English school

“ I suppose that American boys' schools are fashioned largely on what the English call their public schools; and so far as they emulate the democratic spirit of the English schools, with their sense of equality and their honor of personal worth, the American schools cannot be too like them. ”

“ We have seen placed side by side, in the same burgh town, an English school, in which what are deemed the branches suitable for mechanics and their children, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, were energetically taught, and a grammar school in which a university-bred schoolmaster laboured, with really not much energy, especially in those lower departments in which his rival excelled, but who was fitted to prepare his pupils for college, and not devoid of the classical enthusiasm. ”

“ Not being bound up with the colleges, as the earlier Latin grammar schools had largely been, the academies became primarily independent institutions, taking pupils who had completed the English education of the common school and giving them an advanced education in modern languages, the sciences, mathematics, history, and the more useful subjects of the time, with a view to "rounding out" their studies and preparing them for business life and the rising professions. ”

“ Each teacher will thus familiarize himself with the English work of the whole school, and can do his particular part of it more intelligently and more effectively. As the success of high school English also depends in no small degree upon the character of the instruction which the pupils have received in the grades, and particularly in the seventh and eighth grades, it will be found very profitable to have similar conferences occasionally between 13the seventh and eighth grade teachers and the high school teachers of English. ”

“ No school-room teaching can make27 a man write good English. No school teaching ever made an educated man, or a man who could write a good primary text-book. It requires a home of early culture, supplemented by the whole curriculum of scholarship and of university training. ”

“ The limitless resources in English literature, America's lavish provision for higher education and professional training, and the freedom granted to our teaching profession leave the teachers of our language without excuse. The pupils studying English in America have a right to expect the best. One condition which frequently militates against first class work in this line is that school boards all too frequently fail to realize that being a teacher of English means more than merely hearing lessons so many times a week. ”

“ If no attention has been given to these points in the previous part of education, what reason have we to suppose that the evil can be remedied at the universities? The business of tutors and professors there, is to finish young gentlemen in such studies as they had begun at school, or to instruct them in such new arts and sciences, as they are obliged by their several establishments to teach. If the English language, and the art of speaking, be not in the number of those, what reason have we to expect that they should be taught? ”

“ If the pupils in the high schools are to have the right attitude toward the study of English, and are to begin the subject in the right way, the best teachers must be provided for the first year work, since much of the success of the whole high school course in English depends upon the manner in which the introductory work is taught. ”

“ As a teacher of English in a boys’ preparatory school, he is concerned with the problems of secondary education, and he takes the stand that the first demand on English teachers is that they teach the essentials of good English, putting accuracy in detail before attempts at literary grace. ”

“ From time to time the introduction of new honor schools is proposed to keep pace with modern learning. A long-standing agitation in favor of a school in modern languages was compromised by the founding of the school in English ”

“ In my dreamed-of school, founded along these lines, there is perfect freedom in selecting subjects. The school offers the subjects, but it forces no one to take them. English, German, French, natural science, mathematics, history, and geography are taught. The mother tongue is practiced fluently in speaking, reading, and writing. But in this case grammar is superfluous both for general education and for using a language; it belongs to scientific study, not to general culture. ”

“ The ability to write good English fluently, acquired by most of the pupils from several years of constant practice; the maturity of the pupils; their larger stock of knowledge and wider experience; and the possibility of making practical application of their ability to write in preparing orations and debates, reporting for local newspapers, or editing the school publications; all tend to make composition a more attractive and significant subject in the fourth year than it seems to be at any other period of the course. ”

“ The not infrequent practice of having the thoroughly prepared and experienced teachers take charge of third and fourth year English, and of assigning the first year classes to the young and inexperienced English teacher, or even to teachers of other subjects who have little or no interest in the work and who are compelled to take classes in first year English because their time is not completely occupied by their own subjects, generally proves extremely unsatisfactory. ”

“ The reading and study of literature in class in each year is to be supplemented by library reading of literature, the amount of which will be determined by library facilities and other local conditions.
3. Arrangement of Classes If the English work is being taught by several teachers, the distribution of classes among the teachers deserves careful consideration. No English work should be entrusted to a teacher who is not interested in the subject and who is not adequately prepared to teach it. ”

“ The aim of this school is to give instruction in higher English and in the art of expression. Its marked success proves that public speakers, readers, and teachers of reading and elocution in public schools and colleges appreciate a school conducted by teachers who present sound methods. ”

“ In the high school, English is not taught at all as a separate study, but work on it is continued along58 the same lines followed in the elementary school. A study of a certain number of graduates from the university schools and an equal number from the town high school, has indicated that the pupils who have received none of the usual training in English during their high school course do better work in their English courses in college than those who have followed the regular routine. ”

“ I have a book here in which I read that it is the business of the teacher so to organize the activities of the school that they will function in behavior. Well, my boys' behavior in the use of English indicates that I haven't organized the activities of my English class very effectively. I seem to be more of a success in a cherry-orchard than in an English class. ”

“ We wish to have our young boys and girls taught in the different branches of an English education, and in other languages, and in the various sciences, all of which we intend eventually to have taught in this school. ”

“ Her special department was English literature: and she certainly was possessed of remarkable power to interest the young people, perhaps more especially girls, in that subject. Her methods evidenced a conviction on her part that the way to teach English literature to pupils enough advanced to be in high school .should by no means be limited to a dissection and critical analysis of the sentences, or even of the entire composition. One saw at once that it was her higher aim to make the pupils' hearts and souls respond to the author's thought. ”

“ The real relation in which the English schools and universities stand to her greatest minds, even in the past, and the share which university teaching really had in training them, is a problem that still needs elucidation. ”

“ All these elements must be considered in arranging the programme of classes for teachers of English. Teachers cannot do satisfactory work if they must prepare for five or six classes a day, teach these classes, correct twenty-five or thirty themes daily, and hold conferences with pupils before and after school. The teaching of many classes exhausts the energy of the teacher and makes accurate correction after school or in the evening, as well as the careful preparation for the next day’s classes, extremely difficult if not impossible. ”

“ Now in considering this point it is necessary to remember that we are not dealing with the regulations of any subordinate institution or curriculum, with provincial Universities and seminaries, or with schemes of study in which Literature is only one out of many subjects. We are dealing with a Final Honour School at Oxford, with regulations which will inevitably form a precedent and model wherever the study of English literature shall be organized in Great Britain. We are dealing with a school which is to educate those who are [57] to educate the country. ”

“ The question of how to adapt English public school education to nervous and sensitive boys (often the highest and noblest subjects which that education has to deal with) ought to be looked at from every point of view. ”

“ English language proficiency; and (B) student academic achievement in the core academic subjects; (2) to provide high-quality, evidence-based professional development to classroom teachers (including teachers in classroom settings that are not the settings of language instruction educational programs) , school leaders, administrators, and other school or community-based organization personnel, that is— (A) designed to improve the instruction and assessment of English learners ”

“ Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. We find it difficult,—indeed, in some places impossible,—to provide instruction for all who want it. At the single town of Hoogly fourteen hundred boys are learning English. ”

“ I trust the time will speedily come when no man or woman, who is unable to read at sight a page of English of any age from Alfred to Victoria will be considered liberally educated, whatever else he or she may know.
Certainly much has been done in the last ten years to encourage us. In the time of Richard II., in 1385, English was admitted into English schools as a teaching medium: the close of our century will witness its full admission into English and American schools as a teaching subject. ”

“ There are two thoroughly good English schools for pupils of the better, or at any rate, richer class, as to which it has to be said that they are set on foot and carried on by ladies and gentlemen devoted to High Church doctrines. ”

“ The chief feature of the educational system, controlled, examined and aided by government, is the emphasis given to an English training. From the second year of instruction, the English language grows annually in importance in the curriculum of studies. ”

“ The common schools, giving their pupil the power of reading, writing, and calculating, developing his faculties, and furnishing him with much elementary knowledge, put him in communication with all that is written in a common form in the English tongue ”

“ To the end, therefore, of making cultural studies as strong, attractive, and profitable to our undergraduates as practical and scientific training, our institutions should train men of large caliber to teach English and belles-lettres. They should discover great teachers and inspiring personalities. ”

“ The French and German, and for that matter the English, too, in most of our colleges, are mere child's play, where they are not broad and ridiculous farces, the butt of students and professors alike. Let some of our colleges inaugurate the reform: lay out a "modern" course for admission and for college on the same general principle as the classical course—few subjects, but long-continued and detailed study in each of them—and insist on as thorough and vigorous work as they do in their Latin and Greek, and then, after a fair trial, compare results. ”

“ Let us not deceive ourselves upon this point; the mere book-learning is the smallest of the advantages which a boy derives from his public-school career. England wants men, more than scholars, although, of course, it is quite right that a limited number of persons in a nation, with special faculties, and aptitudes for the work, should devote themselves to the business of keeping alive the old traditions of sound learning. ”

“ Reformers have been endeavoring to go out and find the common man, and, in connection with him, to develop those subjects which before, according to university tradition, were looked at somewhat askance. English literature, political economy, modern history, have been put in the foreground of this popularized education. Far and wide throughout England an enthusiastic band of young teachers, under the guidance of officers of the universities, have been giving instruction in these subjects to companies in which social grades are for the time forgotten. ”

“ Many a man of eminence has gone out from these schools with a better education with which to begin life and a conflict with the world, than is obtained now at some of the institutions called colleges.
Young men without means, who had acquired sufficient of the rudiments of an English education, but who desired to pursue their studies and complete an education to subserve the purposes of the pursuit in life selected by them, frequently were the teachers in the primary schools. ”

“ It is indispensable, in order fully and efficiently to carry out our views as to these schools, that their masters should possess a knowledge of English in order to acquire, and of the vernaculars so as readily to convey, useful knowledge to their pupils; but we are aware that it is impossible to obtain at present the services of a sufficient number of persons so qualified, and that such a class must be gradually collected, and trained in the manner to which we shall hereafter allude. ”