Talks on Teaching Literature

by Arlo Bates

An ordinary modern school-boy unconsciously but inevitably measures the values of the books presented to him by the news of the day and the facts of life as he sees it. If he is not made to feel that books represent something more than a statement of outward fact or of fiction, he is too clear-headed not to see that they are of little real worth, and with the pitiless candor of youth he is too honest not to acknowledge this to himself. Young people are apt to credit their elders with enormous power of pretending. The conventionalities of life, those arrangements which adults recognize as necessary to the comfort and even to the continuance of society, are not infrequently regarded by the young as rank hypocrisy. The same is true of any tastes which they cannot share. Again and again I have come upon the feeling among students that the respect for literature professed by their elders was only one of the many shams of which adult life appears to children to be so largely made up.

From the purely intellectual side of the matter, moreover, the youth is right in feeling that there is nothing so remarkable in play or poem as to

justify the enthusiasm which he is told he should feel. If he sees only what I have called the face-value, he would be a dunce if he did not imagine an absurdity in the estimate at which the works of great artists are held. He is precisely in the position of the man who judges the great painting by its realistic fidelity to details, and logically, from his point of view, ranks a well-defined photograph above "The Night Watch" or the Dresden "Madonna." There is more thrill and more emotion for the boy in the poorest newspaper account of a game of football than in the greatest play of Shakespeare's,—unless the lad has really got into the spirit of the poetry.

If nothing is to be taken into account but the intellectual content of literature, the child is therefore perfectly right, and doubly so from his own point of view. Regarded as a mere statement of fact it is to be expected that the average modern boy will find "Macbeth" far less exciting and absorbing than an account of a football match or of President Roosevelt's spectacular hunting. If we expect the lad to believe without contention and without mental reservation that the work of literature is really of more importance and interest than these articles of the newspaper or the magazine, we are forced to depend upon the qualities which distinguish poetry as art. If books are to be used only as glove-stretchers to expand mechanically the minds of the young, it is better to throw aside the works of the masters, and to come down frankly

to able expositions of literal fact, stirring and absorbing.

It must be always borne in mind, moreover, that little permanent result is produced except by what the pupil does for himself. The teacher is there to encourage, to stimulate, to direct; but the real work is done in the brain of the student. This limits what may wisely be attempted in the line of instruction. What the teacher is able to lead the pupil to discover or to think out for himself is within the limit of sound and valuable work. With every class, and—what makes the problem much more difficult—with every boy or girl in the class, the capacity will vary. The signs, moreover, by which we determine how far a child is thinking for himself, instead of more or less consciously mimicking the mind of the master, are all well-nigh intangible, and must be watched for with the nicest discernment. Often the teacher is obliged to help the class or the individual as we help little children playing at guessing-games with "Now you are hot," or "Now you are cold;" but just as the game is a failure if the child has in the end to be told outright the answer to the conundrum, so the instruction is a failure if the student does not make his own discovery of the meaning and worth of poem or play. The moment the instructor finds himself forced to do the thinking for his class in any branch of study, he may be sure that he has overstepped the boundary of real work, or at least that he has been going too rapidly for his pupils

to keep pace with him. This is even likely to be true when he is obliged to do the phrasing, the putting of the thought into word. He cannot profitably go farther at that time. In another way, at another time, he may be able to bring the class over the difficulty; but he is doing them an injury and not a benefit, if he go on to do for them the thinking, or that realizing of thought which belongs to putting thought into word. He is then not educating, but "cramming." It is his duty to encourage, to assist, but never to do himself what to be of value must be the actual work of the learner himself.

All this is evident enough in those branches where results are definite and concrete, like the learning of the multiplication-table or of the facts of geography. It is equally true in subjects where reasoning is essential, like algebra or syntax. Most of all, if not most evidently, is it vitally true in any connection where are involved the feelings and anything of the nature of appreciation of artistic values. We evidently cannot do the children's memorizing for them; but no more can we do for them their reasoning; and least of all is it possible to manufacture for them their likings and their dislikings, their appreciations and their enthusiasms. To tell children what feelings they should have over a given piece of literature produces about the same effect as an adjuration to stop growing so fast or a request that they change the color of their eyes.

In any emotional as in any intellectual experience,

intensity and completeness must ultimately depend upon the capacity and the temperament of the individual concerned. It is useless to hope that a dull, stolid, unimaginative boy will have either the same appreciation or the same enjoyment of art as his fellow of fine organization and sensitive temperament. The personal limitation must be accepted, just as is accepted the impossibility of making some youths proficient in geometry or physics. It may be necessary under our present system—and if so the fact is not to the credit of existing conditions—to present the dull pupil with a set of ideas which he may use in examinations. The proceeding would be not unlike providing the dead with an obolus by way of fare across the Styx; and certainly in no proper sense could be considered education. Difficult as it may be, the pupil must be made to think and to feel for himself, or the work is naught.