Verrill: Harper's Wireless Book. C. SUPPLEMENTARY LITERATURE-HOME READING. (See Grade VII-B.) Hadley: Standards of Public Morality. Root: The Citizen's Part in Government. CONTRIBUTION I. SPECIALIZED TEACHING OF LITERATURE. It then Of course, in discussing questions of this kind, it is always right to assume the obvious. Yet it often happens that what one assumes as obvious, another will reject as unobvious, or perhaps deny as even undemonstrable. may be well to compare what we severally are premising, and what we are postulating as the means and as the ends of literary culture. The writer of these lines assumes as obvious that the study of literature should mean the study of literature, of the thing itself and not of facts or observations about literature. It is assumed, also, that by literature we mean æsthetic compositions, or such in both prose and poetry as involve ultimate spiritual truth or beauty. It is assumed, moreover, that the end in the study of these is, and must be always, the spiritual discernment and appropriation of such ultimate truth or beauty. All students have capacity to discern æsthetic excellences, but by no means in like degree. Most pupils in secondary schools and even colleges disuse the sensibilities in reading, and, if possible, evade occasions of exercising them in outside life. They have become so adjusted to the world of fact that they find it irksome to deal much with the world of sentiment and beauty. It will not do to assume that a class made up of pupils practically out of sympathy with the æsthetic or spiritual side of life can or will read such literature as "The Princess" otherwise than intellectually. If we attempt to discuss with them its quality, they will not understand us, but will perhaps believe we are ourselves deceived about what we say we find, and the experience we derive. That is beginning at the top. It is better to begin, as we do in other subjects, at the bottom. A good way to do that is to set the class at distinguishing by æsthetic judgment those words that have poetic, emotional quality from those that have not. That will at once arouse imagination. Then let the phrases be carefully examined similarly; and when poetic phrases are distinguished clearly from prosaic let the figures be taken in the same way. I have known so little as two weeks' study of this kind to open minds to poetry that had been insensible to it before. Let the teacher devise better means if he can, but he must begin down at the level of his pupil's present capacity of æsthetic appropriation. When by whatsoever exercise or method, the student finds it no longer possible to read past or over poetic terms, phrases, and figures, he may rise to the theme. Let him learn what the theme or message is as a source of power in literature, from some familiar poem like 'How They Brought the Good News'. When he sees that the ultimate idea or beauty here is faith, sympathy, show him how it may be correlated into the ultimate thought or truth, that supreme faith and sympathy may be evinced below the human sphere, and even impressed into the service of society. With this object lesson, send him away |