Let us inquire what is involved in securing appreciation of this type. Take, for example, the appreciation of the period just preceding the Civil War. How are we to understand this remote situation? We cannot observe directly; we cannot, as is the case in the solution of a problem in our present experience, gather data by means of observation; nor can we test our conclusions by experiment. Our first great need is to have presented all of the facts possible. We may read the historian’s account, or have it read to us; we may get hold of the newspapers published at that time; read the debates which took place in Congress; peruse the letters of men and women who lived and wrote at that time; make inquiry concerning the number of slaves, and the value of the Southern plantations worked by them; try to find out why slavery had been abolished in the North, and by every means possible familiarize ourselves with what men said and did and the conditions under which they worked at that time. We must have this material made accessible to the children through books or by word of mouth before we ask them to follow the logical relations established among these facts by the historian. Appreciation has its beginning in the abundance of data supplied which makes possible the imagery with which the children are to work, and is consummated when the child has, through his own efforts and by following the development of another, come to understand the play of cause and effect, the organization and relationship existing among these human activities. Work of this sort has in the last step something in common with the inductive lesson, but with this difference, that the children are in the main concerned with appreciation of facts and of the relationships established among them by some one else, presumably the expert historian. It is more a matter of understanding than the discovery of new truth. Of course, there are lessons in history in which the problem is just as distinct as in any science, and where the work can be best described as inductive or deductive reasoning.
And so likewise for literature. The author presents the situation, and draws his conclusions, supposedly true to the logic of human action. The teacher may need to supply details which are missing, may need to guide the children in their attempt to follow the interpretation of the author, but it must be mainly interpretation of facts provided; and presumably, if great literature is studied, the appreciation of the author’s interpretation of the human relations is of vastly greater importance than the attempt at interpretation which the children may make.
Appreciation does not mean quiescence,—far from it. Neither does it concern itself primarily with the discovery of new truth or excellence. Rather we aim to understand, and to enjoy, when the æsthetic emotions are involved, the work of the masters. If we can, even in some degree, lead children to think their thoughts, to interpret human activity and human feeling as they have interpreted it, we shall have most signally widened and enriched their experience, and shall have made available for them for all their lives a source of recreation and enjoyment, a storehouse of wisdom, which may constitute their greatest indebtedness to our efforts in their behalf.
For Collateral Reading
E. L. Thorndike, Principles of Teaching, Chapter XII.
E. A. Kirkpatrick, The Fundamentals of Child Study, Chapter XIII.
Exercises.
1. Why is it worth while to train children to enjoy literature, music, or painting?
2. Do those who look at the pictures in the art gallery which have been specially mentioned in the catalogue or guide book necessarily show any power of appreciation of good pictures? What would be a better test of such power?
3. Why is it essential that you should enjoy a poem which you try to teach to children?