Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature

by Ontario. Department of Education

MISTAKES IN TEACHING LITERATURE

There are some mistakes in teaching literature that are noted here, in order that they may be avoided:

1. Teaching pupils about literature, instead of teaching literature itself; for example, teaching biography, etymology, history, geography, or science in the literature lesson, because some feature of one or more of these may be suggested by the language of the lesson. A knowledge of such subjects is merely preparatory to the study of literature itself.

2. Teaching merely the meanings of words and phrases, and omitting the greater things of imagery, thought, beauty of language, and the spirit of the writer.

3. Trying to force appreciation by telling the pupils they must learn to like such and such works because educated people like them. It is useless, at this time, to try to develop the critical spirit, as the pupil has not a sufficiently wide acquaintance with literary works on which to form a judgment.

4. Doing for the pupil what he should be led to do for himself. A literature lesson, in which the teacher has been doing all the talking, or both asking and answering questions, will be barren of good results.

5. Paraphrasing. Short passages may be paraphrased, in order to show whether the pupil has understood the force and vitality of the metaphor or the condensed expression. But paraphrasing must be used with great discretion. The teacher will not make the pupils appreciate the beauty of a fine literary selection by converting refined gold into low grade ore.

6. Attempting to draw some moral from every lesson. Not all lessons are didactic. If the pupils have sympathized with what is noble and just in the story, the statement of a moral at the conclusion is unnecessary. Yet in poems that are plainly didactic, for example, To a Waterfowl, Fourth Reader, p. 377, the moral lesson must occupy the first place. There the teacher should show how the author has enforced the lesson of confidence in God's guidance by the incident of the migrating waterfowl, the imagery, the music, the arrangement of parts, and the similarity of his own position to that of the bird.

7. Dwelling unnecessarily on the intellectual side of a poem that is mainly emotional and musical; for example, The Bugle Song, Third Reader, p. 337, and The Solitary Reaper, Fourth Reader, p. 261. In the former case, the pupils should be led to realize the visual imagery, should hear, in imagination, the bugle calls and fading echoes, and enjoy the rare and appropriate music. In the second case, the teacher should call attention to the artistic suggestions of loneliness, distance, antiquity, sadness, and vagueness that are suggested by "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago", and by such possible situations of English travellers in remote parts of the world, and should show that these elements are suitable for the circumstances under which the poet sees the girl. He who questions merely to find out the meaning of the poem, the relation to that of its subordinate parts, and the meaning of the words and phrases, is using a very heavy tool on a very delicate mechanism. Such works must be treated deftly and lightly.