Character of consonants; stopped, unstopped, voiced.
Character of vowels; back, front, round, harsh.
Correspondence of sound to sense.
It would be interesting, and perhaps somewhat humiliating, for each one of us who are teachers to take a list of the questions we have set for examinations in literature and with perfect honesty tell ourselves how many of them we could ourselves answer with any originality, and how many it is fair to suppose that our students could write about with any ideas except those gathered from teacher or text-book. With the pressure of a doubtful system and of unintelligent custom always upon us, few of us, it is to be feared, would escape without a sore conscience.
When I speak of a school-boy or a school-girl as writing with "originality," I do not mean anything profound. I am not so deluded as to suppose
this originality will take the form of startlingly novel discoveries in regard to the significance of work or the intention of authors. I only mean that what the boy or girl writes shall be written because he or she really thinks it, and that each idea, no matter if it be obvious and crude, shall have some trace of individuality which will indicate that it has passed through the mind of the particular pupil who expresses it. This, I believe, is what should chiefly concern the maker of examination-papers. He should especially aim at giving students an opportunity of showing personal opinions and convictions.
No one who has looked over files of examination-papers is likely to deny that we are most of us likely to be betrayed into asking of our classes absurd things in the line of criticism. It is all very well to remember the scriptural phrase about the high character of some of the utterances of babes and sucklings; but this is hardly sufficient warrant for insisting that our school-children shall babble in philosophy and chatter in criticism. The honest truth is that we are constantly demanding of pupils things that we could for the most part do but very poorly ourselves. The unfortunate youngsters who should be solacing themselves with fairy-tales or with stories of adventure as their taste happens to be, are being dragged through "The Vicar of Wakefield,"—an exquisite book, which I doubt if one person in fifty can read to-day with proper appreciation and delight
until he is at least twenty-five. They are being asked to write themes about Lady Macbeth,—and if they were really frank, and wrote their own real thoughts, if they considered her from the point of view of the children they are, where is the teacher who would not feel obliged to return the theme as a failure? Those instructors who recognized that it was of real worth because genuine would also realize that it would be impossible when tried by the modern standard of examinations.
How far individual teachers go in demanding from children what the youthful mind cannot be fairly expected to give will depend upon the personal equation of the instructor. In too many cases the entrance-examinations set a standard which in the fitting-schools may not safely be ignored, but which is fatal to all original thinking. Perhaps the worst form of this is the wrenching from the student what are supposed to be criticisms upon artistic form or content. A hint of the teaching which is intended to lead up to this has been given in the [topics] suggested in connection with the study of "Evangeline" on page 42. The "outline" from which those are quoted goes on to give the following questions:
Of what literary spirit is "Evangeline" the expression?