LANGUAGE TEACHING.
What has been said with regard to the relation of reading to a content is equally true with regard to what is known as language teaching. It is a hopeless task to endeavor to give skill in the use of language independent of a content which is not in accord with the pupil’s own stage of development. The interest, to be genuine, and productive of self-effort, must always be in the content. An enrichment of his vocabulary, a proper use of words, correct form of oral and written speech must come, not for themselves, but as results of an effort to the adequate expression of something which the pupil is interested to communicate.
The widespread criticism directed against the results of language teaching in our schools no doubt has something of justification. This defect does not come from lack of attention to the matter, or from indifference on the part of the teachers, but largely from the over-emphasis of the purely formal aspects of language. The matter is approached from the wrong side. In early years, to get form we must emphasize content. In the primary grades, formal insistence on correct technique should be at the minimum, while richness and variety of subject matter should be at the maximum.
Nor is this without application to the remaining forms of language expression,—drawing and music. Skill in aesthetic forms can come only from an interest in something to be expressed in these forms.
When we consider that the child, up to the eighth or ninth year of his life, has not a sufficient mastery of a reading vocabulary to enable him to get for himself out of books material for which he has deepest need, and which is his natural and proper nourishment, the imparting to him orally such material assumes an aspect of gravest importance. Shall his early years of school life be barren and empty? Surely the teacher has a duty in this respect beyond giving merely formal instruction. She should not allow the pressure for immediate technical results to deprive the child of his inheritance in the folklore and the epic treasures of the race.
It has been shown by experiment that, with young children, instruction is taken more readily through the ear than through the eye. Their pre-school education has been acquired largely through auditory impressions and exists in the mind in the form of auditory images. To throw the emphasis at once on visual impression and imagery is too violent a break in their mental habits.
II.