Traffic Signals for Teachers

...It is the business of those in charge of high school students to see that sufficient extra-curricular reading of good literature be done...

...Though I have read most of the masterpieces of literature, I am thrown into dire con- fusion two or three times a month by the following question, usually put to me by a pert miss of seventeen or so : "Have you read the very latest best seller entitled Such-and-such by So-and-so...

...Now, ordinarily I should not be embarrassed by such a question, fortified by the knowledge that I was reading books centuries old when the young lady was chewing her teething ring...

...June 26, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 209 TRAFFIC SIGNALS FOR TEACHERS By SISTER M. ELEANORE D URING the last year a vast amount of ped- agogical and literary agitation has found ex-pression in certain articles in our magazines...

...She cannot be sure whether she has just made a remark or asked a question which should be utterly taboo in polite society, or has just displayed the kind of ignorance that shocks the hearer, or has just wounded the one addressed in her sorest mental com-plex...

...Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Stevenson, Hawthorne, Poe, Milton, Chaucer, Tennyson, Shakespeare--all the great E n gl i s h writers had joined to make of the high school stu-dent's mind a storehouse of riches and of his pen a means of self-expression...

...But those modern novels that recognize that fact and treat love as it is, a thing of passion that soon burns to ashes--well, it's a shame you haven't read Such-and-such by So- and-so...

...I admire much of our contemporary production...

...Now, condemnation on the part of conscien- tious book reviewers is almost a guarantee of wide sales...

...Of course if she was an old maid, she couldn't write a good love story, unless perhaps she aired her Freudian repressed desires...

...Is it a love story ?" "It was written in the eighteenth century...

...Now is the time for someone to offer a means to this end...

...But what can one do in three hours a week for a semester...

...Sometimes, when I run over the list of masters in a branch of English literature for the benefit of a beginning class and then note the utter bewilderment of most of the students in the face of unfamiliar names, I am tempted to hurl anathemas at them for having the mental audacity to undertake the course at all...

...Upon my denial she always gives me a look which says: "And you pretend to know enough to teach me I Why, what do you know...

...Then I remember that they are victims of this modern pleasure-mad age rather than positive aggres- sors against learning, and I set myself to renewed study of my "branch iv larnin...

...Young people do not read nowadays...

...The astonished look is a real refuge for the afflicted...

...Oh, they are not all hopelessndespite all circumstances against them, the book-lovers and readers do appear in small numbers...

...For some years now I, and many other teachers of literature along with me, have been com- pelled by a large group of our students to play the humble worm...

...There is perhaps no more thankless task than to lead a cause lost even before its undertaking...

...He knew all these writers for the reason that from the fifth grade to the third year in high school he was reading, in time and out of time...

...for then we should no longer be confronted by the spectacle of college graduates who literally have nothing to say and, if they had something to say, would have no language in which to say it...

...They go to the movies...

...Subtracting from my classes the students who are natural born readers and those who are seriously preparing to teach high school English, I have left those students who did practically no read- ing in high school and whose supplementary reading in college consists of best sellers...

...There are, too, always a number of students who are preparing to become teachers...

...This, Romeo--the royal rose in red...

...But I desisted, after a few results such as the following: "No...

...Now, because I know how many other teachers are suffering these constant humiliations along with me, I have about decided to originate the club of the astonished look, despite the fact that I am sure ours is a lost cause among these ultra-modern students...

...they flock to the dance halls...

...When I was less experienced I used to try to confuse her in turn by asking, for example, "Have you read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey...

...She may interpret it in one of two ways: first, that I am simply amazed that she should even ask me whether I have read any book that is on the best-seller market...

...Then I feel like humbly beating my breast in acknowledgment that all the world says about us teachers of English is true...

...Once I nearly choked over those words, but now they sound natural on the lips of a seventeen-year-old...

...There is something about a look of complete and open-mouthed amazement that paralyzes the beholder into silence...

...On the other hand, the entirely static posture of the worm that constantly refuses to turn is doubtless the last word in humiliation...

...If this be done, then we shall revert to those happy times when our students had learned to write good English before they entered college, by study of the literary style of the masters, and when they came to us with minds enriched and deepened by the good food on which they had been fed...

...A novel, a book of poems, a group of plays, a collection of stories, read within a month mean much time and energy...

...We teachers certainly are afflicted nowadays, despite the fact that there still remain a few students who believe us when we say that to read classic literature is ever so much more important than to read the latest best sellers, and who will do something by their liter- ary culture to stem the tide of anathemas that are hurled against us teachers of English by pedagogical and literary critics...

...It would be scream-ingly funny to read romance written for the credulous people of the eighteenth century...

...And we college teachers pay the piper...

...Ten years ago the high school student brought into college a literary background filled vCith well-known and loved masterpieces of literature...

...You can't converse about litera- ture at all...

...There is very little time for extra reading in the life of the college student pursuing a difficult course...

...but almost always the judgment of conscientious book reviewers went hand in hand with the judgment of the general reader...

...However effective the astonished look may be against individual students, it is no weapon at all against those critics who are scolding us teachers of English because of the dearth of literary background and the lack of mastery of our language on the part of our college graduates...

...Pulled away from a book to table, driven from a book to bed, cajoled from a book to run an errand, he voluntarily put behind him all the reading that must be done in college if at all...

...But, the modern young lady being what she is, I am loath to say no...

...Most of us know, too, from sad experience, that when students fail in the scien-tific or other courses they have entered upon, they will almost invariably be directed by a harassed dean of studies, or will voluntarily choose, to enter instead the English course...

...It gave the death blow to the Gothic romance...

...Love's young dream is all an illusion...

...If, however, these have already been read and need only to be reviewed by way of preparation for class analysis and interpretation, addi- tional readings may be required...

...J. CORSON MILrER...

...If the masterpieces of literature have not been already read, but few of them can be read before the student is graduated, no matter how earnest teacher and student are...

...I am not at all of the opinion that no good literature is being produced...

...How old is she...

...What's it like...

...Ten years ago this fallacy was not so appalling in its consequences as it is now...

...If, somehow or other, I can awaken in them an appreciation of the classics, they will urge upon their future students the unrequired reading of immortal literature...

...Somehow or other a fallacy has grown up that it takes but small brain power to pursue the course in English...

...Now, most of us teachers of English are certain that more than our share of the students who enter col-lege will designate English when the president, after the manner of Mr...

...it is a piece of real life that fairly burns the paper on which it is written...

...They were so sort of naive, I imagine, don't you...

...Dooley, asks them, "What branch iv larnin' wud ye like to have studied f'r ye by our competent pro-fissors...

...But, goodness, who'd be interested in somebody who wrote away back in the eighteenth century...

...Hush, you will hear, for well the night wind knows The words that once these parting lovers said Long since, in that dim land, that golden time Of youth's immortal honey-clustered hours, When two, amid the gentle nuptial chime, Wore joy as beautiful as breaking flowers, Yet brief, alas, as June, like to the stay Of these dear blooms that yearly bud and blow, Flinging with lavish hands their wealth away, Before they smile good-bye and softly go...

...While she is groping about in her mind for the apology which certainly must be offered for whichever of these offenses has been committed, the one offended can make her quite happily at ease again by exclaiming, perhaps, "Oh, I have such a violent twinge of rheuma- tism just now l" She will be sure to leap into the breach offered, with a solicitous question about the length of time one has been bothered with the com-plaint or about the badness of the weather...

...It will be readily seen why I despaired of trying to confuse the young lady by asking her if she had read literature that is immortal--I, who know only such naive literature as Macbeth and King Lear and Jane Eyre and The Scarlet Letter, along with certain mod- ern productions that I admire...

...Teachers of college English the country over would rise up to call blessed the high school teacher who could invent a process by which high school students could once more be induced to read the extra-curricular classics...

...These are my hope for the future...

...The situation is very difficult...

...I know, too, that even the classics had their day of birth and that some of them were best sellers at once...

...I think she was well along in her twenties when she wrote it, 21o THE COMMONWEAL June 26, 1929 twenties as an old maid would reckon them...

...I see...

...While she is puzzling out which of these interpretations would be cleverest for her to use, I switch her attention to something else...

...Is this, then, Juliet, the tall, white rose...

...Protests innumerable have been hurled at the heads of us poor inoffensive teachers of English be- cause we turn out students who "butcher the language and confound the literature that is their heritage...

...Were it not for these few consolers in affliction, most of us teachers of English would hie ourselves to the kitchen or to the laundry in quest of a job...

...they spend hours daily in the automobile...

...That's real literature for you...

...second, that I have read it and consider it so outdated already, since it has been on the market a month, as to be amazed that she should even remember its existence...

...We know, of course, that there isn't any real romance in the world...

...Now, that Gothic romance might be interesting...

...Now I answer her with the best imitation I can produce of her own aston- ished look...