The training and testing had bored them to the point where they retained little of the first fine flush of enthusiasm. In other classes, however, the pupils in the course of three months gained from six to ten months in the ability to read with exactness. It seems pretty clear that this result was achieved only because the teachers of those classes maintained interest at a high point. Apparently, then, even in a matter so intimately related to the pupil's mental life as comprehension in silent reading, training can under favorable conditions increase the ability of certain types of student very markedly.

From these and similar investigations it is a fair inference that by appropriate methods pupils can be taught anything within their capacity. It does not follow that we can teach everything. Here comes the necessity of selection. Evaluation of the materials of instruction is obligatory. We need to know what powers and skills must be developed and under what conditions they can be developed. We shall never find the answer merely by inviting the opinion of experienced teachers. Opinion will always remain conflicting and confusing. What we should have, wherever possible, is established fact.

In determining what has been established and what needs yet to be established we must resort to expert guidance. For example, in the two investigations just cited, what has actually been proved? Can the vocabulary of pupils who have never taken Latin be increased by the same methods and to the same extent? Was the unforeseen gain in comprehension in silent reading due to the engaging personality and zealous activity of those particular teachers? Or was it due to the past history of the pupils in the experiment? Or was the result such that any teacher who follows the methods can attain it? Another question would relate to the permanence of the acquisitions. Can they become a lasting part of the pupil's equipment? Will he go forward to establish these habits and develop abiding interests in these activities? Or will he after this particular spurt drop back to his original level because of some obscure nervous organization?

Still another point for expert inquiry would be, will these powers unfolded during longer or shorter periods of intensive drill ac

tually function in other fields of study? One experimenter has found that in her school the boys and girls were taught the items of acceptable English fairly well. At least, they were able to apply what they learned to the writing which they handed in to the English teacher. But they did not apply these rules to the writing which they handed in to the science teacher. Perhaps you have heard of a similar state of affairs in your part of the country. This experimenter did find it in hers, but after working a year or two she was able by means of individual instruction and co-operation among departments to arouse in those particular students a sense of responsibility for the matters which the English department taught. Thereafter they wrote carefully in all their papers and notebooks. They abandoned the lesson-learning attitude about English requirements and habitually applied the standards of good usage.

Obviously here is one of the perennial problems of the English teacher: How can he equip his students with genuine habits of expression, not mere fleeting notions of incorrect usage? One researcher has arrived at the conclusion that young people cannot be taught to write. A supervisor in our town does not go so far. All he maintains is that the English department cannot teach them to write. You observe that he has the courage to stir up a hornet's nest every once in a while. In fact, he proposes that all English departments be abolished and that the ordinary duties of the English teacher be discharged by the members of every other department. The study of co-operation referred to a moment ago seems to indicate that the English teacher is needed to elucidate the principles of expression and to provide really effective assimilative drills. The question remains, Is this experimenter's solution generally applicable? If so, what are the essential conditions for its success? Here again we shall need further experimentation and expert evaluation.

Let me give one further illustration of the pitfalls of hasty generalization and the need of guidance from specialists in this field. One investigator tried to discover how best to diagnose the needs of a student in composition at the beginning of the term. He found that error-recognition and proofreading tests did not serve the purpose. A pupil might make a high score on the tests and yet intro

duce into his writing the same errors which he had corrected on the tests. A good many teachers jumped to the conclusion that such drills serve no useful purpose. One of them, blessed with an experimental turn of mind, decided to gather evidence. She used these drills, not as measuring sticks but as teaching devices. She employed them to clarify the pupil's notion of the fundamental errors in sentence structure. The drill was concentrated in three weeks, and with that group of pupils was effective. That is, they did not make those particular errors in the theme which was written at the end of the period to measure their attainments. It seems to be true that as devices for assimilating principles of sentence structure such drills have a very definite value. This experience shows not only how important it is for teachers to know about scientific investigations but how essential it is for moot points to be further investigated, and for all of us to have expert evaluations of the findings.

This contention might be supported in every field of English study. The application of the criterion of social usefulness to English usage or the building of a curriculum for English expression, the employment of the criterion of the interests of pupils or their mental age as a basis for selecting books for class study and home reading-these and other fields of investigation would just as aptly illustrate the necessity for teachers to know what educational research has to contribute to the solution of classroom problems.

If you have followed me thus far, you will probably assent to two statements: first, we do not, and in fact cannot be expected to, know all the significant studies in our field; second, we very much need to know the significant studies. We need to know how they will aid us in our daily work. How can this lack be supplied? As I view the situation, it is the duty of the National Council to meet the demand. The Council, as the only nation-wide organization of English teachers, owes this service of enlightenment to its members.

The present is the time to undertake this service. The center of interest in educational circles is now shifting. For some years it has dwelt on the measurement of classroom products. Today it is hovering over the materials of instruction. The curriculum engages

the attention of students of education in every section of the country. Scientific studies for the most part have a direct bearing on what the pupil should study and at what stage of his progress he ought to study it. If English curricula in the different cities and states are to keep pace with revisions in science and mathematics, the Council should gather together and make available the results of research in this field. The report should not be drawn up for technical students but for the workaday teacher. In those parts which would guide graduate schools of research the language should be simple enough to be understood by those unacquainted with the refinements of statistical procedure. It should bring out into the light of common sense the bearing of each study and each problem on the exercises of the classroom.

The Council is competent to produce such a summary, for we have within our own number experts acquainted with the crucial questions in English, with the methods and pitfalls of educational research, and with the actual practice and everyday needs of the classroom teacher. We could draw up a summary of investigations containing critical evaluations of research already completed and dependable outlines of essential research yet to be made. Whether we do produce it depends on you. If you, as the leading English teachers of this nation, urge, support, and demand a critical evaluation of scientific studies, the National Council will do its best to supply that demand.

THE ESSAY OF TODAY

SIMEON STRUNSKY

Confronted with the task of defining the novel, you might do much worse than say that a novel, as a rule, is something that is written by a novelist. The generality of mankind is not very well informed on the laws of plot, character, situation, and the inner life; but we know Dickens, Tolstoy, and William Dean Howells when we see them. Similarly, it is possible, in the absence of a thorough acquaintance with the textbooks from Aristotle down, to define drama as something written by a dramatist, and poetry as something offered for sale by a poet, and a picture as something

committed by a painter. People will understand, and nine times out of ten will not go astray.

But now look at the essay. Among a dozen writers brought together by Odell Shepard in Essays of 1925,1 I find one United States senator, three journalists, two or three journalists who have attained the dignity of publicists, one poet and novelist, one literary critic. In the dozen names I find just two which at first sight connote the essay; they are E. S. Martin and Zephine Humphrey. This is not intended to suggest that there is anything in the Constitution of the United States or in the jurisdictional rules of the essayists' labor union to prevent anybody from trying his hand at Montaigne's trade. That there is no such labor organization in this particular field is precisely the point with which I have set out. Freedom from every sort of restriction on immigration from other domains of literature has characterized the essay almost from the beginning. It is particularly true of the contemporary essay.

Nevertheless, Mr. Shepard foresees an air of bewilderment on his reader's face, and he hastens to explain. It appears that he really holds much more rigorous views on the essay than the present writer does:

Really excellent humorous writing is hard to find in the magazines of the year. What is more important, there is little play of mind for its own sake, little amiable and graceful trifling of the kind inherited by English writers from Charles Lamb. . . . . I may as well record that one man at least, while reading his way through the non-fictional prose of recent magazines, has often sighed for more frequent oases of urbane and civilized laughter, little zones of leisure remote from the drum-fire of argument.

Plainly, Mr. Shepard feels that topics like government regulation of business, or prohibition and the Ku Klux, or international peace, or the career of William J. Bryan are not essay topics. It simply happened that 1925 was a poor year. If better essays had been made in 1925 he would have collected them.

What is this ideal essay form which Mr. Shepard has only approximated in the absence of the real thing? It is the thing which Addison and Charles Lamb wrote. It is the thing which Christopher Morley has in mind when he says, in his introduction to the first 'Hartford, Connecticut: E. V. Mitchell.