for a happy present in which they need, every hour that they live, to make use of their voices in natural communication with their neighbors. Children are thinking all the time, and if oral expression of thought were made attractive and æsthetic, there would be more interest in reading recorded thought. Most people would learn to read, even if the schools were abandoned; and if they waited to attack the reading problem until they were mature, they would probably read more fluently and intelligently. Speech is absolutely necessary from babyhood on, and children will imitate what they hear. Speech habits are bound to be formed at an early day, and if they are incorrect ones, it will be almost impossible to break them. No individual, in whatever walk of life, can afford to be deprived of the power and influence which go with a strong, clear speaking voice, full of melody and flexibility.

CHAPTER XII

LANGUAGE

Language cannot be taught, but must be evoked. Speech is the incarnation of feeling and thought. The theme and melody of a bit of music are present in the composer's mind before he communicates them by means of notation. The notes are only a clumsy representation of the artist's more intimate ideas and feelings. So it is with words, which are merely the signs of previously conceived ideas. Ideas spring from experience; the more varied the experience the larger the stock of usable ideas.

Language grows out of the social instinct, and where this instinct is dead, as it is in most schools, language too will be lifeless. When there is desire, speech comes naturally, but a negative, formal schoolroom attitude stifles desire. Man has a language capacity, but life and school must provide an opportunity for its development.

The language of a nation is constantly growing, not by any fixed laws of increase, but in sympathy with new conditions. New objects, new discoveries, new ideas, demand new words. The language of a child is like that of a nation. The listless, idle, overdocile child is not creating new images which will cry for words to clothe them. Little children are in the language-making period. They have keen ears to catch fine intonations, and sharp eyes with which to observe new facts; and yet language in the primary grades is usually as formal as the orthodox butler, and as unorganized as the tin man in the "Wizard of Oz." Language is

a tool which must not only be preserved from rust, but must be sharpened to do its work with precision and effect, that thought may be expressed with freedom, clearness, and correctness.

Children are poets, and the stimulus they need for the development of poetic expression is direct contact with nature. They need to come upon surprises, unexpected likenesses, and alluring lights and shadows. Then language takes on vividness and beauty. Outdoor life stirs the children intellectually too, and by constantly presenting problems for solution it creates a fund of new ideas. These problems are to be solved in terms of comparison and contrast which arise out of live conditions and concrete experiences. Out of this first-hand contact will come nouns, adjectives, and apt phrases. The child of the outdoors will naturally say "as gay as a dandelion," "as black as a cloud"; or, as a little five-year-old boy said when he looked at his uncle's rough, mottled gray suit, "That makes you look like a horned toad."

Language owes much to the startling beauty of nature, and children are more alive to the wonder, mystery, and newness of life than any one else. They are ready to accumulate the impressions, the raw material out of which they will fashion their happiest conceptions. Unconsciously the beauty and suggestion of life surges in upon them, and their hearts are overflowing with joy. From a full heart language is born. The morose and somber are silent, but the joyous needs must speak.

Children's vocabulary will grow naturally if they live in a suggestive environment. They should be allowed to hear the stroke of the hammer in the workshop, to feel the softness of the pussycat's coat, to see the blue of the sky, to taste the honey in the cups of the flowers, and to smell

the pungent fall odors. The great Creator gave the child a voice, but it is a mere instrument of expression upon which experience, imagination, and joy must play. The strings of a harp will be silent without the stroke of the fingers, the voice without the push of desire.

Language lessons are frequently as ineffectual as our attempts to write to a friend with whom we have long been out of touch. What is there to say? we have no words because we have no ideas which compel communication.

If you would foster the gift of language in the children, throw out the commonplace classroom expressions, and introduce variety and imagination into your own speech. Make the sensory life of the child a rich field from which he may glean striking comparisons, and stir his imagination to make use of them in attacking new ideas. Begin by changing your morning greeting, find out in how many ways you can make the children welcome and begin the day; feast their ears upon a variety of clear, musical English; give them "Mother Goose" with its quaint descriptions and humorous turns; let them listen to fairy tale and fable, that they may enlarge their vocabulary and make friends of new words.

Language is not speech alone; it is the communication of ideas. These may be communicated by drawing, modeling, and handwork, which should be kept in close relation to the language work. The dramatic play of the school is coming to the rescue of the language teacher also, for thought is communicated by gesture as well as by voice. Children are in the pantomime and gesture stage. They should be encouraged to put their bodies into action and the facial muscles into expressive use. Away with stolidity and orthodox position if you would have the children learn to talk well!

If the children are allowed to talk naturally and freely, their language will be figurative, for personification is childlike. Children believe in their own fancies. Apparent likenesses and accidental associations are facts to them, which call out quaint and original expression. Children are impressionable and emotional, and their images are strong because they grow out of first-hand contact with life in its newness and mystery. See to it, then, that the school environment does not limit the contact of the children to prosaic books and ugly desks. Make room for the instinctive reactions toward elemental things,— earth, air, water, fire, — and their language will be vigorous and effective. Mere object teaching as a substitute for such intimate experiences as have been suggested is a delusion. The child who makes a formal sentence about an orange, a book, a pencil, held up before the group for inspection, is only giving the result of a perfunctory visual contact which is superficial and stultifying.

There are many types of successful language lessons, for which nature study, game life, and daily happenings furnish suggestive themes. These topics, however, must be presented in the form of problems, and developed by a few leading questions which quicken curiosity and stimulate thinking. The primary school is not nearly as progressive as it would have the world believe. Children are still memorizing symbols, only we have cunningly substituted words and sentences instead of syllables. It is the solution of problems that we need. Constructive thinking which makes some demand upon originality will develop personal power, but the dictated exercises and memory gems of the primary school call for neither constructive thinking nor imagination. The wordiness of the early grades accounts for the lack of initiative and power of individual attack which we complain of in the grammar school.