Within less than a score of years there has been such reading of varied literary masterpieces by children as to bring us face to face with a problem of prime significance in education, the place and importance of literature in the education of American children.
Millions of children are introduced yearly to bookland, and it is a matter of greater importance than what Congress does, what provision is made for these oncoming millions in the sunlit fields and forest glades of literature, where the boys and girls walk in happy companionship with the "wisest and wittiest" of our race. We have now had enough experience with these treasures of culture to get a real foretaste of the feast prepared for the growing youth. We know that their appetites are keen and their digestive powers strong. It is incumbent upon educators to get a comprehensive survey of this land and to estimate its resources. Other fields of study, like natural science, geography, music, etc., are undergoing the same scrutiny as to their educative value. Literature, certainly a peer in the hierarchy of great studies, if not supreme in value above others, is one of the most difficult to estimate. Tangible proofs of the vital culture-force of good literature upon growing minds can be given in many individual cases. But to what degree it has general or universal fitness to awaken, strengthen, and refine all minds, is in dispute.
It seems clear, at least, that only those who show taste and enthusiasm for a choice piece of literature can teach it with success. This requirement of appreciation and enjoyment of the study is more imperative in literature, because its appeal is not merely to the intellect and the reason, as in other studies, but especially to the emotions and higher æsthetic judgments, to moral and religious sentiment in ideal representation.
It has been often observed that discussions of the superior educative value of literature before bodies of teachers, while entertaining and delightful, fall far short of lasting results because of the teachers' narrow experience with literature. In the case of many teachers, the primitive alphabet of literary appreciation is lacking, and the most enthusiastic appeals to the charm and exaltation of such studies fall harmless. Yet literature in the schools is hopeless without teachers who have felt at home in this delightsome land, this most real world of ideal strength and beauty.
The discussion of the subject for teachers is beset, therefore, with peculiar and seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The strength, charm, and refinement of literature are known only to those who have read the masters with delight, while even people of cultured taste listen doubtfully to the praise of authors they have never read. To one enamoured of the music of Tennyson's songs, the very suggestion of "In Memoriam" awakens enthusiasm. To one who has not read Tennyson and his like, silence on the subject is golden. To those not much travelled in the fields of literature, there is danger of speaking in an unknown tongue, while they, of all others, need a plain and convincing word. To speak this plain and convincing word to those who may have acquired but little relish for literature, and that little only in the fragmentary selections of the school readers, is a high and difficult aim. But teachers are willing to learn, and to discover new sources of enthusiasm in their profession. It is probable, also, that the original capacity to enjoy great literature is much more common than is often supposed, and that the great average of teachers is quite capable of receiving this powerful stimulus. The fact is, our common schools have done so little, till of late, to cultivate this fine taste, that we have faint reason to expect it in our teachers.
Overwhelmed as we are with the folly of indulging in the praise of literature before many whose ears have been but poorly attuned to the sweet melody or majestic rhythm of the masters, we still make bold to grapple with this argument. There is surely no subject to which the teachers need more to open their eyes and ears and better nature, so as to take in the enrichment it affords. There is encouragement in the fact that many teachers fully appreciate the worth of these writers, and have succeeded in making their works beautiful and educative to the children. Very many other teachers are capable of the full refreshing enjoyment of classic works, when their attention and labor are properly expended upon them. The colleges, universities, high schools, and normal schools have largely abandoned the dull epitomizing of literature, the talk about authors, for the study of the works themselves of the masters. The consequence is, that the study of literature in English is becoming an enthusiasm, and teachers of this type are multiplying.
The deeper causes for this widespread lack of literary appreciation among the people, and even among teachers and scholars, is found partly in the practical, scientific, and utilitarian spirit of the age, and partly in the corresponding unliterary courses of study which have prevailed everywhere in our common schools. The absence of literary standards and taste among teachers is due largely to the failure of the schools themselves, hitherto, to cultivate this sort of proficiency. Those very qualities which give to literature its supreme excellence, its poetic beauty, its artistic finish and idealism, are among the highest fruits of culture, and are far more difficult of attainment than mere knowledge. It is no small thing to introduce the rarest and finest culture of the world into the common school, and thus propagate, in the broadest democratic fashion, that which is the peculiar, superior refinement of the choicest spirits of the world. If progress in this direction is slow, we may remember that the best ideals are slow of attainment.
There is also an intangible quality in all first-class literature, which is not capable of exact description or demonstration. George Willis Cooke, in "Poets and Problems" (pp. 31-32), says:—
"Poetry enters into those higher regions of human experience concerning which no definite account can be given; where all words fail; about which all we know is to be obtained by hints, symbols, poetic figures, and imagings. Poetry is truer and more helpful than prose, because it penetrates those regions of feeling, beauty, and spiritual reality, where definitions have no place or justification. There would be no poetry if life were limited to what we can understand; nor would there be any religion. Indeed, the joy, the beauty, and the promise of life would all be gone if there were nothing which reaches beyond our powers of definition. The mystery of existence makes the grandeur and worth of man's nature, as it makes for him his poetry and his religion. Poetry suggests, hints, images forth, what is too wonderful, too transcendent, too near primal reality, too full of life, beauty, and joy, for explanation or comprehension. It embodies man's longing after the Eternal One, expresses his sense of the deep mystery of Being, voices his soul sorrow, illumines his path with hope and objects of beauty. Man's aspiration, his sense of imperfection, his yearning for a sustaining truth and reality, as the life within and over all things, find expression in poetry; because it offers the fittest medium of interpretation for these higher movements of soul. Whenever the soul feels deeply, or is stirred by a great thought, the poetic form of utterance at once becomes the most natural and desirable for its loving and faithful interpretation."
This intangible excellence of superior literature, which defies all exact measurement by the yardstick, puzzles the practical man and the scientist. There is no way of getting at it with their tools and measurements. They are very apt to give it up in disgust and dismiss it with some uncomplimentary name. But Shakespeare's mild reign continues, and old Homer sings his deathless song to those who wish to hear.