Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

Teaching English.

Thought and language exercise a reciprocal influence. Thought is stimulated and clarified by the effort to express it. Often it is shaped by the limitations of one’s vocabulary and the range of the words with which one’s hearers or readers are familiar. The faded metaphors of language betray us into fallacies. Phrases like the witness of the spirit, total depravity, have led to extravagant expectations and unwarranted conclusions. People sometimes have a religious phraseology without a corresponding religious experience, and hence deceive themselves and others. Everywhere we see instances that go to show how important it is that the development of the power to think should keep pace with the growth of the power to express thought. Very much is said in these days about the use of good English. As Adam threw the blame upon Eve, and Eve cast it upon the Serpent, so every one blames some one else for the poor English used at school and college. In the end the teachers are usually made to bear most of the blame: the college professor blames the teachers in the high school; these, in turn, blame the teachers in the lower grades; and when the matter is cast up to the primary teacher, she throws the blame upon the street and the home. A professor in the college department of a university gave many ludicrous specimens of English in the work handed to him by students. He was asked of what college class he had charge, and when he replied the sophomore, a high-school teacher suggested that the specimens reflected quite as much upon the teachers of the freshman class as upon the schools below the university.

The committee.

A women’s society in one of our large cities sent a committee to the superintendent to complain of the poor English used by the children in the schools. He agreed that strenuous efforts should be made to provide a remedy. He added, “If you will take care of the English in the homes and on the streets, I will get the teachers to look after the English in the schools.” Instead of throwing blame upon others, it were far more sensible for each educated person to ask wherein he is to blame for setting others a bad example and wherein he can help the teachers of English to accomplish the desired result.

Aim.

The aim in teaching English is twofold,—first, to get the student to appreciate good English and good literature; secondly, to get him to use it in speaking and writing. The latter end cannot be reached by mere practice in essay-writing. Ability to think is a condition of ability to express thought. Too many of the subjects assigned lay stress upon the forms of speech and not upon the content of language. When pupils think in words and disconnected phrases rather than sentences, when they violate the rules for capitals, punctuation, and paragraphs, the teachers of English may be solely to blame; but, in so far as the use of good English depends upon good thinking, the blame for the use of faulty language rests upon all who teach. If the ability to think is not developed in proportion to the use of language, the school will produce stylists who exalt the forms of speech above their content, slaves of beautiful and flowery language who resemble the fops and dudes of social life. To emancipate from such slavery requires more than an emancipation proclamation from the president of a college association.

Linguistic studies.

Language tributary to thinking.

The labors of the brothers Grim, Max Müller, and others have reduced the knowledge of language to a science. Linguistic studies have become as interesting as any branch of natural science. They shed new light upon the history of mankind. In furnishing material for thought, as well as mental discipline, they are not inferior to any other study in the curriculum. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that philological studies are superior to other disciplines as means for developing power to think and power to express thought. The professor of any language is apt to regard that language as an end, and not as means to an end. Primarily, language is a medium of communication. It distinguishes man from the brute creation, and furnishes him the instruments of thought by which he carries forward processes of reasoning beyond the reach of the lower animals. At the university language in general, or any particular language, may be studied as a specialty, and can thus be made an end in itself as appropriately as any other subject which is studied for its own sake. In the lower schools language should always be made tributary to the art of thinking. It should be employed to embody thought, and to convey thought, without intruding itself upon our attention as the thing of chief value. Any phase of linguistic study may be lifted by an enthusiastic teacher into the chief place in the course of study. Orthography has sometimes been taught as if it were the chief end of man to spell correctly. Grammar has been taught as if a faulty sentence were one of the sins forbidden by the Decalogue, and as if the fate of the republic depended upon parsing, analysis, and diagramming. The pronunciation of words may be emphasized until the lips of teacher and pupil smack of an overdose of dictionary, until the overdoing of obscure vowels draws attention away from the thought to the manner of utterance. A sensible man articulates his words in such a manner as readily to be understood, but never in such a way as to excite remark or draw the mind of the listener from the subject-matter of the discourse.

In educational practice, the manner of expressing the thought should not supplant the more important art of making the pupil think. Getting and begetting thought are of more consequence than the expression of thought; in fact, they condition the correct use of language. All talk about English, or German, or Spanish, or Latin, or Greek, as if any one of these languages were an end in itself for the average pupil, is wide of the mark. Correct sentences, beautiful expressions, and rhetorical phrases can never make a nation great or perpetuate its free institutions. Flowery language can never save a dying sinner or console the widow who is following the bier of a son, her only child and support. Fine words never win a battle by land or by sea. The most eloquent orations against Philip of Macedon did not keep him from destroying the liberties of Greece.