In most schools, with the present tendency to multiplication of recitation periods, through the development of the elective system, time for class instruction in composition, especially in the later years of the course, is exceedingly difficult to secure. All the more important becomes the conference between individual pupil and teacher. Themes returned without such a conference, in which corrections are actually made, are likely to be put aside or destroyed without the writer's troubling himself to correct errors or profit by the comments or suggestions which may be written upon them, however full and careful they may be. Every composition teacher should have at least one period each day allowed him in the schedule as equivalent to a recitation period, in which to meet individual pupils. Even then he will need to utilize also every spare moment of their time and his own, in order to secure a conference with each

one.

The writing of daily themes has been frequently urged for high schools. I question the practicability under the usual high school conditions. A weekly essay, prepared with care, talked over with the teacher, and revised, if necessary, is better, I believe, than more frequent work without such supervision. My own school sends only a few students each year to college, and I have found it feasible to meet these few weekly during their last year, reviewing rapidly with them the books for reading and practice, and assigning brief themes, sometimes based on these books, sometimes to illustrate or apply a principle of technique. This has been in addition to a weekly composition required from everyone in the senior class.

The length of these themes is usually limited to a page, or about one hundred words. The exact subject is often left to the writer's choice, but frequently there is definite assignment of the type. For example, an incident in which the main object is suspense, or one in which rapidity of action is noticeable; a comment or criticism of papers read before the class. About once a month a long three-to-six-page composition takes the place of the short one, preceded the week before by a careful outline. Here is an opportunity for relating paragraphs, and arranging material effectively. Especial

pains are taken to correct and return the outlines promptly, that the writers may, in preparing their essays, avail themselves of the suggestions made. School Life, Outdoor Recreations, Sports and Pastimes, are suitable general subjects, under which topics for description, narrative, exposition and argumentation may be grouped. For example, some topics recently assigned in our own school are: Description-A Modern City Schoolroom and a Country Schoolroom that I Know; Narrative-My First Day at School; Exposition-The Responsibility of the Senior; Argumentation-Shall We have Fire Drills in the High School?

The long compositions also afford an opportunity to introduce some subjects involving desirable matters of information, for which it is difficult to find time in the crowded school coursetopics connected with the literature, like the Renaissance or the Age of Milton; current events; art, science or history. Here one meets the difficulty which "bookish" subjects always present the tendency to take material directly from sources, without assimilating or making it the writer's own-collation rather than composition. To offset this difficulty, the phrasing of titles so as to bring in the personal element is sometimes a helpful device, as "The Burning of the Gaspee," told by an eyewitness; "A Leaf from Cromwell's Diary after the Battle of Naseby." Another device is the requirement of a list of the sources of information, with perhaps definite references. Pains should be taken also to impress on the student the need of thorough assimilation of his material, that it may be genuinely his before he gives it utterance, and to teach him that the best way to avoid unconscious imitation of one's sources is to read widely, from a variety of authorities. There is a value in the informational composition not inherent in the wholly creative one, or the one based on experience alone, in teaching the young writer to gather, select and arrange material, and condense it into a limited space. Many find this an exceedingly difficult task. They are the ones who write unnecessary pages in examinations, unable to select the significant details. Here again the character of the titles of themes is important. They need to be made as exact and specific as the nature of

the subject will allow. A good variation from the usual page essay may be the assignment of a general subject to be narrowed to a variety of specific titles. When students choose their own. subjects the titles given by them should be scrutinized as closely as the themes themselves. There should be frequent opportunity for such choice, and for wording of titles on the part of the writers.

If I were to summarize the chief qualities to be striven for in high school composition, I should name sincerity, simplicity and definiteness. For true self-expression, sincerity is absolutely essential, and simplicity hardly less so. Concrete and specific assignments help the pupil to hold himself within definite limits, and encourage clearness of thought and expression.

May I not add a plea for sympathy on the part of the teacher? Nothing is more discouraging than to find a theme on which earnest and conscientious labor has been spent, torn to pieces without a word of praise or appreciation for what has been achieved, or at least attempted. We need to learn how to discriminate between the heedless or lazy pupil, who hands in a hasty and slovenly manuscript, and the dull, blundering, but faithful worker. To the latter should always be given a helping and encouraging word.

If work in composition is emphasized along these individual lines, as I have tried to indicate, it will be found that more than any other school task, it tends to stimulate self-direction and independence of opinion. The pupil has a right to his own beliefs and ideas, and the more clearly and definitely he can give expression to them, the more effective and worthy a member of society he may become. Moreover, he finds that utterance helps to clear his thought, to strengthen his beliefs, to engender new ideas, to make him more self-reliant.

With this achievement as a possible goal for the teacher of composition, his work is a continual inspiration, and he is never weary of devising new means of arousing in his pupils the ambition for self-expression.

English in the Schools

WILBUR L. CROSS, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF YALE UNIVERSITY

T

Π

HE entire system of modern English studies in

school and college has been established within the memory of those of us not yet old. Thirty or forty years ago, English in the schools consisted of grammar, oral spelling and reading aloud. In the college, grammar was continued and supplemented by formal rhetoric, which often ran into formal logic. Reading aloud with occasional memorizing and recital, as practiced in the schools, became in the college, declamation, pure and simple. A natural sequence to the declamation was an original composition which usually took the form of an oration or a dispute, that is, something not to be read but to be spoken. The ideals were Webster, Calhoun, Everett and Sumner. Besides orations, some schools and colleges required, at fixed intervals, essays upon abstract and literary subjects. These essays were read and estimated with a view to discovering which deserved a prize; and then the incident was closed. The man who had in charge the work which I have summarized, was styled, if he bore any title, "Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory." It rarely or never occurred to him that Shakespeare and Milton were as proper subjects for literary study as were Homer and Vergil. Instruction in English literature was given, if given at all, from the outside, either as supplementary to rhetoric or as history out of brief manuals. The student learned in chronological order the names of the great English authors and some facts about their works; he read extracts from Shakespeare, Addison or Pope, one or all, as they appeared in his manual, and might, if he liked, go on by himself.

The old régime was not half so bad as it may sound. If the majority of students never got beyond rules, names and dates, there were always some who followed up the clues of the class room, which led them into extensive reading, not infrequently

to the neglect of the regular curriculum. It would be quite easy to point my remarks with the names of men since distinguished in letters and the learned professions who groped their way to Tennyson and Browning, Carlyle, Emerson and Macaulay before the Victorians had begun to sink under the weight of superincumbent notes and commentaries. If grammar tended to become dry in its formalities, it at least told the student what were the component parts of a sentence and thus enabled him to distinguish in his own writing between a sentence and a conglomerate of phrases without subject or predicate. Best of all, the old reading books contained good, if inadequate, selections from a large range of modern English literature. Read aloud over and over again, until they were nearly or quite committed to memory, these selections became to the student a treasury of thought, rhythm and style. "Thus I stored up," says Andrew D. White, who excepts the reading book from his condemnation of the English curriculum in his day, "Thus I stored up, not only some of the best things in the older English writers, but inspiring poems of Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow and other moderns. My only regret is that more of this was not given us. I recall, among treasures thus gained, which have been precious to me ever since in many a weary or sleepless hour on land and sea, extracts from Shakespeare, parts of Milton's Samson Agonistes, and of his sonnets; Gray's Elegy, Byron's Ode to the Ocean, Campbell's What's Hallowed Ground? Goldsmith's Deserted Village, Longfellow's Psalm of Life, Irving's Voyage to Europe, and parts of Webster's Reply to Hayne."

I need not describe in detail the revolution which has taken place in English studies since the period remembered by the eminent scholar and diplomat. But certain phases of the revolution must be noted in order to gain the point of view for which I am striving. In the college, oral exercises, outside of debate, have been supplanted by written work. Rhetoric, becoming less and less formal, has been reduced to a few simple principles for the immediate and practical guidance of the student in composition. Manuals of literary history, though still employed to advantage under certain conditions, especially as