CHAPTER XIV LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL: PLAN AND We pass now, after our rapid survey of general literary aims, ethical and practical, during the four years of the High School, to a consideration of the details of the work and the stages of progression. As to the beginnings, experience in teaching both the higher Grammar Grades and High School freshmen, has borne in upon us the importance of investing the High School period with distinctive character, - of fostering in the freshman a strong sense of the new page turned, the new chapter begun, the fresh start, the new opportunity. This result will to some extent come of itself. The freshman feels at once, by the less regimental treatment, the larger trust, the expectation of stricter self-government, that he has advanced a step toward the life of freedom. The organization of the studies under a body of specialists is an intimation that higher and more exacting work is to be required of him. The appearance of the elective factor-in the matter of foreign languages at any rate (we will not gnaw here at this scarred bone of contention) - brings with it thoughts of a life-career which give a new sense of nearness to manhood's responsibilities. We believe in utilizing this factor in the English work. Let us signalize this new departure. We have found a certain virtue in using the term Rhetoric in conjunction with our Composition, just to give the sense of a terra incognita; of a new outlook on the composition work from a more commanding elevation. We have avoided Grammar if our freshmen have had a strong, recent dose of it. We have tried to strike a new vein of interest in the reading matter, and to indicate that we are taking a step forward in our methods of study. Our first written exercise has been a series of questions as to previous work in English, -books read in and out of school, the part reading has played in the student's life, his preferences, and how they have changed, etc. This inventory is, for many reasons, an invaluable document; and until it is received, all plans for the year's work must be to some extent provisional. The wise teacher will not be satisfied with it alone. He will get all available information concerning the schools from which his students have come, and the course of English study pursued there. Following the same cue, and realizing the importance of beginnings in all things, the teacher will be careful to plan certain typical lessons and experi ences for the newcomers, which shall suggest the spirit and the atmosphere that is to surround the work. There is to be enlarged recognition of individual rights and responsibilites, to meet the growth of the feeling of realized selfhood that is proper to the adolescent period. Each pupil will be gently thrown back upon himself by being asked at an early moment to do an individual piece of work-report to his class on this or that matter. Again, because this period is marked by a greater capacity of intellectual labor and concentrated attention, the first tasks will announce to the class that more prolonged and more absorbed effort is to be exacted of them. But this severer effort is to be made in an air of quiet, promoting an eager yet tranquil activity. For it is a peculiarity of the adolescent period that, while the pulse of life beats strong, while vitality is at the flood and emotion is often torrential, there is great danger of overstimulating and overtaxing. This new life, while it must find sufficient outlet, must also be husbanded. "Inspire enthusiastic activity," is the safest motto for the teacher at this time, counsels Dr. Stanley Hall; but he is also very insistent that we must avoid a prodigal employment of this "new and final invoice of energy." It is the more necessary to conduct the work in a spirit of glad yet quiet diligence, because these young men and women (notably the young women) are subject, mar of them, to moods or spells, now of inertia, and now of unwonted activity; of elation, and depression (thoughts of suicide are not uncommon at this time, we are told). So that we shall aim in these first recitations and meetings with our freshmen to strike the key-note of dignified and tranquil, yet inspiring and laborious effort. We are going to work for the sake of the joy in the work, yet sometimes grimly against the grain for ends to be taken on trust. With such thoughts in our minds, we shall be careful to choose promising reading matter to make a start with, preferably two or three short selections in poetry and prose; following a rule-to be observed through the High School course-of sandwiching the quieter books judiciously among the more exciting ones. These "points of rest" give a happy rhythm to the work. After the stir and tension of works like "The Ancient Mariner," "The Tale of Two Cities," "Julius Cæsar," "Macbeth," let us have the contrasting calm of "The Deserted Village" or Gray's "Elegy," of Lamb or Hawthorne, of Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator and the Rev. Dr. Primrose. What particular works we select for our first year students will depend largely upon our general scheme for the four years. The simplest scheme is that which adapts itself in part to the composition work. In the first year a generous proportion of the books will be of the narrative order; in the second, following the change of emphasis in the composition work, descriptive literature will receive special attention; while masterpieces of exposition and argument will claim attention in the third and fourth years. But it is one thing to allow a certain emphasis to fall, now upon narrative, and now upon descriptive literature and so on, following the composition work; quite another to confine attention almost exclusively in any year to one or the other order. In the first place, -repeating our argument in Chapter XI, the student is concerned in his varied daily work with all forms of composition; secondly, there is no principle of logical progression that either binds the different kinds of writing together in a given sequence, or clearly separates them, at least, this is true of narration and description, which overlap; thirdly, we need some variety for the sake of the varied interests and quick contemporaneous developments of the adolescent period; fourthly, the mind does not develop in any such linear fashion, but is advancing in the sum of its powers, including the reasoning and argumentative powers, the recognition of which we so often delay until the third or fourth year; lastly, the scheme is too long drawn out and monotonous, an objection that applies with special force to a year's occupation with description and the descriptive type of literary masterpiece. We should as little think of prescribing for each of the four years an exclusive study of the novel, the epic, the essay, and the speech resp |