Never, until the idea that composition is a `study' to be learned from a book is banished from the school, will children be taught to write properly. Among the severest criticisms made upon the com­mon school are these: `The reading and spelling are poor, "The me­chanical work in arithmetic is laborious and inaccurate,' `The com­position is bad'; and these are faults that can be corrected only through practice. There can be no greater mistake in relation to the first stages of school education than that the rationale of a process is immediately valuable. A painter or musician knows his technical rules and his science, but neither his technical rules nor his science can take the place of technique or execution. It is by no means always true that a mathematician is `good in figures'; on the other hand, he is often poor. It is, therefore, extremely important that the teacher should clearly see whether the end to which a school exercise looks is skill or knowledge—practical power or intellectual power.

EXERCISE.—A teacher attempts to teach some boys to skate, and also to use their mother tongue well. On the ice, they proceed at once to copious practice under coaching, but without rules, and soon become proficient; in the schoolroom, they first have many language rules and gram­matical principles, followed by scanty practice and medio­cre success. Comment on the situation, comparing (a) the previous experience of the pupils, (b) the nature of the task and the boys' probable interest in it, and (c) the method used. Could the subject matter of language be made as interesting as skating? Would the same subject matter be equally interesting to all pupils? What can be done about it?

Nature of language.—We have discussed science and art, with special attention to two kinds of science, mathematics and history. There remains an art which, because it serves all and must be taught to all, deserves separate treatment: it is the art of language.

Of course there is a science of language—it has several sciences, of which grammar is a well-known example. But grammar did not make language: the language came first, the grammar afterward; the art leading, the science follow­ing. And so should it be in the teaching of language.

Social value.—Let language perish, and we should either re-invent it or herd with the brutes. Printing has well been called the art preservative of all other arts. Language in the broad sense, communication of some kind, is certainly an indispensable tool in all our progress.

Words are also an aid to thinking, and hence to progress. Thinking without words is about such an undertaking as difficult mathematics would be for most of us without pen­cil and paper, or even a stick and a sand plot. A word is a kind of signpost which marks a place on our mental map.

Finally, a large part of the social value of language con­sists in making us social. All that we are or can hope to be, we owe to the fact that our primitive fathers loved to get together and talk! By such social communication we come to understand each other, sympathize, imitate, emulate, become socially efficient. We can see this in the classroom, clubroom, literary society, even in the street. Nations, too, can understand each other better when each learns the other's language.

How much experience can be compressed into a single word, we can see from the dictionary and from such books as Trench's Study of Words.

Language as educational material.—Language has the same value in school that it has outside.

1. It enables us to get and to give ideas.
2. It is a good tool for the thinker.
   
3. Its practice, since it always involves at least two persons, is essentially a social practice.

But we must never forget that words cannot take the place of things.* They are like paper money, of no value except as they stand for something beyond themselves. The younger the child the more necessary it is that per­ceptive experience of objects shall precede the word used to name that experience. The birth (of the experience) must precede the christening.

Nor can words take the place of ideas. We cannot give a man big thoughts by teaching him big words, nor make him wise by teaching him many languages. As a great language never made a great nation, but great nations have felt the need of and made great languages, so language will not form a great soul, but a great soul requires high linguis­tic power to express itself. To think that language makes the man is about as incorrect as to think that clothes make the man.

Language, then, is an instrument. Its use is an art. One who has learned it is like one who has learned to strike all the typewriter keys; he may or may not have ideas to express.

To make language the core of all curriculums, as we are often urged to do, would be, for many children, like sub­stituting the reflection for the real object. Each child's curriculum must have its own vocational core, about which all else is organized. But we must remember in every case that some language is necessary, whatever the vocation.

Subject matter.—In order to make use of language, we must be able (1) to tell what words mean, and (2) to use words to tell what we mean. In the first case we are either reading or listening to words; in the second, we are speaking or writing words. To know language then, one must know "words, words, words," and how words go together.

First and foremost a child must learn to listen and to talk. Talking is learned largely by listening, partly by prac­tice. Unfortunately, in many cases the children are turned over to us with bad language habits already formed by home and street. But at any rate the teacher's work begins with the babble of the first days at school. We must arrange such rousing experiences as will spontaneously let loose a medley of tongues, and we must bestow high praise on such primi­tive elocution as we can challenge forth. To check the chil­dren with too much correctness at this stage may mean permanent discouragement. And as the world talks more than it writes, so must our language work, from first to last, be mainly oral. We teachers are too much afraid of having a social good time with our pupils.

It is difficult to talk while listening to some one else; yet this is what the pupil must do when he reads, except that he listens with his eyes, so to speak. That is, he must at the same time perceive words and pronounce words. and the eye must run ahead of the tongue, the perceiving ahead of the pronouncing. He must learn to gather words by the eye-full, almost automatically, so that he can fix his mind on expression.

To some extent, this kind of double process runs through all language work. In conversation, one must listen and at the same time think of a reply. In writing, one's thoughts should speed on in advance of pen or typewriter. In public speaking, one must learn how to pronounce a phrase or sentence while sending the mind on to prepare the next for utterance.

It is plain that in forming these difficult, double habits, the essential is practice. There is no secret short cut; here we learn to do by doing.

We can now fix the place of English grammar. It has about the same value as a difficult Manual of Skating would have for the boy on the ice pond, or a prosy and pic­tureless manual of swimming for the one in the water. Such high-level learning is out of place with young pupils. It should be introduced whenever the pupil develops high-level language ability and shows an interest in the subject. For some children this may be in the grammar school; for others, in the high school; for still others, never. Where all pupils are required to take it at an early age, most of them should be allowed to pass it with very moderate at­tainments.

Literature.—One essential thing to learn here is that literature cannot take the place of life. We are in danger of supposing, when we have taught the child to read, that all life and experience are now open to him. But the joys and sorrows of humanity mean nothing before one has had joys and sorrows of his own. We must interpret literature through life before we can interpret life through literature.

Lessons in literature (when one has gained experience enough to interpret them) are chiefly appreciation lessons. They convey some information, arouse some thought, and encourage skill in expression; but their highest value lies in the fact that they are verbal moving-picture shows. If the author knows life, his pictures are true to life; they teach us what happens, in the long run, to the fool, the knave, the proud, the wise, the righteous.

They show us how marriage and other adventures turn out. They help us to appreciate life situations, and to decide which is to be our character, and how we shall play our part.

Our children need literature in abundance,—such litera­ture as they can appreciate. It is fortunate if the pupil can be permitted to follow his own choice, to show us, by his literary taste, and by his choice of selections to memorize, what kind of soul he has. If the children are brought into contact with such literature as answers to their individual brain-set, if it is the literature itself and not a mere study about literature, and if they are given such aid as they need to interpret the difficult portions, we have satisfied the es­sential conditions.

Method.—If there is anything the discoursing public, young and old, needs to realize, it is that when words are used they should be used for something. Woodrow Wilson is to be commended for his college practice of refusing to take part in a debate unless he could argue with conviction. His aim was not merely to appear before an audience, but to convince. Our schools need less of the perfunctory prac­tice of language, and more of the sincere and purposeful effort which grows naturally from life itself. Help the pupil to make clear his purpose then, whether to "tell something" or "make one feel" so and so, or "get one to do " thus and so.

Our next great dictum, perhaps first in importance, is to keep life ahead of language. Our stilted (and borrowed) compositions, declamations beyond the comprehension of the declaimer, and school readers whose literature is years beyond the range of the pupil are conspicuous examples of our failure at this point. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth should speak, and not alone from the pages of an encyclopedia, or from a brain which has been mechanically impressed into service as sort of phonograph record. Where-ever there is a real spring, it will find its way out. Where-ever there is abundant life, the teacher could not suppress it if she would: the chief need is for direction and control. This wealth of personal thought and feeling is just as neces­sary for reading and interpretation as for composition and public speaking.

Granted the presence of something to say or to be read, and a clear conception of its nature and purpose, what more is necessary? The essentials seem to be:

1.   Repeated con-tact with appropriate models
2.   Imitation of such models
3.   Comparison, criticism, and repeated effort
4.   The grad­ual acquisition of the power and habit of self-criticism.

• The poet needs to read many poems of the kind he writes; the orator should read and listen to many orations. As the teacher is "the way" by which the child comes into contact with the world, she must procure these models. Woe to the pupils if their teacher has never really learned to read and write! She must rely on visitors, on literature, on the phonograph,—the better kind,—and on the best artists among her pupils.

• Franklin, by his method of learning to read and write good English, has taught us the value of imitation. One may not only be ignorant of the science of his art: he may not even know its verbal rules. A four-year-old brought up in an environment of good language often speaks better English than a college graduate whose youthful tongue imitated bad models. In the early stages of the art, at least, we should acquire skill in language as we acquire skill in a game or sport.

• Imitation usually means mid-level learning; "com­parison" and "criticism" of a very useful but not highly analytic kind may occur on the same level. The child can usually be made to feel where his fault is, even when he is unable to discern clearly just what is the matter. But it is essential to learn in some way which side of the mark the  stray bullets are going, if we are ever to learn to shoot straight.

• Self-criticism is likely to involve an intellectual, analytical, high-level activity. We should encourage it wherever we find capacity for it, and lead up to some knowledge of the science of language. Here we enter the expert stage.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

• Look up, in Franklin's Autobiography, his method of learning to use good English, and outline the essential steps.

• Make a list of the chief acts of skill which you have acquired. What has been the general process?

• We often quote the dictionary as authority: what authority lies back of the dictionary? What is the ultimate source of authority in the use of language?

• Name some of the advantages that would follow if we could have but one letter for each sound and one sound for each letter. Is such an ideal worth working for?

• Some teachers of foreign language compel their pupils to perform each act, so far as possible, while saying the words descriptive of it. Comment on the practice. Should you use this method in teaching the mother tongue? Why?

• Discuss the topic, "Kindergarten versus home, as an aid to the use of correct English."


• A lecture on "The nature of our number system" is delivered in flowery style, ornamented with poetic quotations, and graced with dramatic climax and sweeping gestures: just what, if anything, is wrong?

• Watch yourself carefully for a time and find how often you catch yourself imitating another's language. When you hear a striking phrase, are you likely to let it die, or try its effect soon on some one else?
• Try to account psychologically for the spread and popularity of slang.

• If we all "know better" than to use poor English, having studied grammar, why do we not always do better?

• Write an introspective account of "How I learned to read." Mention any improvements which you think could have been made on the method.

• Can you speak or read readily any foreign language you have learned? Comment on this.

• Show points of similarity between your learning to read a foreign language, and a child's learning to read Eng­lish. What help does the memory of your own difficulties give you in understanding those of the child?