Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce: Cincinnati, Ohio. Columbia Chamber of Commerce: Columbia, South Carolina. Commercial Club: Sioux City, Iowa. Commercial Club: Fargo, North Dakota. Denver Civic and Commercial Association: Denver, Colorado. Jackson Chamber of Commerce: Jackson, Michigan. Kearney Commercial Club: Kearney, Nebraska. Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce: Los Angeles, California. Oakland Chamber of Commerce: Oakland, California. Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Seattle Chamber of Commerce: Seattle, Washington. Washington Chamber of Commerce: Washington, District of Columbia. A summary of Questionnaire "B" may be stated as follows: Questionnaire "B" reveals conditions with regard to Business English that calls for immediate reform for these reasons: The pupil's inability to use the English language effectively in business is considered a very serious defect because the proper use of English will yield him an economic and a social return. A high school pupil should be able to speak and write correctly and with facility. It is essential for the successful selling or promoting of his own or the other man's service or goods. He should possess a vocabulary which enables him to express his thoughts forcefully and efficiently. The English as given in the high school is extremely inefficient. Some of the causes given for this are the need of: "Better and more specific text-books; better equipped instructors at higher salary; a lack of appreciation on the part of the pupil of the necessity of such training, and last but not least the "fault lies with what is taught or the method of teaching for the results are not happy". Good "Business" English should enable a pupil to express himself in such a way that he may be understood where various shades of meaning might place a different phase upon the different business transactions. A vocationally trained pupil and a culturally trained one should have a minimum amount of vocational and cultural training in English Language and Literature, as a combination of the two are very valuable in order to make him a well developed person. He should have the ability to read, write and speak English efficiently before he secures an employment certificate, for in an English speaking nation, what is of greater worth than to know one's own language? In the Outline for Vocational Guidance through English Composition some of the themes mentioned were: Vocational Ethics; Social Ethics; and Civic Ethics. These grade themes were for the high school pupils. As there is a close relation, in many respects, between what we may call "High School Ethics" and "College Ethics", I cite the following on “College Ethics": "A refreshing series of ethical waves have recently swept over our country, resulting in a purging of the commercial, political and social atmosphere, creating a new type of moral sense; the wording of this theme suggests, however, that the crusade against existing evils has penetrated less deeply into collegiate circles than into the arena of the business world. The phrase 'college ethics', seems to imply that the man so fortunate as to be registered in a college, may be governed by ethical law unlike that outside the classic halls of learning, that the Golden Rule does not apply to the gownsmen in the same way as to the townsmen. *** A teacher's power is infinitely more in what he is, than what he teaches. 'How can I hear what you say', said Emerson, 'when what you are is continually thundering in my ears?' It is this contact of student life with that of the faculty that counts for more than all else in the morals of our institutions. Really the strongest lessons that we teach are the lessons we do not teach, but those that emanate from our personality. *** History is replete with examples of such teachers, among them Thomas Arnold of Rugby stands pre-eminently; the secret of Arnold's marvelous power lay not in his super!or academic training, but in the fact that his heart throbbed with greatness and goodness which reached out and touched and moulded the lives of his boys, whose sports and studies he shared. Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke, by her consistent life, ever held before her young women the ideals of a fine, noble womanhood; so completely were these ideals ingrained in the lives of these students that they reflected them everywhere they went in after life. It is this subtle influence of heart upon heart, and soul upon soul that counts for ethics in the college halls, without which all formal instruction is worthless. Such has been the influence of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Aquinas, Erasmus, Savonarola, Pestalozzi, Arnold, Mary Lyon and a galaxy of others who have lived and taught down through the ages. With such teachers, the ethical life of our colleges will revive and send out such a moral force as will eliminate the evils of the commercial, political and social world against which legislation is now directed". (13) I. What Some Practical Workers say about English. 1. The teachers of the Horace Mann School write as follows: "The study of English naturally occupies an important place in the school program-Regarding it as the most efficient means of culture at our command, we make it the 'core', as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler styles it, of our curriculum, devoting more time to it than to any other subject, and considering it the chief standard for measuring the progress and ability of our pupils. Our aim is the obvious one-to train the children to use their mother-tongue more effectively in speaking and writing, and to gain some knowledge and appreciation of its literature. In schoolroom practice the subject groups itself as follows: 1. Reading and Literature. 2. Composition. 3. Language Work and Grammar". (41) 2. Hall in Adolescence and Literature says: "I am persuaded that Quintillian was right when he declared that the simple reading of great works, such as national epics 'will contribute more to the unfolding of students than all the treatises of all the rhetoricians that ever wrote.' At the dawn of adolescence I am convinced that there is nothing more wholesome for the material of English study than that of the early mythic period in Western Europe. I refer to the literature of the Arthuriad and the Sangrail, the stories of Parsifal, Tristram, Isolde, Galahad, Gawain, Geraint, Siegfried, Brunhilde, Roland, the Cid, Orlando, Lancelot, Tannhauser, Beowulf, Lohengrin, Robin Hood, and Rolando. This material is more or less closely connected in itself, although falling into large groups. Much of it bottoms on the Nibelungen and is connected with the old Teutonic mythology running back to the gods of Asgard. We have here a vast body of ethical material, characters that are almost colossal in their proportions, incidents thrilling and dramatic to a degree that stirs the blood and thrills the nerves. It is a quarry where Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spencer, Scott, Tennyson, Ibsen, and scores of artists in various lines have found subject-matter. The value of this material makes it almost Biblical for the early and middle teens, and is increased, from whatever point (13) Fordyce, pp. 71-79. (41) Teacher's College Record, p. 143. of view we scrutinize it, for this purpose. In a sense, it is a kind of New Testament of classical myths. *** Morals and ethics, which are never so inseparable as at this period, are here found in normal union. *** This material educates the heart at an age when sentiment is predominant. *** Hero worship is developed by a role of noble deeds, a castle album of portraits of heroes, the reading together of heroic books, the offering of ranks in the peerage, and the sacred honor of the perilous for athletic, scholarly, or self-sacrificing attainments. Some would measure the progress of culture by the work of reinterpreting on even higher planes the mystic tradition of a race, and how this is done for youth is a good criterion of pedagogic progress. This spirit is organized in and its fitness shown in the growth and success of the Knights of King Arthur, an unique order of Christian knighthood for boys,' based upon the romantic heroloving, play-constructing, and imaginative instincts which ripen at about fourteen. Its purpose is to bring back to the world, and especially to its youth, the spirit of chivalry, courtesy, deference to womanhood, recognition of the noblesse oblige and Christian daring of that kingdom of knightliness which King Arthur promised that he would bring back when he returned from Avalon. 'In this order he appears again.' It is found in the model of a college Greek letter fraternity, with satisfaction for the love of ritual, mystery, and parade." And again he says: "By general consent, both high school and college youth in this country are in an advanced stage of degeneration in the command of this the world's greatest organ of the intellect, and that despite the fact that the study of English often continues from primary into college grades, that no topic counts for more, and that marked deficiencies here often debars from all other courses. Every careful study of the subject for nearly twenty years shows deterioration, and Professor Shurman, of Nebraska, thinks it now worse than at any time for forty years. Such a comprehensive fact must have many causes: I. One of these is the excessive time given to other languages just at the psychological period of greatest linguistic plasticity and capacity for growth. II. The second cause of this degeneration is the subordination of literature and content to language study. Grammar arises in the old age of language. III. It is hard and, in the history of the race, a late change to receive language through the eye which reads instead of through the ear which hears. IV. The fourth cause of degeneration of school English is the growing preponderance of concrete words for designating things of sense and physical acts, over the higher element of language that names and deals with concepts, ideas, and non-material things. The first result of this is that the modern school child is more and more mentally helpless without objects of sense." (17) 3. Margaret Sherwood, assistant Professor of English Literature in Wellesley College, Massachusetts, since 1912, writes that: "The great meanings of literature should be taught, not dogmatically, but with reverent effort to interpret, to become aware of many kinds of insight into the mysteries of existence, to let life grow great in finding how different thinkers, searchers for the light, struggled, won, or failed. That large reading of human life and experience that shows us growth achieved, perhaps, through failure, doubt, despair, must be ours. While we may not always share the conclusion, we are wiser for sharing the struggle; the aspirations of many an one with whose convictions we should not agree may prove the truest stimulus; all is safe so long as the great issues of life are conceived as spiritual issues. *** It is frankly for its civilizing power that we need this study, not for remote questions of scholarship involving intellectual gymnastics. The highest type of literature, the most imaginative, the most idealistic, should be brought to bear upon life; the young should know their Carlyle and their Ruskin, their Browning and their Keats, their Shakespeare, Bishop Berkeley and Sir Thomas Browne, as they now know brake and lever, pulley and piston, and the wriggling of the amoeba under the microscope. They should be taught that: "A good book is the precious 1(Described in the Boy Problem, by its founder, William B. Forbush. Chicago, 1901, p. 91.) (17) Hall, pp. 442, 445, 456. life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.' *** We need to teach the message, the supreme importance of literature as soul revelation, with less of the outer covering, more of the divine intent, that the young may be made to feel the impact of the intellectual and spiritual past experience of the race as expressed in terms of beauty." (37) 4. Aristotle says of: "The Origin and Development of Poetry, Psychologically, Poetry may be traced to two causes, the instinct of Imitation, and the instinct of 'Harmony' and Rhythm. Historically viewed, Poetry diverged early in two directions: traces of this twofold tendency are found in the Homeric poems: Tragedy and Comedy exhibit the distinction in a developed form. Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures; and through imitation he learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.✶✶✶ Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitude, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry." (1) 5. James F. Hosic, Head of Department of English, Chicago Teachers College, informs us that: "An outline of English to guide the teachers of a school is, in a sense, a necessary evil ***. But English as a subject of study does not lend itself readily or happily to definite outlining. *** The word English has come to signify a group of studies called language, composition, word study, reading, literature, grammar, and even penmanship. For clearness it is worth while to observe that only four distinct but related activities are involved: hearing, speaking, reading, and writing English. The essential purpose of these studies, moreover, is only twofold: to become able to express yourself and to understand others". (19) 6. The Joint Committee informs us that: 1. "Training in composition is of equal importance with the study of literature, and should have an equal allowance of time. Composition work should find place in every year of the school course. 2. Subjects for compositions should be drawn from the pupil's life and experience. To base theme work mainly upon literature studies leads pupils to think of composition as a purely academic exercise, bearing little relation to life. 3. Oral work should be conducted in intimate relations with written work, and ordinarily the best results will follow when both are taught by the same teacher. 4. Theory and practice should go hand in hand. The principles of grammar and rhetoric should be taught at the time and to the extent that they are aids to expression. 5. If examinations are given, they should be framed as to be a test of power rather than of memory. The general purpose of teaching oral expression in the schools is to make possible in the lives of the people an accurate, forceful living speech which shall be adequate for ordinary intercourse and capable of expressing the thoughts and emotions of men and women in other relations of life. Recognizing the fact that the impulses to converse, to sing, to narrate, to picture, and to portray (mimic and dramatize) are racial traits of long standing, and that the ability to be effective and interesting in these forms of expression is of enduring social importance, it becomes the task of the teacher to provide incentive and occasion for the normal exercise of these impulses, and to free the channels of expression by establishing right habits of thought and by developing the organs of speech. It is likewise natural for men to enjoy in others excellence and skill in speech and portrayal, and the cultivation of the auditory taste and the dramatic sense enhances (37) Sherwood, pp. 888, 889. (1) Aristotle, pp. 1, 15, 17. (19) Hosic, pp. 4-7. the enjoyment of these forms of art. Such enjoyment it is the privilege and function of the school to promote. The essential object of the literature work of the 7th, 8th, and 9th years is so to appeal to the developing sensibilities of early adolescence as to lead to eager and appreciative reading of books of as high an order as is possible for the given individual, to the end of both present and future development of his moral, emotional, æsthetic, and mental nature. To this general purpose, stated somewhat more in detail in the first three paragraphs below, all other purposes must be secondary". (33) 7. Percival Chubb in "Teaching of English" quotes Sainte-Beuve as follows: "I hold very little to literary opinions. Literary opinions occupy very little place in my life and thoughts. What does occupy me seriously is life itself and the object of it. Chubb further says: This is cited by a disciple, Matthew Arnold, who takes the same attitude holding that poetry, Literature generally, is to be appraised according to its soundness as a criticism of life. And these two men are above suspicion on literary grounds; both had an exquisite sense of the beauty of literary art and of the excellences of style. Let us too, then use Literature in this spirit to aid our young men and women to interpret life, to see life, to respond to the spectacle and drama of life. *** In prescribing the literature that is to be read during the High School period, we must allow several factors to count. These may be ranged under two main divisions: first, the characteristics, the needs, and the interests of the adolescent period; and secondly, the vocational and social demands made upon High School education. The two requirements must be kept in mind: General culture, or education for a typical, ideal manhood and womanhood; and preparation to meet the actual demands of life and a specific kind of social environment. Education cannot simply be for power and for general culture; it must likewise be a novitiate for life, and must clear an opening into the vocations. The very important facts must be faced that the overwhelming majority of High School graduates conclude their academic education when they graduate; and yet that large numbers pass from the High School into the professional and technical schools, omitting college training. Most of them go forth into the shops of the world to labor severally according to gifts and opportunities; some into a technical institute to serve as an apprenticeship in a selected calling; others, into college. The High School should, therefore, enable them to discover their gifts, and should have emphasized their cultivation with an outlook toward the vocation for which they fit. The public expects as much; and from the American point of view, rightly so. A vast amount of time is being wasted in collegiate education upon unpropitious material that needs other methods of treatment. The High School course in English, therefore, must be framed to subserve this double) preparation: it must aid in the preparation for social and personal life,—that is, for manhood and womanhood and citizenship; it must also aid in the choice of, and advance toward, a vocation. Incidentally it must dovetail into the higher institutions of learning and craftsmanship, academic and professional. Incidentally, we say, because these institutions have no peculiar demands to make on the High School other than those which these schools should make for themselves,namely, that the work they undertake to do shall be well done. Of these two general purposes, that of general culture must be the controlling one. We have many types of character to keep in mind and to develop. All we can do is to allow free play of these considerations upon the problem of selection." (8) 8. Hampton Institute, Virginia, in its Academic-Normal Courses in English uses the following: "The aim of the English course is to develop in pupils the ability to use the mother tongue in both oral and written speech with clearness, correctness, and facility. To secure this end, a progressive line of reading, oral and written composition, and grammar is carried on throughout the course. During the first year, the work consists of reproduction exercises, letter writing, and short oral and written compositions based on personal experiences, the work of other lessons, the trades, the occupations, and the activities of school life. (33) Joint Committee. (Report being printed.) (8) Chubb, pp. 237-241. |