Chapter 12

THE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

CHAPTER

XVIII THE TEACHING OF English LITERATURE _Caleb T. Winchester_

XIX THE TEACHING OF English COMPOSITION _Henry Seidel Canby_

XX THE TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS _William K. Prentice_

XXI THE TEACHING OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES _William A. Nitze_

XXII THE TEACHING OF GERMAN _E. Prokosch_

XVIII

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

=Scope of study of English literature in college=

It should be understood at the outset that this paper is concerned with the study of literature, not in the university or graduate school, but in the college, by the undergraduate candidate for the bachelor's degree; and, furthermore, that the object of study is not the history, biography, bibliography, or criticism of literature, but the literature itself. Perhaps also the term "literature" may need definition. As commonly--and correctly--used, the word "literature" denotes all writing which has sufficient emotional interest, whether primary or incidental, to give it permanence. As thus defined, literature would include, for example, history and much philosophical writing, and would exclude only writing of purely scientific or technical character. But in the following pages the word will be used in a narrower sense, as indicating those books that are read for their own sake, not solely or primarily for their intellectual content. This definition is elastic enough to comprise not only poetry, drama, and fiction, but the essay, oratory, and much political and satirical prose. It should be further understood that for the purpose of this paper, English literature may be considered to begin about the middle of the fourteenth century. Earlier and Anglo-Saxon writings are by no means without great literary value, and it may at once be granted that no college teacher of English literature is thoroughly equipped for his work who is ignorant of them; but they can be read appreciatively only after considerable study of the language, the method and motives of which are linguistic rather than literary.

=Aims governing the teaching of English literature=

Perhaps it may be asked just here whether English literature, as thus defined, need be studied in college at all. Until quite recently that question seems generally to have been answered in the negative. Fifty years ago, few if any of our American colleges gave any study to texts of English classics. There were, indeed, in most colleges professors of rhetoric and _belles-lettres_, whose lectures upon the history and criticism of our literature were often of great value as an inspiration to literary study; but it was only in the decade from 1865 to 1875 that in most of our colleges the literature itself, with hesitating caution, began to be read and studied in the classroom.

=Can literary appreciation be developed?=

Nor was this hesitation without some reasons, at least plausible. The chief object of college training, it was said, is to discipline and strengthen the intellect, to give the student that grasp and power of thought which he may apply to all the work of later life. The college should not be expected to pay much attention to the cultivation of the imagination and the emotions. These faculties, to which literature makes appeal, are not, it was said, under the control of the will, and you cannot cultivate or strengthen them by sheer resolve or strenuous exertion. The first condition of any real appreciation of literature, so ran the argument, is spontaneous enjoyment of it; and you cannot command a right feeling for literature or for anything else. But a normal development of the imagination and the emotions does usually accompany the vigorous development of the intellect, so that the advancing student will be found to turn spontaneously to art and literature. And his appreciation of all the highest and deepest meanings in literature will be quickened because he brings to his reading a mind trained to accurate and vigorous thinking. Moreover, all substantial advantages from the study of modern vernacular literature can be better obtained from the Greek and Latin classics. They afford the same richness of thought and charm of form as our modern writing; but they demand for their appreciation that careful attention and study which modern literature too often discourages. The survivors of a former generation sometimes ask us today, with a touch of sarcasm, "Do you think the average New England college student of fifty to seventy-five years ago, when the Emersons and Longfellows and Lowells were young men, the days of the old _North American Review_ and the new _Atlantic Monthly_, had any less appreciation and enjoyment of whatever is good in literature, or any less power to produce it, than the young fellows who are coming out of college today after more than a quarter century of literary instruction?" And they occasionally suggest that, at all events, it is difficult to find any evidences of the result of such instruction in the quality of the literature produced or demanded today.

=Conflict of utilitarian and cultural standards=

On the other hand, the study of English literature often fares little better with the advocates of the modern practical tendency in education. They have but scanty allowance for a study assumed to be of so little use in the actual work of life. An acquaintance with well-known English books, especially if they be modern books, is, they admit, a desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern educator, after giving with equal positiveness the subjects that his boy must have and must not have included in his course of study, added by way of concession, "The boy might, if he has time, take English literature."

=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.]

[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."

Obviously, few (at most seven) of the colleges examined admitted students prepared to take advanced courses in French; and only eighteen, or 36 per cent, allowed students to begin French in the freshman year, over one half of the entire number postponing the beginners' French until the sophomore, junior, or even senior year. It is clear, therefore, that as late as 1864, and in spite of such illustrious examples as that set by Harvard in the appointment of Ticknor to the Smith professorship in 1816, the Romance languages could hardly be classed as a recognized college subject. At best, they were taught on the principles that "it is never too late to learn," and although this teaching failed from the "practical" point of view, it yet had little or no opportunity to concern itself with the cultural aspects of the subject. No wonder the commission reported[87] that in the circumstances "a mastery of language, as well as a comprehensive study of the literature, is impossible." With the part played by our Greek and Latin colleagues in keeping the modern languages out of the curriculum we need not deal in detail here. It is enough, in order to explain their attitude, to observe that previous to 1884 the teaching of modern languages was generally poor: it was intrusted for the most part to foreigners, who, being usually ignorant of the finer shades of English and woefully ignorant of American students, could not have been expected to succeed, or to native Americans, who for various and often excellent reasons lacked the proper training, and therefore succeeded--when in rare cases they did succeed--in spite of their qualifications rather than because of them. Add to all this the conviction natural to every classicist, that Latin and Greek are the keys to all Western civilization and that without them Romance literatures (not to say "languages") are incomprehensible, and the situation up to the 90's is amply clear.

=Contemporary status of Romance Languages in college curricula=

Today, then, conditions are changed, and for better or worse the Romance tongues are on a par with other collegiate subjects. A glance at the latest statistics is instructive. In 1910, out of 340 colleges and universities in the United States, 328 taught French; 112 (the universities) offered more than four years' instruction, 50 offered four years, 90 three years, 68 two years, and only 8 one year. The present status can easily be divined: the interest in Spanish has certainly not waned, while the interest in French has grown by leaps and bounds. Some curtailment there has been, owing to the adoption of the "group system" of studies on the part of most of the colleges, and as the colleges are relieved of more and more of the elementary work there doubtless will be more. But, in any case, it is safe to say that French, Spanish, and Italian are now firmly installed as liberal studies in the curricula of most of our colleges. Now, how do they fulfill this function? What changes will be necessary in order that they may fulfill it better? What particular advantages have they to offer as a college subject? A brief consideration of each of these points follows.

In general, our colleges require fifteen units of entrance credit and about twenty collegiate units for the college degree.[88] Of the entrance units, a maximum of four in French and two in Spanish is allowed; and of the college units, an average of five, or about one fourth of the entire college work,[89] must be taken consecutively in _one_ department of study or in not more than _two_ departments. This last group of approximately five units thus constitutes, so to speak, the backbone of the student's work. It is his so-called "principal sequence" (Chicago) or his "two majors" (Amherst) or his "major subject" (Wisconsin and Colorado); and while in the case of Amherst it cannot be begun "until after the freshman year," in general it must be begun by the junior year. Considerable variety prevails, of course, in carrying out this idea; for example, Johns Hopkins requires "at least two courses in the major and at least two in some cognate subject." Harvard states that "every student shall take at least six of his courses in some one department, or in one of the recognized fields of distinction." Princeton demands of "every junior and senior ... at least two 3-hour courses in some one department." But almost all representative colleges now recognize four general groups of study: Philosophy (including history), language, science, and mathematics; and the student's work must be so arranged that while it is fairly evenly distributed over three of the groups it is at the same time definitely concentrated in one of them.

=Normal prescription in a Romance Language=

In answer to our first question, it follows that the student entering with the maximum of French should be able, before graduation, to get enough advanced courses to give him an intelligent grasp of the literature as well as the language. In our better-equipped colleges this is undoubtedly the case. Harvard, for instance, would admit him to a course (French 2) in French Prose and Poetry, which includes some "composition," to be followed by (6) a General View of French Literature, (8) French Literature in the Eighteenth Century, (9) French Literature in the Seventeenth Century, (16) Comedy of Manners in France, (17) Literary Criticism in France; and in some of these courses the linguistic aspects would be considered in the form of "themes," "reports," etc., while the student could choose (5) Advanced French Composition for that special purpose. Other colleges (e.g., Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford) offer the same or similar opportunities. So that, although titles of courses are often deceptive, the general plan of offering (1) an introductory course in which both the language and the literature are treated, (2) a survey-course in literature, leading to (3) various courses in literature after 1600, and supported by (4) at least one specific course in language, now constitutes the normal collegiate "major" in French; and, on the whole, it would be difficult in the present circumstances to devise a better plan.

=Changes in current practice that will enhance effectiveness of teaching of Romance Languages--Danger of minimizing the language phase=

It is obvious that the success of any plan depends on the thoroughness with which it is carried out, and this in turn depends on the qualifications and energy of those who have the matter in hand. That contingency does not concern us here. But what is worth noting is that the fourth point mentioned above,--the specific language part of the "major"--might be strengthened, especially since some excellent institutions omit this consideration entirely. The danger of falling between two stools is never greater, it seems, than in treating both language and literature. An instructor who is bent on elucidating the range of Anatole France's thought naturally has little time to deal adequately with his rich vocabulary, his deft use of tense, the subtle structure of his phrase--and yet who can be said really to "know" such an author if he be ignorant of either side of his work? "Thought expands but lames," said Goethe--unless it is constantly controlled by fact. In order to give the undergraduate that control, it is essential that he should be placed in the position everywhere to verify his author's thought. How difficult it is to bring even the best of our undergraduates to this point I need not discuss. But at least once in the process of his work he might be held to a stricter account than elsewhere. And if we ask ourselves by what method this can best be accomplished, I believe the answer is by some _special_ course in which the language of several representative writers is treated as such.[90] The point could be elaborated, particularly in view of the present-day tendency to dwell unduly on so-called _realia_, French daily life, and the like--all legitimate enough in their proper time and place. But enough has been said to show that excellent as the present plan is, it could without detriment enlarge the place given to linguistics. In this bewildered age of ours we are forever hearing the cry of "literature," more "literature": not only our students but our teachers--and the connection is obvious--find language study dull and uninspiring, oblivious to the fact that the fault is theirs and not the subject's. Yet, as we observed above, French is "hard," and its grammatical structure, apparently so simple, is in truth very complicated. Manifestly, to understand a foreign literature we must understand the language in which it is written. How few of our students really do! Moreover, language and literature are ultimately only parts of one indivisible entity: Philology--though the fact often escapes us. "The most effective work," said Gildersleeve,[91] "is done by those who see all in the one as well as one in the all." And strange as it appears to the laity, a linguistic fact may convey a universal lesson. I hesitate to generalize, but I believe most of our colleges need to emphasize the language side of the French "major" more.

=Relative positions of French, Spanish, and Italian in a college course=

As for Italian and Spanish, few of the colleges as yet grant these subjects the importance given to French. For one reason, entrance credit in Italian is extremely rare, and neither there nor in Spanish, in which it is now rather common, owing to the teaching of Spanish in the high schools, does it exceed two units. Some work of an elementary nature must therefore be done in the college; indeed, at Amherst neither language can be begun until the sophomore year--though fortunately this is an isolated case. Further, even when the college is prepared to teach these subjects adequately, it is still a debatable question whether they are entitled to precisely the same consideration as their more venerable sister. It is unnecessary to point out that such great names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Alfieri, Leopardi, Carducci, Cervantes, Calderón, Lope de Vega, Benavente, _e tutti quanti_, are abundant evidence of the value of Italian and Spanish culture. They unquestionably are. Where the emphasis is cultural, it would certainly be unwise to neglect Italian, since the Renaissance is Italian and underlies modern European culture in general. On the other hand, Spanish is, so to speak, at our very doors because of our island possessions: it is the _one_ foreign language which calls for no argument to make the undergraduate willing to learn to speak, and Spanish literature, especially in the drama, has the same romantic freedom as English literature and is thus readily accessible to the American type of mind. Pedagogically, thus, the question is far from simple. But while it is impossible to lay down any fixed precept, it seems worth while to remember: that the French genius is preëminently the vehicle of definite and clear ideas, that in a very real sense France has been and is the intellectual clearinghouse of the world, and that potentially, at least, her civilization is of the greatest value to our intellectually dull and undiscriminating youth. From French, better than from Italian and Spanish, he can learn the discipline of accurate expression, of clear articulation, and the enlightenment that springs from contact with "general ideas." Moreover, we must not forget that the undergraduate's time is limited and that under the "group system" some discrimination must necessarily be made. Granted, then, that, all things considered, the first place will doubtless be left to French, the question remains whether the attention given to Spanish and Italian is at least adequate. And do the colleges extract from them the values they should?

As a general proposition, we may take it for granted that the college should offer at least _four_ units in each of these subjects. For Spanish, certainly, the tendency will be to make the proportion larger. But two units devoted to learning the language and two devoted to the literature may be regarded as essential, and are as a matter of fact the common practice. Several illustrations will make this clear. _Johns Hopkins_ offers: in Italian, 1. Grammar, Short Stories, etc., 2. Grammar, Written Exercises, Selections from classic authors, Lectures on Italian Literature; in Spanish, 1. Grammar, Oral and written exercises, Reading from Alarcón, Valdés, etc., 2. Contemporary Novel and Drama, Oral practice, Grammar and Composition, 3. The Classic Drama and Cervantes, oral practice, etc., History of Spanish Literature. _Illinois_: in Italian, 1a-1b Elementary Course, 2a-2b Italian Literature, nineteenth century; in Spanish, 1a-1b Elementary Course, 2a-2b Modern Spanish, 3a-3b Introduction to Spanish Literature, 4a-4b Business Correspondence and Conversation, 5a-5b Business Practice in Spanish, 11a-11b The Spanish Drama of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 17a-17b The Spanish Drama of the Nineteenth Century. _Harvard_: in Italian, 1. Italian Grammar, reading and composition, 4. General View of Italian Literature, 5. Modern Italian Literature, 2. Italian Literature of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 10. The Works of Dante; in Spanish, 1. Spanish Grammar, reading and composition, 7. Spanish Composition, 8. Spanish Composition and Conversation (advanced course), 4. General View of Spanish Literature, 5. Spanish Prose and Poetry of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 2. Spanish Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.[92]

Since Spanish and Italian fall into the department of Romance languages, in order to make up his "major" the student is at present compelled to combine them with French. On the whole, this arrangement appears to me wise. To be sure, the deans of our colleges of commerce and administration will say that, granting the greater cultural value of French, the business interests of the country will force us nevertheless to give Spanish the same place in the curriculum as French. And the more radical educators will affirm with Mr. Flexner:[93] "Languages have no value in themselves; they exist solely for the purpose of communicating ideas and abbreviating our thought and action processes. If studied, they are valuable only in so far as they are practically mastered--not otherwise." I have taken a stand against this matter-of-fact conception of education throughout this chapter. I may now return to the charge by adding that the banality of our college students' thinking stares us in the face; if we wish to quicken it, to refine it, we should have them study other media of expression _qua_ expression besides their own (that is what Europe did in the Renaissance, and the example of the Renaissance is still pertinent); that if Mr. Flexner's reasoning were valid the French might without detriment convey their "ideas" in Volapük or Ido (I suggest that Mr. Flexner subject Anatole France to this test); and that instead of being valueless in themselves, on the contrary, languages are the repositories of the ages: "We infer," said Emerson, "the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument in which each forcible individual in the course of many hundred years has contributed a stone." In other words, however great the claim of Spanish as "a practical subject" may be and whatever concessions our schools and colleges may make to this fact, I still believe that Spanish should be subordinated as a college subject to the study of French. In principle we may admit the Spanish "major," as in fact we do at present with the Italian "major"; but some knowledge of French on the part of the student should be presupposed, or if not, it should be a required part of the Spanish sequence. This may seem extreme, but in reality few students would wish to proceed far in Spanish without some French, and, practically, the knowledge of one Romance tongue is always a great aid in the study of another.

=Training teachers of Romance Languages=

Thus we see that, with the addition here and there of an extra course (where the college is not up to the standard as we have outlined it), and an added stress on the advanced linguistics, the present curriculum in Romance apparently provides an excellent working basis. If properly carried out--and the success of all teaching depends of course ultimately on the teacher--it ought to fulfill all legitimate needs, so far as the strictly collegiate aims are concerned.

A word is now in order as to its fitness for those students who are planning to take Romance as a profession. Normally these students would coincide with those who are taking up "special honors" in Romance languages; and for the latter group most of our colleges now make special provision--in the form of "independent work done outside the regular courses in the major subject and at least one other department during the junior and senior year (Wisconsin)," or as Amherst states it, "special work involving collateral reading or investigation under special conditions." In general, this gives the candidate certain professional options among the courses listed (in cases where the college is part of the university) as "primarily for graduates." In this way the student is able to add to his "major" such subjects as Old French (Chicago), Introduction to Romance Philology (Columbia), Practical Phonetics (Chicago), a Teachers' Course (Wisconsin), etc. Personally I am of the opinion that the day has passed when any of our graduates who has not at least a Master's degree in Romance should be recommended to a teaching position. But evidently any such hard and fast rule is bound to be unfair, especially since a large percentage of our students is compelled to earn a living immediately upon graduation. Thus here again--as in the elementary courses as now given in the colleges--we are confronted with a makeshift which only time and continued effort can correct. In the meantime the value of such professional courses depends to a very marked degree upon the success with which they can be carried out where they are counted toward a higher degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) the difficulty is not so great, since their introductory nature is self-evident; but where they conclude, so to speak, the student's formal training the difficulty of making them "fit in" is often sadly apparent. At any rate, in this borderland between cultural and professional studies, where the college is merging with the university or professional school, the necessity for the able teacher is a paramount issue. If the transition is to be successful, the obligation rests upon the teacher so to develop his subject that the specializing will not drown out the general interest but will inform it with those values which only the specialist can impart.

=Final contributions of Romance Languages to the American college student=

And now as to our final consideration: What particular advantages have the Romance tongues to offer as a college subject? An obvious advantage is: an understanding of foreign peoples. The Romance languages are modern. They are spoken today over a large part of the habitable globe. We stand in direct relations with those who speak them and write them. Above all, a large share of the world's best thought is being expressed in them. The point requires no arguing, that translations cannot take the place of originals: _traduttore traditore_, says an excellent Italian proverb. If we are really to know what other nations think,--whether we accept or reject their thought makes little or no difference here,--we can do so only by knowing their language. And the better we know it, the greater our insight will be. To speak at least _one_ foreign language is not only a parlor accomplishment: it is for whoever is to be a citizen-of-the-world a necessity. There is a Turkish proverb that he who knows two languages, his own and another, has two souls. Certainly there is no better way to approach a nation's soul than through its language. But, in the second place, the Romance tongues have certain artistic qualities which English in a great measure lacks. The student who has intelligently mastered one of them has a better sense of form, of delicate shades of expression, and--if the language be French--of clarity of phrase: what Pater termed _netteté d'expression_. He learns to respect language (as few Americans now do), to study its possibilities in a way which a mere knowledge of English might never have suggested, and to appreciate its moral as well as its social power: for French forces him to curb his thought, to weigh his contention, to be simple and clear in the most abstruse matters. In a famous essay on the Universality of French, Rivarol said: "Une traduction française est toujours une _explication_."

And lastly, in themselves and in the civilizations they stand for, the Romance tongues are the bridge between ourselves and antiquity. Since the decline in the study of Greek and Latin, this is a factor to be seriously considered. It is the fashion today to berate the past, to speak of the dead hand of tradition, and to flatter ourselves with the delusion of self-sufficiency. To be sure, the aim of education is never to pile up information but to "fit your mind for any sort of exertion, to make it keen and flexible." But the best way to encompass this is to feed the mind on ideas, and ideas are not produced every day, nor for that matter every year, and luckily all ideas have not the same value. There are the ideas of Taine, of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Descartes, of Montaigne, of Ficino, of Petrarch, of Dante, of Cicero, of Aristotle, of Plato; and in a moment I have run the gamut of all the centuries of our Western civilization. Who will tell me which ideas we shall need most tomorrow? Evidently, we cannot know them all. But we can at least make the attempt to know the best. And incidentally let it be said that he who professes the Romance tongues can no more dispense with the Classics than the Classics can today afford to dispense with Romance: French, Italian, and Spanish are the Latin--and one might add the Greek--of today. But to return to our theme: to deny our interest in the past is to throw away our heritage, to sell our mess of pottage to the lowest bidder. If the Romance languages have one function in our American colleges, it is this: To keep alive the old humanistic lesson: _nihil humani a me alienum puto_; to the end that the modern college graduate may continue to say with Montaigne: "All moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. Every man carries the entire form of the human condition. Authors have thitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark; I ... by my _universal_ being, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer." The college course in the Romance languages should prepare for a profession, but it must first help to prepare thinking men and women.

WILLIAM A. NITZE _University of Chicago_

Footnotes:

[85] The quotation is from Emerson, _Nominalist and Realist_.

[86] I make no attempt in this article, written before 1917, to treat actual teaching conditions: the premises are too uncertain.

[87] The above statistics are from C. H. Handschin, _The Teaching of Modern Languages in the United States_, Washington, 1913, pages 40ff.

[88] I cite the following figures: (_a_) Entrance: Harvard 16-1/2, Amherst 14, Wisconsin 14, Columbia 14-1/2, Colorado 15, Illinois 15, Chicago 15; (_b_) Collegiate Degree: Harvard 17-1/2 "courses," Amherst 20 "courses," Wisconsin 120 "credits," Columbia 124 "points," Colorado 120 "hours of scholastic work," Chicago 36 "trimester majors." It is certainly desirable that our colleges adopt some uniform system for the notation of their courses. Johns Hopkins, at least, is specific in explaining the relationship of its "125 points" to its "courses"; see page 262 of the _University Register_, 1916.

[89] At Chicago exactly 1/4 or "at least 9 coherent and progressive majors" must be taken in "one department or in a group of departments." But Chicago also requires a secondary sequence of at least 6 majors; Columbia requires three years of "sequential study--in each of two departments." Illinois, "a major subject (20 hours)" and "an allied minor subject (20 hours)."

[90] An excellent manner of procedure is that outlined by Professor Terracher in his interesting article in the _Compte rendu du Congrès de Langue et de Littérature Française_, New York (Fédération de l'Alliance Française), 1913.

[91] From _Johns Hopkins University Circular_, No. 151.

[92] It will be noted that throughout the amount offered in Spanish exceeds that in Italian. This is to be expected in view of the boom in Spanish studies. Moreover, most colleges now allow two units of entrance credit in Spanish, and 7 and 8 above, under Harvard, are half courses. Columbia is, I believe, the only college accepting 2 units of entrance credit in Italian; but I have not examined the catalogues of all our colleges.

[93] Publications of the General Education Board, 3, 1916, page 13.

XXII

THE TEACHING OF GERMAN

=Our aim=

The mechanical achievements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have obliterated geographical distances. The contact between nations, intermittent in former ages, has become a continuous one. It is no longer possible to ignore great cultural forces in foreign nations even temporarily--we may repudiate or appreciate them, as we see fit, but we should do so in a spirit of fairness and understanding, and not in ignorance.

This, however, is not possible unless those who are to become leaders of the people are intimately familiar with those treasure chests of the nations that contain the true gems of racial spirit more abundantly than even art or literature, history, law or religion, stored up in the course of hundreds and thousands of years--the nations' languages. It is the clear duty of the college to instill, through the right way of teaching foreign languages, a cosmopolitan spirit of this character into the growing minds of our young men and women, after the secondary school has given them the first rudiments of knowledge and cultural training.

According to one's point of view, there is as much to be said in favor of the classical as the modern languages. Without doubt, their growing neglect in our institutions of learning is deeply to be regretted; however, its causes do not concern us here directly. The study of modern languages is, relatively speaking, so manifestly in the ascendency, that a return to the emphasis that was formerly laid upon Latin and Greek is hardly imaginable. The choice between several modern languages must very largely be determined by personal preferences and purposes. So much, however, can safely be said, that an intelligent reading knowledge of German and French is the least that should be expected of a college graduate. For, while in theory the humanistic importance of modern language study is the same for all languages, it rises, in practice, proportionately with the cultural level of the foreign nation--German and French obviously taking the lead in this regard.

=Place of German in the college curriculum=

I am optimistic enough to assume it to be generally granted that the study of a foreign language ought to be started early in life--say, at the age of twelve. While hardly challenged in theory, this desirable condition is far from being carried out in practice. Probably the time will never come when colleges will be able to dispense with elementary courses in modern foreign languages--not only for those who enter without any linguistic preparation, but also, and perhaps preëminently, for students who are taking up a second foreign language in addition to the one (or two) started in the preparatory school. Thus, the starting point of the modern language course in college is easily fixed: it must begin at the very rudiments of the language. Nor is it difficult to state, in general terms, the purpose of the most advanced work of the undergraduate curriculum: it must consist in adequate linguistic skill, literary knowledge and feeling, and cultural understanding to such an extent that the college graduate who has specialized in German may safely be intrusted with the teaching of German in secondary schools. At least, this holds good for the majority of institutions; a small number of colleges devote their whole effort to cultural training, and some of the larger institutions, particularly in the East, find it possible to postpone most of the professional preparation to a period of graduate work. But on the whole the average well-equipped college includes the training of teachers as one end of its foreign-language work. Ordinarily, such mastery of the subject as would prepare for teaching cannot be gained within the four years' college course. Rather, it might be said to require the average equivalent of something like six college years, with the understanding that not much more than one fourth of the student's time be devoted to German. This implies that only under uncommonly favorable conditions should students be encouraged to specialize in a foreign language that they begin on entering college.

=Organization of the German course=

Thus, the peculiar conditions of modern language instruction bring it about that a discussion of its organization in college must deal with a six years' course: elementary instruction must be offered to those entering without any knowledge of German; courses of a sufficiently advanced character must be provided for those who enter with three or four years of high-school German; and there must be advanced work for students who intend to make the study and teaching of German their life's work.

In this six years' college course three divisions are clearly distinguishable: an elementary division devoted to such linguistic training as will enable a student to read with fair ease texts of moderate difficulty; an intermediate group during which literary and cultural appreciation should be developed, and an advanced group intended for the professional preparation of prospective teachers of German. These three divisions may be approximately equal, so that each of them covers about two years, with four or five hours a week. For graduation, all students should be required to present the equivalent of the first period for two languages (either classical or modern), one or both of which might with advantage be absolved in high school. The second division should be required of all students for at least one foreign language. Colleges of high standing may find it possible to exceed these requirements; no college should remain below them.

The first or elementary division should, at least for one foreign language, be finished before the student is admitted to the college. All that can reasonably be expected from this part of the work is a study of the elements of grammar, the development of a good pronunciation, a fair working vocabulary, and some ability to read, speak, understand, and write German.

The second group should include, in the main, reading courses to introduce the student to what is best in German literature, but no general theoretical study of the history of literature need be contemplated. Besides, it must offer such work in speaking and writing as will develop and establish more firmly the results gained in the first two years, and an appropriate study of German history and institutions. Each of the three aims might be given about one third of the time available, but they may overlap to some extent. Thus, writing and speaking can be connected with each of them, and historical readings and reports may furnish a part of language practice.

The third group, intended for the training of teachers, must contain a course in the method of modern language teaching (connected with observation and practice), an advanced grammar course, and courses in the phonetics and historical development of the German language. These courses are indispensable for teachers, but will also be of advantage to students not intending to teach.

=The elementary group=

The first group is frankly of high school character. It is best to admit this fully and freely, and to teach these courses accordingly. Through greater intensity of study (more home work and longer class periods), the work of three or even four high school years may be concentrated into two college years, but the method cannot differ essentially. The way of learning a new language is the same, in principle, for a child of twelve years and a man of fifty years; in the latter case, there is merely the difficulty to be overcome that older persons are less easily inclined to submit to that drill which is necessary for the establishment of those new habits that constitute _Sprachgefühl_. It is a fallacy that the maturer mind of the college student requires a more synthetic-deductive study of the language than that of the high school student.

It is sad but true that many college teachers are more reactionary in questions of method than the better class of high school teachers. The claim that elementary work in college requires a method different from that used in the high school is one symptom of this, and another symptom of the same tendency is the motto of so many college teachers that there is no "best method," and that a good teacher will secure good results with any method. At the bottom of such phrases there is usually not much more than indifference and unwillingness to look for information on the real character of the method at which they are generally aimed: the _direct method_. The regrettable superficiality appearing in the frequent confusion of the "direct" with the "natural" method is characteristic of this. I am, of course, willing to admit that what nowadays is termed the "direct method" is not the best way possible, but that it may and will be improved upon. However, it is not one of many methods that, according to circumstances, might be equally good, but it represents the application of the present results of psychological and linguistic research to the teaching of languages and distinctly deserves the preference over older ways.

The first demand of the direct method is the development not only of a fair but of a perfect pronunciation--not so much as the independent aim, but as an indispensable condition for the development of _Sprachgefühl_. It is immeasurably easier to obtain good pronunciation from the start than to improve bad pronunciation by later efforts. In the teaching of pronunciation a slight difference in the treatment of children of twelve years and of college students might be granted: young children are generally able to learn the sounds of a foreign language by imitation; students of college age can hardly ever do this well, and careful phonetic instruction is absolutely necessary with them. Whoever wishes to keep aloof from phonetic _terms_ may do so; but not to know or not to apply phonetic _principles_ is bad teaching pure and simple. The use of phonetic _transcription_, however, is a moot question. Its advantages are obvious enough: it insures a clear consciousness of correct pronunciation; it takes up the difficulties one by one: first pronunciation, then spelling; it safeguards greater care in matters of pronunciation in general. The objections are chiefly two: economy of time, and the fear of confusion between the two ways of spelling. The writer admits that until a few years ago he was skeptical as to the value of phonetic transcription in the teaching of German. But the nearly general recognition of its value by the foremost educators of European countries and the good results achieved with it by teachers of French in this country caused him to give it a trial, under conditions that afforded not more than an average chance of success. The result was greatly beyond his expectations. Neither he nor, as far as he knows, any of his colleagues would contemplate abandoning phonetic script again. Without wishing to be dogmatic, I believe that this at least can be asserted with safety: on purely theoretical grounds, no teacher has a right to condemn phonetic transcription; those who doubt its value should try it before they judge.

In the writer's opinion it is best not to use any historical spelling at all during the first six or eight weeks of college German. If the confusing features of traditional orthography are eliminated during this period, it will be found that there results not a loss, but an actual _gain in time_ from the use of phonetic script. Nor does the transition to common spelling cause any confusion. The less ado made about it, the better. It is a fact of experience, that students who have been trained in the use of phonetic script turn out to be better spellers than those who have not--simply because this training has made them more careful and has given them a clearer conception of the discrepancy between sound and letter.

That elementary grammar should be taught inductively is true to an extent, but often overstated. It is true for the more abstract principles, such as the formation of the compound tenses, the formation and the use of the passive voice, and so on. But attempts at inductive teaching of concrete elements of mechanical memory, such as the gender and plural of nouns, or the principal parts of strong verbs, are a misunderstanding of the principles of induction. It goes without saying that thorough drill is much more valuable than the most explicit explanation. It holds good for college as well as for high schools that there is but very little to "explain" about the grammar of any language. Unnecessary explanations rather increase than remove difficulties.

=The use of English=

The use of English is another debated question. As far as the teaching of grammar is concerned, it is unessential. If inductive drill takes the place of explanations and abstract rules, the question is very largely eliminated from practical consideration. In those very rare cases when theoretical discussions might seem desirable, it does not make much difference whether a few minutes a week are devoted to English or not. The question assumes greater importance when the development of the vocabulary is considered. In this, there are three fairly well-defined elements to be distinguished. The first vocabulary, say, of the first two or three months should be developed by concrete associations with objects and actions in the classroom; the use of the vernacular has no justification whatever during that time--not on account of any objection to an occasional English word or phrase, but simply because there is no need of it, and every minute devoted to German is a clear gain. After this, the vocabulary should be further developed through the thorough practice of connected texts. If they are well constructed, the context will explain a considerable portion of the words occurring; those that are not made clear through the context form the third division of the vocabulary and can without hesitation be explained by English equivalents. In general, the principle will go rather far that the use of an occasional English _word_ is entirely harmless, but that English _sentences_ should as much as possible be avoided in elementary work. Connected translation, both from and into English, must absolutely be excluded from the first year's work, for the chief purpose of this year is not only the study of grammar and the development of an elementary vocabulary, but, even more than that, the cultivation of the right _attitude_ toward language study. Reading should be our chief aim, and speaking a means to that end, but the student must be trained, from the very beginning, to understand what he is reading rather through an intelligent grasp of the contents than by fingering the dictionary. In this way he will become accustomed to associating the German sentences _directly_ with the thought expressed in them, instead of _indirectly_ through the medium of his native tongue.

A great deal of misunderstanding is frequently involved in the emphasis laid upon speaking. There can hardly be a more absurd misinterpretation of the principles of the direct method than for college teachers to try to "converse" with the students in German--to have with them German chats about the weather, the games, the political situation. This procedure is splendidly fit to develop in the students a habit of guessing at random at what they hear and read--a slovenly contentedness with an approximate understanding. Both teacher and students should speak and hear German practically all the time. But this should be distinctly in the service of reading and grammar work, containing almost exclusively words and forms that the student must _know_, not guess at.

At the end of the first year a college student ought to have mastered the elements of grammar and possess good pronunciation and an active vocabulary of about six hundred or eight hundred words. If the second year is devoted to further drill on grammatical elements and to careful reading, its result ought to be the ability to read authors of average difficulty at a fair speed. During the first year all reading material should be practiced so intensively that an average of a little more than a page a week is not exceeded materially; but toward the end of the second year a limit of six or eight pages an hour may well be reached. By this time, translation into good English begins to be a valuable factor in the achievement of conscious accuracy; but it must under no circumstances be resorted to until the students have clearly obtained the habitual attitude of direct association between thought and sentence.

It is little short of a misfortune that there exists no adequate German-German dictionary (such as La Rousse's French dictionary). It would not be very difficult to write such a book, but until we possess it the irritating use of German-English dictionaries and vocabularies will be a necessary evil.

The hardest problem of the second year--and this is progressively true of more advanced work--is the uneven preparation of the students. In large colleges it will often be feasible to have as many sections as possible at the same hour, distributing the students in accordance with their preparation. Where this is not possible, special help for poorly prepared students is generally indispensable.

=The literature group=

The literature group is as distinctly of college character as the elementary group is admittedly high school work. It is here, in fact, that the best ideals of the American college find the fullest opportunity. This is true both for the teacher and for the student. In the elementary group, pedagogical skill and a fair mastery of the language are the chief prerequisites of a successful teacher. In the second group, other qualities are of greater importance. While a certain degree of pedagogical skill is just as necessary here as there, it is now no longer a question of the systematic development of habits, but of the ability to create sympathetic understanding, idealism, depth of knowledge, and literary taste--in short, to strive for humanistic education in the fullest sense of the word. This is true not only for colleges with a professedly humanistic tendency; the broadening and deepening influence of foreign language study is nowhere needed more urgently than in technical and other professional colleges.

Speaking and writing must no longer stand in the center of instruction in the courses of the second group, but their importance should not be underrated, as is done so frequently (it is a fact that students often know less German at the end of the third year in college than at the end of the second year). At least during the first year of this group, a practice course in advanced grammar, connected with composition, is absolutely necessary. The grammatical work should consist in review and observation, supported by the study of a larger reference grammar (e.g., chapters from Curme's grammar, to introduce the students to the consistent use of this marvelous work). In composition, free reproduction should still be the main thing, but independent themes and translation from English into German--which would be distinctly harmful in elementary work--are now valuable exercises in the study of German style. It would be wholly wrong, however, to make linguistic drill the Alpha and Omega of this part of the college course. The preparatory years should have laid a sound basis, which during the college work proper should not be allowed to disintegrate, but the fact should not be lost sight of that the cultural aim must be stressed most in the second group.

To reach this aim, a familiarity with the best works of German literature is the foremost means. German literature affords a scant choice of good and easy reading for the elementary stage: Storm, Ebner-Eschenbach, Seidel, and Wildenbruch are justly favorites, but absurdities like Baumbach's _Schwiegersohn_ are, unfortunately, still found in the curriculum of many colleges. In contrast with the small number of good elementary texts, there exists an abundance of excellent material for the second group. Aside from the classical poets, the novelists Keller, Meyer, Fontane, Raabe; the dramatists Hebbel, Grillparzer, Kleist, Hauptmann; poems collected in the _Balladenbuch_ or the _Ernte_ present an inexhaustible wealth, without our having to resort to the literary rubbish of Benedix or Moser or the sneering pretentiousness of Heine's _Harzreise_.

The details of organization will vary greatly for this group, according to special conditions. But in general it may be said that during the first year of this period about two hours a week should be devoted to the continuation of systematic language practice as outlined above, and three hours to the reading of German authors for literary purposes. Nor should this consist in "reading" alone. Reading as such should no longer present any difficulty, if the work of the elementary group has been done well. Special courses should be devoted to the study of the modern German novel, the drama, and the lyrics, and to individual authors like those mentioned. In these detached literature courses the principal endeavor must be to help the students to understand and feel, not so much the linguistic side of the texts read, as the soul of the author, and through him the soul of the German nation. Reading must become more and more independent, the major part of the time in class being devoted to the cultural and æsthetic interpretation of what has been read at home. It is evident that in this, the most important part of the German college work, all depends upon the personality of the instructor: literary and human understanding cannot be instilled into the student's mind by one who does not possess them himself, together with a love for teaching and the power to create enthusiasm.

All other requirements must be subordinate to this--even the instructor's mastery of the language. No doubt, in theory it would be most desirable that German be the exclusive language of instruction throughout; but in literary courses practical considerations will so often speak against this, that no sweeping answer to this question seems possible. For the chief aim must not be overshadowed by any other. If poor preparation on the part of the students or a deficient command of the language on the part of the instructor makes it doubtful whether the cultural aim can be attained, if German is the language of instruction, English should be used unhesitatingly. This implies that for this part of the work an instructor with a strong personality and an artistic understanding, although lacking in speaking knowledge, is far preferable to one who speaks German fluently but cannot introduce his students to the greatness of German literature and the spirit of the German people.

On the other hand, written reports in literary courses should always be required to be in German; it is also a good plan to devote a few minutes of each period to prepared oral reports, in German, on the part of the individual students. Where systematic practice in the colloquial use of the language is desirable for special reasons, a conversation course may be established in addition to the main work, but literary courses are not the place for starting conversational practice with classes that have been neglected in this respect during their preparatory work.

The second year of the literary group should offer a choice between two directions of further literary development: about three hours of each week should be devoted either to a course on the general history of German literature, or to the intensive study of one of the greatest factors in German literature--such as Goethe's _Faust_. In large institutions both courses can probably be given side by side, the students taking their choice according to their preference, but in most colleges an alternation of two courses of this kind will be preferable.

The method of instruction is determined by the students' preparation and the teacher's personality, in literature courses more than anything else. Obviously, lectures (in German, where circumstances permit), extensive, systematic reading, written reports, and class discussion are the dominating features of such courses.

Some knowledge of German history and institutions is an indispensable adjunct of any serious work in German literature. Probably in all colleges such instruction will be incumbent upon the German departments, and it is rarely possible to combine it with the course on the general history of German literature. Therefore, a special course in German history and institutions should be offered during the second year of the literature group.

=The professional group=

The work of this group may overlap that of the second group to a considerable extent, in the sense that courses in both groups may be taken at the same time. The professional preparation of a teacher of German should include: a thorough knowledge of the structure of the German language, an appreciative familiarity with German literature, and a fair amount of specialized pedagogical training. The study of literature cannot be different for prospective teachers from that for all other types of college students, and, therefore, belongs to the second group. But their knowledge of language structure, though not necessarily of a specialistic philological character, must include a more detailed knowledge of German grammar, a familiarity with technical German phonetics, and at least an elementary insight into the historical development of the language. In addition to suitable courses in these three subjects, a pedagogical course, dealing with the methods of modern language teaching, and connected with observation and practice teaching, must be provided for. Where the previous training has been neglected, a course in German conversation may be added; but, generally speaking, this should no longer be necessary with students in their fifth or sixth year of German instruction. Wherever this need exists, the system of instruction is at fault.

=Conclusion=

Incomplete though this brief outline must necessarily be, the writer has attempted to touch upon the most important phases of the students' development of linguistic, cultural, and, where demanded, professional command of German. Little has so far been said concerning the college teacher. The strong emphasis placed upon the direct method in this article should not be misinterpreted as meaning that a fluent command of the spoken language is a _conditio sine qua non_. Nothing could be farther from the truth. First of all, the necessity of the exclusive use of the direct method exists obviously only in the elementary group. In this group, however, "conversation" in the generally accepted sense of the word should not be attempted--it will do more harm than good. The constant practice in speaking and hearing should be so rigidly subservient to the interpretation and practice of the texts being read and to grammatical drill, that only a minimum of "speaking knowledge" on the part of the teacher is unavoidably necessary; his pronunciation, of course, must be perfect. However desirable it may be that a teacher should know intimately well the language he is teaching in college, there are other requirements even higher than this; they are, in the first group, energy, thoroughness, and pedagogical skill, coupled with an intelligent understanding of the basic principles of the direct method; in the second group, literary appreciation and a sympathetic understanding of German thought, history, and civilization; and, for the third group, elementary philological training, theoretical as well as practical acquaintance with the needs of the classroom, and a long and varied experience in teaching. Rarely will all three qualifications be combined in one person, nor are such fortunate combinations necessary in most colleges. A wise distribution of courses among the members of the department can in most cases be effected in such a way that each teacher's talents are utilized in their proper places.

E. PROKOSCH