PART TWO (continued 7)

Cultural and utilitarian standards harmonized

Now in answer to this second class of objectors, it may be frankly admitted that the study of English literature is primarily, if not entirely, cultural. A boy may not make a better engineer or practical chemist for having studied in college the plays of Shakespeare or the prose of Ruskin. And to the older objectors, who urge that literary study can ever give that severe intellectual discipline afforded by the older, narrower college course, we reply that it is not merely the intellectual powers that need culture and discipline. The ideal college training will surely not neglect the imagination and emotions, the faculties which so largely determine the conduct of life. And at no period in the educational process is the need of wide moral training so urgent as in those years when the young man is forming independent judgments and his tastes are taking their final set. The study of English literature finds its warrant for a place in the college curriculum principally because, better than any other subject, it is fitted to cultivate both the emotional and the intellectual sides of our nature. For in all genuine literature those two elements, the intellectual and the emotional, are united; you cannot get either one fully without getting the other. In some forms of literature, as in poetry, the emotional appeal is the main purpose of the writing; but even here no really profound or sublime emotion is possible without a solid basis of thought.

Appreciation the ultimate aim in the teaching of literature

This, then, let us understand, is the primary object of all college teaching in this department. It affords the student opportunity and incitement to read, during his four years, a considerable number of our best classics, representative of different periods and different forms of literature, and to read them with such intelligence and appreciation as to receive from them that discipline of thought and feeling which literature better than anything else is fitted to impart. If the student would or could do this reading by himself, without formal requirement or assistance, there might be little need of undergraduate teaching of literature; but every one who knows much of American college conditions knows that the average undergraduate has neither time, inclination, nor ability for such voluntary reading.

Appreciative study of literary masterpieces involves vigorous mental exercise

Just here lies a difficulty peculiar to the college teacher in this department. All studies that appeal primarily to the intellect and call only for careful attention and vigorous thinking can be prescribed, and mastery of them rigidly enforced. Indeed, the ambitious student is often stimulated to more vigorous effort by the very difficulty of his subject. But the appreciative reading of any work of literature cannot thus be prescribed. Of course the instructor may do much to help the student to such appreciation—that, indeed, is his chief duty; but he will not try to expound or enjoin emotional effects. Recognizing these limitations upon his work, he often finds it difficult to avoid one or the other of two dangers that beset all efforts to teach a vernacular literature; the student must not think his reading an idle pastime, nor, on the other hand, must he think it a repellent task. In the first case, he is likely never to read anything well; in the second case, the things best worth reading he will probably never read at all. Of the two dangers, the first is the more serious. The student ought early to learn that no really good reading is "light reading." And it may be remarked that this lesson was never more needed than today. There was never a time when people of all classes read more and thought less. We have what might almost be called a plague of reading, and an astonishing amount of what is called "reading matter" rolling out of our presses every year; while, significantly, we are producing very few books of permanent literary value. If the college study of literature is to encourage this indolent receptive temper, and relax the intellectual fiber of the student, then we might better drop it from the curriculum. The student must somehow learn that the book that is worth while will tax his thought, his imagination, his sympathies. He cannot be content merely to leave the door of his mind lazily open to it. Every teacher knows the difficulty in any attempt to inspire or direct such a pupil. And the simpler the subject assigned him, the greater the difficulty. Give him, for example, a group of the best lyrics in the language, in which the thought is simple and the sentiment homely or familiar. He will glance over them in half an hour, and then wonder what more you want of him. And you may not find it so easy to tell him. For he does not perceive nice shades of feeling, he has little sense of poetic form, he has not read the poems aloud to get the charm of their melody, and he will not let them linger in his mind long enough to feel that the simplest sentiments are often the most profound and moving. He simply tries to conjecture what sort of questions he is likely to meet on examination. Doubtless from this type of pupil better results can be obtained by the reading of prose not too familiar, that suggests more questions for reflection and discussion.

Suggestions for teaching of English literature—Emotional appreciation to have an intellectual basis

It is perhaps impossible to lay down a detailed method for the teaching of English literature. Much depends upon the nature of the literature read, the temperament of the teacher, the aptitude of the pupil. Every teacher will, in great measure, discover his own methods. At all events, no attempts will be made here to give more than a few suggestions. In the first place, the teacher will remember that every work of literature—except purely "imagist" poetry, which it is hardly worth while to teach—is based upon some thought or truth; in most varieties of prose literature this forms the main purpose of the writing. The first object of the student's reading, therefore, must be to understand thoroughly the intellectual element in what he reads; and here the instructor can often be of direct assistance. And after such careful reading, the higher emotional values of what he has read will often disclose themselves spontaneously, so that the reader will need little further help.

Abundant oral reading by teacher an aid to appreciation

Just here it is worth while to note the great value of reading aloud, both by the teacher as a means of instruction, and by the pupil as a test of appreciation. All good writing gains vastly when read thus. Mentally, at all events, we must image its sound if we are to get its full value. As to poetry, that goes without saying; for the essential, defining element in poetry is music. You may have truth, beauty, imagination, emotion, but without music you have not yet got poetry. But it is hardly less true that prose should be read aloud. "The best test of good writing," said Hazlitt—and no man in his generation wrote better prose than he—"is, does it read well aloud." The sympathetic oral reading of a passage from any prose master, a reading that naturally indicates points of emphasis, shades of thought, nuances of feeling, is often better than any formal explanation, for it reproduces the living voice of the writer. The wise teacher will avoid the mannerisms of the professed elocutionist or dramatic reader, but he will not neglect the value of truthful oral interpretation for many passages of beautiful, or subtle, or powerful writing. And the student will often give a better proof of intelligent appreciation by reading aloud, "with good accent and discretion," than by any more elaborate form of examination.

Knowledge of author's life and art and of ideals of the times necessary for comprehension and appreciation

Some varieties of literature can best be approached indirectly, through a study of the life of the author, or of the age in which he lived. As any great work of pure literature must come out of the author's deepest life, it is evident that any knowledge of that life gained from other sources may be an important aid in the appreciation of his work. It is true that in the case of a writer of supreme and almost impartial dramatic genius, such knowledge may be of comparatively little value; though few of us will admit that it is merely an idle curiosity that would be gratified by a fuller knowledge even of the man William Shakespeare. But all the more subjective forms of literature, such as the lyric and the essay, can hardly be studied intelligently without some biographical introduction. Still more obvious is the need in many instances of some accurate knowledge of the period in which a given work is produced. For all such writing as grows directly out of political or social conditions, as oratory, or political satire, or various forms of the essay, this is clearly necessary. It would be folly to attempt to read the speeches of Edmund Burke or the political writings of Swift without historical introduction and comment. But the historical setting is hardly less important in many other forms of literature. For the whole cast of an author's mind, the habitual tone of his feeling on most important matters, is often largely decided by his environment. It is only a very inadequate appreciation, for example, of the work not only of Carlyle and Ruskin but of Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold, that is possible without some correct knowledge of the varying attitude of these men toward important movements in English thought, social, economic, religious, between 1830 and 1880. It must always be an important part of the duty of the college teacher of literature to provide such biographical and historical information.

Knowledge of an author's style to be result of appreciative study of his works and not gathered from texts on literary criticism

All careful study of literature must involve some attention to manner or style—not so much, however, for its own sake, as a means for the fuller appreciation of what is read. In strictness, style has only one virtue, clearness; only one vice, obscurity. A perfect style is a transparent medium through which we plainly see the thought and feeling of the writer. Such a style may, indeed, often have striking peculiarities, but these are really the marks of the writer's personality, which his style reveals without exaggerating. All rhetorical study ought, therefore, to accompany or follow, not to precede, the careful reading for appreciation. No good book ought ever to be considered a mere corpus vile for rhetorical praxis.

Careful attention to critical analysis

Of much greater value is that distinctively critical analysis which endeavors to discover the different elements, intellectual, imaginative, emotional, that enter into any work of literature, and to determine their relative amount and importance. Such analysis may well form the subject of classroom discussion, and advanced students should often be required to put the conclusions they have drawn from such discussion into the form of a finished critical essay. All exercises of this kind presuppose, of course, that the work criticized has been read with interest and intelligence; but no form of literary study is more stimulating or tends more directly to the formation of original and accurate critical judgments. It affords the best test of real literary appreciation.

Content of college course in literature

Obviously it is impossible with this method of study to cover the entire field of English literature in the four college years. It is wiser to read a few great books well than to read many smaller ones hurriedly. It becomes, therefore, an important question on what principle these books should be selected and grouped in courses. In the opinion of the present writer, it is well to begin with a brief outline sketch of the history of the literature given either in a textbook or by lectures, and illustrated by a few representative works, read carefully but without much detailed or intensive study. Such an introductory course may have little cultural value; but it furnishes that knowledge of the chronological succession of English writers, and the varieties of literature dominant in each period, that is necessary for further intelligent study. This knowledge should, indeed, be given in the preparatory schools, but unfortunately it usually is not. When given in college, the course should, if possible, be assigned to the freshman year. In the later years, the works selected for study will best be grouped either by period or by subject. Both plans have their advantages, but in most instances the first will be found the better. The study of a group of contemporary writers always gains in interest as we see how they all, with striking individual differences in temper and subject, yet reflect the social and moral life of their age. Sometimes the two plans may be united; a particular form of literature may be studied as the best representative of a period, as the political pamphlet for the age of Queen Anne or the extended essay for the first quarter of the nineteenth century. And in some rare instances a single writer is at once the highest representative of the age in which he lived and the supreme master of the form in which he wrote—as Shakespeare for the drama and Milton for the epic.

Gradation of courses and adaptation of methods to growing capacities of students

These courses should all—in the judgment of the present writer—be elective, but should be arranged in some natural sequence, those assigned to a lower year being preparatory to those of a higher. This sequence need not always be historical; the simpler course may well precede those which for any reason are more difficult. Methods of instruction will also naturally change, becoming less narrowly didactic with the advancement of the student. In the senior year the teacher will usually prefer to meet his classes in small sections, on the seminar plan, for informal discussion and the criticism of papers written by his pupils on questions suggested by their reading. Of such questions, students who for four years have been reading the masterpieces of English literature will surely find no lack.

The number of courses that can be offered in the department will depend in some cases upon the relative size of the faculty and the student body. For in no other subject is it more important, especially in the later years, that the classes or sections should be small enough to allow some intimate personal touch between professor and student. It may be safely said that no college department of English literature is well officered or equipped that does not furnish at least four or five year-long courses of instruction. And certainly no student can maintain for four years such an acquaintance with the best specimens of a great literature without gaining something of that broad intelligence, heightened imagination, and just appreciation of whatever is best in nature and in human life, which combine in what we call culture.

Undergraduate vs. graduate teaching of English literature

Throughout this paper it has been assumed that what has been termed appreciation—that is, the ability to understand and enjoy the best things in literature—is the one central purpose to which all efforts must be subservient, in the teaching of English literature. But it should be remembered, as stated at the outset, that this paper has to do with the college undergraduate only, the candidate for the bachelor's degree. In the university, and to some extent in the graduate courses of the college leading to the master's degree, the subjects and methods of teaching may well be very different. Studies in comparative literature, studies of literary origins, the investigation of perplexed or controverted questions in the life or work of an author, the study and elucidation of the work of an unknown or little-known writer—all these and many other similar matters may very properly be the subjects of specialized graduate study. But they will rarely be found of most profit to undergraduate classes.

Caleb T. Winchester Wesleyan University

XIX

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION[60]

Language an index of mental development

"Deeds, not words," is a platitude—a flat statement which reduces the facts of the case to an average, and calls that truth. It is absurd to imply, as does this old truism, that we may never judge a man by his words. Words are often the most convenient indices of education, of cultivation, and of intellectual power. And what is more, a man's speech, a man's writing, when properly interpreted, may sometimes measure the potentialities of the mind more thoroughly, more accurately, than the deeds which environment, opportunity, or luck permit. It is hard enough to take the intellectual measure even of the makers of history by their acts, so rapidly does the apparent value of their accomplishments vary with changing conceptions of what is and what is not worth doing. It is infinitely more difficult to judge in advance of youths just going out into the world by what they do. Their words, which reveal what they are thinking and how they are thinking, give almost the only vision of their minds; and "by their words ye shall know them" becomes not a perversion, but an adaptation of the old text. Would you judge of a boy just graduated entirely by the acts he had performed in college? If you did, you would make some profound and illuminating mistakes.

This explains, I think, why parents, and teachers, and college presidents, and even undergraduates, are exercised over the study of writing English—which is, after all, just the study of the proper putting together of words. They may believe, all of them, that their concern is merely for the results of the power to write well—the ability to compose a good letter, to speak forcibly on occasion, to offer the amount of literacy required for most "jobs." But I wonder if the quite surprising keenness of their interest is not due to another cause. I wonder if they do not feel—perhaps unconsciously—that words indicate the man, that the power to write well shows intellect, and measures, if not its profundity, at least the stage of its development. We fasten on the defects of the letters written by undergraduates, on their faltering speeches, on their confused examination papers, as something significant, ominous, worthy even of comment in the press. And we are, I believe, perfectly right. Speech and writing, if you get them in fair samples, indicate the extent and the value of a college education far better than a degree.

Disappointing results from teaching of composition

It is this conviction which, pressing upon the schools and colleges, has caused such a flood of courses and textbooks, such an expenditure of time, energy, and money in the teaching of composition, so many ardent hopes of accomplishment, so much bitter disappointment at relative failure. I do not know how many are directly or indirectly teaching the writing of English in America—perhaps some tens of thousands; the imagination falters at the thought of how many are trying to learn it. Thus the parent, conscious of this enormous endeavor and the convictions which inspire it, is somewhat appalled to hear the critics without the colleges maintaining that we are not teaching good writing, and the critics within protesting that good writing cannot be taught.

Fixing responsibility for alleged failure of composition teaching

It is with the teachers, the administrators, the theorists on education, but most of all the teachers, that the responsibility for the alleged failure of this great project—to endow the college graduate with adequate powers of expression—must be sought. But these guardians of expression are divided into many groups, of which four are chief.

There is first the great party of the Know-Nothings, who plan and teach with no opinion whatsoever as to the ends of their teaching. Under the conditions of human nature and current financial rewards for the work, this party is inevitably large; but it counts for nothing except inertia. There is next the respectable and efficient cohort of the Do-Nothings, who believe that good writing and speaking are natural emanations from culture, as health from exercise or clouds from the sea. They would cultivate the mind of the undergraduate, and let expression take care of itself. They do not believe in teaching English composition. Next are the Formalists, who hold up a dictionary in one hand, the rules of rhetoric in the other, and say, "Learn these, and good writing and good speaking shall be added unto you." The Formalists have weakened in late years. There have been desertions to the Do-Nothings, for the work of grinding rules into unwilling minds is hard, and it is far easier to adopt a policy of laissez-faire. But there have been far more desertions into a party which I shall call, for want of a better name, the Optimists. The Optimists believe that in teaching to write and speak the American college is accepting its most significant if not its greatest duty. They believe that we must understand what causes good writing, in order to teach it; and that for the average undergraduate writing must be taught.

Divergent views on teaching of composition

The best way to approach this grand battleground of educational policies is by the very practical fashion of pretending (if pretense is necessary) that you have a son (or a daughter) ready for college. What does he need, what must he have in a writing way, in a speaking way, when he has passed through all the education you see fit to give him? What should he possess of such ability in order to satisfy the world and himself? Facts, ideas and imagination, to put it roughly, make up the substance of expression. Facts he must be able to present clearly and faithfully; ideas he must be able to present clearly and comprehensively; his imagination he will need to express when his nature demands it. And for all these needs he must be able to use knowingly the words which study and experience will feed to him. He must be able to combine these words effectively in order to express the thoughts of which he is capable. And these thoughts he must work out along lines of logical, reasonable developments, so that what he says or writes will have an end and attain it. In addition, if he is imaginative—and who is not?—he should know the color and fire of words, the power of rhythm and harmony over the emotions, the qualities of speech whose secret will enable him to mold language to his personality and perhaps achieve a style. This he should know; the other powers he must have, or stop short of his full efficiency.

Alas, we all know that the undergraduate, in the mass, fails often to attain even to the power of logical, accurate statement, whether of facts or ideas. It is true that most of the charges against him are to a greater or less degree irrelevant. Weighty indictments of his powers of expression are based upon bad spelling: a sign, it is true, of slovenliness, an indication of a lack of thoroughness which goes deeper than the misplacing of letters, but not in itself a proof of inability to express. Great writers have often misspelled; and the letters which some of our capable business men write when the stenographer fails to come back after lunch are by no means impeccable. Other accusations refer to a childish vagueness of expression—due to the fact that the American undergraduate is often a child intellectually rather than to any defects in composition per se. But it is a waste of time to deny that he writes, if not badly, at least not so clearly, so correctly, so intelligently, as we expect. The question is, why?

It would be a comfort to place the blame upon the schools; and indeed they must take some blame, not only because they deserve it, but also to enlighten those critics of the college who never consider the kind of grain which comes into our hoppers. The readers of college entrance papers could tell a mournful story of how the candidates for our freshman classes write. Here, for an instance, is a paragraph intended to prove that the writer had a command of simple English, correct in sentence structure, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The subject is "The Value of Organized Athletics in Schools"—not an abstruse one, or too academic:

If fellows are out in the open and take athletics say at a certain time every-day; These fellows are in good health and allert in their lessons, while those who take no exercise are logy and soft. Organized athletics in a school bring the former, while if a school has no athletics every-thing goes more or less slipshod, and the fellows are more liable to get into trouble, because they are nervious from having nothing to do.

This is a little below the average of the papers rejected for entrance to college. It is not a fair sample of what the schools can do, but it is a very fair sample of what they often do not do. It was not written by a foreigner, nor, I judge, by a son of illiterate parents, since it came from an expensive Eastern preparatory school. The reader, marking with some heat a failure for the essay from which this paragraph is extracted, would not complain of the writer's paucity of ideas. His ideas are not below the average of his age. He would keep his wrath for the broken, distorted sentences, the silly spelling, the lack (which would appear in the whole composition) of even a rudimentary construction to carry the thought. Spelling, the fundamentals of punctuation, and the compacting of a sentence must be taught in the schools, for it is too late to cure diseases of these members in college. They can be abated; but again and again they will break out. It is the school's business to teach them; and the weary reader sees in this unhappy specimen but a dark and definite manifestation of a widespread slovenliness in secondary education, a lack of thoroughness which appears not only in the failures, but also, though in less measure, among the better writers, whose work is too good in other respects not to be reluctantly passed.

Again, it would be easy to place much of the blame for the slipshod writings of the undergraduate upon the standards set by his elders outside the colleges. Editors can tell of the endless editing which contributions, even from writers supposed to be professional, will sometimes require. And when such a sentence as the following slips through, and begins an article in a well-known, highly respectable magazine, we can only say, "If gold rust, what will iron do?"

Yes the Rot—and with a very big R—in sport: for that, thanks to an overdone and too belauded a Professionalism by a large section of the pandering press, is what it has got to.

Again, any business man could produce from his files a collection of letters full of phrasing so vague and inconsequential that only his business instincts and knowledge of the situation enable him to interpret it. Any lawyer could give numberless instances where an inability to write clear and simple English has caused litigation without end. Indeed, the bar is largely supported by errors in English composition! And as for conversation conducted—I will not say with pedantical correctness, for that is not an ideal, but with accuracy and transparency of thought—listen to the talk about you!

However, it is the business of the colleges to improve all that; and though it is not easy to develop in youth virtues which are more admired than practiced by maturity, let us assume that they should succeed in turning out writers of satisfactory ability, even with these handicaps, and look deeper for the cause of their relative failure.

Democratizing education and immigration the cause of poor quality of expression

The chief cause of the prevalent inadequacy of expression among our undergraduates is patent, and its effects are by no means limited to America, as complaints from France and from England prove. The mob—the many-headed, the many-mouthed, figured in the past by poets as dumb, or, at best, an incoherent thing of brutish noises signifying speech—is acquiring education and learning how to express it. Hundreds of thousands whose ancestors never read, and seldom talked except of the simpler needs of life, are doing the talking and the writing which their large share in the transaction of the world's business demands. Indeed, democracy requires not only that the illiterate shall learn to read and write in the narrower sense of the words, but also that the relatively literate must seek with their growing intellectuality a more perfect power of expression. And it is precisely from the classes only relatively literate—those for whom in the past there has been no opportunity, and no need, to become highly educated—that the bulk of our college students today are coming, the bulk of the students in the endowed institutions of the East as well as in the newer State universities of the West. The typical undergraduate is no longer the son of a lawyer or a clergyman, with an intellectual background behind him.

There is plenty of grumbling among college faculties, and in certain newspapers, over this state of affairs. In reality, of course, it is the opportunity of the American colleges. Let the motives be what they may, the simple fact that so many American parents wish to give their children more education than they themselves were blessed with is a condition so favorable for those who believe that in the long run only intelligence can keep our civilization on the path of real progress, that one expects to hear congratulations instead of wails from the college campuses.

Nevertheless, we pay for our opportunity, and we must expect to pay. The thousands of intellectual immigrants, ill-supplied with means of progress, indefinite of aim, unaware of their opportunities, who land every September at the college gates, constitute a weighty burden, a terrible responsibility. And the burden rests upon no one with more crushing weight than upon the unfortunate teacher of composition. That these entering immigrants cannot write well is a symptom of their mental rawness. It is to be expected. But thanks to the methods of slipshod, ambitious America, the schools have passed them on still shaky in the first steps of accurate writing—spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and the use of words. Thanks to the failure of America to demand thoroughness in anything but athletics and business, they are blind to the need of thoroughness in expression. And thanks to the inescapable difficulty of accurate writing, they resist the attempt to make them thorough, with the youthful mind's instinctive rebellion against work. Nevertheless, whatever the cost, they must learn if they are to become educated in any practical and efficient sense; the immigrants especially must learn, since they come from environments where accurate expression has not been practiced—often has not been needed—and go to a future where it will be required of them. Not even the Do-Nothing school denies the necessity that the undergraduate should learn to write well. But how?

Solutions proposed by four types of instructors

The Know-Nothing school proposes no ultimate solution and knows none, unless faithfully teaching what they are told to teach, and accepting the sweat and burden of the day, with few of its rewards, be not in its blind way a better solution than to dodge the responsibility altogether.

The Formalists labor over precept and principle—disciplining, commanding, threatening—feeling more grief over one letter lost, or one comma mishandled, than joy over the most spirited of incorrect effusions. They turn out sulky youths who nevertheless have learned something.

The Do-Nothings propose a solution which is engaging, logical—and insufficient. They are the philosophers and the æsthetes among teachers, who see, what the Formalists miss, that he who thinks well will in the long run write as he should. Their special horror is of the compulsory theme, extracted from unwilling and idealess minds. Their remedy for all ills of speech and pen is: teach, not writing and speaking, but thinking; give, not rules and principles, but materials for thought. And above all, do not force college students to study composition. The Do-Nothing school has almost enough truth on its side to be right. It has more truth, in fact, than its principles permit it to make use of.

The umpire in this contest—who is the parent with a son ready for college—should note, however, two pervading fallacies in this laissez-faire theory of writing English. The first belongs to the party of the right among the Do-Nothings—the older teachers who come from the generation which sent only picked men to college; the second, to the party of the left—the younger men who are distressed by the toil, the waste, the stupidity which accompany so much work in composition.

The older men attack the attempt to teach the making of literature. Their hatred of the cheap, the banal, and the false in literature that has been machine-made by men who have learned to express finely what is not worth expressing at all, leads them to distrust the teaching of English composition. They condemn, however, a method of teaching that long since withered under their scorn. The aim of the college course in composition today is not the making of literature, but writing; not the production of imaginative masterpieces, but the orderly arrangement of thought in words. Through no foresight of our own, but thanks to the pressure of our immigrants upon us, we have ceased teaching "eloquence" and "rhetoric," and have taken upon ourselves the humbler task of helping the thinking mind to find words and a form of expression as quickly and as easily as possible. The old teacher of rhetoric aspired to make Burkes, Popes, or De Quinceys. We are content if our students become the masters rather than the servants of their prose.

The party of the left presents a more frontal attack upon the teaching of the writing of English. Show the undergraduate how to think, they say; fill his mind with knowledge, and his pen will find the way. Ah, but there is the fallacy! Why not help him to find the way—as in Latin, or surveying, or English literature? The way in composition can be taught, as in these other subjects. Writing, like skating, or sailing a boat, has its special methods, its special technique, even as it has its special medium, words, and the larger unities of expression. The laws which govern it are simple. They are always in intimate connection with the thought behind, and worthless without it; but they can be taught. Ask any effective teacher of composition to show you what he has done time and again for the freshman whose sprawling thought he has helped to form into coherent and unified expression. And do not be deceived by analogies drawn from our colleges of the mid-nineteenth century, where composition was not taught, and men wrote well; or from the English universities, where the same conditions are said (with dissenting voices) to exist. In the first place, they had no immigrant problem in the mid-century, nor have they in Oxford and Cambridge. In the second, the rigorous translation back and forward between the classics and the mother tongue, now obsolete in America, but still a requisite for an English university training, provides a drill in accuracy of language whose efficiency is not to be despised.

The student must express his intellectual gains even as he absorbs them, or the crystallization of knowledge into personal thought will be checked at the beginning. The boy must be able to say what he knows, or write what he knows, or he does not know it. And it is as important to help him express as to help him absorb. The teachers in other departments must aid in this task or we fail; but where the whole duty of making expression keep pace with thought and with life is given to them, they will be forced either to overload, or to neglect all but the little arcs that bound their subjects. And since they are specialists in other fields, and so may neglect that technique of writing which in itself is a special study, their task, when they accept it, is hard, and their labor, when it is forced upon them, too often ineffective. Composition must be taught where college education proceeds—that is the truth of the matter; and if not taught directly, then indirectly, with pain and with waste.

The school of the Optimists approaches this question of writing English with self-criticism and with a full realization of the difficulties, and of the tentative nature of the methods now in use, but with confidence as to the possibility of ultimate success. In order to be an Optimist in composition you must have some stirrings of democracy in your veins. You must be interested in the need of the average man to shape his writing into a useful tool that will serve his purposes, whether in the ministry or the soap business. This is the utilitarian end of writing English. And you must be interested in developing his powers of self-expression, even when convinced that no great soul is longing for utterance, but only a commonplace human mind—like your own—that will be eased by powers of writing and of speech. It is here that composition is of service to the imagination, and incidentally to culture; and I should speak more largely of this service if there were space in this chapter to bring forward all the aspects of college composition. It is the personal end of writing English. If the average man turns out to be a superman with mighty purposes ahead, or if he has a great soul seeking utterance, he will have far less need of your assistance; but you can aid him, nevertheless, and your aid will count as never before, and will be your greatest personal reward, though no greater service to the community than the countless hours spent upon the minds of the multitude.

In order to be an Optimist it is still more important to understand that writing English well depends first upon intellectual grasp, and second upon technical skill, and always upon both. As for the first, your boy, if you are the parent of an undergraduate, is undergoing a curious experience in college. Against his head a dozen teachers are discharging round after round of information. Sometimes they miss; sometimes the shots glance off; sometimes the charge sinks in. And his brain is undergoing less obvious assaults. He is like the core of soft iron in an electro-magnet upon which invisible influences are constantly beating. His teachers are harassing his mind with methods of thinking: the historical method; the experimental method of science; the interpretative method of literature. Unfortunately, the charges of information too often lodge higgledy-piggledy, like bird-shot in a signboard; and the waves of influence make an impression which is too often incoherent and confused. If the historians really taught the youth to think historically from the beginning, and the scientists really taught him to think scientifically from the beginning, and he could apply his new methods of thought to the expression of his own emotions, experiences, life, then the teacher of composition might confine himself to the second of his duties, and teach only that technique which makes writing to uncoil itself as easily and as vividly as a necklace of matched and harmonious stones. In the University of Utopia we shall leave the organization of thought to the other departments, and have plenty left to do; but we are not yet in Utopia.

At present, the teacher of composition stands like a sentry at the gates of knowledge, challenging all who come out speaking random words and thoughts; asking, "Have you thought it out?" "Have you thought it out clearly?" "Can you put your conclusions into adequate words?" And if the answers are unsatisfactory, he must proceed to teach that orderly, logical development of thought from cause to effect which underlies all provinces of knowledge, and reaches well into the unmapped territories of the imagination. But even in Utopia composition must remain the testing ground of education, though we shall hope for more satisfactory answers to our challenges. And even in Utopia, where the undergraduate perfects his thinking while acquiring his facts, it will be the duty of the teacher of writing to help him to apply his intellectual powers to his experiences, his emotions, his imagination, in short, to self-expression. And there will still remain the technique of writing.

How to teach college students the art of self-expression?

Theoretically, when the undergraduate has assembled his thoughts he is ready and competent to write them, but practically he is neither entirely ready nor usually entirely competent. It is one thing to assemble an automobile; it is another thing to run it. The technique of writing is not nearly as interesting as the subject and the thought of writing; just as the method of riding a horse is not nearly as interesting as the ride itself. And yet when you consider it as a means to an end, as a subtle, elastic, and infinitely useful craft, the method of writing is not uninteresting even to those who have to learn and not to teach it. The technique of composition has to do with words. We are most of us inapt with words; even when ideas begin to come plentifully they too often remain vague, shapeless, ineffective, for want of words to name them. And words can be taught—not merely the words themselves, but their power, their suggestiveness, their rightness or wrongness for the meaning sought. The technique of writing has to do with sentences. Good thinking makes good sentences, but the sentence must be flexible if it is to ease the thought. We can learn its elasticity, we can practice the flow of clauses, until the wooden declaration which leaves half unexpressed gives place to a fluent and accurate transcript of the mind, form fitting substance as the vase the water within it. This technique has to do with paragraphs. The critic knows how few even among our professional writers master their paragraphs. It is not a dead, fixed form that is to be sought. It is rather a flexible development, which grows beneath the reader's eye until the thought is opened with vigor and with truth. It is interesting to search in the paragraph of an ineffective editorial, an article, or theme, for the sentence that embodies the thought; to find it dropped like a turkey's egg where the first opportunity offers, or hidden by the rank growth of comment and reflection about it. Such research is illuminating for those who do not believe in the teaching of composition; and if it begins at home, so much the better. And finally, the technique of writing has to do with the whole, whether sonnet, or business letter, or report to a board of directors. How to lead one thought into another; how to exclude the irrelevant; how to weigh upon that which is important; how to hold together the whole structure so that the subject, all the subject, and nothing but the subject shall be laid before the reader; this requires good thinking, but good thinking without technical skill is like a strong arm in tennis without facility in the strokes.

The program I have outlined is simpler in theory than in practice. In practice, it is easier to discover the disorder than the thought which it confuses; in practice, technical skill must be forced upon undergraduates unaccustomed to thoroughness, in a country that in no department of life, except perhaps business, has hitherto been compelled to value technique. Even the optimist grows pessimistic sometimes in teaching composition.

And yet in the teaching of English the results are perhaps more evident than elsewhere in the whole range of college work. It is wonderful to see what can be accomplished by an enthusiast in the sport of transmuting brains into words. When the teacher seeks for his material in the active interests of the student—whether athletics or engineering or literature or catching trout—when he stirs up the finer interests, drawing off, as it were, the cream into words, the results are convincing. Writing is one of the most fascinating, most engaging of pursuits for the man with a craving to grasp the reality about him and name it in words. And even for the undergraduate, whose imagination is just developing, and whose brain protests against logical thought, it can be made as interesting as it is useful.

The teaching of English composition in this country is a vast industry in which thousands of workmen are employed and in which a million or so of young minds are invested. I do not wish to take it too seriously. There are many accomplishments more important for the welfare of the race. And yet, if it be true that maturity of intellect is never attained without that clearness and accuracy of thinking which can be made to show itself in good writing, then the failure of the undergraduate to write well is serious, and the struggle to make him write better worthy of the attention of those who have children to be educated. I do not think that success in this struggle will come through the policy of laissez-faire. All undergraduates profit by organized help in their writing; many require it. I do not think that success will come by a pedantical insistence upon correctness in form without regard to the sense. Squeezing unwilling words from indifferent minds may be discipline; it certainly is not teaching. I think that success will come only to the teacher who is a middleman between thought and expression, valuing both. When we succeed in making the bulk of the undergraduates really think; when we can inspire them with a modicum of that passion for truth in words which is the moving force of the good writer; when the schools help us and the outside world demands and supports efficiency in diction; then we shall carry through the program of the Optimists.

Henry Seidel Canby Yale University

Footnotes:

[60] Reprinted in revised form from College Sons and College Fathers, Harper and Brothers.

XX

THE TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS

Significance of recent criticisms of the teaching of the classics

Methods of teaching are determined to a large extent by appreciation of the objects to be attained. If teachers make clear to themselves just what they wish to accomplish, they will more easily develop the means. The storm of objection now rising against the study of the Classics indicates clearly that there is a general dissatisfaction with the result of this study. There is a striking unanimity on this subject among persons of widely different talent and experience, of whom some are still students, while others are looking back upon their training in school and college after years of mature life. Their adverse criticism is all the more significant because often expressed with obvious regret. Some, who have had unusual opportunities for observation, state their opinion in no uncertain language. For example, Mr. Abraham Flexner, in his pamphlet "A Modern School," on page 18 says: "Neither Latin nor Greek would be contained in the curriculum of the Modern School—not, of course, because their literatures are less wonderful than they are reputed to be, but because their present position in the curriculum rests upon tradition and assumption. A positive case can be made out for neither." The president of Columbia University, in his Annual Report for 1915-1916, page 15, speaking of the "teachers of the ancient classics," says: "They have heretofore been all too successful in concealing from their pupils the real significance and importance of Greek and Latin studies." Such criticisms, however, do not prove that the study of the Classics cannot accomplish all that its advocates claim for it, but only that it is not now accomplishing satisfactory results.

Undoubtedly there are various causes for a depreciation of classical studies at the present time. Other subjects, such as mathematics, are suffering from a similar disparagement. In recent years interest has centered more and more in studies designed to develop powers of observation, give knowledge of certain facts, or provide equipment for some particular vocation, to the neglect of those which discipline the mind or impart a general culture. It is certainly important, therefore, to consider the relative values of these various studies. To do so it is desirable to examine the aims of classical teaching and the methods by which these aims may be realized; for it is at least possible that the widespread dissatisfaction with this teaching is due not so much to the subject itself as to defects and insufficiency in the methods employed.

The present aims of classical teaching

Not all teachers of the Classics agree in all respects as to the aims of their teaching. Certain aims, however, are common to all the classical departments in American colleges. These are:

1. To train students, through the acquisition and use of the ancient languages, in memory, accuracy, analysis and logic, clearness and fluency of expression, and style.

2. To enable certain students to read with profit and enjoyment the masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature.

3. To impart to certain students a knowledge, as complete as possible, of the classical civilization as a whole. To a complete knowledge of this civilization belongs all that the ancients possessed or did, all that they thought or wrote, whether or not any particular part of it had an influence upon later times or is, in itself, interesting or valuable now. All parts alike are phenomena of the life of these ancient peoples and so of the life of the human race.

4. To impart a knowledge and understanding of the thoughts and ideas, the forms of expression, the institutions, and the experiences of the ancients, in so far as these are either actually valuable in themselves to the modern world or have influenced the development of modern civilization.

Besides these aims which are common to all, there are certain others less generally pursued by classical teachers in this country. Among these are:

5. To make students familiar with "the Greek (and Latin) in English," i.e. with the etymology and history of words in our own language which had their origin in or through Greek or Latin.[61]

6. To trace the influences of the classic literature upon modern literature and thought.[62]

7. To train those who expect to teach the Classics in pedagogical methods, and to familiarize them with modern pedagogical appliances.[63]

8. To teach the language of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers.[64]

The classical departments of some colleges also give courses in Modern Greek[65]: such courses, however, belong properly to the field of Modern Languages.

Now it is by no means certain that all of these aims properly concern all classes of students. On the contrary, every one would doubtless agree that those described under Nos. 7 and 8 do not concern the average student of the Classics. It is also a debatable question whether it should be the aim of classical teaching to give all classical students some knowledge of the classic civilization as a whole; whether, for example, Aristophanes and Plautus, however important these authors may be for a complete understanding of the ancient life and literature, are worth while for all classical students alike. It is far more important, however, to determine whether, in that which seems to many persons the chief business of a classical department, all who study the masterpieces of the ancient literatures should be taught to study them in the original language.

Teaching from the originals only

No one doubts that classical departments should provide courses on the ancient literature in the original, or that the æsthetic qualities of a literature can be fully appreciated only in the original language. Some people, however, maintain that every literary production is primarily a work of art, and consequently that its æsthetic qualities are its most essential qualities: that to teach the classical literature through the medium of translations would be aiming at an imperfect appreciation of its most essential qualities, and would also divert students from the study of its original form. Yet in most colleges courses on painting and sculpture are given through the medium of photographs, casts and copies, and no one questions the value and effectiveness of such courses, or doubts that they tend to increase the desire of the students to know the originals themselves. Similarly courses on Greek literature in translations are given at many American colleges, for example at Bucknell, California, Colorado, Harvard,[66] Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Lafayette, Leland Stanford, Michigan, Missouri, New York University, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington University, Wesleyan, and Wisconsin: courses in Latin literature in translations at California, Colorado, Kansas, Leland Stanford, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington University. Besides these there are courses at some colleges on Greek or Roman Life and Thought,[67] or Life and Letters,[68] or Civilization,[69] most of which do not involve the use of the ancient languages on the part of the students. For example, at Brown courses which require no knowledge of the ancient languages are given in both Greek and Roman "Civilization as Illustrated by the Literature, History and Monuments of Art."[70] Harvard also offers courses entitled "A Survey of Greek Civilization" and "A Survey of Roman Civilization, Illustrated from the Monuments and Literature," in which a knowledge of the ancient languages is not required.

In deciding the question here at issue it is essential to distinguish between the different kinds of literature. The value of certain literary productions undoubtedly consists chiefly in the æsthetic qualities of their form; that is, the excellence and influence of these productions depends upon the particular language actually used by the author. Such works of literature lose very much in translation, and it may be asserted with some reason that they lose their most essential qualities. It may well be doubted, therefore, whether any one can derive great pleasure or benefit from the study of the poems of Sappho or the odes of Horace, for example, unless these are studied in the original. The value of other literary productions, on the other hand, lies partly in their form and partly in their content, or in their content alone. It is quite a different question, therefore, whether one may derive a satisfactory pleasure and benefit from a translation of the Agamemnon of Æschylus or Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, of Lucretius or Tacitus, to say nothing of such books as Aristotle's Constitution of Athens.

Teaching only from classical texts

There is another and still more important question connected with the theory of classical teaching, namely whether all classical courses should be based upon or begin with the study of some classical text. Some are of the opinion that it is the business of classical teachers to teach the Greek and Latin languages, and the literatures in these languages, and that anything which cannot be taught best through the study of some portion of the classical literature in the original should be taught by some other department of the college. Consequently in some institutions courses on ancient literature in English translations are given by the English Department,[71] courses on Greek and Roman History, Archaeology, and Philosophy by the Departments of History, Archaeology, and Philosophy, respectively, courses on the Methods and Equipment of Teaching the Classics by the Department of Pedagogy.

Others, less extreme in their views, hold (a) that any study of the Greek or Roman civilization apart from the original ancient literature would be vague, discoursive, and unprofitable, and in particular that a discussion of a literature or of literary forms without an immediate, personal acquaintance with this literature or these literary forms in the original would not be useful, and (b) that such courses would have little permanent value for the students because it would not be possible to compel the students to make much effort for themselves.

Quite the opposite opinion on this most important question is held by those who believe (a) that the study of the Classics should not be confined to those who are now able, or may in the future be expected, to read the ancient literature in the original, (b) that there are some things even about the ancient literature and civilization which can be taught more effectively without the loss of time and the division of attention involved in reading the ancient authors in the original, and (c) that in courses such as those dealing with ancient history ancient books on these subjects, either in the original or in translations, cannot properly be used as textbooks for the reason that, quite apart from their errors and misconceptions, these books do not contain, except incidentally, those phases of the ancient life which are the most interesting and valuable to the modern world. Such persons consider that the attempt to convey an appreciation of the ancient literature through those limited portions of it which can be read by the students in the original is necessarily ineffective. They hold that to appreciate any literature one must study it as literature,—i.e., as English literature should be studied by English students, French literature by French students,—and that literary study of this sort properly begins where translation and exegesis leave off. And finally, they maintain that the effort to give students a lively knowledge of ancient life or ancient history through the ancient texts is precisely like the effort to illustrate ancient life by ancient works of art; e.g., to give a student an idea of an ancient soldier by showing him an ancient picture of a soldier. Such illustrations convey instead the impression that ancient life was both unattractive and unreal, that the study of it is childish and unpractical.[72]

Courses in the ancient languages

Many classical courses are designed primarily to teach the classical languages themselves, or to give mental training through the study and use of these languages. Until recently most American colleges required for admission an elementary knowledge of these languages involving commonly at least three years of preparatory training in Greek and from three to five years of preparatory Latin. Now, however, many colleges provide courses for beginners in Greek, some also for beginners in Latin. For example, courses for beginners in Greek are given at Bryn Mawr, University of California, Chicago, Colorado, Columbia, University of North Dakota, Dartmouth, Harvard, Idaho, Illinois, Johns Hopkins, Kansas, Lafayette, Leland Stanford, Michigan, New York University, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Vermont, Washington University, Wesleyan, Williams, Wisconsin, Yale, and elsewhere. Courses for beginners in Latin are given, for example, at the Universities of Idaho, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Ordinarily these courses resemble in general plan and method the corresponding courses in secondary schools; but inasmuch as the students are more mature, the progress is much more rapid.

The "Natural Method"

In some institutions the attempt is made in teaching ancient Greek and Latin to employ methods used by the teachers of modern languages. Some classical teachers have even adopted to some extent the so-called "natural" or "direct" method of language teaching[73]: commonly such attempts have not been very successful, and where some degree of success has been attained the success seems due to the personality and enthusiasm of the individual teacher. Others have contented themselves with devoting a part of certain courses to exercises designed to show the students that the classical languages were at one time in daily use among living people and were the media of ordinary conversation[74]. Students in such courses commonly memorize certain colloquial phrases and take part in simple conversations in which these phrases can be used. Such methods, skillfully employed, undoubtedly relieve the tedium of the familiar drill in grammar and "prose composition," and may help materially in imparting both a knowledge of the ancient languages and a facility in reading the ancient authors.

An interesting experiment is now being tried at the University of California in a course in Greek for beginners, given by Professor James T. Allen. The description of the course in the university catalogue is as follows: "An Introduction to the Greek Language based upon graded selections from the works of Menander, Euclid, Aristophanes, Plato, Herodotus, and the New Testament. The method of presentation emphasizes the living phrase, and has as its chief object the acquiring of reading power. Mastery of essential forms; memorizing of quotations; practice in reading at sight." This course has had considerable success. More than three hundred students have been enrolled thus far in a period of six or seven years, and some of these have testified that it was one of the most valuable courses they have had in any subject. One of the chief advantages has been that the students, while learning forms and vocabulary, are reading some real Greek, and that of first-rate quality.[75]

Use of modern literature in ancient Greek or Latin

Various attempts have been made, especially in recent years, to provide for classical students modern stories in ancient Latin, in the belief that modern students will acquire a practical knowledge of the language more readily from such textbooks than from any parts of the ancient literature.[76] The story of Robinson Crusoe was translated into Latin by G. F. Goffeaux, and this version has been edited and republished by Dr. Arcadius Avellanus, Philadelphia, 1900 (173 pages). An abridgement of the original edition was edited by P. A. Barnett, under the title The Story of Robinson Crusoe in Latin, adapted from Defoe by Goffeaux, Longmans, Green and Co., 1907. Among original compositions in ancient Latin for students may be mentioned (1) Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles, A First Latin Reader, edited by John Copeland Kirtland, Jr., of Phillips Exeter Academy, Longmans, Green & Co., 1903 (134 pages). (2) The Fables of Orbilius by A. D. Godley, London, Edward Arnold, two small pamphlets, illustrated, containing short and witty stories for beginners. (3) Ora Maritima, A Latin Story for Beginners, by E. A. Sonnenschein, seventh edition, 1908, London, Kegan, Paul and Co.; New York, The Macmillan Company (157 pages). This is the account of the experiences of some boys during a summer in Kent. (4) Pro Patria, A Latin Story for Beginners by Professor E. A. Sonnenschein, London, Swan, Sonnenschein and Co.; New York, The Macmillan Company, 1910 (188 pages). (5) Rex Aurei Rivi, auctore Johanne Ruskin, Latine interpretatus est Arcadius Avellanus, Neo-eboraci, 1914 (Published by E. P. Prentice). (6) F. G. Moore: Porta Latina, Fables of La Fontaine in a Latin Version, Ginn and Co., 1915.

A series of translations of modern fiction is now being produced under the title of The Mount Hope Classics, published by Mr. E. P. Prentice, 37 Wall Street, New York City. The translator is Dr. Arcadius Avellanus. The first of these appeared in 1914 under the title Pericla Navarci Magonis, this being a translation of The Adventures of Captain Mago, or With a Phoenician Expedition, B. C. 1000, by Léon Cahun, Scribner's, 1889. The second volume, Mons Spes et Fabulae Aliae, a collection of short stories, was published in 1918. The third, Mysterium Arcae Boule, published in 1916, is the well-known Mystery of the Boule Cabinet by Mr. Burton Egbert Stevenson. The fourth, Fabulae Divales, published in 1918, is a collection of fairy stories for young readers to which is added a version of Ovid's Amor et Psyche.

Over these books a lively controversy has arisen between Dr. Avellanus and Mr. Charles H. Forbes, of Phillips Academy, Andover.[77] Undoubtedly the translator's style and vocabulary are far from being strictly in accord with the present canons of classical Latin. He employs a multitude of words and idioms unfamiliar to those whose reading has been confined to the masterpieces of the ancient literature which are most commonly studied. On the other hand, the ancient language is made in these books a medium of modern thought. The stories presented hold the attention, the vividness of the narrative captivates the reader and carries him through the obscurities of diction and of style to a wholly unexpected realization that Latin is a real language after all.

It is a serious question whether students can ever acquire a mastery of a language, or even a sufficient knowledge of it really to appreciate its literature, unless they learn to use this language to express their own thoughts. But it is evident that it is impossible adequately to express modern ideas in the language of Cæsar and Cicero. Those who would exclude the Latin of comparatively recent authors such as Erasmus from the canon of the Latin which may be taught, as well as those who confine their teaching to the translation and parsing of certain texts, are raising the question whether the Latin language should be taught at all in modern times.

Naturally less effort has been made to provide for students modern literature in ancient Greek. At least one such book, however, is available, The Greek War of Independence, 1821-27, told in classical Greek for the use of beginners (with notes and exercises) by C. D. Chambers: published by Swan, Sonnenschein and Co.

Courses in "Prose Composition"

In nearly all American colleges courses in Greek and Latin composition are given, either as a means of mental training or in order to give a more complete mastery of these languages and a greater facility in reading the literature. In some places, for example at the University of California, a series of courses is given in both Greek and Latin composition culminating in original compositions, translations of selections from modern literature, and conversation in the ancient languages. Courses in Latin conversation[78] are given in other places also, and courses in the pronunciation of ancient Greek and Latin.[79]

All such courses belong to the general field of the study of the classical languages as distinguished from the study of the literature, history, or any other phase of the classical civilization. This branch of language study, of course, includes such purely linguistic courses as those in Comparative Philology, Comparative Grammar, the Morphology of the Ancient Languages, Syntax, Dialects, etc.

Courses in literature

The bulk of classical teaching in American colleges is devoted to the literature. The great majority of all college courses in Latin and Greek have the same general characteristics.[80] A certain limited portion of text is assigned for preparation. This text is then translated by the students in class, and the translation corrected. Grammatical and exegetical questions and the content of the passage are discussed. Most of the time at each meeting of the class is consumed in such exercises. Generally lectures or informal talks are given by the instructor upon the life and personality of each author whose work is read, upon the life and thought of his times, upon the literary activity as a whole, and upon the value of those selections from his works which are the subject of the course. Sometimes the students are required to read more of the original literature than can be translated in class. Generally some collateral reading in English is assigned. Often the instructor reads to the class, usually from the original, other portions of the ancient literature.

The number and extent of such courses in the different institutions vary according to the strength of the faculty, the plan of the curriculum, and the number and demands of the students in each. In the main, however, the list of selections from the ancient literature presented in such courses in all the colleges is much the same. Many of these courses deal with one particular author and his works, such as Sophocles, Plato, Plautus, or Horace. Others deal with some particular kind of literature, such as Greek tragedy or oratory, Latin comedy, etc., or with a group of authors of different types combined for the sake of variety.[81]

Methods commonly pursued

The methods as well as the aims of such courses are well exemplified in the following passages contained in the Circular of Information for 1915-1916 of the University of Chicago, page 211: "Ability to read Greek with accuracy and ease, and intelligent enjoyment of the masterpieces of Greek literature are the indispensable prerequisites of all higher Greek scholarship. All other interests that may attach to the study are subordinate to these, and their pursuit is positively harmful if it prematurely distracts the student's attention from his main purpose."

It is not immediately apparent what distinction is made here, if there is any, between the "prerequisites" and the "main purpose" of classical scholarship. What the chief aim of classical teaching is according to this view, however, is made clear by the two paragraphs which follow, as well as by the descriptions of the individual courses offered by the Chicago faculty.

"In the work of the Junior Colleges the Department will keep this principle steadily in view, and will endeavor to teach a practical knowledge of Greek vocabulary and idiom, and to impart literary and historic culture by means of rapid viva voce translation and interpretation of the simpler masterpieces of the literature.... In the Senior Colleges the chief stress will be laid on reading and exegesis, but the range of authors presented to the student's choice will be enlarged."

Value of such courses

The advantage of such courses is that they make the students who take them familiar with at least some limited portions of the best of the ancient literature in its original form, and most people are agreed that this is the only way in which students can be taught to appreciate that part of this literature, the value of which lies chiefly or wholly in its form. But people are not agreed upon two most serious questions which arise in this connection. The first is whether all students are capable of appreciating at all literature of this sort, especially when it is conveyed in an ancient and difficult language. The other question is how much of the classical literature really depends for its values chiefly upon its form. To say that the Psalms and the Gospels have no value or little value for the world apart from the original form and language in which they were written would, of course, be absurd. Is it any less absurd to say that the study of the Homeric poems, the Attic tragedies, the works of Thucydides and Plato would have little value for students unless this literature were studied in the original language? These questions cannot properly be ignored any longer by teachers of the Classics.

Defects of these courses

The defects of such courses are manifest to most persons. Students who pursue these courses through most of the years of secondary school and college fail to acquire either such a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages as would enable them to read with pleasure and profit a Greek or Latin book, or such a knowledge of the Greek and Roman literature and civilization as would enable them to appreciate the value of classical studies. Many of them graduate from college without even knowing that there is anything really worthy of their attention in the classical literatures. The fact stares the teachers of the Classics grimly in the face that they are not accomplishing the aims which they profess.

One explanation of this fact suggests itself. In the classical courses commonly given in American colleges the attention paid to the content of the literature, to the author and his times—the lectures and readings by the instructor, the discussion of archaeological, historical, literary, and philosophical matters introduced into the course,—distract attention from the study of the language itself, and check this study before a real mastery of the language has been secured. On the other hand, the time and still more the attention devoted in these courses to the mere process of translation detracts from the appreciation of the literature and obstructs the study of the life and thought. In attempting to accomplish both purposes in these courses the teachers fail to accomplish either, and the result is chiefly a certain mental training, the practical value of which depends largely upon the mental capacity and skill of each individual teacher, and is not readily appreciated.

Courses not requiring knowledge of the ancient languages

To obviate some of these defects, and also to provide courses on Greek and Roman culture for those unfamiliar with the ancient languages, courses which require no use of these languages are now given at various colleges on Classical Literature or Civilization.[82] A course on the "Greek Epic" at the University of California is described as follows: "A study chiefly of the Iliad and the Odyssey; their form, origin, and content; Homeric and pre-Homeric Aegean civilizations; relative merits of modern translations; influence of the Homeric poems on the later Greek, Roman, and modern literature. Lectures (partly illustrated), assigned readings, discussions, and reports." The course at Harvard entitled "Survey of Greek Civilization" is "A lecture course, with written tests on a large body of private reading (mostly in English). No knowledge of Greek is required beyond the terms which must necessarily be learned to understand the subject." "The prescribed reading includes translations of Greek authors as well as modern books on Greek life and thought." The lecturer frequently reads and comments upon selections from the ancient literature. At Brown University a course is given on Greek Civilization, including the following topics: I Topography of Greece, II Prehistoric Greece, III The Language, IV Early Greece (The Makers of Homer, Expansion of Greece, Tyrannies, The New Poetry, etc.), V The Transition Century, 600-500 B. C. ((a) Government and Political Life, (b) Literature, (c) art), VI The Classical Epoch, 500-338 B. C. ((a) Political and Military History, (b) Literature, (c) The Fine Arts), VII The Hellenistic and Græco-Roman Periods, ((a) History, (b) Literature, (c) Philosophy, (d) Learning and Science, (e) Art), VIII The Sequel of Greek History (The Byzantine Empire, the Italian Renaissance, Mediæval and Modern Greece). This is described as "Wholly a lecture course, with frequent written tests, examination of the notebooks, and a final examination on the whole. Definite selections of the most conspicuous authors are required in English translations." The Lecturer also reads selections from Homer, the Greek drama, Pindar, etc. Similar courses on Roman civilization are given at both Brown and Harvard. There is also a course of fifteen lectures on "Greek Civilization" at Vermont; "The Culture History of Rome, lectures with supplementary reading in English," at Washington University; "Greek Civilization, lectures and collateral reading on the political institutions, the art, religion, and scientific thought of ancient Greece in relation to modern civilization," at Wesleyan; "The Role of the Greeks in Civilization" at Wisconsin.[83]

Defects of the lecture system

Whatever success such courses may have, they are open to one criticism. Most, if not all of them, appear to be primarily lecture courses, with more or less collateral reading controlled by tests and examinations. The experience of many, however, justifies to some extent the belief that college students derive little benefit from collateral reading controlled only in this way, because such reading is commonly most superficial. Little mental training, therefore, is involved in courses such as those just described, and the ideas which the students acquire in them are chiefly those given to them by others. And it may reasonably be doubted whether the value to the students of ideas received in this way is comparable to the value of those which they are led to discover for themselves. So far, then, as such courses fail to accomplish the purposes for which they were designed, their failure may be due wholly to this cause.

The study of literature apart from its original language

It is entirely possible to conceive of courses in which no use of the ancient languages would be required, but in which the students would acquire by their own efforts a knowledge of the classical literature and civilization far more extensive and more satisfying than in courses largely devoted to translating from Greek and Latin. Such courses would not merely substitute English translations for the originals, and treat these translations as the originals are treated in courses of the traditional type; the ancient literature would be studied in the same way as English literature is studied. For example, in a course of this kind on Greek literature, in dealing with the Odyssey the students would discuss in class, or present written reports upon, the composition of the poem as a whole, and the relation to the main plot of different episodes such as the quest of Telemachus, his visit to Pylos and Lacedæmon, the scene in Calypso's cave, the building of the raft, the arrival of Odysseus among the Phæacians, his account of his own adventures, his return to Ithaca, the slaying of the wooers, etc.; also the characters of the poem, their individual experiences and behavior in various circumstances, and the ideas which they express, comparing these characters and ideas with those of modern times. In dealing with the drama, the students would study the composition of each play, present its plot in narrative form, and criticize it from the dramatic as well as from the literary standpoint; they would discuss the characters and situations, and the ideas embodied in each.[84] In dealing with Thucydides they would discuss the plan of his book and the artistic elements in its composition; also the critical standards of the author, his methods, his objectivity, and his personal bias. They would study the debates in which the arguments on both sides of great issues are presented, expressing their own opinions on the questions involved. They would study the great descriptions, such as the account of the siege of Platæa, the plague at Athens, the last fight in the harbor of Syracuse, making a summary in their own language of the most essential or effective details. Lastly they would discuss such figures as Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, Archidamus, Brasidas and Hermocrates, their characters, principles, and motives. In dealing with Plato they would study the character of Socrates and those ideas contained in the Platonic dialogues which can be most readily comprehended by college students.

Classical studies not confined to the ancient authors

The study of "The Classics" is not properly confined to the Greek and Latin literatures: it includes the military, political, social, and economic history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, their institutions, their religion, morals, philosophy, science, art, and private life. The geography and topography of ancient lands, anthropology and ethnology, archaeology and epigraphy contribute to its material. It is not necessary that all these subjects be taught by members of a classical department. In particular it is the common practice in this country to relegate the study of ancient philosophy to the Department of Philosophy, whereas in England and on the Continent such distinctions between departments are not recognized. But certainly these branches of the study of the classical civilization should be taught best by those most familiar with the classical civilization in all its phases, and most thoroughly trained in the interpretation and criticism of its literature. It is also obvious that the teaching of the classical literature would be emasculated if it were separated from these other subjects mentioned. Only, such subjects as history should not be taught from the literary point of view. History should be an account of what actually took place, derived from every available source and not from a synthesis of a literary tradition. In this respect the teachers of the Classics have from the earliest times made the most serious mistakes. To some extent the same charges may be brought against the methods and traditions of the teachers of modern history. The teaching of Greek and Roman history, however, is affected in a peculiar degree by the traditions of classical scholarship. The historical courses given by most classical teachers are based upon the translation and discussion of the works of certain ancient authors, whose accounts are not only false and misleading in many respects, but characteristically omit those factors in the ancient life which are the most significant and interesting to the modern world. Such courses begin by implanting false impressions which no amount of explanation can eradicate. The ancient world, therefore, is made to appear to modern students unreal and unworthy of serious attention: it is not strange that they are dissatisfied with such teaching, and that it seems to many practically worthless. A true picture of the life and experience of the ancient Greeks and Romans would appear both interesting and profitable to a normal college student.

Summary of objects to be sought in the teaching of the classics

The aims of the teaching of the Classics in American colleges should be to give, in addition to a training of the mind:

1. An appreciation of the best of the classical literature. For this is, in many respects, the best literature which we have at all, even when without any allowances it is compared with the best of modern literatures. Much of it is universal in character. It is also the foundation of the modern literatures. By learning to appreciate it, students would learn to judge and appreciate all literature.

2. A familiarity with the characters and narratives of the ancient literature. The knowledge of these characters, their behavior under various vicissitudes of fortune, and their experiences, would of itself be a valuable possession and equipment for life.

3. A knowledge of the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans, revealed and developed in their literature, and tested in the realities of their life. Many of these ideas are of the utmost value today, and are in danger of being overlooked and forgotten in this materialistic age of ours, unless they are constantly recalled to our minds by such studies.

4. A knowledge of the actual experiences of the ancients, as individuals and as nations, their experiments in democracy and other forms of government, in imperialism, arbitration, and the like, their solutions of the moral, social, and economic problems which were as prominent in their world as in ours.

To realize these aims old methods should be revised and improved, new methods developed. For there can hardly be a study more valuable and practical than this.

William K. Prentice Princeton University

Footnotes:

[61] For example, at the University of Kansas.

[62] Leland Stanford, Michigan, Princeton.

[63] California, North Dakota, Harvard, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Leland Stanford, Michigan, Oberlin, Otterbein, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin, Yale, etc. Some of these courses are offered only to graduate students, and some are given by the Departments of Pedagogics.

[64] In New Testament or Patristic Greek at Austin, Bucknell, California, Cornell, Harvard, Illinois, Lafayette, Michigan, Millsaps, Trinity, Wesleyan. In Patristic Latin, Bucknell and elsewhere.

[65] Brown, Cornell, Leland Stanford. [N. B. These lists are by no means complete. **refers to footnotes 61-65]

[66] History of Greek Tragedy. Lectures with reading and study of the plays of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Requires no knowledge of the Greek language.

[67] E.g., Columbia, Lafayette.

[68] California, Washington University.

[69] Colorado, Idaho, Syracuse, Vermont, Washington University, Wesleyan, Wisconsin.

[70] It should be noted that at Brown the titles of the classical departments are "The Department of Greek Literature and History" and "The Department of Roman Literature and History."

[71] At Cornell and Oberlin, for example.

[72] See especially Clarence P. Bill. "The Business of a College Greek Department," Classical Journal, IX (1913-14), pp. 111-121.

[73] See the article by Mr. Theodosius S. Tyng in Classical Weekly, VIII (1915), Nos. 24 and 25. Also M. J. Russell: "The Direct Method of Teaching Latin," in the Classical Journal, XII (1916), pages 209-211, and other articles on this subject in the Classical Journal and the Classical Weekly in recent years.

[74] For example, "Latin Conversation," at Columbia; "Oral Latin," at Leland Stanford; "Sight Reading and Latin Speaking," at New York University.

[75] See Professor Allen's article, "The First Year of Greek," in the Classical Journal, X (1915), pages 262-266.

[76] As early as the seventeenth century books were produced which may be regarded as the forerunners of this sort of modern composition in the ancient language. One of these was published in 1604 under the title: "Iocorum atque seriorum tum novorum tum selectorum atque memorabilium libri duo, recensente Othone Melandro." Another is the "Terentius Christianus seu Comoediae Sacrae—Terentiano stylo a Corn. Schonaeo Goudono conscriptae, editio nova Amstelodami 1646": this includes dramas such as Naaman (princeps Syrus), Tobaeus (senex), Saulus, Iuditha, Susanna, Ananias, etc. Still another is the "Poesis Dramatica Nicolai Amancini S. J.," in two parts, published in 1674 and 1675. A century later there appeared a story which, judging from its title, was designed primarily for students: "Joachimi Henrici Campe Robinson Secundus Tironum causa latine vertit Philippus Julius Lieberkühn," Zullich, 1785.

[77] See the Classical Journal, XI (1914), pages 25-32; Classical Weekly, IX (1915-16), pages 149-151; X (1916), pages 38 f.; Classical Weekly, X (1916), pages 37 f.

[78] See note 2, page 411.

[79] Columbia.

[80] This is true of the courses in secondary schools and graduate courses in universities also; but in the secondary and graduate schools the proportion of translation courses to the others is smaller.

[81] For example, at Harvard one course includes Plato, Lysias, Lyric Poetry, and Euripides, with lectures on the history of Greek literature; another Livy, Terence, Horace and other Latin Poets.

[82] See above, page 407 f.

[83] For a fuller list of institutions where classical courses not requiring a knowledge of the ancient languages are given see above, page 407.

[84] "Die höchste Aufgabe bei der Lektüre des griechischen Dramas sei das Stück Leben, das uns der Dichter vor Augen führt, in seinem vollen Inhalt miterleben zu lassen." C. Wunderer, in Blätter für das Gymnasial-Schulwesen, Vol. LII (1916), 1.

XXI

THE TEACHING OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES

The college course must emphasize power, not facts

It is well at times to emphasize old truths, mainly because they are old and are consecrated by experience. One of these, frequently combated nowadays, is that any college course—worthy of the name—has other than utilitarian ends. I therefore declare my belief that the student does not go to college primarily to acquire facts. These he can learn from books or from private instruction. Me judice—he goes to college primarily to learn how to interpret facts, and to arrive through this experience at their practical as well as their theoretic value: as respects himself, as respects others, and in an ever widening circle as regards humanity in general. The first object, thus, of a college course is to humanize the individual, to emancipate him intellectually and emotionally from his prejudices and conventions by giving him a wider horizon, a sounder judgment, a firmer and yet a more tolerant point of view. "Our proclivity to details," said Emerson, "cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry." The college seizes upon the liberating instinct of youth and utilizes it for all it is worth. We summarize by saying that the college prepares not merely for "life" but for "living"; so that the society whom the individual serves will be served by him loyally, intelligently, and broad-mindedly, with an increasing understanding of its aims and purposes.

The college can attain its aim only when the student brings necessary facts from secondary schools

This, let us assume, is the somewhat lofty ideal. What about its concrete realization? Especially when the subject is a language, which, considering that it consists of parts of speech, inflections, phonetics, etc., is a very practical matter and apparently far removed from the ideal in question. Every language teacher is familiar with this stock objection. How often has he not been told that his business is not to teach French culture or Spanish life, but French and Spanish? And as everybody knows, French and Spanish are not learned in a day, nor, indeed, if we judge by the average graduate of our colleges, in four years of classroom work. It is not my purpose to combat the contention that college French or Spanish or Italian could be taught better, and that from a utilitarian point of view the subject is capable of a great deal of improvement. As Professor Grandgent has trenchantly said "I do not believe there is or ever was a language more difficult to acquire than French; most of us can name worthy persons who have been assiduously struggling with it from childhood to mature age, and who do not know it now: yet it is treated as something any one can pick up offhand.... French staggers under the fearful burden of apparent easiness." I do not think these words overstate the case. All the more reason, then, to bear in mind that the burden of this accomplishment should not fall on the college course alone, or, I should even say, on the college course at all. For the fact is that a thorough knowledge of the Romance tongues cannot be acquired in any college course, and to attack the problem from that angle alone is to attempt the impossible. It is on the school, and not on the college, that the obligation of the practical language problem rests. If our students are to become proficient in French—in the sense that they can not only read it but write and speak it with passable success—the language must be begun early, in the grade school (when memory and apperception are still fresh), and then carried forward systematically over a period of from six to seven years. But this will require on the part of our schools: (1) a longer time allotment to the subject than it now generally has, (2) a closer articulation between the grade-school, high-school, and college courses, and (3) the appointment of better and higher-paid teachers of the subject. An encouraging move is being made in many parts of the country to carry out this plan, though of course we are still a long way from its realization; and when it is realized we shall not yet have reached the millennium. But at least we shall have given the practical teaching of the subject a chance, comparable to the opportunity it has in Europe; and the complaint against the French and Spanish teacher—if there still be a chronic complaint—will have other grounds than the one we so commonly hear at present.

Limitations of elementary and intermediate courses as college courses

In the meantime, let us remember that the college has other, and more pressing, things to do than to attempt to supply the shortcomings of the school. It is certainly essential that the college should continue and develop the practical work of the school in various ways, such as advanced exercises and lectures in the foreign idiom, special conversation classes, and the like—if only for the simple reason that a language that is not used soon falls into desuetude and is forgotten. But assuredly the so-called elementary, intermediate, and advanced courses in French and Spanish (as given in college) do not fall under that head. They exist in the college by tolerance rather than by sound pedagogical theory, and the effort now being made to force all such courses back into the school by reducing the college "credits" they give is worthy of undivided support. Not only are they out of place in the college program, but the burden of numerous and often large "sections" in these courses has seriously impeded the college in its proper language work. The college in its true function is the clarifier of ideas, the correlator of facts, the molder of personalities; and the student of modern languages should enter college prepared to study his subject from the college point of view. Much of the apparent "silliness" of the French class which our more virile undergraduates object to would be obviated if a larger percentage of them could at once enter upon the more advanced phases of the subject. It is, then, to their interest, to the interest of the subject, and to the advantage of the college concerned, that this reform be brought about.

Aim of the teaching of Romance languages in the college

In any case, the function of a college subject can be stated, as President Meiklejohn has stated it, in terms of two principles. He says: "The first is shared by both liberal and technical teaching. The second applies to liberal education alone. The principles are these: (1) that activity guided by ideas is on the whole more successful than the same activity without the control of ideas, and (2) that in the activities common to all men the guidance of ideas is quite as essential as in the case of those which different groups of men carry on in differentiation from one another." As applied to the Romance languages, this means that while the college must of course give "technical" instruction in language, the emphasis of that instruction should be upon the "ideas" which the language expresses, in itself and in its literature. It is not enough that the college student should gain fluency in French or Spanish, he must also and primarily be made conscious of the processes of language, its logical and æsthetic values, the civilization it expresses, and the thoughts it has to convey. While it may be said that all thorough language instruction accomplishes this incidentally, the college makes this the aim of its teaching. The college should furnish an objective appraisal of the fundamental elements of the foreign idiom, not merely a subjective (and often superficial) mastery of details. For the old statement remains true that—when properly studied—"proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual";[85] and what shall we say when "literature" is added to this list?

Status of Romance languages in representative colleges—Early status

From these preliminary observations let us now turn to the present status of Romance languages in some of our representative colleges.[86] One gratifying fact may be noted at once. Whereas a quarter of a century ago Greek and Latin were still considered the sine qua non of a liberal education, today French and German, and to a lesser extent Spanish and Italian, have their legitimate share in this distinction. Indeed, to judge merely by the number of students, they would seem to have replaced Latin and Greek. To be sure, several colleges, as for instance Amherst and Chicago, alarmed by this swing of the pendulum, have reserved the B.A. degree for the traditional classical discipline. But in the first case the entire curriculum includes "two years of Greek or Latin," and in the second the B.A. students comprise but a very small percentage of the college body; and while in both cases Latin and Greek are required subjects, Romance is admitted as an elective, in which—to mention only Amherst—six consecutive semester courses, covering the main phases of modern French literature, can be chosen. As noted, the recognition of modern languages as cultural subjects is relatively recent. As late as 1884 a commission, appointed by the Modern Language Association, found that "few colleges have a modern language requirement for admission to the course in arts;...of the fifty reported, three require French, two offer an election between French and German, and two require both French and German." And of these same colleges, "eighteen require no foreign language, twenty-nine require either French or German, and eighteen require both French and German, for graduation in the arts."