The Muses in the Common School

IF we turn back to the days of Socrates and Phædrus, and compare their literary horizon with that of our own day, we can easily see that, much as the Muses gave to them, it was little or nothing in comparison with the wealth which they have placed within our reach. In every department of literature, art, and science they have poured forth their gifts lavishly on such as were ready to receive them, and we have only to open our ears to catch the sound of their heavenly music. How many of all these glorious gifts belong to the teacher whose work lies in the common school ? There are those who would answer, " Very few. " I have known a teacher to say that she did not see what she wanted of the Augustan age, or the centuries following it before Chaucer. The life of fourteen centuries ! She might as well have said: “ The growth of mankind means nothing to me. I can afford to lose out of my life the condition of the world when our Saviour came into it. I can see what is best for the future of my pupils without anything in the past from which to judge. The motives which have moved mankind, the rise and fall of nations, the stories people have loved through the ages, the songs they have sung, the thoughts which have as a consequence found their expression in literature, — all these have no lesson for me ! ”

If we were called upon to study some great picture, should we feel that we knew much about it if we covered up all but a small part, and examined that part alone without knowing anything of its relation to the rest ? In the same way, if we give the child only one little corner of the picture of the world’s history to study, as, for example, the history and literature of his own century, can it ever have a great meaning to him, let him examine it ever so closely, until he compares it with the life and thought of other times ? But if we take the picture as a whole, what a changed aspect it presents! How the parts fall into place, and how each one seems to supplement and explain the others ! Just so will the picture of the world’s history appear to the child if he is given a broad and comprehensive view of it, instead of being confined to isolated fragments which have little or no meaning without the connecting links which join them into one whole. But would not such a view be superficial? Yes, our glance at that picture has been superficial; but that one glance has given us the best the picture contains, the one large thought that the artist intended to convey to us. His methods of work and the details of the picture we have yet to study, but we are no longer in danger of attaching undue importance to one part over another. We can now judge of the details in the light of their relation to the whole, and are much more likely to judge fairly.

No really good teacher will be content to give anything to her pupil but the best there is to give, — the whole picture; nor will she rest satisfied until she has the whole to give. She will not feel that she has taught American history in a truly patriotic manner until she has taught the root, stem, and leaves as well as the flower. The Old Man of the Sea, seen in the light of Ovid and Virgil with the Cross towering above them, will tell her a deeper secret than that which she will learn through Hawthorne alone; for he will tell her what Christianity and what America did for the later romancer that heathen Greece and Rome never did for the earlier poets. Washington will mean more to her when placed by the side of Hannibal or Cæsar ; Webster and Clay will mean more when compared with Demosthenes; Franklin will seem a greater American when his theory of electricity is contrasted with the primitive notions of the lightningfearing people who ascribed all unknown power to Zeus.

The first point, then, to dwell upon is that entirety is the gift of the Muses to the child ; not only entire pieces of literature, even masterpieces, but a view of the entire life and growth and development of mankind as contained in literature. The second point which I would emphasize is the danger of overburdening the child’s mind with commonplaces, or perhaps they should more properly he called inanities. Among children the Muses seldom go begging for an audience, unless their taste has been corrupted by poor literature. If their minds are left untrammeled, they will quickly recognize the heavenly Muse, and welcome her gladly. She is never commonplace or inane, nor are children disposed to be so unless led into the same barren field. As an illustration of the better class of commonplace in reading,

I take the following stanza from a first reader: —

No Muse ever gave that to children, It is a type of many poems and much prose written by persons of scant literary attainments. Neither the Muses nor the children can be greatly interested in it. I do not say that the children will be wholly uninterested in it, but I do say they will not be greatly interested ; for to be greatly interested or interested in any great way is to be permanently interested, and there is nothing in such writing as this to give it any permanence in the child’s mind. Some time ago I experimented, in order to see if this story would take any permanent hold on the mind of children. I went into a school-room where there were fifty little children, whose average age was not far from six years. After saying that I would tell them two stories, one about a doll and the other about the winds, I repeated this doll poem to them. They received it good-naturedly ; some of them smiled. They tried to appear pleased, for they were evidently desirous to be polite. Then I told them the story of Ulysses and his gift from Æolus. I chose this story because, when I entered the room, they were having a lesson on the winds and clouds. I gave the story as it is told in the tenth book of the Odyssey: the arrival of Ulysses at the dwelling of Æolus, situated on a floating island inclosed with a wall of brass; the present to Ulysses of a bag containing all the winds except the west wind, which was to waft him and his seamen home ; the jealousy of the sailors, who feared Æolus had bestowed some important gift on Ulysses which they were not to share; their opening the sack while Ulysses slept, and their bitter lament when they found themselves blown back to the island of Aeolus. After telling both stories, I left the room without commenting upon either. The children’s teacher was absent, and the young cadet who had them in charge went on with their lesson. The next week I went again to the same room, and told the children that I had two stories for them, one a doll story and the other about the winds, and asked which I should tell them. They unanimously chose the latter, and I narrated the adventures of Æneas with Æolus as given in Virgil’s Æneid. They enjoyed the account, and since then have been making and studying Æolian harps. When their teacher returned, she asked them what they had heard while she was away. Many hands went up, in anxious testimony of the owner’s desire to tell the story of Ulysses, but hardly a child in the room could remember anything whatever about the doll which ran to the appletree. A wee boy, six years old, repeated the story of Ulysses without missing one point, and all the other children listened as if the story were new. He added at the end a moral of his own, to the effect that the seamen should not have been so curious, and had been justly punished. There is no doubt that the children were more or less interested in the doll poem when I recited it to them, but it had no relation to universal life, as had the story of Ulysses, and consequently made no lasting impression. Of course the form itself was meagre, and admitted little expansion; but such a poem is a mere device to put before children words instead of thought. Nor is this specimen by any means the worst of its kind. Here is a poorer study of the same sort, from another reader; it has not even the pretty thought of the golden sun in it: —

舠' Look at my fine wax doll,'

Let me see it, May. Is it a new doll ? ’

“'Yes, Lucy, I am sure it is a new doll.'

“ ‘ Has your doll blue eyes ? ’

“ ‘No it has black eyes and a blue dress.' ”

And here is a worse one than the last, from still another first reader :_

“ Has the girl with the doll a hat ?

“ The girl with a doll has a hat.

“ Has the girl a doll and a dress ?

“ The girl has a doll and a dress.

In contrast with this inane reading I will mention a study which I heard given some months ago, in the presence of more than a hundred people, at a meeting of the Principals’ Association in Chicago. None of the children had been in school more than nine months. The teacher related to them the story of Rip Van Winkle, which they repeated, and she wrote it out on a blackboard as fast as they gave it to her. Then they read it from the blackboard with great ease. She took no pains to use monosyllables. One of the words they learned in this lesson was ” rheumatism, ” and they rather liked the word because it was long and “ hard.” Some one, to puzzle or test the little folk and see whether the work were genuine, gave them a queer cane as a subject; and the children observed it, talked of it, and without difficulty read from the blackboard what was said about it. Their interest in the Rip Van Winkle story was supreme. They quite forgot the crowd around them, and laughed over the story with unfeigned merriment.

Here is another story, a gift of the Muses, which several good primary-school teachers assure me has been listened to with delight by children, to some extent reproduced by them in writing, and read from their own reproductions ; while, in addition to all this, they have used it in connection with studies of insects as examples of natural history : —

THE CRICKET AND THE POET.

Once upon a time many poets met at a minstrels’ court to sing for a prize. Not only did each poet sing, but he played on the lyre while he sang. One poet sang better than the others; indeed, so well did he sing that the old judges could not find the least fault with him, although their ears were very sharp. So he sang out boldly, and he played in time and tune. After a while the judges said to each other that it was of little use to try to find fault with him, and that this must be the poet who ought to have the prize. Just then a mischief happened to the poet’s lyre. It had seven strings, but one of them snapped, and he feared he could not finish his song. The poet’s heart sank within him when he thought of the ill luck in store. He felt sure that he could not win the prize. But a cricket, which had been listening to the poet’s song, left its home in the green bush, and for mere love of music flew, with its little heart on fire, and lighted on the broken string. So when the singer felt for that string the cricket sang out the right note, and saved the poet from spoiling his music. When the song was ended the judges all cried out: “ Take the prize! Who would not give the prize to such a sweet voice and such a tine lyre? Why, we took your lyre for a harp, so shrill was the sweetest note.” This note was the sound which the cricket made.

The poet took the prize and went home, but he did not forget the cricket which had helped him. He made a life-size marble statue of himself holding a lyre, and on the lyre he perched a golden image of the cricket.

Now, what can a child get from this story that he cannot get from the story of the doll? In the line of science, he can compare the poet’s idea of the cricket, its method of producing a noise, with his own observations in nature, and can be taught to listen for musical sounds in the out-of-door world. He can learn to trace the growth of a story from the myth-making age through mediæval times, until the Muse of Lyric Verse repeats it to us through the lips of a great nineteenth-century poet; and the child can in this way see the rise, progress, and growth of one thought. Again, he can, at a glance, get a vivid picture of real minstrel life in the Middle Ages. That is true history, and he can learn to separate the truth from the myth, while in the myth he can touch another corner of life, even the life of mankind in the time of Socrates and Phædrus ; for the cricket sent by the Muse of Song to aid the minstrel poet belonged to the same choir which sang over the heads of the ancient philosophers. Finally, a teacher of tact and feeling can add the fine point which makes Browning’s poem so exquisitely modern : the value of a child’s affection when the one string which made his life’s harmony complete “ was snapped in twain, never to be heard again.” Even if the only motive in giving reading to children were to teach them words, spelling, punctuation, surely a choicer vocabulary could be found in the latter story than in the ordinary feeble reading lessons. But the acquisition of a vocabulary is hardly ever a sufficient motive in a reading lesson.

Here is another example of a commonplace reading lesson from a first reader, where the only motive is that of increasing the child’s list of words : —

“ Nell and Jip have had a long walk, and now they are glad to stop and rest.

“ As Nell went by the mill, she met Frank with his big dog, Dash.

“ Dash and Jip ran at a hog, and Jip bit it on the leg.

“Then a man came and hit Jip, and made him and Dash run off.舡

What a picture to put before a child for his contemplation ! A dog biting a hog on the leg! Just imagine the heavenly Muse choosing such a subject for her song ! What a contrast between this and the story of the dog Gelert, or that of Dick Whittington and his cat !

I give another illustration of the same sort:—

THE SLEEPY MULE.

Here is old Bob ! Come, boys, let us have a ride!

I am afraid to get on him, Fred ; he may throw us off.

Fie, Paul! What are you afraid of? Bob is a sleepy old mule. I am sure any one can ride him. Come on, boys !

The second part of the lesson tells us that the boys climbed up on the mule’s back, whereupon he jumped and kicked, throwing one boy to the ground and another into the mud. The point of the story is that the mule was not so sleepy as he looked.

Now, I do not doubt that, as a study from nature, the mule might prove a very profitable object, and we should never undervalue sense-perception and its relation to reading. By studying the animal itself, however, the child could learn more words than from any reading lesson, and much in regard to his habits and characteristics which would prove fully as interesting, if not so exciting, as his kicking; as, for instance, whether he walks on his feet or his toes, in what way his knee corresponds with the human knee. With the assistance of such facts, drawn from his own observation, the child can make commonplaces himself, and learn something of comparative zoölogy while he is learning to read. Æsop’s story of the donkey which wanted to be a pet, or that of the miller who lost his mule by trying to please everybody, are either of them far better animal stories than the one given. They are classic fables instead of modern ones made up to sell, and they hold the germs of eternal truth.

The story of Athena and Poseidon, the gift of the horse to Athens by the latter, the gift of the olive-tree and the naming of the city by the former,— such lessons are organic parts of universal literature, and give the child glimpses of the thought of the universal man, glimpses which he must get from books if he gets them at all. They include reading, history, spelling, punctuation, and above all thought. They do not seal the pores of the child’s observation by seeing for him what he is Quite able to see for himself. I do not wish to give the impression that I consider the story of the sleepy mule “ bad reading,” but I certainly do not wish to give the impression that I consider it good reading. Here is a fox lesson which is much worse : —

“ See the fox. He is on a box.

“ Is the box for the fox ?

舠 It is for the fox. It is his box.

“ The fox can sit in the box.

“ Can a fox eat ?

“ A cat, a rat, or a pig can eat.

“ A fox can eat.”

A child would have to study Delsarte many years before getting his tongue sufficiently limbered for such reading.

Here is an inanity written in dramatic form: —

WHO ATE THE PIE ? A DIALOGUE.

Ned. Who ate my pie ? Did you see a boy eat it ?

May. No, a boy did not eat it.

Ned. But who did eat it ?

May. I saw a cat get it. Ned. A cat ? Was it our old cat ? May. Yes, it was our cat; but the cat did not eat the pie.

Ned. Did not eat it, do you say ? But who did eat it ?

May. The dog saw the cat get it; and so the dog ran for it, and the cat let the dog get it. So, you see, the dog eat the pie. It was fun to see the dog run. I saw it all, as I sat on the rug.

Ned. Oh, you old dog! You bad old dog! Why did you eat my pie ? Get out, you old dog! You old cur, get out!

May. No, no! Do not use the dog so. You eat pie, if you can get it. Why may not the dog eat it, if he can get it ?

GREEK CHORAL ODE.

(Exercise for Lesson 74. Change 舠 eat ” to “ ate.”)

I eat pie. You eat pie.

The cat and the dog eat pie.

All of us eat of the pie.

You and I eat pie.

Here again the lesson contains no point which the child cannot easily make without the book. Such writing approaches closely the lowest depth of literary degradation, and not only serves to corrupt the child’s natural good sense, but — and this is one of the worst features— it also corrupts the taste of the teacher who uses it. Nearly all of our primary-school teachers are young highschool graduates, who are not mature enough to have given careful consideration to the subject. They become so accustomed to such composition that they begin to look upon it as necessary, and lose their appreciation of its worthlessness ; and thus the evil is propagated, and the child is prepared for new inanities. Since his mind has thus been weakened instead of strengthened, he naturally continues to read trash the rest of his life, if he reads at all.

Contrast with the above lesson Hawthorne’s Snow Image, Little Daffydowndilly, or any of the stories in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Queer Little People. The origin of the bees, as found in Virgil’s fourth Georgic, is a better study. The youth tending the bees ; his wooing of Eurydike ; her death ; the consequent destruction of the youth’s bees; his visit to his mother, who lives in the depths of the Nile, surrounded by her handmaidens spinning and singing; his complaint to his mother of the death of the bees ; his visit to the Old Man of the Sea to find out why they died; his return to his mother, who instructs him how to create new swarms of bees, — all these graphic incidents engage the attention, appeal to the imagination, and set the judgment of the child at work. I have repeatedly told this story to primary-school children, and they have discussed it as intelligently as the pie question is discussed in the dramatic effort already quoted. They never believe that bees came that way or that people can live under water, but they think that the folks of olden times loved honey.

The story of Donald, from Browning, if told simply, is a much better lesson for primary children than the dog-andpie study. Donald was a hardy fellow who lived among the mountains, a good hunter who could fish and shoot. He was proud of his strong bones and large muscles, and would not let a fiend dispute with him the right of way without a tussle. Once when hunting he stepped upon a narrow rock, and found himself face to face with a gold-red stag, — a brave creature which had never grown cowardly by being shut up in parks. Donald looked at the deer, but was too proud to run away, and the deer looked at Donald fearlessly, but could escape from him only by throwing him off the rocks ; so the young man lay down in the narrow path, that the deer might run over him. thinking to slay the stag as he bounded over. But the noble animal picked its way very daintily, for fear of injuring the young man, extending one foot and then the other, with as much care as a mother takes in removing a fly from the face of her sleeping babe ; not even the tip of his hoof touched the body of the youth. Donald saw this, but was so much more of a hunter than a man that he reached up and killed the deer, even while it was tenderly raising its foot to avoid hurting him. Which was more human, the man or the deer ?

This story is really a study ; a lesson to set the child thinking; a lesson to develop tenderness towards animals. In the dog-and-pie lesson, notice that the moral — 舠 No, no ! Do not use the dog so. You eat pie, if you can get it ” —is enforced upon the child. Children arrive at higher moral conclusions by reflecting on moral conditions than by having morality thrust upon them.

A child’s reading should be distributed all along the known life of the human race. He may not know it, but the teacher should know it, the parent should know it, and the board of education should know it. He should have enough of the ancient to suggest the middle periods of history, and enough of the middle periods to furnish a connecting link for the modern, all so given and so directed that it may naturally lead to greater depth or fuller detail. Thus will the child gain a true perspective ; thus will he learn to reason correctly, having true conditions from which to reason; thus will he know the real meaning of such names as Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln ; and thus will he rise to the dignity of a true patriot. No one need flatter himself that he can make a good American citizen of a boy by keeping him on dog-and-pie literature.

The excuses urged by teachers for neglecting to cultivate a literary taste in their pupils are various.

舠 I cannot place an outline of the world’s literature before children,” says one ; “ it is too great a thing to attempt.”

舠I am obliged to teach reading ” (meaning word-calling, or the “ correct ” method of pronouncing and emphasizing dog-and-pie literature), urges another.

舠 I do not know enough of literature,” says a third.

“ I could do it if I were a specialist and had plenty of time,” pleads a fourth.

“ I don’t dare to go outside of the regular prescribed course of study. If the authorities above me direct me to teach dog-and-pie inanity, I must do it,” says a fifth.

To all these objections educators may urge the following : —

Dog-and-pie literature is not reading. To teach word-calling is not to teach reading. To teach word-calling does not lead to good word-calling. Those pupils who are kept on feeble reading lessons that they may “ recognize words at sight舡 are the very ones who never do learn to “ recognize words at sight.” They stumble over words and miscall them to a far greater extent than do the pupils who are searching for the thought in what they read. Let any one who doubts this give one of Lowell’s poems to a class of high-school graduates or any normal-school training class, every member of which has been through the six inanities, the six school readers, and judge for himself whether or not the word-calling method leads to good wordcalling.

Surely, the true economy of education clearly demands that we should crowd back into the most elementary period all that is merely designed to familiarize children with the looks of words. Most of the work of this class can be done without a book, by free use of blackboard and slate. Yet even in the very earliest period there are capital bits of nursery literature ready for use, and at each step of a child’s training the field of genuine literature available for schools widens. A teacher with ever so little knowledge of universal literature, if she has any literary taste, will constantly get something new, and share it with her pupils as naturally as an artist speaks of a great picture to a fellow-artist. And there is no higher authority so stupid or so selfish as to wish to deny to the child the privilege of sharing to some extent with his teacher that which the great consensus of literary opinion through the ages has persisted in calling noble and permanent.

Mary A. Burt.