Kansas Teacher du lieu suivant : Topeka, Kansas • 14

THE KANSAS TEACHER 12 curriculum had any relation at all to the needs and abilities of real human youngsters, it was due to the fact that a teacher's practice is always less rigid than his theory. Within the memory of the present generation this absurd method has been gradually reversed. Educators now study both child psychology and social needs, and try to build thereon a logical, coherent, progressive course in English from the primer class up1, not from the Ph. down. In the cities and the ambitious towns the superintendents and principals are striving to work out a course of study which will fit the mind of the child and prepare him to read wisely and pleasurably, to write clearly in good form those communications that people actually do have need of, and to speak his own language pleasingly and correctly.

'And now abideth reading, writing, and speaking; and the greatest of these is speaking: Reading, writing, and speaking these three activities include all the phrases of training in English. Historically studied, the school emphasis appears to have fallen first on literature; second, on rhetoric and composition, and only recently upon oral English. It was first assumed that anyone who studied the classics would thereby learn to write and speak well. Literary style, however, proved less contagious than was hoped. College examining boards sent forth an angry wail as to the flagrant crimes against the language, committed by entering freshmen.

Then rhetorics were multiplied, and boys and girls had to read about clearness, force and elegance, and the whole tribe of their verbal enemies, including barbarisms, improprieties, solecisms, and the like. Illiterary refused to retreat before even this phalanx of mighty names; hene the desperate pedagogs adopted the theory that one might learn to write by writing. They and their pupils fought their way over rivers of ink and up mountains of manuscript. If much of this writing owed more to dutiful perseverance than to inspiration, and if some errors obstinately reappeared to the hundredth time, nevertheless thousands of youngsters did learn something useful about expressing themselves on paper. Then one day a few pioneer minds discovered the neglected but obvious fact, that people begin to speak long before they begin to write, speak a hundred times as much and often, and continued speaking long years after they cease to do much writing.

The instantaneous deduction was that oral English needed more attention than it was getting. If. faulty diction and poor sentence structure and incoherent thinking become speech habits, these errors will be firmly rooted before written composition begins, and will persist in spite of carloads of grammars and rhetorics. On the other hand, all the expressional virtues that can be acquired in oral English (except tone quality, carry over perfectly into the written work. The modern teacher of English believes firmly in the value of good oral training in expression from the earliest grades up.

Reading, writing and speaking are. all taught differ-ently these days from what they were twenty years or even ten years ago. The modern teacher's attitude toward literature is not that they love the classics less but contemporary writings more. Shall Milton, Burke and Addison be allowed entirely to crowd out Alfred Noyes Woodfow Wilson, and Henry VanDyke? Is the spectator reaUy so valuable that it should entirely displace the At-lanhc Month Are the coarse or sentimental novels and the wittily indecent plays of the Eighteenth Century better food for adolescent minds than the best modern novels and plays? The present-day teachers of English insist that no book is good merely because it is old, worthless merely because it is new. They and their pupils try to choose fair mindedly from both classic and contemporary literature those works that express most effectively the highest ideals of truth and beauty.

Teachers of English feel that they have neglected their duty and opportunity if they fail to acquaint their pupilj with the best living authors. Why not keep-step with lit-erature and history, instead of tagging along one or two centuries behind? It would have been a tremendous pity if the Elizabethans had been so busy mulling over Chancer that they were blind to Shakespeare. After leaving school our pupils will read twenty modern books to one old classic. They, will spend a larga share of their reading time on newspapers and magazines. It is to be hoped that they will read a good many books and articles on popular science, social problems, and other non-literary topics.

Granted that we should teach them the meaning and beauty of the best older classics, should we not also train them to select wisely from the mass of current literature to which they will devote most of their time? Hence we are now encouraging supplementary reading from the grammar grades up through high school, and many of us use the Independent, the Literary Digest, or other periodicals in our classes. We want our students to form good reading habits. Since oral composition has become the running-mata of written composition, and since literature and composition have been separated in most of the larger schools, there has been a growing tendency to socialize thema work. That is, the makers of courses of study consider first the actual occasions for writing and speaking in everyday life outside of the schoolroom, and then plan the types of assignments which will prepare boys and girls to meet these occasions efficiently. There is so much to be done that we cannot afford to waste time upon material that does not directly aid the student to speak and write well.

Since our aim is to prepare him to live successfully as a social being, and not merely to make him reach College Entrance Requirements, we have cut the classical dead wood out -of our English grammar. Instead of burdening him with the latinized classifications which the early scholars foisted upon our uninfected inflections that really do aid him to speak correctly, inflictions that really do aid him to speak correctly. Oral and written composition are becoming practical and social to the highest degree. Our students produce plays instead of dissecting them endlessly by the aid of notes and review questions. Instead of mining all their ideas out of encyclopedias and the classics, the youngsters write student editorials, news items, and interviews on live school topics.

In their clubs and organized classes they learn how to plan programs, handle committee work, lead meetings, wriU minutes, and take part in dramatics, debates, and discussions. The poise and resourcefulness thus developed will serve, later in their lives, to make them democratic leaders of public opinion. They will not be painfully embarrassed and absurdly helpless if some one asks them to preside over a meeting, or make a presentation speech, or give a toast at a banquet, or review a book for some literary club. Their fathers and mothers, in nine cases out of ten, were utterly unprepared to meet these social emergencies. The citizens of tomorrow will not Miltons, but they will not be ingloriously mute, either.

In a word, we teachers of English are now striving.