THE ADVANCE MOVEMENT OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

JAMES FLEMING HOSIC, HEAD OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, CHICAGO NORMAL COLLEGE, CHICAGO, ILL., AND SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

New occasions teach new duties,

Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward,

Who would keep abreast of truth.

Lowell's well-known lines perfectly express the spirit of the movement of which I speak tonight. For the English teachers of America are rapidly awakening to the new demands of the new day and will rise to meet them. Long noted for their vagaries, their disunion, each an infinitely repellent particle, they present today a fairly united front. They have formed one great brotherhood and eagerly call to each other from the South and North, and West and East: How goes the battle, fellow-struggler? How fare you in your assaults upon the fortresses of slovenly speech, and impotent thought, and ignorant taste?

Such a spectacle is most enheartening. For education in the mothertongue remains and must always remain of transcendent importance to every child. It is necessary in order that he may think. It is necessary that he may make his thoughts known. It is necessary that he may share the thought and life of others. Any sign which augurs greater efficiency, a higher general level of instruction in English will be hailed by every man of judgment among us as due and ample cause for rejoicing. Not least happy are those who, being actually engaged in the work, see just before them larger possibilities of achievement, more and sounder fruit of their labors.

How does it happen that teachers of English, who only yesterday were notorious for vagary and disunion, should now be found united in one great brotherhood? What are their common purposes? What their common needs? We answer, they are actuated (1) by a sense of limitations which prevent the highest success and which must be overcome and (2) by a new and higher conception of their mission.

Upon no subject taught in the schools, particularly the high schools, has tradition hung more heavily than upon the subject of English. Originally no part of the curriculum for the adolescent years, it was introduced at the behest of higher institutions. Hence, from the beginning, it was treated from the point of view of preparation for the academic life. Moreover, being a language study, it must needs be pursued by those methods which had long been in vogue in the language field. "Here," said the schoolmaster, "is a body of knowledge, fully formulated, prepared for assimilation. Master it for your own.' Unfortunately such a method was ill adapted to the study of a living tongue. Nevertheless, this method

has persisted, and it is only with the astonishing growth of the public high school that teachers and supervisors have become aroused to the necessity of sweeping aside this mass of pedantry and emphasizing in its place the essential language arts.

This has come about because the social has largely replaced the academic ideal. Formerly the schools fitted for college. Now, since not more than 4 per cent of those in high school ever go to college, the school very properly fits more directly for life. By life, it should be said, we mean the activities of business and industry, the associations of the family, the relationships and demands of the social community. Knowing that tomorrow his pupils may be in the midst of such responsibilities, that they will be hearing the call to service, that they must meet the test of efficiency, that they must prove their personal worth, that they should be able to find within themselves the possibility of the highest pleasures and of a deepening and broadening intellectual life, the English teacher will strive with all the earnestness that in him lies to make his classroom a place of generating power, of expanding capacity, of storing-up of resources against the day of need.

And what are the chief demands which life presses upon us? I answer, (1) a clear head, (2) the power of solving problems, (3) knowledge of self and of human nature, (4) ideals of conduct and strength to cling to them, (5) familiarity with the sources of culture, (6) standards of taste, (7) command of the vernacular. These, then, are the qualities and capabilities which the English teacher will seek to develop. Nor does any other have a better opportunity. First and always the student of English must think straight. How else shall he learn to speak persuasively or write with clearness; how else shall he read and get the sense? Problems, moreover, are not confined to mathematics. Every attempt to adapt certain means to a specific end is a problem-solving effort; likewise the discovery as in an argument, for example, of how another has done so. As for literature, it is the expression of human life, the embodiment of human nature. Thru it the heart is revealed and by means of it we live vicariously in a thousand experiences and situations not possible to us otherwise, finding ourselves more completely in a few hours of reading, it may be, than by years of actual toil and pleasure. Thus, too, are built up by concrete example images of what we should like to be and do and those strong feelings of attraction and repulsion which determine our course whenever moral issues confront us. Hence the sources of culture are found largely in libraries. It is the poets that shall teach us to respond with sympathetic fervor to the appeals of truth and beauty in that world of art and nature in which we may be privileged to move. Lastly, it is the supreme duty of the English teacher to enable his pupils to use effectively the language of every day. Thus we run the gamut, striking one by one the chief notes in the scale of life. English may sound them all.

Whether it does so or not will depend upon the teacher's point of view. If composition is taken to be a skillful treading among the eggs of our unphonetic English spelling, a judicious sowing of discourse with capitals, periods, and commas, and a successful dodging of the pitfalls of an elusive grammar-like Peter Bell's yellow primrose, nothing more and if literature is treated as an opportunity for verbal inquisitions, untimely reference hunting, and petty pressing of noses against the author's private windowpanes, then indeed shall the tones be few and harsh which the player will evoke. But if the better view obtain, that composition is thinking and that literature is life, the teacher will guide the activities of his class into those channels which lead directly into the experience beyond the school. Nor will he fail to exact the faithful performance of every essential detail, making the student feel how these contribute to the end he has in view.

This is why we hear so much nowadays of oral expression; of attempts to use the newspapers, the magazines, the newer books; of student criticism; of school papers; of interschool correspondence; of the acting of plays, and of various other departures from the beaten track. These are experiments in reality-attempts to direct boys and girls in doing precisely those things which they will most insistently continue to do all their days.

For the mere conning and saying of lessons is at best very like a treadmill, a performance not easily duplicated outside the school. It certainly does not enlist the whole-hearted earnestness of the pupil, and hence often signally fails to produce any deep or lasting effect. Boys and girls must enter into their speaking and reading with that zest and purpose which actuate them in their clubs and games. They must care to win, must study to win, must rejoice in winning. They will do so if their school life is real life. The resourceful teacher will make it so.

Such is the spirit which animates the leaders of the new English movement. They are not mere iconoclasts. They do not favor anarchy or welcome chaos. They are not unmindful of the values which the methods in vogue for several decades are capable of unfolding. They are not willfully ignoring the excellent traditions. But they would infuse the English work of the time with the best educational ideals of the time. They would keep abreast of progress, would walk in the van.

They are aware that conditions seemingly beyond their control render their task appallingly difficult. The country as a whole has indifferent standards of linguistic culture. Often there seem to be no standards at all. In many communities less than 10 per cent of the children may be said to receive any favorable linguistic or literary influence whatever in their homes, while on the street they are laughed at for their pains when they speak as in the school they have been taught to speak. The fathers read the newspapers and nothing better. The mothers read the lighter magazines or nothing at all. At the best, the school can never raise the English of all the boys and girls far above the community level, and that is often

painfully low. The wonder is, not that we do so badly in our English instruction, but that we produce any visible effects at all.

The situation in the school itself is not always favorable. Other departments fail to support by example and precept the efforts of the English teachers. The pupils are required to take too many hours of work and have not time for thoroness or ripening. The English teachers are overwhelmed with pupils and slight the work or destroy their health and energy in an heroic attempt to do justice to individuals where only mass instruction is possible. Actual statistics show that the mortality among composition teachers is in many instances actually greater than at the bloody field of Gettysburg. And yet it is a useless and unnecessary sacrifice! If the number of English teachers in the high schools of the United States were doubled, the total expense of this all-important subject would not far surpass that of the sciences, while if it were computed with relation to the actual time given to it, far less. No reasonable man will deny that the intolerable and unfortunate conditions to which I have referred could and should be removed.

The actual facts are at hand in the famous Hopkins report and will soon be given to the country. They should be urged upon the attention of all supervisors and all boards of education. For the sake of results, for the sake of precious human life and strength, they should be acted upon without delay.

Along these lines, then, lie the possibilities of advance in English teaching. A unity of purpose, reassuring in its depth and strength, seems to pervade our ranks. The social character and social activities of the school begin to bulk large in our conception of what English training may and ought to do. Not forgetting that life is more than meat and culture more than industry, to life itself we look for those aims which shall direct our efforts. Nor will we hope to work miracles and heal multitudes when we know quite well that upon each separate head must hands be laid.

We respect our high calling. Our land is one of many interests, many occupations, many religions, many races even. What shall constitute us all Americans? What, indeed, but pride in our common country, its history, and its free institutions; love of the Stars and Stripes which symbolizes them; knowledge of our common language by means of which we share the common life; and familiarity with our nation's literature, which reflects our history, which embodies our spirit, and disseminates our ideals. This language and this literature it is our privilege to teach. This we would do with an eye single to the making of competent and useful citizens, ready and able to serve others, and possessed of the means of ever widening and enriching their own intellectual lives.

THE HIGH SCHOOL AND DEMOCRACY

THOMAS JESSE JONES, SPECIALIST, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, D.C. Society is now undergoing a very rapid process of evolution. Everywhere the insistent demand is for more democracy-democracy in government, including popular election of all officials and the subordination. of government interest in war to government activity for soil, industry, health, and education; democracy in courts, judges who do not consider legal precedent and legal tradition more important than the welfare of the boy and the girl and more binding than the sacred ties of home life; democracy in industry, workshops in which the employee is more than a tool and the employer is always a brother; democracy of art, the beautiful and artistic of the world made common to all and the common in life transfigured in art for its very simplicity and universality; democracy of recreation, buildings and open parks in our cities for the laughter and the pleasure and the play of all the people, and for farmers and laborers of the open country liberal allowances of regular time for healthful fun and joyful appreciation of nature's handiwork; democracy of health, God's fresh air and pure food for the children of all men and a death-rate that draws no unfair line against the infants of the laborers; and most important of all, a demand for a democracy of education.

Democracy of education is just beginning to be realized. As to the classes of people who shall receive education, we have long been democratic. Civilized people are now almost unanimous in their belief that all the people must be educated. While, however, we have proclaimed with almost boastful pride our belief in the education of all the people, we have been clinging with blind tenacity to a form of education that is both traditional and aristocratic. The subject-matter of education has been largely the conventional knowledge demanded by a people who had more leisure than responsibility. We have been content to accept this decorative or "disciplinary" idea of education devised for the independent classes of a very simple form of society now practically out of existence.

The high school has now the opportunity of the century to lead in the great tide of democratization now moving as never before. It can, if it will, not only lead the school system, but it can guide and direct more largely than any other social group every phase of democracy as it reaches out into the home, the church, the playground, the field, the shop, and the legislation halls. This tremendous possibility is claimed for the high schools of the land because of their strategic position in our civilization.

What then are the educational elements which the high school must recognize if it would live up to its wonderful opportunity to assist in the great movement for a real and active democracy in education and in life?

First of all, teachers must catch the spirit of the twentieth-century democracy and learn of the great movements for the improvement of man