Ontario. Department of Education

“ They are greater than photography. "The light that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream" have given them a beauty that is greater than the realism of the actual person or natural scene. It is the same in literature. The author's feelings, his language, the rhythm of his words, and his delicate fancy afford the reader greater delight than he has ever known when he has met similar persons, scenes, or actions in real life. This is genuine æsthetic pleasure, similar to the pleasure that people derive from china, music, or landscape gardening. ”

“ But there is more than mere information required for successful teaching. In poetry the teacher should feel delight in the music, the expression, the emotion, till he is eager to communicate his feelings to the pupils. This enthusiasm, however, should not have in it any insincerity, or extravagant commendation of the poem or the author. The teacher who has wide information and genuine interest in his work will seldom fail to arouse a real pleasure in the literature lesson. ”

“ Good literature portrays and interprets human life, its activities, its ideas and emotions, and those things about which human interest and emotion cluster. It gives breadth of view, supplies high ideals of conduct, cultivates the imagination, trains the taste, and develops an appreciation of beauty of form, fitness of phrase, and music of language. ”

“ In the highest forms of literature, the emotional element predominates, and it should be one to which all mankind, to a greater or less degree, are subject. It is the predominance of these emotional and artistic elements which makes literature a difficult subject to teach. The element of feeling is elusive and can best be taught by the influence of contagion. There is usually less difficulty about the intellectual element, that is, about the meaning of words and phrases, the general thought of the lesson, and the relation of the thoughts to one another and to the whole. ”

“ A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.—Milton
The book which makes a man think the most is the book which strikes the deepest root in his memory and understanding. ”

“ In literature, as in other arts, there is a great deal that is merely decorative. It is not the purpose here to disparage this form of art. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. Its loveliness increases." Some of the most famous portraits and landscapes in the picture galleries afford infinite pleasure to the student of art by the technique in colour, drawing, and arrangement. ”

“ The problem for the teacher is to direct this activity of imagination into proper fields, and to present material which will give the child a large store of beautiful images—images that are not only delightful to dwell upon, but are also elevating and refining in their influence upon character. The fairy tale, the folk tale, and the fable, owe their popularity with young children to the predominance of the imaginative element. ”

“ To introduce children to the world of literature, it is not necessary to wait until they have mastered the art of reading. The introduction should come long before they have learned to read, through listening to good stories told or read to them by others, through hearing suitable poems read or recited with spirit and feeling, and by memorizing nursery rhymes and gems of poetry. ”

“ It is of the greatest importance that the passages chosen should have artistic excellence in thought, feeling, music, imagery, and language. Moreover, these qualities must be present in such a form that they will, when properly presented by the teacher's reading or reciting, appeal, in some considerable measure, to the pupils' capacities and interests. Since there are so many noble passages in English literature, nothing of doubtful value should be memorized. ”

“ A suspicion that a lesson contains a good story is often sufficient to ensure a careful reading of it, and a curiosity as to the writer's devices to make the story interesting will lead to a closer examination of it. But more frequently some special interest resulting from the time of year, the surroundings, or the work taken in some other subject, may be effectively utilized by the teacher. These interests of children are so numerous and so varied that there are few lessons in the Readers for which a receptive attitude of mind cannot be secured. ”

“ Most of the words that people use have not been learned from the dictionary, but from their context in reading or conversation.
On the other hand, many lessons are spoiled by too constant inquiry into meanings. There is much mere learning of meanings without reference to the thought or emotion that they are intended to explain. Many words are explained that are already understood. The fault may be due to the teacher's experience with annotated text-books of literature. ”

“ Early work in literature should be correlated with oral composition.
As to the comparative merits of reading and telling, much may be said on each side. In the early stages, telling must, of course, be the predominant if not the exclusive means of communicating the story. The matter and language can thus be better adjusted to the capacity of the individual pupil. The teacher who is familiar with the pupil's home life and surroundings has within his power a means of adapting the story to the attainments of the pupil that even the best writer of children's stories can hardly command. ”

“ What admirable characteristics does the whole selection exhibit? Simplicity, directness, and eloquence of language, noble emotion, loftiness of character, and high ideals.
As a final synthesis of the lesson, let the pupils tell the story in their own words, preserving, as far as possible, the same order of ideas as is followed in the extract. This will reveal to the teacher whether they have grasped the ideas in their proper relationship. ”

“ In prose, it is advisable to let the pupils read the selection before the lesson is taken up by the teacher. The pupils must have practice in getting the thought from the symbols on the printed page and in grasping the general trend of the story, the description, or the argument. The work will be mainly intellectual, but the pupils may also, at this stage, have practice in discovering the emotional elements in some of the prose extracts.
In the higher Forms, the teacher may occasionally allow some of his best readers to read a poem aloud, where the emotion is evident or the narrative plain. ”

“ Teaching pupils about literature, instead of teaching literature itself; for example, teaching biography, etymology, history, geography, or science in the literature lesson, because some feature of one or more of these may be suggested by the language of the lesson. A knowledge of such subjects is merely preparatory to the study of literature itself. ”

“ But the teacher who has studied the poem and whose feelings have been deeply stirred by its music and pictures can, through his reading, communicate to his pupils his own appreciation; and it will be a dull pupil who does not feel the contagion. It is, however, not well to insist on too great uniformity in method; the spirit rather than the form is vital. ”

“ Not all lessons are didactic. If the pupils have sympathized with what is noble and just in the story, the statement of a moral at the conclusion is unnecessary. Yet in poems that are plainly didactic, for example, To a Waterfowl, Fourth Reader, p. 377, the moral lesson must occupy the first place. There the teacher should show how the author has enforced the lesson of confidence in God's guidance by the incident of the migrating waterfowl, the imagery, the music, the arrangement of parts, and the similarity of his own position to that of the bird. ”

“ The pupils usually do not know anything about him, and the teacher's aim, in this preparatory work, is to relate the thought and feeling of the poem to the properly assimilated knowledge and experience of the pupils. In some cases, they may have made a favourable acquaintance with the author in another poem, and this may give the necessary stimulus to their interest in his life. The best time, however, to give a biography of an author, when that is helpful, is after the lesson has been studied, for then the pupils will appreciate what the teacher has to say about him personally. ”

“ To show mercy does more to make a monarch kingly than does his crown. The one stands for the exercise of authority and power commanding obedience and awe; the other comes from the heart and reveals the character. It is more than kingly, it is God-like; for in exercising it, man's power becomes more like God's than in any other way.
Develop the above argument by questioning. Sum up the result by requiring the whole argument to be given by a pupil orally in his own language. Finally, require the pupils to write, as forcibly as they can, the whole of Portia's argument. ”

“ In the lessons on art, there are studies of pictures that suggest feelings and thoughts characterized by universality, permanency, and nobility—pictures that stir men to nobler thought and higher aspiration. Often, such pictures are the painter's method of expressing in colours, thoughts that the poet has expressed in words. Lessons such as Dandelions, Bob White, and The Sandpiper require a preliminary acquaintance with certain facts of nature, and therefore should be taken, if possible, when these can be obtained through personal observation by the pupils. ”

“ The pupil who has observed again and again an apple orchard in the spring, and who knows birds and trees, has a store of memories that will enable him to picture vividly what he reads about these at any time. ”

“ A situation in a story can frequently be made intelligible by reference to the pupil's own experience. Moreover, in telling the story, the teacher's gestures, facial expression, and tone of voice are likely to be more spontaneous and natural than would be the case in reading, and this gives immense assistance in interpreting aright the meaning and spirit of the selection. ”

“ It may be objected that these methods of introduction make the pupil depend too much on the teacher, and do not throw him sufficiently on his own resources. It is to be remembered, however, that the great object of teaching literature is to cultivate a taste for it. When the pupil approaches a selection with ideas and feelings which are already, in his consciousness, related to those presented in the poem, he is in the best possible mental attitude to appreciate it, and the probability of his liking it is much greater than if it were presented without any such introduction. ”

“ In some works, the thought is not so condensed and confined. Here, the main effort of the reader is to grasp the thoughts successively in a rapid, clear, and comprehensive manner. He must be able to read a book chapter by chapter and grasp the central ideas, to hold paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, in his consciousness, so that each gives added illumination to the main thought and, at the end, the whole of the work stands out in its entirety. ”