Essays Literary, Critical and Historical

by Thomas O'Hagan

Should you ask for a proof of this statement you have but to visit with an open and unbiased mind the primary and secondary schools of our Province and learn for yourself of their lack of efficiency in the foundation subjects of reading, writing, composition and spelling.

Should your desire lead you further to ascertain something of the character of the work that is being done in the departments of what may be designated culture subjects, such as Latin, French and German, you will quickly find proof that here it is pedantry rather than scholarship which obtains.

As to the subject of reading, it is conceded on all sides that it is badly taught in both the Public and High Schools, and that along this line little progress has been made for a number of years. The High School teachers lay the blame for this at the door of the Public Schools, alleging that the pupils read very badly when they enter the High Schools, forgetting meantime that the charge recoils upon themselves, since the teachers of the Public Schools are the product of the High Schools.

The fault lies in the fact that neither teachers nor inspectors of Public or High Schools in Ontario have had any training in the subject of reading; or, if they have had, it has only been along the line of barren and worthless theorizing. This is borne out by the fact that teachers who have from time to time boldly ventured to prepare manuals of reading have not been able to apply their own principles, and as readers or vocal interpreters of literature have been and are pronounced failures.

If the teacher whose spirit has been quickened by the deeper sympathies and experiences of life cannot read, how, pray, can you expect the boy or girl to do so? If “Learn by doing” is pedagogically of great value to the pupil, should it not be of equal value to the teacher?

Now turn we for a moment to the subject of composition, and what do we find? A condition which reveals manifest defects in its teaching. We can readily put our finger on its weak spots, and with Goethe say, “Thou ailest here and ailest there.” In the first place, the translations in the secondary schools from Greek, Latin, French and German authors are so badly done, so inaccurately done, so inelegantly done, that what should be a daily practice in English composition in the construction of sentences and paragraphs, the disposal of phrases, and the choice of the exact word, becomes almost worthless. The introduction of no fad like oral composition will or can compensate for this.

Again, while the Public and High Schools are being provided with libraries—in many instances quite an unnecessary expense being entailed—little direction is given to the reading, and pupils gabble thoughtlessly through books in mental gallop from chapter to chapter without adding to the capital of their scholarship a single new thought or idea, or to their vocabulary a single new word. Was it not at a convention of teachers, held but a short time ago in an Ontario city, that a Public School teacher boasted of the fact that one of his pupils had read sixty books in three months? And not a teacher present—not even the Inspector—protested.

Then, too, in many cases the teachers cannot teach composition, since they cannot write themselves. What does a teacher know about sentence or paragraph construction, or the logical and artistic expression of thought, who has never served his time as an apprentice in the great laboratory of composition? It is but a few years since a leading Canadian journalist told the writer that among the letters sent to his paper many of the worst and most faulty came from teachers.

Lastly, the study of literature, which should be an auxiliary to composition, nay, be its right arm, is often such in our schools as to aid the student but little in the work of composition.

There yet remain to be considered, of the foundation subjects, writing and spelling. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found as many slovenly and bad writers as here in the schools of Ontario. Go to England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany or Switzerland, and you will find that a boy or girl of fifteen years of age writes a hand marvellously clear and legible. Why is this? Because in Europe its importance is emphasized, and it counts for quite as much in the estimate of acquirements as arithmetic or grammar or history or geography. We also know of no word in the school vocabulary of Europe—in any language—that exactly corresponds in meaning to our word for school exercise book—“scribbler.” Sometimes a word when traced to its origin is very significant.