THE REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON ENGLISH.' By A. F. NIGHTINGALE, Superintendent of high schools, Chicago. The committee of ten, clothed with the authority of the National Educational Association to appoint nine other committees of ten each, men of the largest experience and the widest repute, who should consult concerning the application of proper remedies to cure the evils which make the secondary schools (God save the mark!) "the most defective part of the education of this country," have published their report. No such educational movement, whether considered in the light of its conception or in the light of its denouement, was ever before attempted. The report is by far the best contribution to educational theory of the century, whether we consider the range of subjects discussed, the exhaustive treatment of each, the high character, scholarly ability, and rich and varied experience of the contributors, or the widely divergent opinions to which the report has given rise among the rank and file of those who are largely responsible for this "most defective part of our education." The committee was nationally appointed for a national purpose, and it was fair to presume that the results of their deliberations were published for no other reason than to receive the commendation, the criticism, or the condemnation of the freethinking, individual-minded educators of this country. We have been surprised therefore to note the attempts in the "I am holier than thou spirit" to smother freedom of speech and freedom of opinion on the dogmatic statements and wise suggestions of this great educational pronunciamento. Personally I have had no words but those of exalted praise for this marvelous report, issued with such marvelous unanimity in such a marvelously short time, but there are those who, out of their largo experience and with the independence of the American spirit, have dared to place some strictures upon the conclusions reached. They are men whose experience entitles them to be heard with candor, whose opinions I respect, and whose judgment on educational matters, if I disagreed, would lead me to review my own. I protest, therefore, in the name of untrammeled opinion against the anathema maranatha which has been pronounced upon them, and against the dictum of Holy Writ, slightly changed, which has been used to silence adverse opinions, "For I testify unto every man that readeth the words of this book, if any man shall add unto these things [the committee] shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book." Wendell Phillips once said, "If the Alps, piled in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem of despotism, then the ever-restless ocean is ours, which, girt within the eternal laws of gravitation, is pure only because never still." So it seems to me that the far-reaching and long-abiding benefits of this report are to be secured, not from an idolatrous adoption of its every tenet, but through the ceaseless agitation in every educational circle of the ideas propounded, so that out of the revolution that has been inaugurated may come reformation, progress, advancement. Less than one hundred years ago a young girl in Hatfield, Mass., was in the habit of going to the schoolhouse and sitting on the doorstep, that she might listen to the recitations of the boys in a building across whose threshold no girl night cross as a pupil. Less than four score years ago Emma Willard, of sainted memory, gave the first examination in this country to a young lady in geometry, and about the same time she introduced into her little school in Middlebury, Vt., the study of physiology, and so great was the innovation, that at the examination the entire audience, shocked at the indelicacy of teaching such a subject to girls, rose and left the room, and they were not Christian scientists either. These instances with which our own fathers Read before the National Educational Association, at Asbury Park, N. J., July, 1894. and mothers were conversant seem strange to us now, and I refer to them only to show that, notwithstanding all the defects of our present educational system, its puerile methods and its meager results, there has been constant improvement, not only in the classes reached, but in the matter taught and in the methods used since 1792, when a Massachusetts town was indicted for voting "not be at any expense for schoolmg girls." It is with this optimistic spirit that I approach the discussion of this much ana-. lyzed subject of English. At the very outset I am pleased to state that it is my conviction that the highest interests of our schools would be subserved if, without a plus or a minus, and without a single attempt at exegesis, this most admirable and most exhaustive report of the conference on English could be adopted and placed on trial as the "ne plus ultra" of matter and method in the instruction of the English language and of English literature in all our primary and secondary schools. . I do not agree, in my possible ignorance and stupidity, with all the propositions of all the conferences as set forth in this educational encyclical, but I am in hearty accord with this superb report of the conference on English, which is so largely permeated with the empirical thought of that teaching genius, Dr. Samuel Thurber, who by his ponderous strokes upon the anvil of everlasting truth has aroused on this subject the white heat of enthusiasm. His ideas may seem somewhat Utopian when we stand face to face with the heterogeneous elements of our cosmopolitan schools, but it is only through this looking up and lifting up spirit that we can ever approach those ideals which shall find all our children in a condition of intelligent homogeneity. It is not my province to discuss the recommendations of the conference relative to elementary schools; but "if," quoting from the report, "during the period of life when imitation is the chief motive principle in education," the child could “be kept away from the influence of bad models and under the influence of good models,” and if "every thought which he expresses would be used as a proper subject for criticism as to language," all of which is practically impossible amid such a lamentable lack of language culture among the common school teachers of to-day, then indeed would there be little to change or criticise in our secondary schools, and our colleges would be a veritable "Paradise Regamed" for the professors of literature. It is the process of undoing what has been poorly done, and doing what has been left undone that dissipates the strength, shocks the sensibilities, and destroys the nerves of our secondary teachers, most of whom are the products of the wisdom of the colleges. When the radical reforms now being attempted shall have culminated in perfecting the what and the how in our lower schools, then shall we make axiomatic the maxim that the beginning is half the end. Taking exceptions to the brief and summary way in which the committee discard the spelling book, which we believe to be still a spell of power and of might in all schools where the foreign element largely predominates, we commend this portion of the report as a New Testament on the teaching of English. I do not echo the universal opinion of all competent to judge in maintaining that language is or ought to be the basic study in all our schools. It is the fountain head whence flow all the helpful, healing streams of education. Language is the key that unlocks all human thought and gives voice to all human aspirations. To think well, to speak well, to write well-these are the rightful heritage, the common prerogative of all who are correctly educated. Words are ammunition in the battery of intelligence, steam in the engines of thought, true coin in the exchange marts of scholastic culture. A man without words is like a beautiful ship launched upon the welcome bosom of the sea without a pilot. There is no substitute for language. It is the common carrier of all thought, the drawn sword of all strife, and the one language that American pupils should study through all their career is the English language. Courses of instruction, however, that confine language study to the English, eliminating foreign tongues, ancient or modern, ignominiously fail in the production of that power essential to modern culture. I would have children at the age of 10 or 11 years commence the study of that language which, in the fields of persuasion and philosophy, of literature and law, is so largely the progenitor of the English-the incomparable Latin. This is the international arsenal out of which men in all ages have taken the weapons of words with which they have fought the battles of all genuine culture. Latin is the Carboniferous age in its relation to modern thought. We heat our firesides now by the consumed and adapted sunlight of Paleozoic times, so the light of modern literature and law comes from the intellectual sunlight that warmed the souls of the great masters of Greece and Rome. Side by side in daily study the two languages should be pursued, the Latin constantly illuminating the English, and making the study of our native tongue more and more a delight, therefore more and more fascinating, and as an inevitable sequence more and more profitable. It can not be controverted that Latin, as some one has recently written, is the most valuable and loyal handmaid in securing that accurate and discriminating use of the English language which is the sign and seal of the educated and the cultured. I therefore deprecate the force and fervor of that movement, now gathering strength, which would permit some modern language to usurp the place which rightly belongs to Latin, and for which there is no adequate alternative. In large cities, for political and purely utilitarian reasons, German may be suffered as an elective, but to introduce French as a culture study into our grammar schools, to accompany that of the English to the exclusion of Latin, will work mischief and defeat the very ends for which we all labor, viz, a fluent and facile use of the English language as an instrument for the expression of thought by our pupils. The controversial history of the last two decades in regard to humane studies has established the fact that there is no substitute for classical culture. I still believe in the Cape Horn route of culture, not in the short cut, the miasmatie way across the Isthmus. If we would be strong, we must contend with something-resist something-conquer something. We can not gain muscle" on a bed of eiderdown." Toying with straws will only enervate the faculties. The blacksmith's arm becomes mighty through his ponderous strokes of the hammer upon the anvil. The very facility of acquisition of the modern languages precludes the possibility of discipline. Put Latin into our common schools and the puzzling problem of English grammar will be nearing its solution, for the why that meets the pupil at every step, the very laboriousness and difficulty of the task, will open the intellect, develop the powers of discrimination and adaptation, enlarge the vocabulary, enable the student to write a better English essay, use a more terse and trenchant style of speech, and grasp with more avidity and keenness any promulgated form of thought than if he should spend quintuple the time in the study of English grammar alone. It is true that the English conference, as President Eliot says, "intend that the study of English shall be in all respects as serious and informing as the study of Latin," but they did not commit the error of saying that it should be as serious and informing as the study of French. Permitting me to digress a moment, I have always believed until recently that the course of study in our high schools should be the same, whether the pupil's immediate outlook was the activities of life or a college course; that a good preparation for college was the best preparation for any alternative; but the demand on the part of some of the leading colleges that pupils must enter with an elementary knowledge of three foreign languages will forever prevent this desideratum on the part of our high schools. Pupils can not afford to devote so large a portion of their time to foreign languages at the risk of not going to college; but substitute one or two sciences, physics and chemistry or biology for one foreign language, ancient or modern, then will the high schools of this country rise to the occasion and infuse the college spirit into all their pupils. While no one will essay to contravene the logic that every teacher in every school (and I would not except the college) should be a paragon of excellence in the use of English, exemplars of a pure and polished style and untiring critics of those habits formed from environment which make our young people careless in their choice and slovenly in their arrangement of words, spoken and written, nevertheless I believe it of paramount importance that the department of rhetoric, English language, and English literature should be under the care of special teachers who are enthused on this subject; teachers of contagious personal influence, who worship at the throne of language, who have mastered the subtle power of rhetoric, and who constitute a thesaurus of English literature, from which they may enrich the heart, stimulate the intellect, and infuse the reading spirit into the soul of every pupil. To be sure a physicist who looks with contempt upon the idea that he must watch the English expressions of his pupils in the laboratory and correct the form as well as the fact of their written exercises is a poor teacher and ought not to be tolerated, yet, as it is essential that science should be taught by scientists, and mathematics by mathematicians, and Latin and Greek by superb linguists, so it is equally desirable that the essentials of a good style in writing and the inculcation of a taste for good reading should be in the keeping of specialists who have made the history and the masterpieces of literature their chief delight. As we can learn to converse only by conversing, to debate only by debating, and to write only by writing, so the pupils in all schools of all grades, including especially the college and the university, should be constantly employed in giving their thoughts a tongue and in transferring them to written exercises, essays, and theses. Rhetoric is being taught to-day in the colleges very much as it is in the high schools, and with about the same results. There is too much distrust of the higher for the lower, and time is wasted in trying to do what we are prone to believe others have left undone. We can never lead students up the mountain heights, into the ether of a rarer culture if we sit and complain of the ruggedness of the foothills. The demand for reform and rejuvenation and inspiration in matter and methods on the part of the colleges is just as great as on the part of the high schools. It is evident that somebody's feelings had to be very tenderly nursed, or the English conference would not have fallen into such an euphemistic expression as “We believe that the correction of specimens of bad English should not form more than one-fifth of the admission examination." Having been born to no master, I would say one-millionth instead of one-fifth. Neither good philosophy nor good pedagogy will sustain the theory that the correct can be safely taught through contrast with the incorrect. As well may we give our pupils long and involved sentences in profanity in order to show by contrast that we can be equally emphatic without being sacrilegious. As well may we slake the thirst of our children with whisky in order to prove the more exhilarating effects of good water. Were our children neither to see nor to hear at home, at school, or in the byways any incorrect English, there would be removed great mountains of difficulty in our efforts to secure for our pupils a pleasing acquisition of good forms of expression. A book of 150 pages was recently placed in my hands, fashioned after this plan of doing evil that good may come. It is replete with bad specimens and incorrect expressions of English. It abounds with chaff from which wheat is expected to germinate. It is prepared by and has the strongest indorsement of college professors of English. It contains, as do many similar books, specimens of examination questions used by Harvard and other exemplary institutions. |