Talks on Teaching Literature

by Arlo Bates

Shakespeare, for instance, for the reader to fail to perceive how the idea burns through the word, how wide is the difference between the mere apprehension of the language and the comprehension of the poet's meaning. In the study of great poetry the impossibility of resting satisfied with anything short of the ideas is so strongly brought out that it cannot be ignored or forgotten; and in this way pupils are impressed with the value of words.

This sensitiveness to the value of words in general is closely coupled with an appreciation of the force of words in particular, of what may be called word-values. The power of appreciating that a word is merely a messenger bringing an idea, is naturally connected with the ability to distinguish with exactness the nature and the value of the thought which the messenger presents. To feel the need of knowing clearly and surely the thought expressed inevitably leads to precision and delicacy in distinguishing the significance and force of language. When once a child appreciates the difference between the accepting of what he reads vaguely or mechanically and the getting from it its full meaning, he is eager to have it all; he finds delight in the intellectual exercise of searching out each hidden suggestion and in the sense of possession which belongs to achieving the thought of the master. It is not to be expected that our pupils shall be able to receive in its full richness the deepest thought of the poets, but they none the less find delight in possessing it to the extent

of their abilities. The point is too obvious to need expansion; but every instructor will recognize its great importance.

Obvious as is this importance of the sense of the value of words and a sensitiveness to word-values, it is not infrequently overlooked. Teachers see the need of a knowledge of the meaning of terms and phrases in a particular selection without stopping to think of the prime value of the principle involved, or indeed that a general principle is involved at all. Still more often they fail to perceive all that logically follows. In exact, vital realization of the full force of language lies the secret of sharing the wisdom of the ages. If students can be trained to penetrate through the word of the printed page to the thought, they are brought into communication with the master-minds of the race. It is not learning to read in the common, primary acceptation of the term that opens for the young the thought of the race; but learning to read in the higher and deeper sense of receiving the word only as a symbol behind and beyond which the thought lies concealed from the ordinary and superficial reader.

Most of all is it the business of the young to learn about life. Whatever does not tend, directly or indirectly, to make the child better acquainted with the world he has come into, with how he must and how he should bear himself under its complex conditions, is of small value as far as education goes. Of rules for conduct he is given plenty as

to matters of morality and of religion. Moral laws and religious precepts are good, and could they accomplish all that is sometimes expected of them, life would quickly be a different matter, and teachers would find themselves living in an earthly paradise. Unhappily these excellent maxims effect in actual life far less than is to be desired. Not infrequently the urchin who has been stuffed with moral admonitions as a doll with sawdust shows in his conduct no regard for them other than a fine zeal in scorning them. Children are seldom much affected by explicit directions in regard to conduct. They must be reached by indirection, and they are moulded less by what they recognize as intentionally wise views of life than by those which they receive unconsciously. The more just these unrecognized ideas of themselves and of the world are, the greater is the chance that they will develop a character well balanced and well adjusted to the conditions of human life.

Children live in a world largely made up of half-perceptions, of misunderstandings, and of dreams; a world pathetically full of guesses. They must depend largely upon appearances, and constantly confound what seems with what really is. They learn but slowly, however, to shape their beliefs or their emotions by conventionality. They do not easily acquire the vice of accepting shams because some authority has endorsed these. All of us are likely to have had queerly uncomfortable moments when we have found ourselves confounded and reproved by

the unflinching honesty of the child; and we have been forced to confess, at least to ourselves, that much of our admiration is mere affectation, many of our professions unadulterated truckling to some authority in which after all we have little real faith. Children are naturally too unsophisticated for self-deception of this sort. They confound substance and shadow, but they do it in good faith and with no affectations. They are therefore at the place where they most need sound and sure help to apprehend and to comprehend those things which their elders call the realities of life.

What human nature and human life are like is learned most quickly and most surely from the best literature. The outward, the evident conditions of society and of humanity may perhaps be best obtained by children from the events of every-day existence; but in all that goes deeper the wisdom of great writers is the surest guide.

On the face of it such a proposition may not seem self-evident, and to not a few teachers it is likely to appear a little absurd. Children, it is evident, learn the realities of life by living. They perceive physical truth by the persuasive force of actual experience: by tumbling down and bumping their precious noses; by unmistakably impressive contact with the fist of a pugnacious school-fellow; by being hungry or uncomfortably stuffed with Thanksgiving turkey; by heat and by cold, by sweets or by sours, by hardness or by softness. Certainly through such means as these the child