Literature for Children

by Orton Lowe

The man who believes that education and books are designed for the imparting only of useful information had better read no farther than this sentence; for if he does, he will be irritated many a time by what he regards as ideal and foolish and unworthy of a practical age. But if he believes life to be something more than meat and the body something more than raiment, and that he needs his books as well as his cloak brought into Macedonia, he may with patience and sympathy follow the guesses herein at the ways and means by which good books may be brought into the life of a boy. For in the living out of the great story of securing shelter and food and raiment, the boy who has never felt the charm of a great book in chimney-corner days, or the man who has never pored over a "midnight darling" by candlelight, has missed one of the most refined and harmless pleasures of life. The very books themselves are refining because they make up the art of literature, an art that is in its highest sense an expression and interpretation of life. This art deals with the beautiful. Its appeal is primarily to the feelings. Its basis is truth whether actual or hoped for. It is this very nature of literature itself that at the start brings up the question whether the investment put into it is really worth while. How far has education a right to develop a sense of the beautiful? What abiding pleasures and tastes, if any, should the boy of school age seek and cultivate? Just what equipment for life does a boy need, anyhow?

These are big questions; they are knotty questions. They have never been settled because they cannot be answered in a way satisfactory to all. They are rather questions of temperament than of logic. To attempt an investigation into the claims of literature in a scheme of education, and to draw from such claims a logical conclusion, is beyond the ability, knowledge, or inclination of the writer; only personal impressions will be attempted in the chapters that follow. And besides, such an investigation, if it could be made, would be so out of fashion among schoolmasters at the present time that it might bring nothing but reproach on the one attempting it. The very convenient plan is to assume a certain educational specific as true and from that assumption to go straight to a favourable conclusion. In accordance with this fashion it seems the easiest way to take the privilege of the day and without more ado assume that books of literature are necessary in the education of a boy, and conclude therefrom that a principal business of the teacher is to train the boy to read books intelligently and to form a substantial taste for them. And why should not a schoolmaster who dotes on a few old favourites have an unshaken faith in his assumption and go merrily on to the business of the literature itself and what may be done toward developing among school children a taste for it?

The late Professor Norton pointed out that a taste for literature is a result of cultivation more often than a gift of nature. The years of the elementary school seem to be the time in which cultivation is easiest and the one in which the taste takes deepest root. Vigorous and tactful effort will go far to develop pure taste and abiding taste for books.

The present age is more concerned about pure food than about pure books—maybe an exemplification of John Bright's wish that the working-men of England eat bacon rather than read Bacon. The bulky, coarse food of the last century has been displaced by the sealed package of condensed food done according to a formula, and a mystery to the man who eats it. So is it in our books. We do not have the frankness and vulgarity of the eighteenth century; but instead, we have the most studied forms of insinuation, the harm of which was not approached by the coarseness of former times. Many a present-day story makes the ordinary course of life seem uninteresting, a dangerous thing for a book to do, according to Ruskin. The conduct portrayed has in it too much of personal freedom arising out of caprice, breaking too much with traditional right through what a critic once designated as "debauching innuendo and ill favoured love." The book is often spectacular or sullen in tone. It may be melodramatic, leaving the reader rebellious or with a weakened sense of responsibility. Or again, it may be given to boisterous laughter over situations based on personal misfortune or bad manners—the way of the comic supplement. And worst of all, it may become the fashion; that is, a best seller. Its name and some of its motives will probably get to the children through the talk of the parents. Then to persuade the reading public that the pure taste for the healthful story is much more worth while will try the resources of the teacher. Yet that is exactly what should be expected of him—a Herculean task and a most thankless one.

To secure a stable as well as a pure taste for things worth while in books should be an aim of the teacher. He must do this in an age when the vaudeville idea is deep-rooted. Variety takes the place of sustained attention. This begets the mood for profligacy. Something new and good is expected to turn up in the shape of a book. In this mood there is nothing to inspire to steady purpose. And it seems that the best thing left for the teacher to do is to "come out strong" on a few good books. Through fortune and misfortune such books will be permanent possessions to their reader.

The responsibility for securing this pure and abiding taste rests primarily with the teacher. He needs to know and to appreciate the good books which he desires the boy to read. He needs to know the poem or story at first hand, not criticism about it. If the teacher has real appreciation for a piece of literature, the boy will discern it in his face. Then the boy can be put on the right scent and left to trail it out for himself, as Scott long ago suggested. Time must be taken to do this: a few good things must be done without fuss or hurry. It is foolish to have a taste surfeited as soon as cultivated. Here is truly a place to be temperate as well as enthusiastic.

A teacher should be able to read aloud from a book with good effect. The voice can bring out the finer touches that are likely to be missed by the eye. No explanation in reading is so good as is adequate vocal expression. In fact, as a rule, the less explaining the better. If there is a single thing that for the last dozen years has stood in the way of boys' and girls' appreciating good literature, it is the so-called laboratory method. Of all the quack educational specifics that have been advanced, the laboratory method, with a poem or an imaginative story, has been the most presumptuous and absurd. Who cares to treat fancies and fairies according to formulæ? One might as well apply the laboratory method to his faith and his hopes in his religion.

In this struggle to bring good books into the life of the boy, many opposing forces must be met with tact and with patience. Censorship of books, like inspection of foods, may be highly desirable; but by no means is it efficacious. The worthless book will continue to obtrude itself at all times and on all occasions. Then there are the reading habits of the community, the notions of parents about what the child should read, and the child's own natural or acquired tastes,—these must all be reckoned with. Here are a few of the opposing forces to be encountered in every community:

The juvenile series—the hardest problem to handle from the book side of the question. The series is always "awful long," all of the volumes are cut to the same pattern, they are always in evidence, and they are all equally stupid. The themes range from boarding school proprieties to criminal adventure; and they are all equally false to the facts of real life or the longings for true romance. What shall be done with them?

The ease of access of the child to the daily paper with headlines inviting attention to the doings of police courts and clinics.