Talks on Teaching Literature

by Arlo Bates

require of children: it is how much farther it is well to call upon them to criticise literature than we should ask them to comment on life. We need to know what we are doing, and though an examination of the character and motives of a criminal in a book is not the same thing as would be this sort of criticism applied to a flesh and blood neighbor, the two processes are the same in essence. The better the teacher succeeds in arousing the imagination of the pupil, moreover, the more closely the two approach. We should be sure that we are doing well in requiring of the young, who would not and should not be encouraged to dwell on actual crime and suffering, that they produce original opinions upon these things as represented in fiction.

It is of course to be allowed that no teaching can make fictions vital and real in exactly the same way as is that which is known actually to have happened. An imaginative child vitalizes the story which touches him, but does not bring it home to himself as he would occurrences within the circle of his own experience. It may be urged that by encouraging him to analyze sin in the comparatively remote world of fancy we give him a chance to perceive its moral hatefulness without that distrust of his fellows which might come if he were forced to learn the lesson from the harsher happenings of life; and that in books the knowledge of character and circumstance is so much fuller than it is likely to be in experience that he is able

to see more clearly. The fact remains, however, that we should hardly expect or desire a lucid and reasonable estimate of the late King and Queen of Servia from the school-children who are being made to write laborious reams on the motives and the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; that we should be shocked at finding boys and girls considering in real life occurrences like the seduction of Olivia Primrose, or suspicions like those Gareth entertained of Lynette. We certainly cannot afford to be prurient, or to confine the young to goody-goody books. They may generally be safely trusted, it seems to me, to read any tale or poem of first-class merit, although its subject were as painful as that of "Œdipus." They will receive it as they receive facts of life told by a wholesome-minded person, often with very little real perception of the darkest and most sinister side. It will be as it was with young Copperfield when he read Fielding's masterpiece and took delight in the hero, "a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature." When it comes to the discussion of motives, of character, of black events in fiction, the case is different. The child is forced to take a new attitude; to accumulate the opinions of his elders, to view life from their more sophisticated point of view; and inevitably to receive a fresh, and not always a desirable insight into evil. I am not inclined to dogmatize on this point, and touch upon it chiefly for the sake of suggesting that teachers may do well to keep it a little in mind. Each case, it seems to me, must be

decided upon its own merit, and I at least have no arbitrary rules to lay down. Of one thing, however, I am sure, and that is that whatever is taken up at all should be treated with absolute and fearless frankness.

All criticism of diction, style, or whatever belongs to literary workmanship necessarily comes late. In the secondary schools I believe very little can profitably be done in this line at all. Of this I shall speak later in connection with the study of workmanship, but here I may say that I suppose most teachers to recognize the obvious absurdity of such questions about metres and metrical effects as are given on page [43]. That they should be gravely proposed in a book of advice is indication that somebody believes in them; but any class of students with which I have ever had to deal would be reduced to mechanical repetition of cant conventionality by the bare sight of such interrogations.

One thing which is of importance is the need of encouraging pupils to judge of any work as a whole. It is so much easier to deal with details than with a complete work that constantly students leave schools where the training is in many respects excellent, and have gained no ability to go beyond the examination of particulars. The far more important power of estimating a book or a play from its total effect has not been cultivated. No teacher should forget that the ability to deal fairly with a whole is of as much more value than any

facility in minute criticism as that whole is greater than any of its parts.

This does not mean that a student can well summarize everything he reads or that he may wisely attempt it. It does imply that at least his attention shall have been directed over and over to the great fact that the study of details is not the study of a masterpiece; that he shall have been required to judge a book or a play, so far as he is able, as a whole work and with reference to its entire effect. In talking with undergraduates even about short works, pieces no longer than a single essay of Steele or a simple lyric, I constantly find that they are apt to have no conception whatever that they could or should do anything but pick out minute details. I ask what it amounts to as a whole, how it justifies itself, or what is its value as a complete poem or essay, and they seem utterly unable to see what I am driving at. The painful attempt to find out what I wish them to say so entirely occupies their minds as to render them incapable of using whatever power of judgment they may possess. Not long ago one boy said to me: "I didn't know it made any difference what the poem was about if you could pick out things in it." "What do you suppose it was written for?" I asked. A look of painful bewilderment came into his face, and he answered that he supposed some folks liked to write that way. I inquired whether he would test a bridge—he was an engineering student—by picking out bits without seeing how the parts held

together and how strong it was as a whole, and he returned with puzzled frankness: "But a bridge has a use." "Very good," was what I assured him, "and so does a poem. Can't you appreciate that mankind has not been keeping poems from generation to generation without finding out if they really are useless? Any work of literature that is really good must be of value as a whole, and you have not got hold of it until you are able to see what it is for as a single thing, a complete unit." The fact is so evident that it seems almost absurd to mention it in a book intended for teachers, but scores of boys come yearly from the fitting-schools who prove how often the fact is ignored,—ignored, very likely, because it is taken for granted, but no less ignored with seriously ill effects.

In general, criticism in the secondary schools should have to do only with the good points of work. Unless a pupil himself shows that he perceives shortcomings in what is read, it is on the whole the place of the instructor to keep the attention of the class fixed on merits, while defects are ignored. This is not to be interpreted as meaning that any weakness should ever be allowed to pass for a merit; or as indicating that it is ever wise to shirk a difficulty. Any intelligent pupil, for instance, should see for himself that the metaphors are sadly and inexcusably mixed in the passage: