Talks on Teaching Literature

by Arlo Bates

It follows that in the choice of pieces to be read to students the first thing to be considered is that these shall be effective in a broad sense so that they will appeal to the average intelligence and taste of a given class easily and naturally. They must first of all have that strong appeal to general human emotion which will insure a ready response from youth not well developed æsthetically and rendered less sensitive by being massed with other

students in a class. Such a selection is not easy, and it involves the careful study of what may be termed the individuality of any given group of pupils; but it seems to me to be at once one of the most obvious and one of the most important of the points which should be considered in the beginning of any attempt to create in school a real enjoyment in literature.

A danger which naturally presents itself at the very outset is the likelihood of forgetting that the possession of this easy and obvious interest is not a sufficient reason why a work should be presented to a class. It too often happens that the desire of arousing and interesting pupils leads teachers to bring forward things that are sensational and have little if any further recommendation. Doubtless Dr. Johnson was right when he declared that "you have done a great thing when you have brought a boy to have entertainment from a book;" yet after all the teacher is not advancing in his task and may be doing positive harm if he sacrifice too much to the desire to be instantly and strongly pleasing. Flashy and unworthy books are so pressed upon the reading public at the present day that especial care is needed to avoid fostering the tendency to receive them in place of literature.

It is not my purpose to give lists of selections, for in the first place it has been done over and over, notably in such a collection as the admirable "Heart of Oak" series; and in the second no selection can be held to be equally adapted to different

classes or to have real value unless it has been made with a view to the actual needs of a definite body of pupils. Pupils must be interested, yet the things chosen to arouse their interest should be those which have not only the superficial qualities which make an instant appeal, but possess also those more lasting merits essential to genuine literature.

In the lower grades it is generally, I believe, possible for the teacher to control the choice of selections put before students, although even here this is not always the case. If errors of selection are made, however, they are largely due to inability to judge wisely and to a too great deference to general literary taste. A teacher must remember that two points are absolutely essential to any good teaching of literature: first, that the selection be suited to the possibilities of the individual class; second, that the teacher be qualified so to use and present the selection as to make it effective. Many conscientious teachers take poems which they know are regarded as of high merit, and which have been used with advantage by other instructors, yet which they individually, from temperament or from training, are utterly inadequate to handle. They either lack the insight and delight in the pieces which are essential if the pupils are to be kindled, or are deficient in power so to present their own appreciation and enjoyment that these appeal to the children.

For illustration of one of the ways in which a child may be led into the heart of a poem I have

chosen "The Tiger," by William Blake. This belongs to the class of literature constantly taken for use with children because it is reputed to be beautiful, yet which constantly fails in its appeal to a class. It is to me one of the most wonderful lyrics in the language, yet I doubt if it would ever have occurred to me to use it in our common schools, and certainly I should never have dreamed that it was to be presented to children in the lower grades. I do not know with what success teachers in general may have used it, but in one or two Boston schools with which I happen to be fairly well acquainted the effect is pretty justly represented by the mental attitude of the small lad spoken of in the next chapter. The extent to which children acquiesce in a sort of mechanical compliance in what to them are the vagaries of their elders in the matter of literature can hardly be exaggerated. Doubtless they often unconsciously gain much of which they do not dream in the way of the development of taste and perception, but too often the whole of the instruction given along æsthetic lines slides over them without producing any permanent effect of appreciable value.

Of course I do not contend that children are not advancing unless they know it. Early training in literature may often be of the highest value without definite consciousness on the part of the child. Self-analysis is no more to be expected here than anywhere else in the early stages of training. The child does not in the least comprehend, for

instance, that the ditties of Mother Goose, meaningless jingles as they are, are educating his sense of rhythm; he does not understand that his imaginative powers are being nourished by the fairy-tale, the normal mental food for a certain stage of the development of the individual as it is the natural and inevitable product of a corresponding stage in the development of the race. So long as a child has genuine interest in a poem or a tale he is getting something from it, but he does not concern himself to consider anything beyond present enjoyment. In the earlier stages at least, and for that matter at any stage, the thing to be secured is interest; and instruction in the lower school grades should be confined to what is actually needed to make children enjoy a given piece. Anything beyond this may wisely be deferred.