Essays Literary, Critical and Historical

by Thomas O'Hagan

Now just here it will be well, lest it might be thought that we are making statements without any facts to support them, to quote from the official report of McGill University matriculation examination held at Montreal and the various examining centres of Canada in June, 1908. Touching the subjects of writing and spelling, the chief examiner in his report says: “The handwriting of some of the candidates was so unformed and untidy that it was hard to believe that the writers were actually candidates at a matriculation examination. Certainly such candidates will stand a poor chance of being accepted should they look for any employment in which writing is a factor. It is regrettable that a number of papers otherwise excellent showed conspicuous lapses in this particular. This will explain to some candidates thoroughly well up in their subject why their marks were not high. A word of warning might be given them that if they wish to have a high standing in English when they come to college they must give their days and nights to the study of the spelling-book—or the dictionary, perhaps, for there are no spelling-books nowadays.” This is frank criticism, and if hearkened to by schools and colleges cannot but prove a benefit educationally. There is no attempt here to consider the work of the examiner as “confidential.” Such criticism is, indeed, the basis of progress.

But pray enter the temple of higher studies and see what we find. Assuredly the work done in Latin is not thorough. How could it be so when a course that demands six or eight years of study in Old World schools is completed here in three? Is it any wonder that the Canadian matriculant, when pursuing his classical studies at the University, ever lives on intimate terms with his “crib” or “pony”? How extensive can be the vocabulary of a student in Latin whose class work has covered but four thirty-minute spaces a week for three years? What will be his grasp of the Latin grammar? During his third year he has been “sight reading.” Is he really prepared for such work at the end of the second year? It is quite true that “sight reading,” or translation without preparation, is excellent practice in the study of any language, but does it not presuppose a solid grounding in the grammar and a wide vocabulary? The boy’s teacher, fresh from the academic halls of his alma mater, has pathetically bid farewell to his “crib” or “pony,” and now goes out into the cold classical world alone to teach “sight reading” to his class, that have been tiptoed into Latin. What is the result? In most instances the work is worthless—a loss of time which could have been far better devoted to the Latin grammar or the extension of his vocabulary. But it looks well, you know, in a High School curriculum.

In the department of modern languages—that is to say, French and German—a still worse condition exists. After a three or four years’ course in those languages in an Ontario High School, what does the student carry away? The ability, think you, to converse in those languages, to write them and read them easily? Not at all. Though in many cases the students have been taught by so-called specialists, their accent in reading French or German is in most instances unlike that of either “Christian, pagan or man.” They have prepared for an examination and have passed. That is all.

The purpose in studying modern languages in Europe is to be able to speak and write them with ease. Here gabbling through syntax and making application of its rules to the prescribed text seem to constitute the chief aim in their study. Indeed, an Ontario teacher who went to Europe a couple of years ago for the purpose of taking a summer course in modern languages complained on his return that over there too much attention was given to the speaking of the languages and not enough to the grammar. He was probably disappointed with Old World scholarship, finding that it was so devoid of pedantry. No doubt grammar has its place, but its role is a secondary one in the acquisition of any modern language.

Let us for a moment consider next how the important subject of history is taught in our secondary schools. No one will deny how large a place this subject should hold in a curriculum of well ordered studies in either a High School or a University. For what is history but a record of the activities of the human race, and to have a thorough knowledge of this is in itself equivalent to a liberal education.

But the student who pursues a course in history in the High Schools of Ontario is beset with a double danger—that of endeavoring to cover too much ground and thereby getting but a superficial knowledge of the facts and great movements of history, and that of basing his judgments on data drawn from only one source.

The course in history, as at present constituted in the High School curriculum of Ontario, comprises five years. Now, certainly a good deal should be done in that time, but it would be the sheerest folly to think that any boy or girl could within that time gain even a fair knowledge of the history of Greece, Rome, Canada, England, medieval and modern Europe. This tiptoeing the pupils in history is not a whit better than tiptoeing them in Latin, French or German. Indeed, we are not sure but it works greater harm to true scholarship. We are living in an age when education is becoming so widely diffused that scholarship as a consequence is becoming very superficial and thin.

As we write we have before us the Syllabus of the Ontario High School Course in Medieval and Modern History. It briefly outlines the scope of the work to be done and gives a list of books to be consulted as works of reference. Now, the scientific method of studying history warns you to take nothing for granted. First you must verify the facts by examining the witnesses that testify to these facts. Secondly, you must properly appreciate or value these facts from the point of view of principles that ought to govern human actions, and thirdly, these facts should be explained by going back to the causes, whether particular or general, that produced them. That is, the scientific method in history requires, first, verification; secondly, appreciation or valuation; and thirdly, explanation of historic facts.

In a High School it is true there is not sufficient time for historical research or investigation, but there is sufficient time to study a question on more than one side; there is sufficient time to be honest; there is sufficient time to prefer truth to falsehood; and where in a mooted point the policy and teachings of the Catholic Church are involved there should be sufficient time and sufficient honesty to consult authors who know whereof they write. Take for example the history of the Middle Ages. Without a thorough and correct knowledge of the policy, teachings and work of the Catholic Church, how, I ask, may the student hope to follow and understand the great movements of history in those centuries? In the first place, the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages was the bulwark of sovereignty, law and order, the founder of universities, the patron of letters, the inspiration of art, the shield of the oppressed, and a very staff and guide to the halting and stumbling steps of civilization. She was knowledge, she was authority, she was order, she was reverence.

Taking up now the books of reference recommended in the Syllabus of the High School Course in Medieval and Modern History in Ontario, we find the work of but one Catholic author on the reference list—“English Monastic Life,” by Dom Gasquet, the Benedictine. Is this not truly a one-sided study of history that obtains in the secondary schools of Ontario? Yet the teachers of history in those schools are supposed to be broad-minded and cultured men. Why, then, should they refuse to read the Catholic point of view in the study of historical periods and historical movements in which the Catholic Church was the greatest factor?