[INTRODUCTION]
It is universally conceded that the public schools fail to give children much power as readers. One authority asserts that, after the child’s twelfth year, his ability as a reader steadily declines. (Up to that time he is gradually acquiring greater mastery over words, and so, in a sense, may be said to be improving.) Testimony can be added that, by the time he reaches the university, the average student cannot read at all.
Many remedies have been suggested, from which two may be selected as typical. One is to call the attention of the child to the mechanics of vocal expression—to inflection, force, movement, and so forth. The other (that commonly employed), to tell the child to get the thought. It cannot be denied that both methods have, in isolated cases, been productive of some good, yet, on the whole, they have been well-nigh barren of results. Let us inquire briefly into the causes.
The mechanical method fails, especially with younger people, because it is dry, technical, unstimulating, and, in the main, uninteresting. It deals with rules for the use of the different elements of vocal expression, telling the child he must use a rising inflection here, a falling inflection there; that he must read parenthetical phrases and clauses in lower pitch and faster time; that this emotion should be manifested in normal quality, that emotion in orotund quality; and so on through weary, dreary rules and principles, the study of which has seldom done any good and oftentimes much harm. The “get-the-thought” method is a revolt against the other plan. Recognizing the fact that drills in the elements have done nothing toward elevating the standard of reading, the conscientious principal or superintendent tells his teachers that they must see to it that the scholars get the thought. This is a step in the right direction, but it must be acknowledged that it does not produce results. And the chief reasons for this are two. First, for one cause or another the finer shades of meaning escape too many teachers. Second, very few teachers have received the necessary training to enable them to discern quickly with what mental conditions various forms of vocal expression are associated. In other words, they have not the criteria of vocal expression; and, in consequence, helpful criticism is impossible.
Why have previous methods of teaching reading practically failed? There are three reasons: first, the lack of appreciation of the best literature on the part of the teacher; second, the complexity of vocal expression; and third, the intangibility of vocal expression.
Appreciation of the meaning and beauty of literature is the first requisite of a successful teacher of reading; and yet there is little opportunity afforded the teacher to get this appreciation. Is it not true that too many teachers have no love for real literature? The fault is not theirs, but that of the method of teaching literature that substitutes grammar, philology, history, and lectures about literature for the study of the meaning and beauty of the literature itself. One may safely assert that thousands of children would be better readers, even with the present faulty methods, if their teachers had a genuine interest in the best literature. Of what avail is it to put good literature into the schoolbooks if its merit does not appeal as well to the instructor as to the pupil? The stream can rise no higher than its source. There is, however, a rapidly growing sentiment against the substitution of parsing, history, philology, or ethics for genuine literary training. We are coming to recognize that literature is art, beauty, spirit; and, when this recognition becomes general, we shall have better teachers and better readers. For there is nothing that so stimulates our vocal expression as the desire to impress upon others the beauty and feeling of what has impressed ourselves.
Complexity may be defined by illustration. A phrase may be read fast or slowly; in high or low key; with one melody or another; with loud or subdued force; with this quality of voice or with that. Now all these elements are present at one time; so that, without proper training, the teacher is unable to discriminate between them and hence unable to give the needful correction, without which there can be no progress.
Intangibility may be explained by showing what is meant by a tangible subject. The spelling lesson is tangible; the arithmetic lesson is tangible. A mistake is easily recognized and corrected. Three months after a paper on these subjects has been handed in, the teacher can go back to it and examine it. But vocal expression is evanescent, and, by the untrained, can be recalled imperfectly, if at all, and then only a short time after it has been heard. In the presence of the combined difficulties due to complexity and intangibility, the teacher is appalled; and, conscientious though he be, he gives up in despair. The teaching becomes perfunctory; the children lose interest; and there is the end of reading. Reading, which should be the brightest and most inspiring of lessons, degenerates into a humdrum, dry-as-dust time-killer. Good reading is as rare as the classical bird. No idea of a pupil’s reading ability can be gained from a knowledge of the class he is in. He is no better reader in the highest public-school grade than he is in the grade two or three below the highest. The teacher has come to recognize the futility of his efforts; and so, in many class rooms, the time set apart for reading is given up to language lessons, composition, and other studies, valuable in themselves, but only incidentally helpful in increasing the pupil’s reading power.
It may be asked, what objects are to be attained as a result of reading lessons? There are two. First, to give us the power to extract thought from the printed page. After we leave school, our information is gained from books; and what we get from these is largely determined by our school training. Our system of education has a great deal to answer for when it fails to provide this training. The value of vocal expression is not to be depreciated, but of the utmost importance is the ability to get the author’s meaning. Our teaching, from the primary grade to the university, is lamentably weak in this direction. A well-known college professor, in response to a school superintendent’s question as to what would better the preparation of secondary-school students for college, replied: “For Heaven’s sake, teach them how to read.” Another college instructor—a learned authority on geology—states that he finds occasion to remark to his classes about once a month, “It’s a great thing to be able to read a page of English.” No one who examines the reading in our schools can fail to be struck, not so much with the absence of expressive power, as with the absence of mental grasp. We are so anxious to get on that we are content with skimming the surface, and do not take the time to get beneath it. The reading lesson should be, primarily, a thinking lesson, and every shade of thought should be carefully determined, no matter how long a time may be consumed. The habit of hurrying over the page, which is so prevalent, is clearly an outgrowth of schoolroom methods. Careless of all the future, we are too prone to push the pupil along, ignoring the simplest and most evident of psychological laws, that thought comes by thinking, and thinking takes time.