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“speak the tongue

That Shakspere spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held"-

that is to be the main spring of scholarly conscience in our literary culture, a culture that need not be less fine, and may be much more vital, because it is nourished upon Shakespeare and Milton; upon the Bible and the "Pilgrim's Progress"; upon Addison and Irving, Burke and Webster, Scott and Hawthorne, Tennyson and Longfellow, Browning and Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau much more than upon the masters of antiquity, although these masters are gaining a wider currency by means of masterly translations, of which the latest example is Norton's noble version of Dante.

Here is the splendid animating and elevating impulse that may well be the conscious inspiration of this new humanistic movement in American education. Our teachers of English are called upon to use our unsurpassed English literature, as it has never been used before, toward the formation of character, the enrichment of life, and the refinement of manners. Let them see to it that our boys and girls, while they may know less than the educated few of earlier centuries knew of Homer and Demosthenes, Virgil and Cicero (we believe they will know more in large ways through translation), learn to draw very much more succulence than the classically trained youth drew from the great literary fruitage of the English masters; and at length

learn to honor and to gain the strength which so few of us now draw from Chaucer and Spenser, Burton and Hooker, Marlowe and Jonson, Browne and Bacon, and other great minds who have so much to give us in our own tongue.

It is with such general convictions and from such a point of view that we approach our task of attempting to focus some of the light that has been shed upon the new tasks and problems of the teacher of English by the discussions, the complaints and arraignments, the experiments and reforms, which have stirred the educational world during the past decade or so. That scattered light has not yet settled to a steady glow by any means; we must not expect that it will just yet. We shall remain for some time in the experimental stage of the New Learning. At present most of us are at work in a mist of unsettled questions which is very slowly lifting. Nevertheless, it may serve at such a time to make a tentative effort to formulate some

general conclusions. These at least may serve the useful purpose of being starting-points of debate for further advance.

CHAPTER II

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL IN DEALING WITH ILLITERACY

So much attention has been drawn by wide discussion in the press to the battle against illiteracy, which the movement for the reform of English studies signalizes, that we think it necessary to consider carefully what the responsibilities of the school are in the matter of illiteracy. This will enable us to indicate our general conception of the scope and aims of English study, and to review the limitations that thwart and excuse the school. It is as important for the teacher as for the public to recognize these limitations at the

outset.

In no subject do the forces of the social environment against which the school has to strive make themselves so continually felt as they do in English. In literary studies the higher ideals and sentiments of the race expressed by its poets and seers clash with the average commercialized ambitions and soiled ideals in whose atmosphere the child is reared; while in language work the higher usages of literary English exacted in the school are in perpetual conflict with the barbarisms.

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE SCHOOL

9

The teacher of

of the swarming illiterate outside. English, at least in the great majority of our city public schools, is involved in unceasing warfare with these retarding forces. In Arithmetic or Science or Geography the teacher may sow on virgin soil; the English teacher must sow on soil choked with the weeds of bad habit, and must ceaselessly ply the hoe against untiring enemies.

In the discussion of the problem of illiteracy not enough allowance is made for this fact. It is one of fundamental importance; and our discussion must start with it because it has very practical bearings. (The schools are held responsible by the public and by the colleges for linguistic faults that have their roots and their favoring soil in the illiteracy of the community. The standards of the community are more potent than those of the school; and against the illiteracy of the playground, the street, and the home, the literacy of the schoolroom has a weak chance.) Undoubtedly the school may do more than it is doing- by heroic effort it may do much more-to beat back the tide of slovenly, slangy, mumbled speech that is poured out on street and mart. But first of all let the difficulties that face the school be known and appreciated. Let it not bear the full burden of blame.

The discouraging fact that meets the teacher is that, although she may secure passably good speech, written and oral, in the class room, there is during recess and

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on the playground and the street a barbaric reversion, with a sense of a relief, to the patois of "real life.” It is this provoking Jekyll and Hyde dualism, this double standard of linguistic manners, with which we have to reckon. Too often the boy or girl will sin in society against his school conscience because to speak fair to say "isn't" instead of "ain't," "coffee" instead of "cawfee" is to put on airs in the eyes of their companions. No teacher will credit herself with full success unless she has overcome this dualism. will measure her efforts, not merely by results obtained in the schoolroom, but by those which tell in the world outside it. Nevertheless, this wider success is more than can reasonably be expected of her; and our plea is for a recognition of her difficult task.

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The fundamental fact to be borne in mind in this connection is that good speech is a habit, a point of social manners. It is, we urge, too much to expect that the habits enforced for a few hours daily in the schoolroom (Saturdays and Sundays and holidays and long vacations excepted) shall prevail against contrary influences affecting the child during the greater part of his daily life. Why is it that the average English or German or French child speaks and writes his native tongue more correctly and pleasantly than the average American child? The principal (though not the only) reason is to be found, not in the better and more laborious teaching of the schools, but in the higher

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