Shall be a soldier’s sepulcher.
—Hohenlinden. Campbell.
[CHAPTER XI]
EMOTION
Teaching children to read with feeling is one of the most difficult tasks falling to the lot of the teacher, and yet it is one that has, if successfully accomplished, far-reaching results. For, apart from the legitimate development of emotion, it enlarges their sympathy and lays the foundation for a genuine love of literature.
We must confess that emotional expression is rarely found in our public schools. It would avail little to discuss the causes of this condition in detail. In this chapter we shall try to discover a remedy. Emotion in reading comes largely through the imagination. Unless the mind conceives the thought, how can the nerves thrill and tingle? It is for this that we need teachers who are themselves lovers of the beautiful, sublime, tender, in order that they may impart their appreciation and feeling to their classes. Emotion is catching, and so is the absence of it! Time, time, time, is here the great need. It takes time to think; time for the picture to come forth in its fulness out of subconsciousness. Is not imagination the basis of literary interpretation, of historical study, yes, even of mathematics and science? The time spent on the development of imagination and emotion in the reading lesson will show its results in every other study.
If, then, the teacher would get the right emotion, he must see to it that the child has the proper and adequate stimulus. Appeal to his everyday experience and make that serve as an introduction to the new experience of the poem.
Let us suppose we are speaking to the children: