Recently the teachers of our school set about to discover what actually was in the minds of the pupils when they sat down to a given task. All of them were asked to write out, honestly and simply, just what they did, and what was in their minds when they opened their books to study a lesson. The results were a revelation of poor teaching. We at once gave ourselves unreservedly to the task of thinking more in terms of the learning rather than the teaching process. We stopped asking questions. We invited questions from the pupils. When an assignment was given, we tried to avoid the name. We allowed the pupil to manufacture his own task, to follow his inclination, to establish his own mode of procedure. And we were grateful for what he brought us, meager though it might be, so long as it was his own, the product of his own impulse.

In English, I prepared sets of questions and distributed them among the pupils. They were not asked to answer a solitary one of them. If they found them useful in studying a poem or an essay, or in writing a composition, well and good. They could reject all of them if they chose. The results have been increasingly reassuring that the pupils are invading the fields of literature to find for themselves what they contain. We find that they are freer to tell why they like a poem and dislike another; why they find one essay stimulating and the other sheer rot.

True, the teacher is not left entirely out of the picture. He has to be more skilful than ever, more crafty in calling to their attention things they have overlooked, points of technique they have disregarded but which should be helpful. But he has put himself on their plane. He sees life and literature through their eyes. He lets them see that their interests are as valid for them as his are for him, and he is now getting the results the English teacher dreams about.

These sets of questions were prepared for written composition, reading a poem, reading an essay, reading an entire book, and reading a play. In no case were the questions based on subject matter, or solicitous of information. They were challenges to the pupil to think, and to think for himself. They induced him to examine his own mind as he addressed himself to the assignment, and to follow his own intellectual promptings as he studied. By virtue of this character, they were subtle helps to his study, ingratiating sign posts as he went along. But they did not do the work for him, nor did they imply that he was expected to reach certain conclusions because his teacher would approve.

One sample set follows.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDYING A POEM

1. What is a poem worth to you?

2. Can you approach the reading of a poem with a challenge to a new experience, or are you prejudiced?

3. If prejudiced, can you analyze that prejudice?

4. If prejudiced, can you approach it with an open mind?

5. If so, how would you address your mind to the reading?

6. Would the title be helpful? Could you read the poem without letting the title impress you, and then see if your reaction fitted what the poet has in mind?

7. Regardless of that, what would you expect a poem to give you?

8. When the poem is read, does your mind have a single definite impression? Can you state it in a few words?

9. If it is vague, can you tell whether it is due to the difficulty of the poet's language, or to his own vagueness of thought?

10. When it is read, and the idea discerned, can you classify it as the poet's intent-merely to give an impression or picture, or to awaken some emotion, or to impinge some idea on your mind?

11. If you have classified it, can you yourself visualize the picture, or is your emotion awakened, or do you grasp and believe the idea?

12. If any or all of those are true with you, can you detect any flaws in the picture, or can you add any others from your own experience? Is the emotion awakened real to you, or new? If new, do you believe it worth while for you to cultivate? If an idea, is the idea common in your experience, or new? is it important for you? If so, in what way can you make use of it? 13. Do you think that the substance of the poem can be better expressed in prose? If so, in what form? Could you express it in prose? Would it be possible for you to try to express it in another poem?

If new,

14. Do you know of any other poems expressing the same idea? If so, better or less effective? (This thought can apply also to the essay.)

15. The style of a poem is more involved than prose. Can you see the need of a knowledge of Grammar to aid you in appreciating the poem? How would you test it out? (This also applies to the essay.)

16. Do you read the poem aloud when studying it? If so, what values do you see over reading it silently? What do those values mean to you?

17. What does the pattern of a poem do to help the poet? Does it help you or hinder you? Do you see any attractive attributes in the poem which merely the pattern gives? Can you name them?

18. Can you note specific words and their purpose?

19. Does the reading of a poem give you any new experience? If so, in what way does it give that which prose could not give? If preferable, can you show why?

20. Does a poem help you to read prose better?

THE SCARBOROUGH SCHOOL

SCARBOROUGH, NEW YORK

J. MILNOR DOREY

IS GRAMMAR REVIVING?

Following a rebellion, some years ago, against the formalities of grammatical rules and drill, high schools throughout the country have experienced, or are experiencing, a period of composition instruction in which formal grammar is minimized or excluded. Is this type of instruction to continue? Or are we seeking a workable mean which will give us the best of both the "accuracy-first" and the "self-expression" theories of composition? To answer these questions in part (and at the same time

TEACHING OF FORMAL GRAMMAR

Shaded states are using more formal grammar than three or four years ago. Unshaded states are using less.

to determine broadly the tendency in twelfth-year teaching of literature), a questionnaire was submitted, first, to each of the state high-school supervisors or inspectors, and second, to superintendents of representative cities in all states. The questionnaire follows:

1. In the ninth grade, is the tendency to teach more, or less, formal grammar? 2. In teaching grammar in the high school, is the tendency to use more, or less, diagramming?

3. What is the composition text most used in ninth-grade English?

4. Is American, or English, literature preferred in the twelfth grade? Or is the tendency toward a mixture of the two?

5. What biography and criticism text is adopted, or most widely used, for American literature? For English literature?

The questionnaire was sent to one hundred sixteen supervisors and superintendents. The superintendent of at least one representative city in each state received the questions, and two or three city superintendents in such states as New York, Ohio, Texas, and California. Seventy-four, or sixty-four per cent, of the recipients returned answers to the questionnaire.

Replies to the second and fifth questions indicate such a wide variety of textbook preference that the results are relatively indecisive. In general, Ward, Hitchcock, and Lewis and Hosic are most popular for ninth-year composition, according to questionnaire answers. For American and English literature the favorites were Long, Halleck, and Pace.

The revival of grammar arises partly, it seems to me, from the dissatisfaction created by relying wholly upon the teaching of informal grammar. In the use of informal grammar we were teaching for the threefourths, or five-sixths, of ninth-year students who would not enter college, or need a very extensive technical knowledge of the language. But stand

ards are rising. Both college and business demand a technical knowledge of English. We find often that more than half of our ninth-grade students afterward enrol for Freshman English in college, and discover themselves unable to translate the instructor's marginal corrections. For these corrections are made in grammatical terms which for them are frequently unrelated and scattered rather than related and interwoven. Formal grammar involves a step-by-step realization of word relationships, none of which is possible without a complete understanding of the preceding principle. The student's knowledge of grammar should compare favorably with his knowledge of arithmetic; it should be orderly, reasonable, easily classified. It is difficult, I think, to build such a knowledge for ninth-year students by the informal, or deductive, method.

Years ago we taught a great deal of formal grammar and little paragraph writing with the hope that grammatical knowledge would eventually enable the student to write rhetorically as well as grammatically accurate sentences and paragraphs. When we found that this method not only failed of its object but prohibited the pupil's acquiring a language accent of his own, we began to teach a great deal of composition and little grammar. Of the two extremes the latter, most teachers believe, is more compatible with writing efficiency. We may now, however, begin to combine more widely the two methods, deductive correction of written paragraphs, and sure construction for the student of a workable grammatical science. D. M. WOLFE

BELLEVUE HIGH SCHOOL

ON THE VALUE OF SIDE-SHOWS IN THE
CLASS-ROOM CIRCUS

It is a circus! I know it, and so do you; so do all wide-awake teachers, English ones especially. "Something doing" in the ring every minute, and there may be two rings or even three. The ringmaster of course is practically obsolete in all circuses nowadays, and you and I are ordinary performers, taking our turn among the rest. We still have in our ring, however, the daring riders who leap with the greatest ease through hoops fairly blazing with difficulties; the skilled trapeze performers and tightrope walkers who seem to you and me always on the verge of an ignominious fall, but who are never afraid to take a chance; and always, always the clowns. What dear fellows they are! And really, you know, it takes true skill to be a clever clown.

So much, briefly, for the main circus, but what about the side-shows, and how do they help? Well, for side-shows I have in mind lesser activi