HaU (SoUcge of AgritultutK 
 
 At QJorneU Iniucraita 
 attars, Sf. 5. 
 
 library 
 
Cornell University Library 
 LB 2321.P6 
 
 Teaching in schooi and coliege, 
 
 3 1924 013 032 028 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013032028 
 
TEACHING 
 
^Ti^y^o. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, 1;to. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
TEACHING 
 
 IN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 
 (M.A. Harvard, Ph.D. Yale) 
 
 FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL; FORMERLY 
 INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH AT HARVARD; LAMPSON PRO- 
 FESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT YALE; MEMBER 
 OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND 
 LETTERS 
 
 Weto gorft 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1912, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published August, zgxa. 
 
 J. 8. CuBhlnff Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
THIS BOOK 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 MY COLLEAGUES IN THE GOOD CAUSE 
 
 THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS 
 
 OF CONNECTICUT 
 
Suppose her some poor keeper of a school 
 Whose business is to sit thro' summer months 
 And dole out children leave to go and play. 
 Herself superior to such lightness — she 
 In the arm-chair' s state and pedagogic pomp — 
 To the life, the laughter, sun and youth outside. 
 
 — In A Balcony. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is not so egotistically cocksure 
 as the title would seem to imply. Quite 
 the contrary. My object is not to lay 
 down the law for all teachers, but to give 
 some hints based on personal experience, 
 both from pew and pulpit ; for I sat twenty 
 years in front of the desk, and twenty 
 years behind it. My book is perhaps con- 
 fessional rather than hortatory ; for that 
 very reason it will irritate some, and help 
 others. But I think we often learn more 
 from a man's confessions than from his ser- 
 mons. Concrete facts and definite sugges- 
 tions stick tighter in the mind than abstract 
 ideas and loud exhortation ; just as a piece 
 of bread is more valuable to a hungry man 
 than the sentiment of enthusiasm for hu- 
 manity, unaccompanied by specific applica- 
 
X Preface 
 
 tion. At all events, I make no apology for 
 the personal tone of this work. 
 
 " God uses us to help each other so, 
 Lending our minds out." 
 
 W. L. P. 
 
 Florence, 
 Tuesday, 2 April, 19 12. 
 
 Note 
 
 I have made some changes for this new 
 edition, — few in number, but significant. 
 
 W. L. P. 
 Yale Umversity, 
 Tuesday, 23 April, 1918. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory i 
 
 School-teaching and Discipline . . 12 
 Private School-teaching and Scholarship 41 
 Imagination in Teaching . . . -Si 
 The Efficiency of College Teaching . (>^ 
 Education and Instruction ... 94 
 
 English Composition 117 
 
 English Pronunciation . . . .130 
 Teaching English Literature . . -137 
 The Moral Aspect of Teaching . . 171 
 
TEACHING IN SCHOOL AND 
 COLLEGE 
 
 I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 I DO not know that I could make entirely 
 clear to an outsider the pleasure I have 
 in teaching. I had rather earn my living by 
 teaching than in any other way. In my 
 mind, teaching is not merely a life-work, 
 a profession, an occupation, a struggle : it 
 is a passion. I love to teach. I love to | 
 teach as a painter loves to paint, as a musi- 
 cian loves to play, as a singer loves to sing, 
 as a strong man rejoices to run a race. 
 Teaching is an art — an art so great and so 
 difficult to master that a man or a woman 
 can spend a long life at it, without realising 
 much more than his limitations and mis- 
 takes, and his distance from the ideal. But 
 
2 Teaching in School and College 
 
 the main aim of my happy days has been 
 to become a good teacher, just as every 
 architect wishes to be a good architect, and 
 every professional poet strives toward per- 
 fection. For the chief difference between 
 the ambition of an artist and the ambition 
 of a money-maker — both natural and hon- 
 ourable ambitions — is that the money- 
 maker is after the practical reward of his 
 toil, while the artist wants the inner satis- 
 faction that accompanies mastery. 
 
 Teaching is an art, not a science : and I 
 may as well confess at the start that I know 
 not any too much of the science of pedagogy. 
 I am unable, therefore, to use technical terms, 
 as I am not sure what they mean. I know 
 a great many children, boys and girls, 
 young men and maidens : but I have never 
 mastered any technical terminology, and 
 have never attempted to find the way to 
 a boy's heart by a scientific formula. The 
 science of pedagogy is to-day a recognised 
 branch of learning, and there are admirable 
 men and women who seem to have achieved 
 
Introductory 3 
 
 distinction in its pursuit; but I have been 
 too busy teaching and studying my own 
 speciality — English Literature — to give 
 any serious or prolonged attention to that 
 or any other science. I am not proud of 
 my ignorance, nor in the least disposed to 
 slur the importance of fields of knowledge 
 through which I have never passed. But 
 the study of pedagogy should invariably 
 be (and nowadays fortunately it invariably 
 is) accompanied with practical illustrations. 
 One might know all about the science of 
 pedagogy, and yet be a poor teacher of Latin, 
 English, French, or Mathematics ; just as 
 one might be able to pass a brilliant exami- 
 nation on the functions of the brain, and 
 yet not be an original or profound thinker. 
 Perhaps the ideal combination is that sug- 
 gested by Herbert Spencer in Education: 
 "Science will not make an artist. But in- 
 nate faculty alone will not suffice. Only 
 when Genius is married to Science can the 
 highest results be produced." The diffi- 
 culty is, that I, in common with most 
 
4 Teaching in School and College 
 
 teachers of literature, have neither genius 
 nor science. We are forced to substitute 
 sympathy, humour, devotion, and common- 
 sense. This book is written to help the 
 ordinary teacher, not the inspired genius ; 
 he is a rare bird, and no pedestrian can ^how 
 the way of an eagle in the air. 
 
 The noble ancient word Education has in 
 recent years been gradually taking the place 
 of the word Pedagogy ; and the art of teach- 
 ing can to a certain extent be taught, like 
 the art of drawing ; Normal Schools are 
 doing a work that cannot be done elsewhere. 
 The ablest professors of Education are 
 now employing their time and talents more 
 sensibly than formerly; they are studying 
 and teaching the history of education, and 
 they are endeavouring to connect school 
 and college in a logically progressive way. 
 
 The teacher must be a living sacrifice. 
 He should be consumed with ambition, but 
 his ambition should be to promote the wel- 
 fare of others, rather than to further his own 
 advancement. The great prizes of life — 
 
Introductory 5 
 
 wealth and fame — are not for him, and 
 must be resolutely forgotten at the outset. 
 His aim is twofold : the enlargement of 
 knowledge in his chosen field, and the ele- 
 vation of his pupils. I say he is a living 
 sacrifice, because he must give up not only 
 the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and 
 the pride of life, but also what seems to him 
 important work, when the needs of his pupils 
 require it. The teacher must be accessible. 
 Personal contact with the student is all- 
 important. Every teacher in school or 
 college should have regular office hours out- 
 side of his lectures or recitations, where he 
 may be consulted. But he cannot stop 
 there. Even if interrupted at other times, 
 and when engaged in special study, by the 
 visit of a student, he should drop his work 
 and see him — except under extraordinary 
 circumstances, like ill health, writing that 
 must be finished at a certain hour, or some 
 real emergency. "That one soul should 
 remain in ignorance who was capable of 
 knowledge, that I call a tragedy." We hear 
 
6 Teaching in School and College 
 
 a great deal to-day about "original work," 
 "productive work," but the truly productive 
 work on the part of the teacher is the work 
 that produces results in the mind and in the 
 character of his pupils, and they remember 
 the personal contact, the timely hint, the 
 friendly attitude, long after they have for- 
 gotten the answers they studied for the 
 examination. Such men as Dean Briggs of 
 Harvard and Dean Wright of Yale have been 
 productive in the highest sense of the word. 
 The life of a devoted and conscientious 
 teacher has much hardship, nervous strain, 
 drudgery, and petty annoyance ; therefore, 
 no one should become a teacher who does 
 not love his art, and who is not actuated by 
 a sincere desire to perform some service in 
 the world. A high purpose "makes drudg- 
 ery divine." But there are selfish compen- 
 sations and rewards in the teaching pro- 
 fession, just as there are in all others. Aca- 
 demic life in school or college is delightful to 
 men and women of scholarly tastes ; one is 
 removed from the sordid and material side 
 
Introductory 7 
 
 of the struggle, and one's associations and 
 friendships are based on a community of 
 intellectual interest. One does not dwell in 
 a daily atmosphere of cloth and pork, and it 
 is a blessed thing to be indifferent to the 
 stock-market. I have never read through 
 a stock report or a newspaper column of 
 stock quotations. I do not even understand 
 the meaning of such expressions as "pre- 
 ferred stock" or "debentures." In view of 
 my gross ignorance of these things, I try to 
 refrain from too arrogant criticism of the 
 morality of business men and politicians, 
 who in the dust and heat face problems that 
 never come to me, and of which I really 
 know nothing. I heard a commercial travel- 
 ler say that in two weeks he had to meet more 
 temptations than the man who did his work 
 in a chair faced in a year. We teachers 
 have, or ought to have, peace of mind. I 
 took luncheon in a down-town merchants' 
 club in New York, and I have not forgotten 
 the anxious and worried faces of the candi- 
 dates for indigestion. Then I brought a 
 
8 Teaching in School and College 
 
 business man for the first time in his life to 
 lunch at a club in a small university town 
 where most of the members were engaged in 
 daily work of a non-material kind. His 
 sole comment was, "How happy everyone 
 seems in this place !" The teacher also has 
 the summer vacation, which he spends in 
 study, in travel, or in rest — at any rate he 
 has the chance to acquire new ideas by the 
 change from routine. Furthermore, the 
 teacher has, except in war-time, intellec- 
 tual freedom — a wonderful thing. He can 
 think and say what he likes. The man of 
 business must be careful to say nothing that 
 will injure his affairs, or those of his em- 
 ployers ; the lawyer is naturally forced to 
 make his convictions, if possible, coincide 
 with those of his clients ; the politician is 
 eternally thinking of his constituents, of 
 his "fences," or of his party ; but in a high- 
 class university the professor has a free 
 mind and a free tongue. This is proved by 
 the way teachers in the same institution 
 differ openly on everything from God to the 
 
Introductory 9 
 
 tariff. President Eliot told me once, and 
 I think it a fine saying, "Prudence is not 
 an especially desirable virtue in a college 
 professor." 
 
 But all these are selfish considerations, put 
 in here simply to make the picture true. 
 The real compensation is in the very hap- 
 piness of teaching, of practising a great art 
 that one loves with all one's soul. And still 
 more satisfactory is the delight of having 
 permanently influenced certain pupils, of 
 having made their lives richer, fuller, and 
 better. I sat in the smoking-car of the little 
 branch train leaving the Grand Canyon in 
 Arizona. The regular fireman of the loco- 
 motive had a day off, and he came and sat 
 with me. I said to him, "This has been a 
 new experience for me, this Canyon ; it 
 is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. 
 Does it affect you the same way ? Of course 
 you see it every day. Does it seem won- 
 derful to you 1 or is it just the beginning 
 and the end of the day's run ? " He 
 replied, "Do you want to know what I 
 
lo Teaching in School and College 
 
 think of it ?" and then he quoted word for 
 word the whole pf Bryant's Thanatopsis. 
 Now I suppose some poor, underpaid school- 
 mistress had taught the boy that poem, and 
 this was her reward. Can one ask for any- 
 thing better ? Active gratitude and friend- 
 ship on the part of the pupil toward the 
 teacher are most encouraging and gratify- 
 ing; but often where there is no display of 
 feeling, and no sign of recognition, the real 
 work has been done, and done with per- 
 manent results. And so long as the pupils 
 live, the teacher is not forgotten. I re- 
 member every teacher I ever had. Some I 
 recall with gratitude and reverence, some 
 with cordial dislike, some almost with pity ; 
 but I have forgotten none. 
 
 There never has been in the world's his- 
 tory a period when it was more worth while 
 to be a teacher than in the twentieth cen- 
 tury ; for there was never an age when such 
 vast multitudes were eager for an education, 
 or when the necessity of a liberal education 
 
Introductory 1 1 
 
 was so generally recognised. The astound- 
 ing growth of institutions like the Corre- 
 spondence Schools has surprised even their 
 most optimistic promoters. It would seem 
 as though the whole world were trying to 
 lift itself to a higher plane of thought. And 
 to those of us who teach literature, it is 
 pleasant to remember, that, while trash sells 
 by the thousand, reprints of standard works 
 sell by the million. It is a great thing to 
 be a teacher in these present years of grace ! 
 
II 
 
 SCHOOL-TEACHING AND DISCIPLINE 
 
 THE disciples called Our Lord "Teacher" 
 — a beautiful word ; when people were 
 in difficulties, they came to Him for help : 
 "Teacher, what shall we do ?" In country 
 schools one hears it to-day, and it is very 
 pretty. The child, finding the problem too 
 much for its abilities, addresses the pale 
 woman at the desk : "Teacher, will you help 
 me with this ?" The Authorised Version 
 translated the Greek word "teacher" into 
 "master," the then English equivalent, and 
 the word survives in our private schools 
 even unto this day. The teacher must be 
 a Leader, a Master, in many cases a Lion- 
 tamer, a manager of wild beasts. It is essen- 
 tial, then, that the man or woman who teaches 
 should have a strong personality, a domi- 
 nant, fearless disposition. He is the Captain 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 1 3 
 
 of the ship, and is as much alone in the school- 
 room as the captain is alone with his crew 
 on the high seas. Those who have never 
 taught have no idea of the loneliness and 
 responsibility of a school-teacher shut up 
 in a big schoolroom with a pack of wild boys 
 and girls. The teacher can consult outside 
 of hours with his superiors or colleagues ; 
 he can get advice and talk over his difficulties. 
 But when he goes into the schoolroom, shuts 
 the door, takes the lonely seat behind the 
 desk, and looks into the shining morning 
 faces, then he is thrown back absolutely on 
 himself. No power on earth can help him, 
 and nothing can save the situation if he 
 makes a blunder. There he needs all his re- 
 sources, all his courage, and infinite patience. 
 I remember when I first taught school, 
 hardly more than a boy myself, I was sent 
 in evenings to preside over "study hour." 
 This meant that I was to sit behind a desk 
 in a big room filled with healthy boys, and 
 see that no one spoke or made a noise for an 
 hour. I could not interest them, for I, too, 
 
14 Teaching in School and College 
 
 must say nothing. They came jostling, 
 tumbling, hilariously, in; I rang a bell, 
 which meant instant silence. That bell 
 gave forth no uncertain sound; I put my 
 whole personality into my finger as I pressed 
 the electric button, and I tried to make it 
 trill just the psychological length of time, 
 neither too short nor too long. Yet every 
 time I rang that bell I wondered if they 
 would really obey. They did, but I never 
 recovered from my amazement at the mir- 
 acle. I used to look at them as they sat over 
 their tasks with puckered brow and wonder, 
 since they were so many and united, and I 
 was all alone, why they did not devour me. 
 To-day, when I see in a big public school, a 
 thin, anaemic woman sit behind a desk and 
 control a roomful! of young myrmidons, I 
 marvel at the mysterious force of the individ- 
 ual soul. 
 
 For the actual teaching in a school is the 
 least of the teacher's difficulties. Children 
 must be led, must be controlled ; order and 
 discipline must somehow be maintained, or 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 15 
 
 the teacher must seek another situation. 
 In a private boarding-school the personal 
 contact is much closer and much more pro- 
 longed. One cannot leave his task, as the 
 workman drops his hammer at the stroke of 
 twelve. In the school where I learned to 
 teach, I rose at seven, presided over a break- 
 fast-table, taught various classes from half 
 past eight to one, played outdoors with boys 
 in the afternoon (how fortunate for me that 
 I loved sports even more than the pupils 
 did), presided at the dinner-table, presided 
 at study hour, and then went upstairs to 
 see that the smaller boys took their hot 
 baths and retired in good order. Energy, 
 cheerfulness, patience, and sympathy are all 
 helpful. 
 
 In teaching a class, either in boarding- 
 school or day-school, or, for that matter, in 
 college, certain practical hints may be not 
 impertinent here. Nothing is too minute 
 or too trivial that concerns the great art of 
 teaching. Constant and tremendous enthu- 
 siasm for the subject taught is essential. 
 
1 6 Teaching in School and College 
 
 While one is actually teaching it, this thing, 
 whatever it may be, should seem to be the 
 most important thing in time or eternity. 
 The late President Harper, who was one of 
 the most brilliant teachers I have ever 
 known, told me that he had taught the first 
 verse of the first chapter of Genesis I have 
 forgotten how many thousand times. I 
 remarked that he always seemed enthusiastic. 
 He said: "Sometimes I feel wildly enthu- 
 siastic ; other times I have no enthusiasm at 
 all. When I have no enthusiasm, then I 
 create it." It is absurd that a teacher 
 should allow a headache or a sleepless night 
 to affect his teaching. If his health will 
 permit him to enter the classroom, he 
 must teach with zeal and vigour. 
 
 Just as enthusiasm and force are conta- 
 gious, so are lassitude and indifference. I 
 asked a student once what was the matter 
 with a certain teacher. "Well," he said, 
 "our classroom is a race." "A race?" 
 "Yes, it's a race to see who will get to sleep 
 first, the class or the teacher." There are 
 
School-teaching and DiscipUne 17 
 
 men and women engaged in teaching who 
 are such ciphers in the classroom that they 
 might just as well teach by telephone, and 
 have a phonograph on the desk to record the 
 pupils' answers. 
 
 And the teacher who emanates force, in 
 some altogether mysterious manner, gets it 
 back. The students react on the man be- 
 hind the desk. I do not know how many 
 times I have risen in the morning feeling so 
 weary and ill that I wondered if I could get 
 to the college. Then at the end of the hour's 
 teaching, I have felt a veritable glow of life 
 and energy. I know that virtue has gone out 
 of me, but some kind of vigour has taken its 
 place. 
 
 A teacher should never begin with an 
 apology — ignorance of the subject, lack of 
 time, ill health, etc. But a teacher should 
 never bluff. Every man or woman should 
 acknowledge a mistake when pointed out to 
 him by a pupil, and be grateful for it. 
 "Every schoolboy knows" things that the 
 teacher has forgotten, or perhaps never 
 
1 8 Teaching in School and College 
 
 knew. Hardly a man on any college faculty 
 could pass all the entrance requirements. 
 And if a student asks a question which the 
 teacher cannot answer, confess ignorance 
 at once. This will sometimes happen in 
 one's own subject. No matter. The stu- 
 dents respect a teacher who is truthful, and 
 will believe him when he does speak out of an 
 abundance of knowledge. The very first 
 pupils to see through a teacher who dodges 
 questions or attempts to cover ignorance are 
 the bluffers, for they understand the art of 
 bluffing by experience, and cannot be fooled. 
 Once a teacher has a reputation for bluffing, 
 he is lost. The students who cheat and the 
 students who bluff never forgive a teacher 
 for these sins. They exact a much higher 
 standard of us than they set for themselves. 
 This is quite right. We are their leaders. 
 
 Never praise an individual pupil in the 
 presence of the class. This is fatal, for the 
 teacher must not be suspected of having 
 favourites. And it is hard on the one 
 praised, as he will soon find out. It is 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 19 
 
 difficult resolutely to refrain from doing 
 this. There are times when the recitation 
 drags abominably, when a succession of 
 failures or utterly stupid answers makes the 
 teacher's heart sick. Then he calls on the 
 one boy or girl who is always prepared, 
 always attentive, always intelligent. A 
 brilliant answer is balm to the soul, but no 
 comment on it should be made. The way 
 to encourage good pupils, stimulate their 
 ambition, and get the very best out of them, 
 is to ask them singly to remain after class, 
 or to seize an opportunity when it presents 
 itself, and express pleasure in their efforts, 
 suggest a good book to read, or let them see 
 in some way that they have attracted your 
 attention and made an impression on your 
 mind. A student never forgets an encour- 
 aging private word, when it is given with 
 sincere respect and admiration. I once 
 asked a college junior to remain a moment 
 as the class was passing out, and when we 
 were alone, I told him how much I appre- 
 ciated his work. He said that that was the 
 
20 Teaching in School and College 
 
 first time in his life either in school or col- 
 lege that any teacher had spoken to him 
 personally and commended his efforts. Of 
 course he outdid himself after that, know- 
 ing that I expected great things of him, 
 and he later became a specialist in the 
 subject I was teaching. 
 
 If it is important, and I am sure it is, 
 never to praise an individual student in the 
 presence of the class, it is far more important 
 never to make fun of a dull student, or a 
 bad recitation ; and it is an absolute rule, to 
 which there are no exceptions under any 
 conceivable circumstances, never to use 
 sarcasm toward an individual student be- 
 fore his mates. This may become a terribly 
 dangerous habit, and it is one that grows 
 with astonishing speed. The teacher is 
 doing a cheap and utterly contemptible 
 thing — raising a laugh at the expense of an 
 individual who is at his mercy. It is an 
 awkward thing to play with souls. You 
 may arouse momentary admiration for your 
 wit, but it is probable that you have killed 
 
School-teaching and DiscipHne 21 
 
 forever the chance to influence the victim 
 of your tyranny. This boy or girl is lost to 
 you, and sometimes years later he will 
 remember you with a flush of anger. It is 
 difficult to avoid sarcasm and ridicule in 
 certain instances — some students leave 
 such wonderful openings and supply such 
 golden opportunities for your wit. Resist 
 this temptation. 
 
 Treat good and bad recitations with 
 apparently equal respect. Teachers are 
 always eager to have their pupils respect 
 them, but how many teachers really respect 
 their pupils ? There are teachers who lis- 
 ten to good recitations or to requests for 
 information with grinning condescension, 
 and to poor recitations with contempt. 
 Assume that every pupil is seriously inter- 
 ested and doing his best, and you will have 
 less trouble. We had a teacher at school 
 when I was a boy who began each recitation 
 by calling on two or three, and then wearily 
 remarked, "Now we'll hear from the dunces." 
 These latter felt classified, and made no 
 
22 Teaching in School and College 
 
 attempt to rise from the slough. If a stu- 
 dent makes systematically bad or stupid 
 recitations, speak to him privately : "This 
 subject seems very difficult to you. I am 
 sorry to be forced every day to give you a 
 low mark. Unless you improve, you must 
 know you cannot possibly pass. Is there 
 .any suggestion I can make that will help 
 you ?" A little conversation like that can- 
 not do any harm, and may accomplish much 
 good. The pupil will be cured of any sus- 
 picion that the teacher is "down on him" 
 (a common superstition among students), 
 he will know that the teacher is not indiffer- 
 ent, but really anxious that he should do 
 better, and he will make that renewed effort 
 that invariably follows personal attention. 
 Always remember that the business of the 
 teacher is not to see how difficult and odious 
 he can make his subject, not to see how many 
 boys and girls he can catch off their guard, 
 not to blow out the lamp of the mind with 
 the chill wind of indifference, but to get the 
 highest results out of each individual stu- 
 dent committed to his care. 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 23 
 
 The teacher should never lose his temper 
 in the presence of the class. If a man, he 
 may take refuge in profane soliloquies ; if a 
 woman, she may follow the example of one 
 sweet-faced and apparently tranquil girl — 
 go out in the yard and gnaw a post ; but 
 there must be no display of rage before the 
 clear eyes of children. When I taught 
 school, there were times when the indiffer- 
 ence, stupidity, flippancy, or silliness of the 
 class brought me suddenly to such a pitch of 
 rage, that I dared not trust myself to speak ; 
 I would clutch the arms of my chair, and 
 swallow foam until I felt complete self- 
 command ; then I could speak with quiet 
 gravity. The boys all saw what was the 
 matter with me, and learned something not 
 in the book. I can still feel on my face the 
 claws of a female teacher who put them there 
 forty years ago. I suppose I was inatten- 
 tive, or whispering to my neighbour, or doing 
 something forbidden : the woman suddenly 
 left the platform, rushed down the aisle, 
 seized me on the mouth, and apparently 
 
24 Teaching in School and College 
 
 tried to dislocate my jaw. It was impres- 
 sive, but not edifying. Every time a teacher 
 flies into a passion in the schoolroom, he is 
 sure either to do or to say something foolish 
 — something that for the moment brings 
 him below the level of the intelligence of the 
 flock. He will bitterly regret it afterwards, 
 for he will find that it is harder to climb 
 than to fall, and he has all that lost ground 
 to recover. 
 
 When penalties must be given, it is better 
 to give them more in sorrow than in anger. 
 I have seen teachers who threw out penalties 
 in impetuous rage, losing all the moral effect 
 of the punishment. I have seen other 
 teachers impose penalties with a triumphant 
 laugh, as though they were playing a game 
 with the children, and had made a clever 
 checkmate. "Ha ! ha ! that will cost you 
 two marks ! " A healthy child then sets 
 his brain to work in the endeavour next 
 time to outwit the antagonist. "Stinking 
 old fool ! I'll show him ! " says the lad 
 to himself. Penalties should be given as 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 25 
 
 though they hurt the teacher as much as 
 the criminal, as though for the moment 
 the boy had really sunk low in the teacher's 
 good opinion, had done something that 
 only continuous good behaviour could re- 
 pair. It is well to have a moment of elo- 
 quent silence intervene between the offence 
 and the punishment, and then have the 
 penalty fall like fate. 
 
 For this reason, bad marks for misbe- 
 haviour and disciplinary penalties should be 
 given as seldom as possible. Familiarity 
 breeds contempt. Those teachers who are 
 always handing down demerits are always 
 having trouble. Every penalty should be 
 an event in the life of the pupil. It is inter- 
 esting to observe how lightly children re- 
 gard the very same penalty when inflicted 
 by one teacher, and how deeply it hurts when 
 inflicted by another. The reason is that 
 children have no respect for some teachers, 
 while for others they will do everything to 
 stand high in their regard. And while it is 
 important to give penalties very rarely, it Is 
 
26 Teaching in School and College 
 
 still more important never to take them off. 
 The pupil must realise that when he receives 
 a bad mark, nothing on earth can remove it. 
 I well remember two teachers in the same 
 school. One began the year by giving out 
 demerits very freely and for the most trivial 
 things ; then at the end of the school day, 
 the culprits flocked around him, begging 
 him to remove certain of the afflictions, 
 promising to do better, saying they did not 
 mean to be bad. To some he yielded. 
 The result was that for months he had to go 
 through this process every day, and when- 
 ever a boy received a penalty, he had the 
 hope of getting it cancelled. The other 
 teacher gave only two or three demerits the 
 first week. Each boy came to him after- 
 ward, and asked for their removal. The 
 teacher said, "I am very sorry — I never 
 give a penalty if I can help it, but once given, 
 I shall never under any circumstances take 
 it off. Even if I find I have made a mis- 
 take, and given it to an innocent boy, I 
 shall not take it off. And I shall try not to 
 
School-teaching and DiscipHne 27 
 
 make any mistakes." After the first week, 
 no boy ever asked him to remove a bad mark, 
 but they all endeavoured to avoid receiving 
 one. 
 
 Whenever it is possible, — it is not always 
 possible, — it is best not to rebuke an individ- 
 ual by name in the presence of the class. 
 Sometimes this permanently antagonises the 
 victim, sometimes it makes a hero out of 
 him in the estimation of his mates. When 
 there is a little plague spot of irruption in 
 the class room, when there is individual dis- 
 order or inattention, it is better to speak to 
 the class as a whole, rather than to single 
 out one person by name. And if there is 
 one boy or girl who persists in repeated 
 offences of this nature, then it is well to 
 keep the culprit a moment after class, and, 
 after everyone has gone out, to talk very 
 frankly, very earnestly, but never angrily or 
 sarcastically with him. Sometimes this 
 method will result not only in complete ref- 
 ormation, but in transforming the individ- 
 ual from a leader of disturbance into an 
 
28 Teaching in School and College 
 
 influence for good order. Very few boys 
 or girls can resist a quiet personal talk. And 
 those who are wilfully and deliberately bad 
 are terribly afraid of it, because they suffer 
 such embarrassment and discomfort. I re- 
 member one boys' school where the teacher 
 was famous for these interviews, and the re- 
 mark of a young villain, "Say, I'd rather 
 he'd lick me any day than talk to me !" 
 
 It is a great advantage to a teacher to be 
 physically big and physically strong; and 
 if the teacher be a woman, to have robust 
 health. She will need it all in the course of 
 an average day. One admirable discipli- 
 nary officer in a college told me that in his 
 many years of teaching he had always thanked 
 God he was over six feet high. He could 
 generally look down on the offender, while 
 the poor wretch had to look up to him. 
 Still discipline, after all, is a matter of per- 
 sonality rather than avoirdupois. There 
 are men of colossal size who somehow 
 never succeed in enforcing discipline ; the 
 worst teacher I had in college was six feet 
 
School-teaching and DiscipUne 29 
 
 four. There are other men, small and un- 
 impressive at first sight, who would be 
 lost in a crowd, and yet who have no diffi- 
 culty in enforcing the most rigid discipline. 
 When I was five years old, I was sent to 
 the Webster public school in New Haven, 
 the "toughest" district school I ever saw. 
 The majority of the boys and girls came 
 from streets where no well-dressed boy 
 could walk with impunity. I remember 
 the horrible fear I had of "the micks 
 of Morocco Street," a fear well-founded, 
 for I was small even for my age, and fre- 
 quently suffered at the hands of these 
 merciless brigands. How my heart aches 
 now for the women who had to teach in that 
 school ! The unspeakably obscene language 
 of the boys at recess, the filth and dirt they 
 brought into the school room, the naive 
 gestures of physical necessity they made 
 when they raised the other hand for per- 
 mission to "go out," the insolent manner in 
 which they answered the teacher's questions, 
 the ribald laughter that resounded on occa- 
 
30 Teaching in School and College 
 
 sions skilfully prepared to produce it ! No 
 boy ever rose to recite without finding pins, 
 tacks (and I remember one file) put in his 
 chair to greet his downsitting — then the 
 howl of rage, the back-handed blow, and the 
 teacher's vain remonstrance. Spitballs, 
 heavy with their damp freight, flew around 
 the room, falling on the just and the unjust. 
 Not a day passed that the teacher did not 
 take out the whip, and lash the boys across 
 the palms. 
 
 Over this whirlwind of childish savagery, 
 disorder, corruption, and sin a little man sat 
 enthroned as principal. Mr. Lewis was the 
 supreme court, and no boy, however wicked 
 or fearless, spoke his name above an awed 
 whisper. Once in a while he would walk 
 through our room, very casually, without 
 looking at anybody. The most absolute si- 
 lence marked his advent. He seemed to me 
 to be about eleven feet high, and to breathe 
 forth threatening and slaughter. Years after- 
 ward, when I returned to New Haven, I saw 
 him, and marvelled at his tiny frame and 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 31 
 
 puny appearance. Was this gray-haired 
 little man the terror of my childhood ? 
 Yet the biggest, the roughest, and the most 
 daredevil boys in the school regarded him 
 with mortal terror. He stood serene and 
 quiet, the bulwark against anarchy. I 
 remember one terribly tough, strong Irish 
 lad, John Devanney, who was my hero. I 
 secretly sent him a Christmas present at the 
 school celebration, and he waved it at me 
 triumphantly, saying, "Huh ! my present is 
 a lot better than yours ! " He did not know 
 that I was the donor, and I did not dare tell 
 him. He was my hero, because when I 
 was whipped by the teacher, I cried ; when 
 he was whipped, he laughed. I can see him 
 now, standing up before the class, the female 
 teacher hitting his hand with the whip with 
 all her might, while he laughed condescend- 
 ingly at her feeble efforts. Yet she had her 
 trump card. When everything else failed, 
 she would say, "I will send you to Mr. 
 Lewis," and then the ruddy cheeks of the 
 great John Devanney turned pale with fear. 
 
32 Teaching in School and College 
 
 What Mr. Lewis did to these lads no one 
 else ever knew, but strange tales came from 
 those mysterious interviews. He was the 
 one salvation of the teachers, and for over 
 forty years he commanded the situation, 
 and made citizens somehow out of that un- 
 promising material. I remember one day, 
 coming out after school was over, he spoke 
 to me kindly, with a smile. I was in such 
 terror that I could say nothing ; but as soon 
 as I got around the corner, I ran for my life, 
 lest he should call me back and eat me. A 
 small man and a great personality ! 
 
 For the average boy or girl, with ordinary 
 health and ordinary ability, I believe the 
 public school is better than the private. It 
 is true that in a public school there are many 
 undesirable pupils — it is often a school of 
 bad manners. Girls may become vulgar 
 and slangy, boys may become coarse and 
 foul-mouthed. Good home influences, re- 
 ligious training, refinement, and the real 
 companionship of father and mother will 
 more than offset this. The small boy is a 
 
School-teaching and DiscipHne 33 
 
 naturally dirty little animal, and the lan- 
 guage, pictures, and associations in his envi- 
 ronment at a public school are often atro- 
 ciously bad. Still, the public school is an 
 absolute democracy — the only pure democ- 
 racy to be found in America. He lives in a 
 field of free competition — he rises or falls, 
 swims or sinks on his merits. In scholar- 
 ship he competes fairly with all his class- 
 mates, and the son of the labourer has the 
 same chance as the son of the millionnaire. 
 If he does not keep up to a certain grade, 
 down he goes to the lower room, and no 
 influence or outside aid can save him. The 
 schools are all crowded, and those who can- 
 not or will not study must drop out under 
 the merciless law of competition. His com- 
 rades, both boys and girls, are imbued 
 with the spirit of democracy, and God help 
 the little snob ! If he is fair and square, 
 asking no special favours, he will form many 
 friendships and stand high with his fellows. 
 If he is selfish, conceited, eccentric, his class- 
 mates will take it out of him, or drive him 
 
34 Teaching in School and College 
 
 away. He sees all kinds of life, learns the 
 pure and noble along with the vulgar and 
 obscene, and literally fights his way upward. 
 He learns to respect boys and girls for what 
 they are and for what they can do, rather 
 than for the backing they have or the homes 
 that support them. If he does not go to 
 college, he cannot graduate from a high 
 school without some knowledge of all sides 
 of human nature, and he is prepared to meet 
 and to understand all sorts of people. If 
 he does go to college, he will probably go 
 with better habits of study, with more ambi- 
 tion to excel in scholarship, and with rnore 
 self-reliance than if he came from a private 
 fitting school. 
 
 On the other hand, if a boy or girl is in 
 poor health, or very far behind in certain 
 studies, he is perhaps better off in a good pri- 
 vate school. He will learn good manners, 
 will associate with children of good breeding 
 for the most part, and will have definite per- 
 sonal moral and religious training. The 
 driving out of the Bible and prayers from 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 35 
 
 many public schools is a narrow-minded, 
 stupid, and silly policy, as the Bible and 
 Christianity are the real foundation of Anglo- 
 Saxon citizenship. In almost all private 
 schools the influences are positively good, 
 and the boys and girls who graduate from 
 them are at home in cultivated society. 
 Then the health of individual students is 
 carefully attended to, and those who are 
 backward in certain studies are personally 
 drilled and coached. If the boy goes to 
 college, he enters with a circle of friends, 
 and his way is easier and less lonely. For 
 this very reason, he may be less self-re- 
 liant, less independent, and apt to believe 
 that his little circle really constitutes public 
 opinion. Cowardice and conceit are no 
 more in favour in an exclusive private school 
 than they are elsewhere, though they may 
 not be eliminated by such drastic measures 
 as in a public institution. 
 
 If a boy goes to a private school after he 
 has attended a public one, it is sometimes 
 a happy combination. But there are some 
 
36 Teaching in School and Colleges 
 
 private schools that will not take pupils 
 after they have reached a certain age. On 
 the other hand, when a child goes to a pri- 
 vate school very young, he fails to become 
 really acquainted with his parents, and is 
 sometimes actually unfitted for domestic 
 life. There are boys who go to an exclusive 
 school at the age of ten ; they live only with 
 rich men'.s sons ; the summer vacations they 
 do not spend at home, but with house- 
 parties in the country, or camping out lux- 
 uriously in the woods, or travelling in Eu- 
 rope. Then they go to college, and then to a 
 professional school ; so that there are many 
 cases of boys who from the age of ten to the 
 age of twenty-six have hardly lived at home 
 at all — have practically lived in a bachelors' 
 club for sixteen years, and are unacquainted 
 with their parents. When their parents 
 are lacking in the character, morality, reli- 
 gion, refinement, and good sense necessary to 
 bring up children, this may be not so unfor- 
 tunate. 
 
 When a teacher, either in a public or a 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 37 
 
 private school, discovers and can prove that 
 a boy or girl is deliberately and wilfully bad, 
 and when all means undertaken for improve- 
 ment have failed, it is the manifest duty of 
 the teacher to see that this individual is per- 
 manently expelled from the institution. 
 Every teacher is in a position of trust; he 
 has a duty toward the parents who have 
 entrusted their children to his care. One 
 evil boy or girl can corrupt many others, and 
 can really lower the standard of an entire 
 institution. Expulsion is the sole .remedy. 
 I am convinced by observation that it is not 
 applied often enough, especially in private 
 schools. 
 
 Fathers and mothers can help the school 
 principal and the school-teacher immensely 
 not merely by taking an intelligent interest 
 in the studies of their children, talking with 
 them sympathetically about their lessons, 
 their teachers, and the general life of the 
 school, but by loyally supporting the dis- 
 cipline of the institution. There are many 
 foolish parents who take the child's part 
 
38 Teaching in School and College 
 
 when he imagines he has a grievance. Al- 
 though the normal mother loves her child 
 better than she loves herself, better than 
 she loves life, and although nothing fills 
 her with more delight than to have the child 
 make a good record at school, and nothing 
 tortures her more cruelly than to have the 
 child fall into disgrace, it is in nearly all cases 
 a bad thing for the child to have the mother 
 an active partisan against school discipline. 
 The parents can show the utmost tender- 
 ness toward their offspring, and the utmost 
 sympathy when misfortunes come, and yet 
 staunchly support the rules of the school. 
 No teacher ever expects that a mother will 
 believe her child to be wilfully bad, or will 
 admit it if she does believe it. I always 
 admire a mother when she comes to me and 
 says that her son has been unfortunate, per- 
 haps, or weak, but surely not evil ; if a 
 mother will not stand up for her son, who 
 will ? But parents, in the interests of their 
 children, should support school discipline, 
 even when their own lamb is gored. One of 
 
School-teaching and Discipline 39 
 
 the greatest difficuhies public school-teachers 
 have to contend with is the visit of an irate 
 father bringing his child, and insisting on 
 better treatment. In Europe when a boy- 
 gets a whipping at school, he receives an- 
 other when he conies home ; in America, 
 when a boy gets the whipping, the father 
 goes to school and tries to whip the teacher. 
 If a teacher occupies a subordinate posi- 
 tion either in school or college, subordinate 
 to the head of the department, or subordi- 
 nate to the principal, he should remember 
 that the obedience he demands from his 
 pupils must be shown by him toward those 
 higher in authority. Obey orders cheerfully, 
 and try to carry out faithfully the policy of 
 your superiors. If your Head is a man you 
 cannot respect, do the best you can under the 
 circumstances, and do not indulge in innu- 
 endo : if the circumstances become intoler- 
 able, leave as quietly as possible, and seek 
 another field for your efforts. But remem- 
 ber that it is possible you may be mistaken, 
 and the superior officer right. You do not 
 
40 Teaching in School and College 
 
 know it all. Work for the good of the insti- 
 tution, and not for yourself. Above all, 
 never try to create a party among the pupils, 
 never organise them into a personal sym- 
 pathetic body-guard. In matters of school 
 or college discipline or policy, never take the 
 pupils into your confidence. The business 
 of the teacher is not to give confidences, but 
 to receive them. 
 
Ill 
 
 PRIVATE SCHOOL-TEACHING AND SCHOLAR- 
 SHIP 
 
 WE hear a great deal nowadays of the 
 lack of enthusiasm for scholarship 
 among university students ; this is no local 
 issue, but a difficulty recognised everywhere, 
 and one lamented by every teacher. The 
 faculties of all American universities are 
 constantly busy devising schemes by which 
 the ambition of students may be stimulated, 
 and their attention occasionally diverted 
 to the curriculum. Some think this can be 
 accomplished by severe penalties for neglect 
 and indifference, others believe in the temp- 
 tation of prizes and the frequent publication 
 of honour lists. But from Seattle to Florida, 
 in urban and in country institutions, the 
 anxiety of the professors is audible : "What 
 can we do to make the students study ? " 
 
 41 
 
42 Teaching in School and College 
 
 Athletics are only one obstacle, and not the 
 most formidable; there are the secret 
 societies, which afflict schools as well as 
 colleges, and obsess the minds of ten times 
 the number of successful candidates ; there 
 are the undergraduate organisations, devoted 
 to almost every conceivable object except 
 the course of study ; there are the men who 
 are "working their way through," and have 
 no time to prepare any lessons ; there are the 
 college papers, where some young gentle- 
 men toil longer and harder than they ever 
 will again ; there are dances, concerts, 
 visits to a neighbouring city; there are 
 extraordinary and baffling cases of chronic 
 ill health and complicated dentistry, that 
 require frequent absences, and where the 
 patient is able to do everything except at- 
 tend classes ; there is the call of the blood. 
 In reading the Confessions of an Oxford 
 Don, I obtained much wicked delight in 
 finding that the same problems that trouble 
 American deans and faculties are in Eng- 
 land just as prominent and just as difficult 
 
Private Schools and Scholarship 43 
 
 to solve ; the Don especially lamented the 
 vast number of Oxonians who require the con- 
 stant attention of London dentists. But, 
 although extracurriculum activities are on 
 the increase, I do not think there is any less 
 enthusiasm for study than in former times. 
 I do not believe there was ever any epoch in 
 the world's history when the majority of 
 young men sincerely regarded hard appli- 
 cation to books as the joy of life. The real 
 difficulty that every professor has to con- 
 tend with is eternal youth. 
 
 How much love for study is there in the 
 home, and how much enthusiasm for learn- 
 ing in the private fitting schools ? If a 
 boy's father and mother bring him up among 
 books, if they intelligently discuss his school 
 courses and his general reading with him, 
 if their own opinions command his respect, 
 he will generally shine as an intellectual star 
 at college. Nay, if the boy's mother really 
 prefers her son's proficiency in scholarship 
 to his social success among his mates, he 
 will probably give the faculty no trouble. 
 
44 Teaching in School and College 
 
 Unfortunately, there are many silly mothers 
 who exalt membership in secret societies and 
 social popularity to such an extent that the 
 boy himself loses all sense of proportion. 
 And what a perpetual and unmitigated 
 nuisance a silly mother is to the head-master 
 of a school ! Visiting the school, petting 
 the already pampered weakling, siding with 
 him against discipline, asking for special 
 privileges, doing everything to destroy the 
 main object of his residence. 
 
 I have observed a paradox in some of our 
 more expensive private secondary schools. 
 The boy is occasionally morally superior to 
 his parents. Among the enormous variety 
 of privileges that a rich man can buy, is a 
 Christian education ; a religious environ- 
 ment for his offspring. There are cases 
 where a man without much or any religious 
 training himself, and without any enthusi- 
 asm for morality, sends his son to the very 
 best school, just as he "buys him the very 
 best clothes. Fortunately nearly all these 
 schools inculcate Christian manhood — the 
 
Private Schools and Scholarship 45 
 
 very atmosphere is religious. Thus we have 
 the paradox of a boy coming to college, living 
 absolutely sober and straight, taking a prom- 
 inent part in prayer-meetings and reli- 
 gious work ; and his parents are either 
 frivolous or dissipated, or both. An under- 
 graduate at Yale laid before me in all sin- 
 cerity this problem : "I do not want to 
 drink. Young as I am, I have seen many 
 people injured by excess, and I would rather 
 not drink at all. But what am I to do ? I 
 don't want to hurt father's feelings." 
 
 It is quite right that character should 
 be placed before scholarship — character 
 should be placed before everything else. 
 Yet the best schools are unconsciously in 
 one direction working against scholarship. 
 They must, of course, prepare the boy to pass 
 his college examinations, and they know how 
 to do it. But a boy may pass all kinds of 
 examinations, and yet have no real love of 
 learning and no ideal of scholarship. Men 
 of the world and jaunty journalists often 
 ridicule the great college athletes, and ironi- 
 
46 Teaching in School and College 
 
 cally ask if the half-back and the pitcher 
 understand the practical value of a college 
 education. They shake their heads over 
 the pictures of a drop-kicker, and remark 
 that when the lad gets out into the world, 
 he will find that his athletic reputation will 
 not help him in earning his living. But 
 as a matter of fact, exactly the contrary 
 is the case, and humorously enough, it is 
 particularly the case in those fields of human 
 endeavour that are ostensibly scholarly. 
 The shortest cut to an immediate big salary 
 in school-teaching is not by the curriculum 
 route, but through the foot-ball gridiron. 
 In the attempt to secure a good position as 
 a school-teacher, the valedictorian stands 
 absolutely no chance whatever against the 
 captain of the football team. Every year 
 I observe the same curiosity : three or four 
 seniors, intelligent and scholarly, members 
 of Phi Beta Kappa, trying hard to find a 
 position to teach school, and in the end 
 forced to accept a low salary ; while two or 
 three of their classmates, whose fame rests 
 
Private Schools and Scholarship 47 
 
 solely on athletics, have an embarrassment 
 of choice, and are offered really extraordi- 
 nary sums to teach Latin, or English, or 
 Mathematics or History in excellent private 
 schools. I should, therefore, advise all young 
 men who wish to teach, not to neglect their 
 studies, but to achieve as much distinction 
 in athletics as their bodily frame will per- 
 mit. It is a great financial asset. 
 
 The constant letters that I receive from 
 school principals and head-masters all say 
 the same thing. They indicate a distrust 
 of pure scholarship. "What I want is a 
 Man, not a Scholar." To one principal I 
 wrote to the effect that the prominent under- 
 graduate he was after was a fine fellow, but 
 had no intention of devoting his life to 
 teaching : he merely wished to teach for two 
 years to accumulate a sum of money, and 
 was then going to study law. "So much 
 the better," came the immediate reply; 
 "men who want to teach are useless. Give 
 me the all-around good fellow, man of sense, 
 physical strength, and personal charm. The 
 
48 Teaching in School and College 
 
 fact that he does not want to become a 
 teacher is the best possible qualification." 
 What then are we to expect ? If gold rust, 
 what shall iron do ? 
 
 I remember the pathetic reply given by 
 one scholarly candidate to a head-master. 
 The latter asked what he could do in athlet- 
 ics, and the poor starveling replied, "I 
 can swim." He was rejected. Athletics, 
 of course, give young teachers a great influ- 
 ence over boys. When I was twenty-three 
 years old, I secured a position to teach in a 
 private school, and although I was not 
 chosen on my athletic record, for I had none, 
 I was exceedingly glad when I came to per- 
 form my duties, that I could play base-ball, 
 football, tennis, and hockey as well as any 
 of the boys I taught History. I had always 
 loved, and always shall love, athletic sports, 
 and this fact made my teaching and my 
 discipline comparatively easy for me. 
 
 The great difficulty is that in most in- 
 stances where teachers are selected, not for 
 their scholarship, or for their love of teach- 
 ing, but for their foot-ball and base-ball 
 
Private Schools and Scholarship 49 
 
 records, it is impossible for them to communi- 
 cate to the boys a real enthusiasm for learn- 
 ing. A man cannot give what he does not 
 possess, and what he has never understood. 
 The result is that many of our colleges are 
 filled with splendid young men for whom the 
 curriculum is either a side issue or a positive 
 nuisance. I see no escape from this vicious 
 circle in the relations of fitting schools and 
 colleges. The head-masters must have 
 young teachers of energy, and magnetism, 
 whom the boys will love and follow; but 
 so long as scholarship is at a discount in the 
 selection of teachers, we cannot wonder at 
 the lack of enthusiasm for study displayed 
 by undergraduates. The ideal is where 
 the athlete is also a very high scholar, and 
 this fortunately sometimes occurs ; but I 
 have known instances where the athlete was 
 either so stupid or so indifferent that he 
 remained for four years close to the foot of 
 the class, had the utmost difficulty in getting 
 his degree, and was then immediately offered 
 an enormous salary to teach ! 
 
50 Teaching in School and College 
 
 I am not, of course, blaming the head-mas- 
 ters : I am merely trying to explain a situa- 
 tion. And it must be remembered that great 
 athletes are often better taught in athletics 
 than they are in their college classrooms. 
 They know what good teaching and faith- 
 ful drill mean, and perhaps they are able to 
 apply this knowledge when it comes to 
 teaching something like Latin or English. 
 Every teacher and professor in the country 
 ought to go at least once to foot-ball practice, 
 and watch the patient, energetic, and efficient 
 coaching. It is real teaching. I learned a 
 great deal watching a Yale graduate who had 
 come all the .way from Minnesota to New 
 Haven to give instruction in foot-ball to a 
 few candidates. He took two men to a cor- 
 ner of the field, and for over an hour drilled 
 them on one minute point of the game. He 
 went over this experiment at least a hun- 
 dred times with absolutely unflagging energy 
 and enthusiasm. I saw a great light, and 
 taught English literature better the next 
 morning. 
 
IV 
 
 IMAGINATION IN TEACHING 
 
 IF a teacher wishes success with pupils, 
 he must inflame their imagination. 
 The lesson should put the classroom under 
 the spell of an illusion, like a great drama. 
 Everything abstract, so far as possible, must 
 be avoided, and there must be a sedulous 
 cultivation of the concrete. If a pupil feels 
 the reality of any subject, feels its relation 
 to actual life, half the battle is gained. 
 Terms must be clothed in flesh and blood. 
 When I was a very small boy, my mother 
 told me that every night when I went to bed I 
 must surely not leave out the stopple in the 
 fixed water basin ; to neglect this was danger- 
 ous to health, she said. But she insisted that 
 it was still more important — I don't yet 
 know why — not to leave any standing water 
 in the basin. These two things she impressed 
 
 SI 
 
52 Teaching in School and College 
 
 on my mind. I immediately invented names 
 for the two dangers. I called them "Cap- 
 tain Stoppleout" and "General Standing 
 Water," thus indicating not only that they 
 were formidable military foes to be over- 
 come, but indicating also the difference in 
 their rank. 
 
 It is much easier to teach History and Liter- 
 ature with imagination than it is Mathe- 
 matics ; yet there are great teachers of 
 Mathematics who have made the subject 
 actually alive. They are rare. One reason 
 why I was a dunce in Mathematics was be- 
 cause I could not get an imaginative hold of 
 it. Propositions in Geometry interested me 
 not in the least. Suppose ABC did equal 
 DEF, what of it ? Parallel lines do not 
 meet — who cares ? If I could only have 
 seen them as two dear and intimate friends, 
 doing their best to get together, struggling 
 with all their might to touch each other, and 
 yet in vain — with the empty assurance that 
 they would meet in infinity, a kind of com- 
 fortless Nirvana ! Professor Andrew W. 
 
Imagination in Teaching 53 
 
 Phillips of Yale, an admirable teacher of 
 Mathematics, taught the subject with poetic 
 imagination and irresistible humour and ob- 
 tained good results from most of his pupils. 
 I read in a German play that the mathemati- 
 cian is like a man who lives in a glass room 
 at the top of a mountain covered with eternal 
 snow — he sees eternity and infinity all 
 about him, but not much humanity. 
 
 There is something fundamentally wrong 
 about the teaching of foreign languages in 
 our American schools. I cannot give the 
 remedy, because, if I were to teach these 
 subjects, even supposing that I had the 
 necessary training and knowledge, I fear I 
 should not get any better results. I studied 
 Latin six years, four at school and two at 
 college; I studied Greek five years, three 
 at school and two at college. Both subjects 
 have always been a great inspiration to me, 
 and I would not be without this foundation 
 for anything. Yet here is the wretched 
 truth. Although I always did well in both 
 studies, and received as high marks in Latin 
 
54 Teaching in School and College 
 
 and Greek as I obtained low ones in Mathe- 
 matics, at the end of all these years of patient 
 and continuous study I could not for the life 
 of me read a page of easy Latin or Greek at 
 sight. As Upton Sinclair has said, the lines 
 were full of words whose appearance was 
 familiar, but whose meaning I did not know. 
 And the teaching of French and German in 
 schools and colleges is singularly barren of 
 practical results. I had secured a comfort- 
 able seat in a railway carriage at Nurem- 
 berg, the carriage on the outside having an 
 enormous sign, Nach Munchen. At the last 
 moment two men, father and son, sprang in 
 breathlessly, placed their bags in the racks, 
 and then suddenly the young gentleman 
 cried, " Father, does nach mean not ? " 
 "Yes," said the parental authority. "Then 
 we are in the wrong train !" and they both 
 began feverishly to drag down their baggage. 
 I quieted their fears, by telling them that the 
 train was going to Munich, their desired 
 haven. Apart from the fact that it would 
 be a curious railway policy to mark the name 
 
Imagination in Teaching ^^ 
 
 of a town whither a train was not going, I 
 was a Httle surprised that so familiar a word 
 as nach was unknown to Americans travelling 
 in Germany. I said to the handsome youth, 
 "I suppose you have never studied Ger- 
 man ? " "Oh, yes, I have," and he told me 
 that very June he had successfully passed 
 the entrance requirement in German at a 
 great Eastern university ! 
 
 Faithful, minute grammatical training 
 is an absolute essential when one begins to 
 study a dead or living tongue. But the 
 letter killeth. Grammar without imme- 
 diate and specific application is simply an 
 unrelated exercise of memory. How faith- 
 fully I learned the pages of the Latin and 
 Greek grammar, without knowing in the 
 least what to do with my store of facts ! 
 Once, when I repeated like a parrot the end- 
 ings of all Latin feminine nouns — of the 
 third declension, was it ? — I rebelled, and 
 remarked in the schoolroom, immediately 
 after my triumphant rapid-fire perform- 
 ance, "I don't see the use of all this." The 
 
56 Teaching in School and College 
 
 teacher gave me a stinging rebuke, saying it 
 was my business to learn what I was told, 
 and not to question methods that I knew 
 nothing about. I can remember even now 
 the prepositions that are followed by the 
 subjunctive, and while dressing in the morn- 
 ing I used to sing, to an improvised tune, 
 those that govern the ablative case. The 
 ablative case, God save the mark ! 
 
 When we studied Cgesar's Commentaries 
 on the Gallic War, a wonderful book, written 
 by one of the most interesting men that ever 
 lived, I had no idea that Caesar wrote sense : 
 I thought he wrote only sentences. Once 
 more, the grammar is essential ; but has it 
 importance in itself, or only as a help to 
 the understanding ? "All Gaul is divided 
 into three parts." What is the most impor- 
 tant fact in that sentence ? Why, the most 
 important fact is just what it says, that the 
 country is divided into three parts. It 
 would be a tremendously important fact if 
 the United States were divided Into three 
 parts. Yet our teachers seemed to think the 
 
Imagination in Teaching 57 
 
 important fact in that striking first sentence 
 was that Gaul was the subject, and, there- 
 fore, nominative. The grammatical con- 
 struction of the phrase rather than its living 
 meaning was the thing invariably insisted 
 on, although we were reading a book full of 
 history and human nature. 
 
 Some time later, when we were studying 
 the Civil War with Mr. Bernadotte Perrin, 
 he recommended us to read Froude's Sketch 
 of Casar. I read this with extraordinary 
 delight, almost with shouts of joy. What a 
 man ! Later I saw the situation clearly. 
 Here was Caesar, a brilliant statesman ; 
 Cassius, a professional politician ; Brutus, a 
 Mugwump. Brutus was the type of sincere 
 reformer, whose ideals were greater than his 
 practical judgment. Wishing to reform the 
 state, he unconsciously played into the hands 
 of a skilful and unscrupulous professional 
 politician, Cassius, and between them they 
 succeeded in killing the most useful man In 
 the world. 
 
 The Latin language must be taught : the 
 
58 Teaching in School and College 
 
 teacher cannot spend the time needed for 
 drill, in telling interesting and entertaining 
 historical anecdotes. But a word in season, 
 how good is it ! How it makes the whole 
 subject alive and real, and with what energy 
 a student will study when his imagination 
 is deeply touched ! When we were in college 
 one of our Latin teachers was Mr. Ambrose 
 Tighe, now a lawyer in St. Paul. Besides 
 teaching us Latin, he told us about Roman 
 history, Roman institutions, Roman poli- 
 tics, Roman personalities. It was a delight 
 to enter his class-room, for he was a living 
 inspiration. But in doing all this, he in- 
 curred the displeasure of higher powers, and 
 had to leave. They felt he was too "popu- 
 lar," too superficial, and that he shirked the 
 hard work of teaching Latin in order to give 
 interesting talks. 
 
 But the teacher who teaches History or 
 Literature, and does not set fire to the im- 
 agination of his pupils, is a failure. Mr. 
 James Whitcomb Riley says that, when a 
 boy at school, he especially hated History. 
 
Imagination in Teaching 59 
 
 "It was a dull and julceless thing." Such a 
 pupil must have had a desperately bad 
 teacher to entertain such a view of History. 
 The teacher is an active force, not a tele- 
 phone receiver. In the high school, I 
 remember only too well our lessons in Greek 
 History. We filed into the room : the 
 accomplished lady at the desk touched a 
 bell. She called my name. I rose con- 
 fidently, for I loved History, and especially 
 Greek History. She said, "Well, begin." 
 I thought I had not heard aright. "What 
 did you say?" "I said, Begin"; and she 
 got her marking-book ready. To the next 
 pupil, she said, "Go on." These were the 
 only comments she ever made. Seeing what 
 was wanted, I thereafter learned that 
 Aristides got his come-uppance six lines 
 from the bottom of the left-hand page ; 
 that the battle of Marathon began in the 
 second paragraph of page so-and-so ; and I 
 obtained eventually a good mark. Fortu- 
 nately, she could not kill my love of History, 
 for I have read it as child and man with 
 
6o Teaching in School and College 
 
 sympathetic imagination. I wept bitterly- 
 over the downfall of the Athenian expe- 
 dition to Syracuse. How I admired Pe- 
 rikles, how I loved Athens, how I hated 
 Sparta ! With what raptures of delight I 
 followed the career of Epaminondas ! To 
 this day, I cannot think of the battle of the 
 Metaurus in Roman history, and Hannibal's 
 awful disappointment, without a sad sink- 
 ing of the heart. And although I have not 
 seen for thirty years the school history of 
 Rome we studied, I remember word for 
 word the rather rhetorical flourish with 
 which the historian described Hannibal's 
 last hopeless years in Italy. " For four long 
 years, in that wild and mountainous country, 
 with unabated courage and astounding 
 tenacity, the dying lion clung to the land 
 that had been so long the theatre of his 
 glory." 
 
 What I regret is, that, owing to stupid and 
 incompetent teaching, my schoolmates 
 hated History with all their might. 
 
 Take the sentence, "Hannibal crossed the 
 
Imagination in Teaching 6i 
 
 Alps, and descended into Italy." Here are 
 eight words, and how shall we teach them so 
 that the pupil will never forget this extraor- 
 dinary feat ? There are some minds to 
 whom the most important facts in this sen- 
 tence are that Hannibal is the subject, the 
 Alps the object, and so on. But the ordi- 
 nary boy or girl cannot get into a state of 
 violent excitement over such valuable details. 
 Who was Hannibal, anyhow, and what busi- 
 ness had he in the Alps ? He was a man 
 from Africa, from a hot climate : such a 
 person does not seem qualified for member- 
 ship in the Alpine Club. But he not only 
 crossed the Mediterranean, without the 
 assistance of the Hamburg-American or 
 Norddeutscher-Lloyd, but somehow induced 
 a large number of his countrymen to come 
 with him — no mean undertaking in itself. 
 Then he finally reached the Alps, and they 
 all began to climb. There are tourists even 
 to-day who complain of difficulties ; although 
 the roads are magnificent, there are tunnels 
 and rack-and-pinions, there is the faithful 
 
62 Teaching in School and College 
 
 and omniscient Baedeker, there are every- 
 where, high and low, hotels so luxurious that 
 they cost you ten dollars a day, board and 
 room extra. But Hannibal had no railways, 
 no inns, no tunnels, no roads, and no guides, 
 and was among treacherous seas of ice and 
 snow, with an army accustomed to a quite 
 different climate and environment. Some- 
 how or other, he persuaded them ; he led 
 them up, and led them down, and brought 
 them into Italy in such good condition that 
 they gave a terrific thrashing to the best- 
 trained soldiers in the world, who were all 
 ready to receive them. When the eye of 
 the imagination follows Hannibal on this 
 expedition, those eight words, "Hannibal 
 crossed the Alps, and descended into Italy," 
 are full of pictures. We are forced to the 
 conviction that Mommsen was right, when 
 he wrote, "Hannibal was a great man." 
 
 English Literature above all must be taught 
 with the imagination. Is it not unfortunate 
 that many mature lovers of literature are 
 afraid to have the great English classics 
 
Imagination in Teaching 63 
 
 taught in the schools, simply because the 
 boys and girls may acquire a permanent 
 hatred for these books ? The only possible 
 objection I can see to teaching the Bible in 
 every public and private school, and the sub- 
 ject is so important that I am willing to risk 
 the danger, is that the pupils may never 
 read the great book again. Over and 
 over I have asked college students their 
 opinion of certain English classics, and their 
 expression is one of disgust : "Oh, I had to 
 study that at school." There are fortu- 
 nately noble exceptions ; such teachers as the 
 late Mr. George, of Newton, really inspired 
 their pupils. 
 
 In order that subjects in the public schools 
 may be taught with vigour and with imagi- 
 nation, it is necessary that the teacher 
 should not be overworked and underpaid. 
 "It is the curse of this world of want and 
 need," said Schopenhauer, "that everything 
 must serve and slave for these." The 
 teachers in our schools, the vast army of 
 faithful, devoted men and women, who wear 
 
64 Teaching in School and College 
 
 out their lives in discipline and instruction, 
 Ought to be provided for much more liber- 
 ally than is now the case. How can men 
 and women teach vigorously day after day 
 when their bodies are tired, their nerves 
 overstrained, and their salaries insufficient 
 to support them decently ? These persons, 
 more than any others, hold the future des- 
 tiny of our country in their hands. I wish 
 that those who have never taught and never 
 give a thought to the work of teachers could 
 be put in charge of a room of children in a 
 district school just one hour. Their nerves 
 would be in a frazzle. Yet there are thou- 
 sands of delicate and refined women who do 
 this hour after hour, day after day, week 
 after week ; and then many of them, in the 
 summer vacation, when they ought to be in 
 a sanatorium, go to a summer school, and 
 study strenuously, such is their zeal for 
 learning and self-improvement. If only 
 the money that is squandered on the build- 
 ing of battle ships and firing off expensive 
 powder into the air could be spent on 
 
Imagination in Teaching 65 
 
 teachers ! If the vast sums wasted on mili- 
 tary pensions could be used productively ! 
 The teachers in our public schools should not 
 be required to teach too many hours, to 
 manage too many pupils, and their salaries 
 should be substantially raised. It is the 
 best possible investment, for it would help 
 many who are in desperate straits, and it 
 would attract skilled and efficient men and 
 women. And it would be well if every 
 school-teacher, after a certain period of ser- 
 vice both in public and in private schools, 
 could have the sabbatical year enjoyed by 
 many college professors. In those rare 
 cases where the salary is high, a large pro- 
 portion of it could be given ; but in most 
 cases, the teacher should have it all. The 
 daily grind of teaching is hard and wearing. 
 If a teacher had every seventh year free 
 from pupils and discipline, and could go to 
 Europe for rest, change, and study, he or she 
 would be so much richer in intelligence and 
 inspiration on the return, so filled with 
 renewed life and energy, that the quality 
 
66 Teaching in School and College 
 
 of the instruction would rise enormously. 
 There is nothing quixotic or fantastic about 
 this. It would be a solid, permanent advan- 
 tage to the country, and it would brighten 
 the lives of those who are devoting them- 
 selves to the most important service. 
 
THE EFFICIENCY OF COLLEGE TEACHING 
 
 THE brilliant, original, imaginative, 
 and forceful school-teacher is at one 
 great disadvantage as compared with the 
 college professor, especially if he teach in a 
 school where boys and girls are prepared for 
 college. He must lead all his pupils in one 
 definite direction, toward the strait gate ; 
 both they and he are to pass through a test 
 that he has never made, concerning the value 
 of which he may have a low opinion, but 
 from which there is no escape. He must 
 hurry his flock along, even as a professional 
 guide hustles a Cook's tourist party through 
 the Louvre. There is no time to linger over 
 masterpieces, to indulge in independent 
 speculation, or to allow any individual mem- 
 ber to take up the precious minutes with 
 questions that penetrate beyond the pre- 
 
 67 
 
68 Teaching in School and College 
 
 scribed limits. The teacher must inspire 
 his pupils, yes ; but he must above all inspire 
 them in a way that produces immediate, 
 practical, and minute results. In some 
 schools the independent teacher has a poor 
 chance to show his independence, for he is 
 reduced to the level of a professional coach. 
 The success of his students and his own 
 success as a teacher are gauged by the pro- 
 portion of his patients that survive the 
 operation of the examiner's knife. This ex- 
 amination looms up forever, like a terrible 
 fate drawing daily nearer, and there are 
 some teachers who are more afraid of it than 
 their pupils. They must often emphasise 
 things that appear to them trivial, and slight 
 matters that appear to them primary. The 
 college professor, on the other hand, is com- 
 paratively free, is the king of his classroom, 
 and can indulge himself and his subjects in 
 all sorts of intellectual luxuries. This free- 
 dom has its insidious temptations along with 
 its wonderful privileges. 
 
 There is no doubt in my mind that the two 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 69 
 
 most efficient institutions of education in 
 the United States are the Military Academy 
 at West Point and the Naval Academy at 
 Annapolis. In the first place, they have 
 the prestige of an exclusive club with a long 
 waiting list. It Is a signal honour to get In 
 at all. In view of the astonishing results 
 achieved by this method, I sometimes won- 
 der why there are not more colleges in Amer- 
 ica, which, Instead of trying with all their 
 might to attract as many students as pos- 
 sible, do not make a fixed limit of member- 
 ship, the excellent custom In vogue at so 
 many high-grade private schools. Even the 
 small colleges Insist on the enormous advan- 
 tages of the small college, In the apparent 
 endeavour to secure as many students as 
 possible to enjoy these advantages ; If their 
 advertising were successful, they would, as 
 Professor Briggs has pointed out, imme- 
 diately cease to be small colleges. 
 
 I have visited the classrooms at both 
 West Point and Annapolis, spent some time 
 in observation, and more In subsequent 
 
70 Teaching in School and College 
 
 reflection. The students are divided into sec- 
 tions of from seven to ten men ; each youth 
 knows that he will be called upon to recite 
 every day. Impossible to loaf, shirk, dodge, 
 or bluff. The test is no distant thing like the 
 day of judgment, or a certain thing with an 
 uncertain date, like death : it is something 
 that has to be faced rather often in each day. 
 Tests that are remote lose all their spurring 
 power. For although every reader of this 
 book knows that he must die, that thought 
 does not trouble him so much as a dentist 
 appointment or an unpaid bill. Every 
 recitation is marked, all the marks are pub- 
 lished every week, no favours are granted, 
 no excuses accepted, the system is one of 
 ruthless competition ; a lazy or indifferent 
 student cannot live in that atmosphere. 
 Out he goes, and the ranks close up. The 
 teachers know exactly the quality of the 
 work done by each student ; and some 
 officer knows exactly where each student is 
 from the moment he rises in the morning 
 till he retires at night, for the poor devil has 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 71 
 
 to post it in his room. The men are happier 
 under this strict regime than might be im- 
 agined, than even they imagine at the time. 
 I asked an officer what he thought of it. 
 He said, "Why, when we were cadets, we 
 
 thought the place was a d d workhouse, 
 
 but we all look back to it with the happiest 
 recollection." The results are wonderful. 
 Every graduate of West Point or Annapolis 
 is an educated man. 
 
 The boys are thoroughly human under the 
 uniform. I had the honour of giving a 
 course of lectures to about two hundred 
 cadets in the old chapel at West Point — 
 and it was a strange and stirring experience 
 for me, a civilian teacher of college boys, 
 accustomed to the latest fashions in men's 
 garments mingled with sweaters and flannels, 
 to behold regularity. In the hall I also saw 
 those calm, noble faces of Gen. Hugh L. 
 Scott, Col. Larned, and Dr. Holden. Well, I 
 was lecturing in that beautiful spot one beau- 
 tiful day in May. The cadets filed in rigidly, 
 each took his place, took out his note-book 
 
72 Teaching in School and College 
 
 and pencil, and gave me the air of military- 
 attention. I stood on the platform, and 
 I was the only man in the room who could 
 look outside on the green grass, through the 
 great open double doors at the rear of the 
 hall. In the middle of the lecture, two huge 
 setter dogs entered at that portal, and I 
 instinctively felt that they would approach 
 the only human face they could see. They 
 lost no time about it, either, but joyously 
 loped down the centre aisle, and mounted 
 the high platform, one on one side of me, 
 one on the other. I looked at the cadets ; 
 they were young, and under some strain. 
 But not a man moved, not a man smiled. 
 They sat up, if possible, more rigidly and 
 stiffly than ever, for there were officers in the 
 room. Something had to be done imme- 
 diately to save the situation, and Providence 
 whispered into my ears the right thing to 
 say. "Why, these are Setters and I ex- 
 pected to meet only West-Pointers ! " Then 
 we all had a joyous spontaneous laugh to- 
 gether, officers, cadets, and lecturer. 
 
EfRciency of College Teaching 73 
 
 A year or two ago, on an intensely hot 
 evening in June, I went into a hotel 
 in New York for dinner. It was so hot that 
 I secured a small table facing an open win- 
 dow, and ate in peace with my back to the 
 room. After a time, four young gentlemen 
 came up to me, and introduced themselves. 
 I supposed they must be recent Yale grad- 
 uates, though for the life of me, I could not 
 recall their faces. They said, "We are 
 cadets at West Point, on a day's furlough. 
 We saw you come into the room, and we did 
 not want to pass out without speaking to 
 you." This may seem a trivial fact to re- 
 cord, but it does not seem so to me. I have 
 a glow at the heart now when I think of it. 
 One of the pleasantest things about college 
 teaching is the man-and-man friendship 
 that the teacher forms with his students, 
 and this instance was especially delightful, 
 for it proved to me that I had not at West 
 Point lectured to a collection of uniforms, but 
 had spoken to human hearts. 
 
 Although it is im.possible to have at 
 
74 Teaching in School and College 
 
 college the discipline that prevails at West 
 Point and Annapolis, I am a believer in 
 strict college discipline, in the absolute en- 
 forcement of regularity of attendance, in 
 daily lessons, daily tasks, regular marking, 
 and semiannual examinations. The Ameri- 
 can college youth is tractable, amenable to 
 discipline, and willing to do anything rea- 
 sonable that is exacted of him by a teacher 
 whom he respects. The one thing he cannot 
 forgive In a professor is slyness, unfairness, 
 anything not absolutely straight. It is, 
 therefore, of the utmost Importance that the 
 students should understand clearly what Is 
 expected of them, and that each Individual 
 pupil should feel that when he begins a new 
 course, he has exactly the same chance as 
 every other individual in it. No past record 
 in any other course or in any previous year 
 should count for or against. 
 
 How important it is that the teacher 
 should control himself, and be a man worthy 
 of the respect of his students ! We teachers 
 are human, we make many mistakes, and 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching y^ 
 
 are all of us far from the ideal. But how- 
 unfortunate it is for the man behind the desk 
 to be shallow or spectacular ; to be peevish 
 or constantly irritable ; to fly into bursts of 
 anger ; to be childish and picayune ; to be 
 inordinately vain ; to be fatuously jocose ; 
 to be deadly dull. 
 
 Whether it is owing to the growth of col- 
 lege athletics, and I suspect that has much 
 to do with it, or owing to the general advance 
 in civilisation and good manners, certain it 
 is that college discipline to-day is a far easier 
 matter for the president, the dean, and 
 the professors than it used to be. Consider 
 the "personal contact" between the presi- 
 dent and the students. It used to be much 
 more close in certain ways than it is now. 
 A recognised part of the president's duties 
 in the good old times was to preserve order 
 by physical force. Brown University is 
 situated at the top of a steep hill, and the 
 president's house was close to the corner. 
 One night the president, the Rev. Dr. 
 Ezekiel Robinson, heard a student disturb- 
 
76 Teaching in School and College 
 
 ance in front of his home. He was tall, 
 with a tremendous reach at both the upper 
 and lower extremities. He rushed out, and 
 when the men saw him coming, they started 
 to run. All got away but one luckless indi- 
 vidual, who in attempting to round the cor- 
 ner received a terrific kick from the pursuing 
 theologian, which highly accelerated his 
 progress down the hill. Neither student nor 
 president thought there was anything incon- 
 gruous in this close personal contact. 
 
 Even when I was an undergraduate, a 
 large part of the duty of professors and in- 
 structors was to maintain order. Unpopular 
 tutors had their windows smashed by hard 
 missiles, so that one tutor, on being asked 
 what his salary was, replied, " It is one thou- 
 sand dollars, with coal thrown in." I re- 
 member one tutor rushing out in his night- 
 gown, in the attempt to disperse students 
 gathered about a bonfire. And it was not an 
 unfamiliar spectacle to see a college instruc- 
 tor standing behind an elm tree in the night, 
 taking down the names of students in a note- 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching j'j 
 
 book. All this kind of personal contact has 
 vanished ; I should think it incredible it ever 
 existed, did I not distinctly remember it. 
 
 But the necessity for discipline remains, 
 and the discipline should remain with it. 
 Records of attendance on all college reci- 
 tations and lectures should be faithfully kept, 
 and irregularity immediately punished. It is 
 vain to expect that students will attend regu- 
 larly without rules and penalties. I suspect 
 that not every professor would attend regu- 
 larly, if it made no difference with his college 
 standing. What kind of training for life do 
 students receive in institutions where they 
 are never forced to keep their engagements .'' 
 Is such negligence fair to their future, or 
 just to the parents who have placed them 
 in our keeping .'' 
 
 I believe in regular assignments of lessons, 
 and, in recitations, regular marking. An 
 Oxford student attended one of my exer- 
 cises in a course in Elizabethan Drama, and 
 at the end of the hour he said, "Why do you 
 give out a regular lesson ? It seems a bit 
 
78 Teaching in School and College 
 
 childish and limited. Why don't you just 
 mention the names of a number of valuable 
 and stimulating books, and let them read for 
 themselves ?" I replied, "Of course I do 
 that, too. But every man has a regular task 
 assigned — otherwise the majority, even with 
 the best of intentions, might not do any 
 work at all. Do you work at Oxford.""' 
 "Oh, I never do any work in term, there 
 is so much going on, you know. But 
 I read in vacations." He was a clever and 
 ambitious man, but he confessed to me that 
 the majority of Oxford students did not 
 work either in term or in vacation. What- 
 ever may be the custom in England or in 
 Germany, our American colleges should not 
 neglect the many for the few. 
 
 And I believe in the marking-book, and in 
 the daily marking of recitations and of writ- 
 ten work. I know that to many professors 
 this seems undignified, out of keeping with 
 the right relations between students and pro- 
 fessors in a great university. I do not share 
 this sentiment. A student from an Ameri- 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 79 
 
 can institution where the marks are never 
 given or heard of except at fixed examina- 
 tions visited Yale, and told me it seemed to 
 him very schoolboyish for the instructor to 
 make a mark in his book after each recita- 
 tion. Whether it is schoolboyish or gentle- 
 manly, is not the point ; every system should 
 be judged by its results. I am convinced 
 that the best way to get faithful work out of 
 students is to mark them regularly. The 
 only real objection to the marking-book is 
 the impossibility of absolute fairness. It is 
 a rough and exceedingly crude method of 
 appraisal, but, unfortunately, the best I 
 know. 
 
 And I believe in written examinations. 
 Imperfect as they are, they are a distinct 
 test of knowledge. We hear a great deal 
 about the nervous terror of pupils at a writ- 
 ten examination, the impossibility of their 
 writing what they know, and many com- 
 plaints of a like nature. But, as a rule, when 
 a student has done well in a subject, he is not 
 afraid of the test. Those who are naturally 
 
8o Teaching in School and College 
 
 stupid, or have neglected their work, are, of 
 course, afraid of the examination, as they 
 ought to be. The test is then important, 
 for an examination is meant to reveal igno- 
 rance as well as knowledge. I was always in 
 terror of mathematical examinations, owing 
 to my stupidity in the subject ; but I rather 
 enjoyed those in studies where I excelled. 
 I think that all colleges should require en- 
 trance examinations, and regular term exam- 
 inations during the course. 
 
 I believe that the marks students receive 
 on examinations and on the completion of a 
 course should be made known to them. 
 Some teachers seem to be mortally afraid 
 that students will study for marks, but my 
 fear is that not enough of them will. If 
 an intelligent student exalts his mark above 
 real knowledge of the subject, this is unfor- 
 tunate. But to excel in college scholarship 
 is surely an honourable ambition, and one 
 that needs stimulation. If a student feels 
 pride in high standing, I am personally very 
 much pleased. It is the most natural thing 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 8i 
 
 in the world, when a student has written an 
 examination paper, and handed it in, that he 
 should obtain a definite result. There should 
 be no air of mystery about it. Every man 
 who fires a shot at a target wants to know 
 whether he has hit it or not. No teacher 
 should be bothered by continual requests for 
 marks, but that is a matter of detail, which 
 any sensible person can settle satisfactorily. 
 An examination should not be a cleverly 
 prepared trap to catch the students : on the 
 other hand it must not be too obvious. The 
 difficulty of preparing a fair examination 
 paper in a large college is enormously in- 
 creased by the number of diabolically clever 
 private tutors and coaches, undergraduate 
 and professional "lectures," digests, and 
 other first aids to the injured. These make 
 it even more necessary to mark daily work, 
 and to force the average student to believe 
 that no final spurt of energy can take the 
 place of systematic daily effort. There are 
 some tutors so clever I believe they could put 
 a dog through an examination — for some 
 
82 Teaching in School and College 
 
 of their successful patients seem to have less 
 than canine intelligence. The examination 
 by itself is not an ideal test. The teacher 
 should do everything he can to frown upon 
 digests, special lectures, and all short cuts 
 to knowledge, as being inconsistent with 
 true scholarship. 
 
 Teachers should mark strictly and fairly, 
 but a "low marker" is not necessarily the 
 sign either of a strict disciplinarian or a good 
 teacher. Some teachers seem to think the 
 main aim should be to flunk as many stu- 
 dents as possible, and many young teachers 
 are really proud of a long list of failures, 
 thinking that it shows a commendable stand- 
 ard. As a matter of fact, if a teacher 
 taught a subject a half year, and then over 
 fifty per cent of his pupils failed to pass the 
 examination, it would seem as though he 
 were rather unimpressive, rather inefficient. 
 A teacher should not be afraid to mark some 
 papers very high, and others very low. 
 Those who give the whole class an aver- 
 age mark break the hearts of ambitious 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 83 
 
 students, and encourage the lazy in their 
 sins. 
 
 A mark once given should stay, should 
 never be changed or cancelled. If the 
 students know that in advance, "they will 
 never ask for remittance. It is very painful 
 to tell a college senior that he has failed in 
 your course, and cannot have his degree at 
 Commencement. Do not do this until you 
 know that he does not deserve to pass, and 
 then stand firm. It is greatly to the credit 
 of the young gentlemen that I have taught, 
 that unspeakably bitter as this disappoint- 
 ment is to them and to their families, I have 
 never lost a friend by it. 
 
 I think that wherever it is in any way 
 possible professors should themselves read 
 and grade all the examination papers that 
 their students write in their courses, and all 
 the written work that they hand in. I know 
 that many professors regard this as a waste 
 of valuable time and energy, and hand the 
 job over to assistants. But the students 
 take more interest in a course, and feel more 
 
84 Teaching in School and College 
 
 confident of the accuracy of the results, 
 when the professor who hears their recita- 
 tions or who lectures to them reads and 
 marks their work himself. Some students 
 regard the whole thing as blind chance when 
 their papers are marked by a young assis- 
 tant who never is seen. "What did you 
 draw on that exam?" I often hear one 
 student ask another, as though it were a 
 game of poker. When I was a graduate 
 student at Harvard, I studied Shakespeare 
 under Professor Child, the foremost Eng- 
 lish scholar that America has produced. If 
 ever a man's time was important for study 
 and research and publication, his was. But 
 although there were one hundred and twenty 
 students in this course, I was impressed by 
 the fact that he read and marked each exam- 
 ination paper himself, nay, each question 
 on the examination. When I got my book 
 back, I read it with great interest. 
 
 I do not believe that a professor can read 
 through a long examination in History or 
 Literature, and give a general estimate of 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 85 
 
 it that will be correct. It is different, of 
 course, in Mathematics, where a glance at 
 each question may be sufficient. A pro- 
 fessor of Mathematics told me that he never 
 thought he was reading with sufficient speed, 
 unless he could always keep one paper in the 
 air. That method will not do in Literature. 
 My own scheme, after trying others, is this. 
 The perfect mark at Yale is 400. I put eight 
 questions on the paper, and the students 
 know that each question will count fifty 
 points. If there are ten subdivisions of a 
 question, each tentacle counts five points ; if 
 there are five, each counts ten. Then I 
 hire an assistant to do the mathematics. I 
 read each answer, speaking out the mark as 
 I read. The assistant adds as I progress, 
 and the moment the paper is read through 
 I know the exact mark for the total, thus 
 saving half the time and energy it would take 
 if I did the mathematics myself, and, in my 
 case, ensuring greater accuracy. The books 
 are all returned to the students, with each 
 question marked in my own hand. If a 
 
86 Teaching in School and College 
 
 teacher reads a paper right through and then 
 makes a general estimate, he may not have 
 observed that there was one question not 
 answered at all ; or he may be unduly preju- 
 diced by very stupid or very brilliant answers 
 to one or two queries. Now I do not think 
 there is a teacher who hates to read papers 
 more than I do. I have many students, and 
 the semiannual task is a terrible burden. I 
 loathe it with an unspeakable loathing; it 
 is the only part of my work that I abso- 
 lutely detest. And yet I believe it to be 
 vitally important and richly productive. 
 Occasionally, too, there are delightful oases 
 in the desert. On an examination paper 
 that I set in Browning, a subdivision of a 
 question concerned the biography of the 
 poet. A student wrote : "Browning died 
 in 1889. In that same year I was born. 
 What a shameful exchange !" 
 
 Wherever public opinion will permit it, I 
 believe in the so-called honour system in 
 examinations. There is much less cheating 
 in college work now than there used to be, 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 87 
 
 partly owing to the general and unquestion- 
 able moral advance in student life, partly 
 owing to the more dignified and at the same 
 time more intimate relation between teacher 
 and taught. Every student is a natural- 
 born casuist, as, perhaps, we all are where our 
 personal interests are concerned, and one 
 must accept that fact ; but if the class and 
 the professor understand each other, I am 
 sure that the honour system is the most satis- 
 factory. Fortunately or unfortunately the 
 average student cares more for the good opin- 
 ion of his classmates than he does for that of 
 the faculty, and strong public sentiment 
 exerts a mighty pressure. I have used 
 the honour system with my students for a 
 number of years, and with excellent results. 
 Immediately the sceptic asks, "How do you 
 know ?" The answer is really very simple. 
 There is a check on the honour system, 
 as there should be on all systems. I 
 should have little respect for a student 
 who told me the name of another whom he 
 saw cheating ; we want no spies and no tell- 
 
88 Teaching in School and College 
 
 tales in our classes. But I always tell my 
 students in advance that unless the honour 
 system prevents cheating, it is worthless, 
 and that if by chance any man should ob- 
 serve evil-doing, it is his duty to tell me, 
 without giving any names, that there are 
 those who take advantage of their oppor- 
 tunities. This seems to me a simple and 
 effective check. 
 
 It is exceedingly unfortunate that stu- 
 dents who will not lie to each other or steal 
 from one another should think it trivial to 
 lie to the faculty or to steal a good mark 
 from the faculty, which theyhave not earned. 
 Cases of this undoubtedly occur every year 
 in every college, in connection with the hand- 
 ing in of written work. And there are indi- 
 gent students, whose tuition Is remitted 
 because they are poor and struggling 
 for an education, who partially support 
 themselves by writing compositions for 
 wealthy classmates, thus exhibiting ingrat- 
 itude, disloyalty, and treachery toward the 
 institution. In all these matters there is 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 89 
 
 decided improvement as compared with the 
 good old times, but flagrant cases occasion- 
 ally jar the optimism of the teacher. A 
 man whose classmates would ostracise him 
 if he cheated to win a prize, will lose no pop- 
 ularity or standing by cheating to save him- 
 self from failure — which means, of course, 
 that the lad has no real standard of virtue 
 at all, his virtue being dependent simply on 
 the size of the temptation. The true stand- 
 ard of virtue should always be within a 
 man's heart, never determined by external 
 circumstances. In order really to know 
 whether a man is virtuous, good-natured, or 
 gentlemanly, we must see him tested. One 
 who scornfully rejects a little bribe, but 
 accepts a big one, is surely not virtuous ; 
 one whose good-nature turns sour in adver- 
 sity is not really good-natured ; a man 
 whose politeness does not survive a dis- 
 appointment is not a true gentleman. 
 
 In general, and except in special emer- 
 gencies, it is best for the teacher both in 
 school and college to take a boy's word of 
 
90 Teaching in School and College 
 
 honour, even if the circumstances seem sus- 
 picious. It is better to let three or four 
 students lie to you than to punish an inno- 
 cent pupil with denial of his word, or with 
 suspicion of his honesty. Nothing rankles 
 in a young man's heart more venomously 
 than unjust suspicion or unfair treatment 
 from his teacher. I well remember the 
 crafty and sceptical expression on the faces of 
 some of my teachers when I was telling them 
 only the exact truth. I wish in vain that I 
 could forget these experiences. When I was 
 a freshman I had an attack of chills and 
 fever, with a high temperature ; it was 
 simply out of the question for me to attend 
 college classes : I had to go to bed. Yet in 
 two days I was well, and reported to my 
 college professor that I had been ill, and 
 hoped that my absence would be excused. 
 He looked at me with a sceptical smile, and I 
 saw he did not believe me. I had to take the 
 penalty, and went away with a dull rage in 
 my heart. On another occasion, a wife of one 
 of the professors had wandered off, out of 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 91 
 
 her mind, and volunteer students went in 
 search of her. I became lost in the woods, 
 and was drenched to the skin by the winter 
 rain. I did not reach my room until ten 
 in the evening, and was too exhausted to 
 study. The next morning I told my instruc- 
 tor the facts, not expecting that he would 
 believe me. To my surprise and delight 
 he accepted my story instantly, and said 
 kindly, "You must have been very tired." 
 Do you think I shall ever forget that man ? 
 It is curious to find that a student who is 
 perhaps almost overpunctilious in every- 
 thing else will sometimes cheat in written 
 work. I remember one extraordinary case. 
 I was playing a golf match at the Country 
 Club with an undergraduate : it was a 
 match we were each of us keen to win, for 
 it was the final for the club championship. 
 On one of the holes we played long shots out 
 of the fair green ; his ball went into the 
 bunker, mine flew over. When I reached 
 the bunker, I passed on ahead, and in a 
 moment or two, he came up, and said he 
 
92 Teaching in School and College 
 
 had lost the hole. " Impossible, we haven't 
 reached the green," said I. But he ex- 
 plained that as he entered the bunker, one 
 of his clubs accidentally fell out of the bag 
 and into the sand, and although he had not 
 even tried to address the ball, and although 
 there was no possibility of my having seen 
 what had occurred, he declared that he had 
 lost the hole. A short time after this event, 
 the same young gentleman submitted, in 
 one of his college courses, a theme written 
 by another hand. He was caught, and sus- 
 pended from college six months. 
 
 Professors should not only insist on regu- 
 lar work from the student, they should in- 
 sist that it appear on the date previously 
 announced. I visited a large American 
 university and entered the classroom of a 
 famous lecturer. There were about seventy 
 students present. The lecturer announced : 
 "Your theses are all due to-day. Please 
 bring them to the desk." There was a 
 moment's painful silence, and then one 
 undergraduate walked forward and de- 
 
Efficiency of College Teaching 93 
 
 posited his essay, amid general laughter, in 
 which the professor joined. "One swallow 
 does not make a summer," he remarked 
 pessimistically. I do not care how distin- 
 guished an authority he was, in this instance 
 he proved himself to be a slovenly teacher. 
 Students will not rebel when fairly notified 
 in advance, but they will always take advan- 
 tage of a teacher who does not mean what 
 he says. In the training of college under- 
 graduates, it is just as important to empha- 
 sise punctuality in work as it is quality. 
 They are more tractable in this respect than 
 any other class of persons. They will 
 adhere even to minute regulations, if the 
 regulations are clearly and definitely ex- 
 plained to them in advance, with the rea- 
 sons why the regulations are made. A 
 teacher who accepts "late themes" prepares 
 himself for all sorts of vexatious difficulties, 
 and neglects an important part of necessary 
 discipline. 
 
VI 
 
 EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION 
 
 A GOOD teacher must first of all know his 
 subject : that is axiomatic. I m.ight 
 study the art of teaching all my life and yet 
 I should never be able to teach Mathematics 
 or any other science. But besides knowingthe 
 subject, the teacher must understand some- 
 thing about human nature, must know his 
 pupils. A teacher teaches some one as well 
 as some thing. This is, of course, the reason 
 why head-masters of schools secure athletes 
 and popular society men to teach their boys : 
 these may not be authorities in any special 
 field of learning, they may not fully under- 
 stand the subject, but they always under- 
 stand the object. A man who has a doctor's 
 degree may or may not be a good teacher — 
 that remains to be proved. A theologian or 
 Hebrew scholar maybe a miserable preacher. 
 
 94 
 
Education and Instruction 95 
 
 How often I have seen a learned doctor of 
 divinity alienating his audience with long- 
 winded dulness, whilst utterly unaware 
 of the fact ! There should always be vital 
 communication between the preacher and 
 the listener, between the teacher and the 
 taught. 
 
 The real test of a teacher is not his success 
 with pupils who are clever and eager to 
 learn, though he should always command the 
 sincere respect of these chosen few. His 
 test comes with the indifferent majority, 
 with those who don't care, with those who 
 don't want to learn. It is a delight to a 
 teacher to have pupils of natural capacity 
 and intellectual background, who respond 
 instantly to his best thought ; but it is a still 
 greater delight to see the first signs of intelli- 
 gence in a dull block of clay, to see attention 
 replace indifference, and witness the birth 
 of intellectual curiosity. It may mean 
 salvation. 
 
 The average group of students do not troop 
 into the class room eager to learn, their 
 
96 Teaching in School and College 
 
 minds full of the subject. They are think- 
 ing of a hundred other things — of what they 
 did yesterday, of a letter they have just read, 
 of the sporting news in the morning paper, 
 of a pleasant engagement immediately after 
 class, of a tennis match for which they are 
 already clad. There is no open macada- 
 mised road between the teacher's mind and 
 theirs : there are enormous obstacles, which 
 must be immediately cleared, before any- 
 thing can be accomplished at all. 
 
 The interest of the class must be instantly 
 aroused and maintained until the end of the 
 period. This is the first step, the first all- 
 important problem. The teacher must 
 drive out of their minds all other things 
 and substitute an absorbing, jealous interest 
 in the lesson. It is not easy to teach on the 
 day before or day after a holiday, on the morn- 
 ing following a presidential election, on the 
 eve or afterglow of a great foot-ball game. 
 But it can be done, and without the slight- 
 est allusion to the events that fill the stu- 
 dents' minds as they enter the room. A 
 
Education and Instruction 97 
 
 teacher is an advocate. He is like a lawyer 
 before the jury — if he does not interest his 
 audience, he has lost his case. Minute and 
 exact accuracy must sometimes be sacrificed 
 for emphasis. By the time the fact lodges 
 in the pupil's skull, it will not be unduly 
 disproportionate, A teacher who teaches 
 with constant parentheses, qualifications, 
 and trivial explanations will never make any 
 definite impression. As Professor Louns- 
 bury has said, "The capacity of the human 
 mind to resist the introduction of knowledge 
 cannot be overestimated." 
 
 There is something distinctly histrionic 
 about the teacher's art, which is one reason 
 why it is so exciting to those who love it. 
 Every recitation should be an event. Many 
 people think a teacher's life must be monot- 
 onous, made up of dull routine, because 
 he teaches the same subject and the same 
 lessons over and over again. Nothing could 
 be farther from the truth. I know of no 
 profession more exciting, more stirring, more 
 thrilling than teaching. No one believes 
 
98 Teaching in School and College 
 
 that an actor who acts Hamlet finds it 
 monotonous, although he repeats not only 
 the same words, but the same gestures, the 
 same attitudes, the same intonations. There 
 is no monotony in teaching the same lesson 
 to different pupils, not if the teacher is a good 
 actor. In my first year at Yale, I taught 
 short lessons in King Henry IV, Part I, to 
 twelve different divisions : it was just as 
 interesting the twelfth time as the first. 
 In fact, the first time was a kind of dress 
 rehearsal, and I think I did better the longer 
 I kept at it. 
 
 The main object of a recitation, with ques- 
 tion, answer, and discussion, should be to 
 educate : the chief object of a lecture must 
 be instruction. In undergraduate work, ed- 
 ucation is more important than instruction, 
 and therefore I believe that more lasting 
 good is accomplished by recitations — the 
 give and take — than by lectures. The 
 ideal recitation is, of course, with a rather 
 small class, — not too small to take away the 
 spur of competition and the excitement of 
 
Education and Instruction 99 
 
 numbers, — but small enough for each man 
 in the room to feel the teacher's personality 
 and to know that there is a chance for him 
 to display knowledge and ignorance. For 
 this reason, it is always best, even though 
 it involves enormous expense and the multi- 
 plication of teachers, to divide large classes 
 into small divisions ; to have the same les- 
 sons taught by several teachers, and to have 
 the same teacher teach the same lesson 
 several times. It pays. The ideal object 
 of the instructor is to educate every student 
 in the room, to "educe the man," as Brown- 
 ing says. 
 
 Yet recitations should always teach, 
 should always give some instruction. Every 
 student should actually know more about 
 the subject at the end of the hour than he 
 did at the beginning. The teacher must 
 not be a mere hearer of recitations. He 
 should not exclusively confine himself to 
 discovering whether or not the pupils have 
 made sufficient preparation. In many of 
 our recitations at school and college we 
 
loo Teaching in School and College 
 
 never expected to learn anything; never 
 did, anyhow : we simply answered formal 
 questions. So fixed was this idea in our 
 minds, that our first interview with a new 
 instructor in the Hartford High School, Mr. 
 Winfred R. Martin, one of the greatest 
 teachers I ever knew, was not only disastrous 
 to us, but we nearly broke out into open 
 rebellion. He asked us things that were 
 not in the notes ! Later we found him a 
 constant and powerful inspiration. Even 
 at that early age we obtained from him a 
 notion of the meaning of true scholarship. 
 He was and is a profound and original 
 scholar, a man of varied and amazing 
 learning, and we respected him for it. 
 
 But in many of our classes the conven- 
 tional method of the so-called teacher re- 
 acted unfavourably on us. Suppose the 
 lesson was in Latin. When one student 
 was reciting, all the others who had not yet 
 been called up were reading ahead, thinking 
 it might be their turn next. As soon as a 
 man recited, he retired into his own thoughts, 
 
Education and Instruction loi 
 
 paid no further attention to the subject, 
 slept, or read a novel. We had teachers 
 whose sole method, invariable as fate, was 
 as follows : "Jones : scan ; that will do. 
 Brown : translate ; that will do. Smith : 
 why is this verb in the subjunctive } That 
 will do." Some others, instead of saying 
 "That will do," said " Sufficient." I remem- 
 ber that independent teachers with a differ- 
 ent understanding of their duty, had a hard 
 time with the lethargy and inertness of the 
 class under that general regime. Professor 
 Edward S. Dana called on one of my class- 
 mates in Physics : the student rose, looked 
 fixedly at him a moment, and sat down, 
 knowing he had obtained a zero, but feeling 
 that fate had done its worst, and that he 
 need fear no fresh misfortune during the 
 hour. He therefore looked resignedly out 
 of the window. Professor Dana cried, "But 
 don't dismiss the subject from your mind !" 
 We had one teacher to whom we recited 
 three hours a week during an entire year. 
 He never changed the intonation of his 
 
I02 Teaching in School and College 
 
 voice, never made a comment or an inde- 
 pendent remark until the last day, and never 
 once lifted his eyes from the book on the 
 desk. I can remember now a classmate 
 secretly looking at his watch, and, finding 
 that the hour was almost gone, his face lit 
 up with rapture. 
 
 Some purely mechanical questions must 
 be asked, in order to test knowledge and 
 preparation : pupils must be held definitely 
 to their work. But other questions must 
 be stimulating. Information, opinions, and 
 ideas should be brought out by the Socratic 
 method, and arguments pushed to a conclu- 
 sion. It is well to cultivate as much intel- 
 lectual resistance as possible. The teacher 
 should be delighted when his judgment or 
 interpretation or statement is seriously 
 questioned by a pupil. It is a sign of life. 
 I have had students who have passionately 
 resisted my comments on certain lessons. 
 Nothing could possibly please me more. I 
 hate to see them swallow everything I say. 
 The passionate partisanship of youth, which 
 
Education and Instruction 103 
 
 shows itself in so many other things, should 
 appear in studies. I asked a student in a 
 class in Tennyson whether he preferred the 
 later poems like Rizpah and The First 
 Quarrel, or the earlier ones, like The Lady of 
 Shalott and The Lotos Eaters. He hesitated, 
 trying to think up something to say. I was 
 grieved that he hesitated, and told the class 
 that, at their time of life, it would be natural 
 to have a strenuous, positive, even passion- 
 ate opinion, either one way or the other. I 
 should not have minded if his hesitation 
 had been the hesitation accompanying or 
 preceding valuable thought ; but it was plain 
 that he did not know which he preferred, 
 and did not care. 
 
 Voluntary recitations are a good thing, 
 and should be received by the teacher with 
 respectful attention. It is hard to get 
 sophisticated students in big Eastern col- 
 leges to volunteer remarks, comments, and 
 questions in the classroom. There is a 
 natural healthy modesty, there is a fear of 
 hypocrisy, there is a reluctance to make a 
 
I04 Teaching in School and College 
 
 public display of knowledge, reading, or 
 love of literature. How many times when a 
 student has earnestly volunteered an inde- 
 pendent suggestion have I seen a smile 
 on the faces of the other men ! The en- 
 vironment is not favourable, and students 
 often have a modest shame of what is 
 best in them. Still, this situation can be 
 overcome by the exercise of a little tact. 
 Then, too, another difficulty appears. There 
 is sure to be one, perhaps two eccentric and 
 zealous students who want to talk all the 
 time, and ask questions every other moment 
 — sometimes at very embarrassing moments. 
 When I was a freshman, one of my class- 
 mates constantly tried to give the teacher 
 information : finally, every time he opened 
 his mouth, other students took out pencils 
 and recorded his sayings with mock gravity. 
 I had one college pupil, a fine scholar, who 
 insisted on talking so voluminously and so 
 continuously that a secret petition was cir- 
 culated in the class, signed, and sent to me, 
 requesting me to shut him up. But better 
 
Education and Instruction 105 
 
 all these difficulties than indifference and 
 inertia. 
 
 And this volunteer work must be wisely 
 directed and made progressively efficient. 
 There are some courses where the students, 
 knowing the weaknesses of the professor, 
 will simulate a profound interest in certain 
 topics, and ask him questions with the sole 
 object of consuming the time, so as to 
 escape being called on themselves. There 
 are many amusing instances that have 
 come to my notice. Pompousness on the 
 part of the professor will sometimes bring 
 about a curious situation. One egotistical in- 
 structor, who had talked for nearly an hour, 
 then took out a watch, consulted it solemnly, 
 and said : "There are just five minutes left. 
 Is there anyone who would like to ask a ques- 
 tion ?" One student raised his hand, and 
 asked, "What time is it ?" 
 
 The teacher must work with the class, as 
 well as manage it. He should be not 
 only a master, but a comrade. I have seen 
 cases where the teacher on one side and the 
 
io6 Teaching in School and College 
 
 students on the other were like two Yan- 
 kees driving a bargain. The teacher was 
 trying to get all the work possible out of the 
 class, and give them the least possible credit 
 for it : the pupils were trying to get the 
 highest possible mark, with the least possible 
 exertion, and felt terribly "sold" if they had 
 read a line beyond the confines of the lesson. 
 Indeed, I heard of one student who received 
 his marks at home in the presence of his 
 father: "Hey!" he cried exultantly. "I 
 got 200 in old X's course. Am I the real 
 thing, or not .?" His father said, "But I 
 thought 200 was just the passing mark." 
 "So it is, father ; that's why it's such a darn 
 good mark." He had not wasted an ounce 
 of superfluous effort. 
 
 In courses where recitations are imprac- 
 ticable the system of instruction must be 
 by lectures. The older I grow, the more 
 sceptical I am of the value of this method 
 in undergraduate work. How many people 
 there are who the day after a lecture re- ■ 
 member only that the lecturer was dull, or 
 
Education and Instruction 107 
 
 delightful, and in neither case remember any- 
 thing he said ! Courses of lectures to col- 
 lege classes by men who understand the fine 
 art of public speaking, have made a careful 
 study of presentation, and know exactly 
 how to adapt themselves to various audi- 
 ences, may accomplish a great deal ; but 
 in general, recitations are more effective. 
 Instruction by lectures should invariably be 
 accompanied by tests, checks, and various 
 devices to ensure not only attention, but 
 regular work on the part of the student. 
 This may be accomplished by having the 
 big class divided into weekly divisions with 
 quiz-masters ; or the first ten minutes of 
 the hour may be devoted to a written test 
 on the subject-matter ; or every student may 
 be compelled to hand in a written theme on 
 the lesson before the lecture begins. If this 
 be done, it is essential that the theme be, in 
 every case, submitted before the lecture, so 
 that the student will have to write his sum- 
 mary or his opinion on what he has studied, 
 not on what he has caught from the speaker. 
 
io8 Teaching in School and College 
 
 The lecture itself should not merely in- 
 struct, it should inspire. The students 
 should be stimulated rather than stuffed. 
 The genius is a law unto himself; but for 
 the average professor, it is best that the 
 lecture should be neither written nor extem- 
 porised, but spoken from notes, each main 
 point being emphasised and driven home as 
 energetically and clearly as possible. I 
 was talking once with Mr. Paul Armstrong, 
 the American dramatist. We were dis- 
 cussing the necessity of exaggeration on the 
 stage. He said, "The audience has just 
 one accessible spot, a bare space only an 
 inch wide, between the hair and the eye- 
 brows : the playwright must hit this mark 
 with a wedge." If the lecture be all writ- 
 ten in fluent and elegant English, the hour 
 passes agreeably and ineffectively, both 
 teacher and pupil have a pleasant time, and 
 only the ablest students obtain any definite 
 or lasting result. There are no salient, pro- 
 tuberant facts and ideas that stick. On the 
 other hand, if the lecturer speak without any 
 
Education and Instruction 109 
 
 notes, the lecture is apt to wander, lose 
 coherence and logical order : and most 
 extempore speakers have the distressing 
 habit of beginning nearly every sentence 
 with the word "now," which is wearing on 
 the nerves. But if a few points are tre- 
 mendously emphasised, repeated, and a pause 
 is made to give the students a. chance to 
 make an accurate record in the note-book, 
 then these leading ideas can be enlarged, 
 illustrated, and made clear and interesting by 
 free talk. 
 
 On the final written examinations which 
 must always come at the end of lecture 
 courses, care must be taken to have the 
 questions deal fully as much with the les- 
 sons studied as with the lectures. The 
 teacher must insist that the pupil shall not 
 merely repeat the phrases delivered by the 
 lecturer ; for I have known instances where 
 the lecturer had a whole series of pet phrases, 
 which the students echoed back to him on 
 the examination book. The students should, 
 indeed, be encouraged to state independent 
 
no Teaching in School and College 
 
 views and opinions on the examination ; 
 only, in order that this may not lead to 
 errors and vagaries, it is well to inform the 
 students that if they hold views divergent 
 from the lecturer, they should state the 
 professor's view first, and then their dis- 
 senting opinion, with reasons. Intelligent 
 opposition of this kind brings joy to a 
 teacher's heart, and should be practically 
 rewarded with high credit. 
 
 In all my remarks on school and college 
 teaching, I have purposely confined myself 
 to the ordinary school and the ordinary 
 college, whether large or small. What I 
 have said and shall say is not intended to 
 deal, except indirectly, with professional 
 schools, graduate courses, technical scien- 
 tific work, and manual training schools. I 
 do not understand the practical problems 
 in teaching scientific and mechanical work, 
 being an ignoramus in science, and devoid 
 of all mechanical skill. I have never been 
 "a handy man about the house," and if a 
 clock, bicycle, or window-sash is out of 
 
Education and Instruction 1 1 1 
 
 order, I immediately consult a specialist. 
 And although I have studied in graduate 
 schools, and taught graduate students for 
 many years, this is not the place to discuss 
 the kind of teaching necessary for such work. 
 In undergraduate college teaching, should 
 the scholar or the teacher predominate ? 
 A university must have both kinds of men : 
 the original investigator, who brings glory 
 to the institution by his published work, 
 inspires the respect and admiration of 
 pupils by his reputation, and also the man 
 who knows how to teach, and can handle 
 classes with high efficiency. Best of all is 
 it when the same man combines both 
 functions. A professor must be a scholar 
 in order to teach. If a teacher is nothing 
 but a pleasant fellow, an agreeable personal- 
 ity, with no ammunition except a cultivated 
 mind, he cannot make a forceful or a lasting 
 impression. As Professor Cook has said, 
 the students may leave his courses "satisfied 
 with the course, satisfied with their teacher, 
 and most of all, satisfied with themselves." 
 
1 1 2 Teaching in School and College 
 
 They will know nothing of the high ideal of 
 scholarship or the thorny road that leads 
 to it. A teacher cannot have the lasting 
 respect of his best pupils, unless he be a 
 sound scholar. Above all, he must be a 
 growing man. A great danger in teaching, 
 even in college, is that after one has an 
 assured position, one will be content to 
 teach one's classes, prepare the lessons for 
 those classes, and spend the rest of the time 
 in amusement or in mere desultory reading. 
 After some years, the mind gets into a 
 condition not only where it has ceased to 
 grow, but cannot grow. Then the teaching 
 suffers, and the man wonders why he is not 
 so effective as he used to be. The brain gets 
 into such a state that the siphon sucks : 
 there is really nothing there. Every teacher 
 should have special lines of work, study, 
 research, and production — in his special- 
 ity, of course — but preferably apart from 
 the actual courses he is teaching. In- 
 tellectual growth is not a matter of age, 
 it is entirely individual. A teacher should 
 
Education and Instruction 1 1 3 
 
 always be on the watch against intellectual 
 stagnation, which breeds decay. No teacher 
 should allow himself to be beaten by his 
 own Past. 
 
 But, in justice to the students, and to the 
 parents who send them to the college and 
 pay for their instruction, the majority of 
 every faculty should be good teachers. And 
 great teachers should be rewarded, advanced, 
 promoted. They should be made to feel 
 that to excel in teaching is a dignified goal 
 for ambition, and that success means pro- 
 motion. Every university can afford to 
 have some famous original scholars on the 
 faculty rolls, even when, as sometimes 
 happens, they are miserable teachers ; but 
 these men are luxuries, and if they are 
 failures as teachers, there should exist not 
 the slightest doubt as to their actual position 
 as profound scholars in the intellectual 
 world outside. No local reputation, how- 
 ever great, is sufficient. In many American 
 universities to-day, owing to the German 
 influence, good teaching not only fails of 
 
114 Teaching in School and College 
 
 reward, but is not encouraged, not respected, 
 especially by those who can't teach. No 
 one respects a great scholar more than I — 
 but what would become of the students 
 if all the professors were more interested 
 in their own investigations than in the 
 welfare of their pupils ? What would even- 
 tually become of the professors ? I heard 
 one college professor say that a college 
 would be a splendid place, if only one did not 
 have to meet one's classes and go through 
 the stupid business of teaching. I suspect 
 that the students cordially reciprocated 
 his sentiments. One distinguished pro- 
 fessor told me that no teacher should ever 
 care anything whatever about the opinion 
 that his students had of him, and that no 
 professor should ever judge another by 
 his success with his classes, because students 
 were not qualified to judge. The only 
 opinion that any professor should entertain 
 with respect was the opinion held of him by 
 his colleagues in other universities. They 
 were the only ones whose good opinion should 
 
Education and Instruction 115 
 
 be sought, for they were the only ones 
 qualified to judge. 
 
 Such a remark is interesting, and indi- 
 cates a different conception of the work of 
 a college teacher from that held by me. 
 Just as student popularity may in some 
 cases be a bad thing for a teacher, so the 
 modern fetich of "original research" may 
 lead a man into mere vanity. There are 
 men who are so delighted when their names 
 are mentioned by a German authority 
 that one suspects their ambition is keener 
 for reputation than it is to add to the sum 
 of human knowledge. Pride, conceit, ar- 
 rogance, vanity, and intolerance should 
 never accompany great scholarship. And 
 no matter what direction the development 
 of our colleges will take in the future, no 
 matter how brilliant the rewards of re- 
 search may be, so long as students attend 
 colleges, just so long will there be a demand 
 and a necessity for able and devoted teachers. 
 No change in administration, no change in 
 organisation, no change in ideals can make 
 
1 1 6 Teaching in School and College 
 
 the work of good teaching superfluous, or can 
 rob the teacher of what to him is his greatest 
 reward — the affection and friendship of 
 his students, and the knowledge that he has 
 influenced them for good. 
 
VII 
 
 ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ON the subject of required English com- 
 position, I am a stout, unabashed, and 
 thorough sceptic. And although the major- 
 ity is still against me, I am in good company. 
 Professor Child read and corrected themes 
 at Harvard for about forty years : at the 
 end of the time, it was his fervent belief 
 that not only was the work unprofitable 
 to the student, but that in many cases it 
 was injurious. That it is always injurious 
 to the instructor, when it is intemperately 
 indulged, is certain. When I was an in- 
 structor at Harvard, I one day met Pro- 
 fessor Child in the yard. He stopped a 
 moment and asked me what kind of work 
 I was doing. I said, "Reading themes." 
 He put his hand affectionately on my 
 shoulder, and remarked with that wonderful 
 
 117 
 
1 1 8 Teaching in School and College 
 
 smile of his, in which kindness was mingled 
 with the regret of forty years, "Don't 
 spoil your youth." Professor Wendell, 
 who inherited the bondage under which his 
 predecessor groaned, has never really be- 
 lieved in the efficacy of the work. Pro- 
 fessor Lounsbury of Yale has given valuable 
 and powerful testimony against it.-' Pro- 
 fessor Cook and Professor Beers — two 
 quite different types of men — are in this 
 point in absolute agreement. 
 
 After spending a year in graduate study at 
 Harvard, I was appointed by President 
 Eliot Instructor in English, an honour of 
 which I have always been proud. I ob- 
 served a curious fact. Men who had been 
 graduated from Harvard, had studied in 
 the graduate school, had topped this by 
 some years of research in Europe were 
 spending nine-tenths of their time doing 
 what ? Reading undergraduate required 
 themes and correcting in red ink spelling, 
 punctuation, and paragraphing. Why such 
 > Harper's Magazine, November, 191 1. 
 
English Composition 1 1 9 
 
 mighty labour of preparation to perform 
 work that could be done exactly as well by 
 any young school-teacher ? Some of the 
 instructors were permitted to give one hour 
 a week of teaching in English Literature, 
 others did nothing but read themes. I read 
 and marked over seven hundred themes a 
 week — most of them were short themes, 
 but some were not. Whenever I entered 
 my room I was greeted by the huge pile 
 of themes on the table, awaiting my atten- 
 tion. I read very few books the whole 
 year — there was no time. I never went 
 to bed before midnight. If I were sick 
 for two or three days, a substitute had to 
 be found, for it was only by steady daily 
 reading that I could keep pace with the 
 manuscripts pouring in like a flood, threaten- 
 ing to engulf me every day. I am very 
 glad that I had this experience, for a variety 
 of reasons : it brought me in relation with 
 the Harvard English faculty, where I made 
 friendships for life, and I cannot speak too 
 highly of the kindness and encouragement 
 
1 20 Teaching in School and College 
 
 shown to the beginner by these men. It 
 brought me into remarkably close contact 
 with one hundred and twenty Harvard 
 seniors and juniors, whose daily themes I 
 read. These young gentlemen practically 
 kept a diary by this method, and told me 
 frankly not only their experiences, but 
 their thoughts. I also read freshman and 
 sophomore required themes, and had an 
 excellent opportunity to become acquainted 
 with the mental states of the average 
 Harvard undergraduate. And I learned 
 what teaching English composition meant. 
 But with the highest respect and admira- 
 tion for my colleagues, nothing on earth 
 would have induced me to continue such 
 brain-fagging toil another year. I do not 
 know that I should have been invited to 
 do so, for I accepted another situation 
 without asking. The curious thing is, that 
 I then believed in the efficacy of the system. 
 I said to myself : "This is worse than coal- 
 heaving. This is nerve-destroying, a tor- 
 ture to soul and body. But it is necessary. 
 
English Composition 1 2 1 
 
 Someone must do it. Why not I ? But 
 not I any longer." 
 
 I entered upon my duties at Yale, and 
 taught freshmen English Literature. These 
 freshmen had passed no entrance examina- 
 tion in English, for Yale had- not then 
 adopted it. The next year I had the same 
 students. I made them all write four or 
 five rather long compositions during the 
 year, in addition to and in connection with 
 their classroom work in literature. When 
 I took home the first batch, I said : "Now 
 for trouble. These young men have never 
 had instruction in English composition, 
 and have never passed through the valuable 
 drill in the freshman year given in other 
 colleges." But, to my unspeakable amaze- 
 ment, their compositions were just as good 
 technically as those written by Harvard 
 sophomores ! It was a tremendous sur- 
 prise, for the writers were not, as a class, 
 one whit more advanced mentally than 
 their Harvard brothers. 
 
 Then in junior year, I required, as I do 
 
122 Teaching in School and College 
 
 now, every student in a large lecture course 
 to write a weekly theme. Indeed, for one 
 who does not believe in required composi- 
 tions, I of my own choice read a large 
 number every year. But this is not so 
 contradictory as it may seem, which will 
 presently appear. I took one weekly batch, 
 all of them, the few good, the few bad, and 
 the many commonplace, up to Harvard, 
 and submitted them to one of the Harvard 
 professors who was immersed in the 
 "system." He read them carefully, and 
 told me they were exactly as good techni- 
 cally as those done by Harvard juniors. 
 
 Now unless the results of constant re- 
 quired themes are absolutely definite and 
 satisfactory, it simply does not pay to 
 require them; for the labour and expense 
 involved in reading and correcting are pro- 
 digious, and grow every year like a cor- 
 rupt pension bill. I know of nothing in 
 the world that illustrates more beautifully 
 the law of diminishing returns than required 
 courses in composition. A class of students 
 
English Composition 123 
 
 will never under any circumstances write 
 five times as well by writing five themes as 
 they will by writing one ; but the reading 
 and correcting of five themes require five 
 times the effort on the part of the body of 
 teachers. In those schools and colleges 
 where the English departments believe in 
 constant required compositions, they are 
 constantly demanding more instructors, 
 more time, and more money. Quite nat- 
 urally. I read a very interesting report on 
 the subject by that accomplished pro- 
 fessor of English, Sophie Hart, of Welles- 
 ley. Here are some extracts : "The 
 committee urges an increase in the time 
 given to the reading and discussion of 
 themes in class. . . . An increase in the re- 
 writing of themes is also urged. . . . Stu- 
 dents should, as they advance, be taught 
 to expect to rewrite from 60 to 75 per cent 
 of their themes. . . . The greatest need in 
 college instruction in English, as in secon- 
 dary schools, is a larger teaching staff. . . . 
 Professor Hart of Cornell strikes at the root 
 
124 Teaching in School and College 
 
 of our difficulty in his communication to 
 the committee: 'Our Cornell experience 
 is that the most difficult thing to over- 
 come is the lack of thought. Many of our 
 freshmen seem to believe that anything 
 patched up in grammatical shape will pass 
 for writing. ... I urge school-teachers to 
 train their scholars to think; especially to 
 prepare outlines of compositions before 
 writing the composition. ' " 
 
 Art thou there, truepenny ? Of course 
 that is the real difficulty. They are forced 
 to write before they have anything to 
 say, and intelligent teachers are forced 
 to read and correct this vain and empty 
 stuff. If a student is well-read, familiar 
 with good literature, and has opinions, his 
 writing is usually technically adequate. 
 I heard a college president say, "The way to 
 learn to write is to write." But it is not 
 true. A good physician or surgeon has 
 not learned to practise by practising : that 
 is the method of quacks. Years of in- 
 struction in knowledge and in principles 
 
English Composition 125 
 
 must come first. I have known cases 
 where a boy will write a required composition 
 full of grammatical and rhetorical errors ; 
 then he will write a letter to his instructor, 
 saying he is called home by illness in the 
 family, and the letter is technically correct. 
 
 I once saw a hundred students, armed 
 only with pencil and paper, shut up in a 
 college classroom. The teacher sprung 
 some subjects on them — "One Summer's 
 Day" among others. No student could 
 leave till he had finished his composition. 
 Imagine the results ! A man I know once 
 remarked, "I want to write articles for the 
 papers and magazines : the only trouble is, 
 I find I have a paucity of words and ideas." 
 
 In the schools there must be some ele- 
 mentary instruction in writing : the simple 
 principles can be taught, and themes written 
 to illustrate spelling, sentence arrangement, 
 punctuation, and paragraphing. Composi- 
 tions on interesting contemporary subjects, 
 or on subjects connected closely with the 
 lessons in Literature can from time to time 
 
126 Teaching in School and College 
 
 be required. A good plan is to have the 
 class vote on a list of subjects. 
 
 In college, it is well to have critical 
 writing accompany literary courses, es- 
 pecially in the last two years. This is 
 true particularly of lecture courses in Litera- 
 ture, where the students should write, 
 not a synopsis nor a description, but an 
 honest opinion. And they should be en- 
 couraged to write truthfully, absolutely 
 regardless of the world's valuation of a 
 certain author. Let them say what they 
 really think. Each theme should be a 
 personal impression, a confession. 
 
 Then, although I absolutely disbelieve 
 in the study of formal rhetoric, and also in 
 courses in required composition, I believe 
 that every college should furnish elective 
 courses — as many as possible — for the 
 benefit of those students who really wish to 
 practise writing as a fine art, who wish to 
 improve their literary style. These courses 
 should be strictly limited in numbers, so 
 that the teacher may have plenty of time 
 
English Composition 127 
 
 for personal conference outside of the class- 
 room with each pupil. This is much more 
 valuable than the class meetings. 
 
 I am certain, however, that the best way 
 to learn to write is to read, just as one learns 
 good manners by associating with well-bred 
 people. A student who loves good reading, 
 who has a trained critical taste, will almost 
 always write well, and is in a position to 
 develop his style by practice, the reading 
 and ideas having come in the proper order, 
 first instead of last. I was teaching a 
 large number of Yale seniors and juniors a 
 course in American Literature, each pupil 
 being required to write a weekly expression 
 of opinion on the book just read, and hand It 
 in before the lecture. I append a theme 
 submitted by a junior who had never re- 
 ceived the slightest training in rhetoric or 
 English composition. He had even omitted 
 the sophomore course In English Literature. 
 But he came to college from a home where 
 there were good books, and he was passion- 
 ately fond of reading. The subject for the 
 
128 Teaching in School and College 
 
 week was The Scarlet Letter, and this is what 
 he wrote : — 
 
 One thing which struck me in this story was 
 the subtle skill with which Hawthorne enwraps 
 his characters in the atmosphere of long past 
 years. The beginning and end are like glimpses 
 down a long, dim vista ; and on all his pages 
 there is the dust and mould of time. It is most 
 truly dramatic ; but its dramatic power lies 
 rather in its profound understanding of human- 
 ity than in its fervour of delineation. It is, 
 compared with the tragedies of Shakespeare, 
 like the glassy reflection of a far-oif conflagra- 
 tion compared with that conflagration itself. 
 His people are most true interpretations of human 
 feeling; yet they always partake of a vague, 
 incorporeal character, like beings seen in far-off 
 perspective. Their conversation, too, has a 
 certain old-time quaintness, which never strikes 
 us as untrue to life, yet does not seem just 
 like ordinary conversation ; just as a human 
 voice may sound human and yet strange when 
 coming from a far distance. I think this is 
 really one of the greatest charms of the book. 
 In that gulf of generations all their grosser 
 
English Composition 129 
 
 personalities are lost; and we are able to con- 
 fine our attention to the workings of the soul. 
 This misty atmosphere also lends peculiar 
 sweetness and force to Hawthorne's moral. 
 It makes it seem, not like the dogmatic asser- 
 tion of an aggressive moralist, but like the voice 
 of impersonal experience, speaking out of the 
 dusky caves of time. 
 
VIII 
 
 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 
 
 " nr^HEN said they unto him, Say now 
 JL Shibboleth : and he said Sibboleth : 
 for he could not frame to pronounce it right. 
 Then they took him, and slew him at the 
 passages of Jordan : and there fell at that 
 time of the Ephraimites forty and two 
 thousand." 
 
 This was a rather drastic method of 
 ensuring general accuracy in speaking the 
 language ; one sometimes wishes it were 
 not obsolete. Christian civilisation has 
 made an enormous advance on Old Testa- 
 ment ideas of morality — but the ancient 
 heroes knew what they wanted, and how to 
 get it. I would there were some modern 
 practicable scheme for improving the pro- 
 nunciation of English, not merely among 
 pupils in our schools, but among the teachers. 
 
 130 
 
English Pronunciation 131 
 
 We have daily evidence in America of bar- 
 barous assaults made by those who ought to 
 know better on the defenceless mother- 
 tongue — assaults made with impunity in 
 the absence of the axe. No teacher in 
 school or college should permit a single 
 one of his pupils to speak the language 
 more accurately than he. The American 
 school — which should be a temple where 
 the English language is treated with rever- 
 ence — is sometimes a scene of cynical 
 desecration. I am not at all attacking 
 colloquial slang, which, in its metaphoric 
 picturesqueness, is often the very life of 
 speech : I am thinking of the careless mutila- 
 tion of words in good and regular standing. 
 A fundamental thing that all teachers 
 should preach and practise is the un- 
 affectedly correct pronunciation of that 
 language which is now heard in the utter- 
 most parts of the earth. Furthermore, the 
 very difficulties of English pronunciation 
 make the successful surmounting of them 
 a glorious achievement, and one that 
 
132 Teaching in School and College 
 
 should appeal to the spirit of youth, 
 which loves a desperate undertaking. Eng- 
 lish is least like a phonetic language : 
 and leaving out the matter of accent, it is 
 easier for an American, with a little in- 
 struction, to speak foreign words correctly 
 than it is for him to conquer the wild and 
 lawless army of English syllables. Let us, 
 then, at the start not minimise the strength 
 of the foe : let this rather become an in- 
 spiration. 
 
 No one can accuse me of apeing the 
 English : indeed, I am more of a Jingo than 
 an Anglo-maniac. But, in the last analysis, 
 the pronunciation of cultivated English- 
 men is the final test as to how most words 
 should be spoken. I say pronunciation, 
 rather than inflection ; for the American 
 imitation of what is known as the "English 
 accent" is proper matter for laughter. 
 And I say "most words," because there are 
 certain words which are pronounced quite 
 differently in England than in America, and 
 which it seems an affectation to copy here. 
 
English Pronunciation 133 
 
 Some of these are Clerk, Trait, Schedule, 
 Fracas, Lieutenant, and the last letter in the 
 alphabet, which Shakespeare calls by a 
 bad name. There is no reason why we 
 should attempt to force these on an Ameri- 
 can public which has repeatedly declined 
 to accept them: But there is one word, 
 been, which the English universally pro- 
 nounce like the sacred vegetable of Boston, 
 and which is gaining ground so rapidly in 
 our country that it seems sure ultimately to 
 prevail. 
 
 Another English pronunciation that is 
 certain to conquer in this country, and that 
 has already gained the majority of culti- 
 vated Americans, is the broad A. To one 
 like myself, brought up from childhood with 
 a flat Last, Calf, Laugh, Aunt, etc., it was 
 years before I could speak these words 
 broadly without feeling like a (flat) Ass ; but 
 after heroic and persistent endeavour, I 
 now pronounce them broadly without even 
 the consciousness of unusual virtue. It is 
 only in gusts of anger or sudden excite- 
 
134 Teaching in School and College 
 
 ment that I descend from the heights to the 
 flats, even as the dog to his Scriptural menu. 
 Next to the first letter in the alphabet, the 
 most shamefully treated of the five vowels 
 is the U, and the combination of the letters 
 EW, that should resemble it in accuracy, as 
 it does now in sin. There should be a 
 distinct difference between the sound of U 
 and double 0, actually observable to the 
 naked ear in such words as Duke, Duty, 
 Constitution, Enthusiasm, Tuesday, News. 
 The letter 0, while not mishandled like the 
 J/,, is treated with scant courtesy, and often 
 with absolute neglect, in such words as 
 Innocent, Violent, Violet; indeed, the latter 
 word is often pronounced as though it were 
 spelled Vialit. This same inoffensive and 
 entirely respectable vowel is dragged ab- 
 surdly out of shape in such words as 
 Mock, Dog, Boss, God, Moss, where it is 
 literally given an Aw-ful sound. Our most 
 popular vowel, E, is abominably treated 
 in such words as Cellar, Yellow, Philadelphia, 
 where it is given the sound of U: this is 
 
English Pronunciation 135 
 
 even more common and more ugly in two 
 useful words, Very and American. 
 
 We laugh (with a broad A, I hope) at 
 the Cockney for making the H silent 
 where it should be plainly heard, but we 
 imitate him in the combination WH, 
 where the H should have its value as 
 clearly as though the spelling were HW, as 
 it used to be, and ought to have re- 
 mained. The majority of Americans play 
 Wist, discuss the price of Weal, and have, 
 apparently, not the faintest notion of how 
 such words as When, Where, and Why 
 should be pronounced. The dog letter, R, 
 has a curious fate in American mouths : it 
 is either unduly accented in such words as 
 Here and Dinner (Middle West) or it is 
 hitched on to the end of words like Idea, 
 Law, Thaw, and Saw, where it is as awk- 
 ward as a sailor on horseback. Listen to 
 any Yankee, when he says " I have no idea 
 of it," and you will note that he speaks the 
 truth. 
 
 Most Americans are mortally afraid to 
 
136 Teaching in School and College 
 
 shove the accent on polysyllabic words 
 sufficiently far back. Such words as Lamen- 
 table, Exquisite, Hospitable, and Vehemently 
 should invariably be accented vehemently 
 on the first syllable. 
 
IX 
 
 TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 IT is a common saying that English 
 Literature cannot be taught; but it is 
 false, for I have been teaching it twenty 
 years. The problems of the teacher of Eng- 
 lish are not the problems of those who teach 
 Mathematics, physical science, and foreign 
 languages, but it is absurd to suppose Eng- 
 lish cannot be taught, and taught in a disci- 
 plinary as well as in an instructive fashion. 
 All this depends partly on the method, and 
 mainly on the teacher. Someone has said 
 that there is naturally more discipline in 
 the study of Mathematics than in the study 
 of History, if History be taught one hour a 
 week and Mathematics five : put them on an 
 equal allotment and on an equal dignity, and 
 it is at least possible that the disparity would 
 not appear so grossly. For a great many 
 
 137 
 
138 Teaching in School and College 
 
 years, the idea prevailed at Oxford and 
 Cambridge that English Literature could 
 not be taught. Anglo-Saxon could be 
 taught, either as a foreign language, or as 
 a linguistic science ; historical English gram- 
 mar and phonetics could be taught, but 
 not Literature. Such ideas are now losing 
 ground. 
 
 If distinction in philology and linguistics 
 were an absolute sine qua non for the teacher 
 of English Literature, I should have to seek 
 another occupation. I have the highest 
 respect for linguistic studies, and realise 
 their importance. But they affect me ex- 
 actly as other sciences do — I have no 
 talent for them, and no deep interest there. 
 I know this sounds like blasphemy, but 
 it happens to be the humble truth. I went 
 through the grind of Anglo-Saxon, as every 
 would-be professor of English Literature 
 should do. At Yale we quite properly, and 
 with my active and hearty approval and 
 support, require the study of Anglo-Saxon 
 as a requisite to the doctor's degree in 
 
Teaching English Literature 139 
 
 English. Not only is it excellent training 
 and a fundamental basis for the study of the 
 language, but every candidate for a teacher's 
 position in English may be forced to accept 
 a position where he will be called on to 
 teach elementary Anglo-Saxon, and he must 
 be qualified to meet this emergency. There 
 are those who prefer the study of Linguistics 
 to the study of Literature. This causes 
 me no surprise. There are those who prefer 
 the study of Mathematics to Literature, — 
 why not ? I gaze upon them not with pity 
 or wonder, but with an awful respect, 
 knowing that I could never attain to such 
 heights. As a young man, I was free to 
 choose, and did not wish to teach subjects 
 for which I had no talent and which I did 
 not enjoy. I chose to teach Literature. 
 
 I had some little difficulties at the outset. 
 After two years of graduate study at Yale, 
 I proceeded to Harvard and interviewed 
 Professor Child. I told him that I had 
 come there to pursue special studies in 
 English Literature, and mentioned a list 
 
140 Teaching in School and College 
 
 I had picked out in the catalogue. He 
 recommended me to take four other courses 
 instead, which I saw were mainly lin- 
 guistic. I remarked that these did not 
 interest me, that I had come with definite 
 plans of what I wished to undertake, and 
 must go elsewhere if not allowed to follow 
 my inclinations. He was finally good 
 enough not only to accede, but to give me 
 his blessing, saying that the majority of 
 graduate students did not know what they 
 wanted, had to be fed by hand, and that it 
 was refreshing to find a student with 
 independence and a programme. I was 
 greatly comforted and encouraged, and 
 found the year most profitable. 
 
 In teaching English Literature in the 
 schools, except in those unfortunate cases 
 where everything else has to be sacrificed 
 in order to make the pupil pass the college 
 English entrance examinations, the teacher 
 should remember that the main object 
 of his work in the classroom is not word 
 study, is not the grinding out of classical 
 
Teaching English Literature 141 
 
 allusions, is not unrelated biographical de- 
 tails of authors, but the awakening in a 
 pupil's mind of a love of reading. A teacher 
 should not be distressed if a boy or girl 
 reads a lot of trash outside of school hours : 
 it is better to read trash than to read nothing. 
 When I was a small boy, I read hundreds of 
 volumes that were in themselves worthless 
 — the "Outward Bound Series" by Oliver 
 Optic (I can remember Lieutenant Shuffles 
 to this day) ; the "Army and Navy Series" 
 by the same author, containing the histories 
 of those remarkably successful young gentle- 
 men, Tom and Jack Somers ; row on row of 
 Harry Castlemon's books. The Sports- 
 man's Club in the Saddle, etc. ; the entire 
 series of Jack Harkaway's adventures with 
 the Indians, and in other perils ; an amaz- 
 ing number of detective stories — Macon 
 Moore is on your track ! all of Horatio 
 Alger's exciting and priggishly moral tales. 
 What did I get out of this stuff ? I obtained 
 a love for reading. I realised the inex- 
 haustible delight there was in books, the 
 
142 Teaching in School and College 
 
 possibility of an instant and wonderful 
 change of scene from my humdrum little 
 existence to the plains of the West, or the 
 snow-capped mountains of the deep. I 
 obtained an enormously increased English 
 vocabulary, the ability to read English 
 with speed and pleasure, and a constant, if 
 crude, stimulation of the imagination. It 
 was when I was in this welter of trash, and 
 hungry for more, that a city librarian, 
 Mr. Frank B. Gay of Hartford, tactfully 
 introduced me to something better. I went 
 down to the institute to take out some new 
 books by Oliver Optic. Mr. Gay suggested 
 that I read Shakespeare instead. Just to 
 please him, I consented to try, and he gave 
 me Julius Ccesar. I became so intensely 
 interested in the play that before a year 
 had passed, I had read all the dramas of 
 William Shakespeare. My taste was ex- 
 traordinary : I thought Titus Andronicus 
 a much superior play to Othello, simply 
 because it was a blood and thunder story : 
 it was, indeed, rather my favourite play. 
 
Teaching English Literature 143 
 
 But it was something to have read all of 
 Shakespeare when I was twelve years old. 
 I could not have done this, had I not 
 already formed the reading habit — had I 
 not learned to read a long book with ease 
 and speed. I owe this largely to silly tales 
 of adventure. 
 
 If boys or girls have the reading habit, 
 their attention can be diverted to good 
 books instead of bad ; but if they don't 
 read at all, or read slowly and with diffi- 
 culty, the task of the teacher is a thousand 
 times harder. The teacher must try to 
 cultivate a love of reading, then the ability 
 to discriminate between good and bad books, 
 and thus the formation of taste, which is 
 the beginning of criticism. This cannot 
 be done by the teacher's forcing his own 
 opinion on the class, or the opinions of 
 distinguished critics ; nor by the constant 
 denunciation of trash, or a false attitude 
 toward it. You can't cure a drunkard by 
 telling him that whiskey does not taste 
 good, because he knows better. 
 
144 Teaching in School and College 
 
 The way to learn to read a foreign lan- 
 guage is not to begin with some ponderous 
 work, but with a novel or play that is so 
 exciting that one is intensely eager to read 
 the next page, and so learns the language 
 in spite of himself. 
 
 Literature read in schools and colleges 
 must be brought into constant relation 
 with life rather than with grammars, 
 dictionaries, and works of reference, though 
 these all have their place. Boys and girls 
 are intensely practical as well as Imagina- 
 tive ; they feel positive values. As Pro- 
 fessor Charlton Lewis has wisely said, 
 "we are likely to succeed In Impressing 
 upon our pupils an author's view of moral 
 questions, his attitude toward life, his pre- 
 sentments of human character, his own 
 character, the plausibility and justice of 
 his narrative." These are the things that 
 boys and girls actually feel, and can be made 
 to feel more Intensely. 
 
 The best work Is often done by a faithful 
 teacher outside of the classroom, for the 
 
Teaching English Literature 145 
 
 best teaching is always between teacher 
 and individual rather than between teacher 
 and squad. A few words in season to the 
 intelligent and to the dullard, a personal 
 interest In their reading, a little talk with 
 them about books. At the earliest possible 
 age, each pupil should be encouraged to 
 own books, to start a private library. The 
 instinct of ownership is enormously strong 
 in boys and girls. "This belongs to me." 
 "Is that your dog?" This passion for 
 ownership, once directed toward the ac- 
 cumulation of books, may lead to astonish- 
 ing and permanent results for good. Let 
 them get the habit of collecting books as 
 every boy collects stamps, eggs, minerals, 
 post-cards, butterflies. 
 
 This is one reason why I have always 
 believed that the public purchase of text- 
 books in schools, and the loaning of them 
 to the pupils is a bad thing. It is better 
 that their families should make the sacrifice 
 and each student own the book that he uses 
 in class. 
 
146 Teaching in School and College 
 
 In freshman and sophomore instruction 
 in English Literature, the teacher finds 
 himself placed in a greater responsibility 
 than the teacher of Mathematics or foreign 
 languages. The recitation cannot run itself, 
 cannot move on predetermined lines. In 
 Mathematics there are problems to be done in 
 the classroom, at the desks or on the board. 
 In Latin the text must be pronounced, 
 must be translated ; there are the necessary 
 questions on grammatical construction. In 
 English there is nothing to translate, nothing 
 to write on the board ; the responsibility 
 falls on the teacher, and he must make his 
 own way. 
 
 There is no better author to begin with 
 than Shakespeare : he interests all kinds of 
 minds, is the greatest writer in literature, 
 and the most fruitful to teach. A complete 
 and unexpurgated text should be used in 
 colleges, one without too many notes, and 
 especially one without too much critical 
 matter in the introduction. If the students 
 will do it, it is well to encourage them to have 
 
Teaching English Literature 147 
 
 their copies of the play rebound and inter- 
 leaved, so that they can make notes of 
 the interpretations in the classroom, and 
 make them in the proper places. Lessons 
 should be short, and every line studied. 
 Three hours a week for a month is not too 
 long a time to spend on one play. As each 
 student is called on, it is well to have him 
 read aloud a dozen lines, before questions 
 are put. Most students are wretched 
 readers, have miserable enunciation, and 
 slovenly pronunciation. The teacher has a 
 chance to help incidentally here. The best 
 passages can be read aloud at various times 
 in the hour by the teacher himself, of course 
 not "dramatically," or in a theatrical 
 style, but with intelligence. Interpretative 
 reading aloud by the teacher is exceedingly 
 valuable, and sometimes better than a 
 commentary. I have known many students 
 who never realised the beauty or true 
 meaning of a passage, until they heard it 
 read aloud by the teacher. The late Pro- 
 fessor Hiram Corson may have carried this 
 
148 Teaching in School and College 
 
 to excess : he believed that interpretative 
 reading aloud was the method for instruction 
 in Literature. He said that a certain can- 
 didate for the doctor's degree had every 
 qualification but one, but that this deficiency 
 was fatal, and would utterly prevent his 
 success as a teacher. The candidate had 
 lost two front teeth ! 
 
 I should not insist on reading aloud as 
 the sole method or the best, and it should 
 not be indulged in too frequently. But 
 it has an important place. The finest 
 reader of Shakespeare's verse that I have 
 ever heard, either on or off the stage, was 
 Professor Child. He occasionally read a 
 page aloud in the classroom, and it was better 
 than volumes of commentaries. The lines be- 
 came illuminated with meaning ; took on 
 new interest and significance. 
 
 Shakespeare's language must be under- 
 stood. It is all well enough to talk about 
 the value of aesthetic criticism, and the 
 killing dulness of philological study. .Es- 
 thetic criticism has no value at all, unless it 
 
Teaching English Literature 149 
 
 is based on accurate knowledge. There was 
 one critic who said that Shakespeare some- 
 times wrote nonsense, which is, perhaps, 
 true, only he selected an unfortunate illus- 
 tration. He took the line from The Tempest, 
 "The fringed curtains of thine eye advance," 
 and said this was nonsense, for how could 
 anyone advance his eyelids ? The trouble 
 was, the critic did not know what the word 
 "advance" meant in the sentence under 
 fire, so the recoil of his criticism was greater 
 than the discharge, which happens to many 
 critics. In some ways, Shakespeare is a 
 very obscure writer, as is shown by the fact 
 that after three hundred years of criticism, 
 scholars and readers have been unable to 
 agree whether or not his most famous 
 character was sane. Some say Hamlet was 
 mad, others say he only pretended to be, 
 while Dr. Furness, who ought to know 
 better than anybody, says Hamlet was 
 neither mad nor pretended to be ! But the 
 first step is unquestionably a knowledge of 
 what the words mean. I read a speech by 
 
150 Teaching in School and College 
 
 a popular actor, who has acted Hamlet 
 many years, and it was clear that he 
 did not know the meaning of the word 
 "coil" in Hamlet's great soliloquy. Some- 
 times the history of certain words like 
 Orlando's "quintain" can be effectively 
 introduced. But whether much or little 
 time be devoted to philology and word 
 history, and that will probably depend, no 
 matter what be said, on the teacher's 
 hobbies, the students must learn the mean- 
 ing of every single word in the play, and 
 their definitions must in every instance be 
 precise and adequate. In this way, not 
 only is Shakespeare properly studied, but 
 the students may form that most desirable 
 habit of reading with understanding — of 
 not proceeding to the next sentence until 
 they have understood the one immediately 
 under the eye. 
 
 Characterisation is an important and a 
 fascinating part of Shakespeare study, and 
 there should be a wide difference of opinion 
 expressed in the class, stimulated by the 
 
Teaching English Literature 151 
 
 teacher. One reason why people differ so 
 much in their estimation of Shakespeare's 
 personages is simply because his men and 
 women are so real. The more alive a 
 character is, the more difficult is it to sum 
 him up in a phrase or a formula. And 
 never, never should pupils be allowed to 
 fall into that detestable habit so common 
 among people who are not students, of 
 substituting phrases for ideas. If the 
 majority of the class do not feel the intense 
 reality of Shakespeare's characters, and if 
 they do not hold individual strong opinions, 
 the teacher is a failure. The men and 
 women should be judged by life, not by 
 book standards. College undergraduates 
 ought to understand the friendship between 
 Hamlet and Horatio. 
 
 In studying plot construction I would 
 study it naturally and simply, and avoid, 
 so far as possible, the use of technical terms 
 and diagrams. Every student should learn 
 what is meant by the three unities ; but 
 I do not believe in the employment of 
 
152 Teaching in School and College 
 
 terms like "rising" and "falling action," 
 and making the students answer like parrots 
 questions of that nature. I have seen some 
 works on Shakespeare that employ strange 
 terminology; others filled with diagrams, 
 that look like treatises on Geometry. I 
 remember with what profit and delight I 
 read one part of Professor Moulton's work, 
 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, and with 
 what disappointment I read the other part. 
 So long as this distinguished critic and 
 scholar confined himself to the specific 
 criticism of the plays he selected, he was 
 admirable, he was profound, he was sugges- 
 tive, he was illuminating; when he wan- 
 dered off into strange theories, the employ- 
 ment of curious terms, I felt cold and sick 
 at heart. One of the most stimulating 
 lectures I ever heard as a student was his 
 lecture on "The Humour of Ben Jonson," 
 where he selected those most difficult plays, 
 Every Man Out of his Humour, Cynthia's 
 Revels, and The Poetaster. He entirely 
 changed my conception of these literary 
 
Teaching English Literature 153 
 
 curiosities, and I obtained permanent ad- 
 vantage. But abstract theories are out 
 of place in teaching classes something so 
 intensely concrete as drama. Teaching 
 must be concrete, for that is what seizes and 
 holds the attention. How many sermons 
 have I heard that were killed by an ab- 
 stract opening. "There are three kinds of 
 truth : scientific truth, historical truth, 
 and" — but no one hears the third kind, for 
 everybody is asleep. But if a preacher 
 begins, "Last night I stood on the corner of 
 Broadway and Fourteenth Streets, and I saw " 
 — everyone sits up ; what was it he saw ? 
 
 The plots of Shakespeare's plays can be 
 compared with well-known contemporary 
 plays with which the students are familiar ; 
 and when an actor comes to the university 
 town, and produces a Shakespearean play, 
 the students should be urged to attend, and 
 to observe the interpretation of characters 
 and passages discussed in the class. All 
 these things help to make the work alive. 
 
 Shakespeare wrote his plays not for 
 
154 Teaching in School and College 
 
 professors to teach, or for scholars to edit 
 with introductions and notes, but because he 
 was an interpreter of Life. This is, after 
 all, the one great thing to which all learning, 
 study, and annotation are subsidiary. They 
 have their place, but it is not the chief place. 
 No matter how learned a teacher or critic 
 may be, no matter how profound an author- 
 ity on Shakespeare's grammar, language, 
 and contemporary history, if he is more 
 interested in these things than he is in 
 humanity, he cannot teach, and he cannot 
 be a really good critic. A pedant may 
 miss the whole point of a scene simply 
 because he is ignorant of human nature. 
 A love of human nature and a knowledge of 
 it are the essential foundation not merely 
 of teaching, but of Shakespearean scholar- 
 ship. Shakespeare's main subject, the main 
 subject, indeed, of nearly all great poets, is 
 Humanity. It is impossible, therefore, that 
 the opinion of a learned critic who knows 
 nothing of men and women can be valuable, 
 because in spite of his book learning, the critic 
 
Teaching English Literature 155 
 
 simply does not know what Shakespeare 
 is talking about. Literature deals first, 
 last, and all the time with Life. Is not the 
 life more than meat, and the body than the 
 raiment ? When I was a sophomore in col- 
 lege, studying Sophokles with that admir- 
 able scholar and teacher, Professor Frank 
 Tarbell, I had to write an essay on the ques- 
 tion, "Does Sophokles represent CEdipus as 
 suffering for sin ?" I read the Greek text 
 carefully from beginning to end, outside of 
 the classroom, and it seemed to me clear 
 that CEdipus was the plaything of fate, and 
 that the idea that he was punished for his 
 sins was ridiculous. I read a considerable 
 number of English critics on the point, and 
 I was chilled by their remote attitude toward 
 so passionate and human a struggle. A 
 few years later, I had a remarkable conver- 
 sation at three o'clock in the morning with 
 that genial Irishman, Professor Mahaffy of 
 Dublin. "Why," said he, "the matter 
 with most of these fellows who write about 
 Greek drama is that they don't know 
 
156 Teaching in School and College 
 
 anything about life, about men and women. 
 They spend their days and nights in a 
 room." Still, how is it possible that a man 
 can spend his life studying Greek Literature 
 and yet know so little about humanity ? If 
 he cannot learn it in human associations, 
 the wonder is that he does not get it from 
 the old Greeks themselves. 
 
 I do not believe that college classes 
 should be forced to learn Shakespeare by 
 heart. I am obliged reluctantly to disagree 
 with some of the best teachers on this 
 question. Professor Child always selected 
 a considerable number of passages from the 
 plays, and required the memorising of them 
 from every student. Each semiannual ex- 
 amination had a part of it devoted to verbal 
 memorising. This has always been easy 
 for me, although I found it easier as a boy 
 than I do as a man. But there are many 
 college students who simply cannot learn 
 passages by heart, or who succeed in learning 
 them only by prodigious effort, the result 
 not being worth the trouble. I should 
 
Teaching English Literature 157 
 
 always recommend certain passages to be 
 committed to memory, and perhaps give 
 extra credit. And I think it is desirable 
 that every examination paper dealing with 
 Literature, except where a great mass of 
 poetry and prose has been read rapidly, 
 should contain quoted passages, the student 
 being required to locate them, to state who 
 spoke them, or to comment upon them in- 
 telligently. 
 
 Teaching Nineteenth-century Literature is 
 more difficult than teaching Shakespeare, 
 there being far less annotation required, 
 and far less verbal difficulties that demand 
 elucidation. But if the author before the 
 class is constantly kept in touch with life, 
 immense good may be accomplished. An 
 hour can be spent, if necessary, on Brown- 
 ing's Meeting at Night and Parting at 
 Morning. The cultivation of true criticism, 
 the interpretation of the author's meaning, 
 the development of the love of reading, 
 these should ever be the teacher's goal. 
 And while he should never force on the 
 
158 Teaching in School and College 
 
 class his own opinions of literature or his 
 own interpretations, he should not be afraid 
 to express them clearly and boldly, after he 
 has sought to bring out ideas from the 
 students. We hear a great deal said against 
 sign-post criticism, but it is absolutely 
 true that many students do not see the 
 beauty or significance of a passage until it 
 is called to their attention. I read some- 
 where that beauties that have to be pointed 
 out are not beauties at all. What nonsense ! 
 How many people see all there is in a picture, 
 a symphony, or a poem without expert 
 assistance ? The teacher must be a leader 
 and a guide as well as a drill-master or a 
 mere raiser of dust. 
 
 When a historical course in literature is 
 taught, like English Literature of the 
 Eighteenth Century, Elizabethan Drama, 
 or American Literature, it is eminently 
 desirable, if there be time for it, and the 
 teacher have sufficient energy to read the 
 themes, that some original critical written 
 work be regularly required from the pupils. 
 
Teaching English Literature 159 
 
 Once in a while, it is well to have a student 
 read aloud his essay to the class : it gives 
 him a mysterious but powerful intellectual 
 stimulus to do this, and so long as he 
 lives, he will not forget the experience. 
 When the teacher reads specimen themes 
 to the class, which he should do regularly, 
 the names of the writers should, of course, 
 never be mentioned. Nor should the 
 teacher follow the example of one in- 
 structor whose class I attended. There were 
 two hundred students in the room, and he 
 began the hour by announcing, "I will read 
 four themes, as follows," giving the heading 
 of each one of the four essays in advance. 
 The result was that one hundred and ninety- 
 six students immediately showed signs of 
 general lassitude. They knew their efforts 
 were not to be heard. Announce one theme 
 at a time. After it is finished, every student 
 in the room has a mild excitement akin to 
 owning a lottery ticket : will my theme come 
 next? It is always the teacher's duty to 
 keep up the tension in the classroom by any 
 legitimate method. 
 
i6o Teaching in School and College 
 
 An excellent scheme for making the 
 students read their lessons attentively, study- 
 carefully the peculiar individual literary 
 style of each author, and receive definite 
 profit from such study, is to require a short 
 written imitation of each author in the 
 course, the prose masters primarily, though 
 optional work can be assigned in the poets. 
 I taught sophomores once a general histori- 
 cal course in English Literature. When we 
 were reading the Faerie Queene, I gave an 
 opportunity for the composition of Spen- 
 serian stanzas having an archaic flavour : 
 a large number of students took advantage 
 of this, and I think they learned in that way 
 the technical scheme of the stanza better 
 than they could have by any memorising, 
 either of the rime order or of the poetry. 
 When we came to Bacon, they wrote 
 short essays, trying to catch the super- 
 ficial peculiarities of his style ; when we 
 reached Addison, they wrote imaginary 
 Spectator papers. The results of this 
 method convinced me of its efficiency. 
 
Teaching English Literature i6i 
 
 And the students obtained much innocent 
 amusement from their own and their class- 
 mates' efforts. A successful parody is often 
 the best kind of criticism. Swinburne's 
 John Jones is worth a dozen volumes di- 
 rected against Browning's obscurity, harsh 
 diction, and whimsical rimes. 
 
 All students of English Literature, both in 
 school and college, should be forced to learn 
 the geography of England. But this reform 
 must begin at the other end. The ignorance 
 of American teachers is scandalous. I hap- 
 pened to have the honour of addressing 
 several hundred teachers on a certain occa- 
 sion, and I found that only two or three knew 
 anything whatever of this matter. We often 
 laugh at Englishmen for their grotesque 
 errors in speaking of towns and states in 
 America, but our own ignorance of England 
 is more general, more profound, and in- 
 finitely less excusable. Every teacher of 
 English Literature in school or college who 
 can possibly find the money should regard 
 it as a necessary part of his equipment as 
 
1 62 Teaching in School and College 
 
 a scholar to visit England and study the 
 literary geography of the country. It is 
 just as scholarly to do this, and often more 
 valuable, than it is to spend a whole summer 
 poring over old books and manuscripts in the 
 British Museum, and I have made it a 
 point to do both and hope to do both 
 again. College students are densely, abys- 
 mally ignorant of the counties of England : 
 the names mean absolutely nothing to 
 them. You say, "Tennyson was a Lincoln- 
 shire man," which ought to mean something : 
 it means nothing. I now require of every 
 student an elementary knowledge of English 
 geography, so that at least they will re- 
 member that York and Devon are two quite 
 different places. I have been in every 
 county in England, in many of them on a 
 bicycle, and I am sure that I understand 
 English Literature better and can teach it 
 more intelligently than I could without 
 this knowledge. English Literature should 
 be studied and taught with a map. And a 
 teacher should encourage his students, when 
 
Teaching English Literature 163 
 
 they go abroad in the summer, as so many 
 do now, to make Hterary pilgrimages, in- 
 stead of spending the precious time dawdhng 
 about hotels. 
 
 It? ought to be superfluous to say that 
 every teacher of English Literature should 
 be a man or woman of sound culture ; but 
 unfortunately this is not always the case. 
 Under the modern strain after the Ph.D., 
 our universities are sending out many 
 teachers who are not even well-read. 
 Graduate students should spend plenty of 
 time in reading, in filling up the great gaps 
 in their knowledge of literature. I know 
 one excellent linguistic scholar who was 
 suddenly called upon to teach courses in 
 English Literature. He had to read six 
 hours a day just to keep ahead of his 
 classes. Another young brilliant doctor," 
 who obtained a post in an Eastern college, 
 wrote back to me, "For Heaven's sake, 
 make the graduate students read ! I don't 
 know anything." 
 
 Although the requirement of the doctor's 
 
164 Teaching in School and College 
 
 degree has become a fetich, it serves a good 
 purpose. Every man or woman who intends 
 to teach in a college should have performed 
 one solid, original piece of genuine scholarly 
 work. Not only has he mastered one definite 
 thing, but in the process he has learned how to 
 work, he has learned the use of the essential 
 tools of scholarship, and he has a scholarly 
 ideal. But along with this and no matter 
 how minute may be the particular subject 
 of his thesis, he should read and read, and 
 be familiar with English Literature. How 
 unfortunate it is that such a point should 
 require any emphasis ! No doctor's degree 
 should be given unless the candidate can 
 read Latin and French, and also one other 
 modern language easily, and unless the 
 candidate has passed an oral examination 
 in the presence of the professors of the 
 department, not on a manual of English 
 Literature^ but in English authors. 
 
 But important as the doctorate is, no 
 college or university should refuse to ap- 
 point a man to the teaching staff, or to 
 
Teaching English Literature 165 
 
 refuse advancement to him, simply because 
 he has not been branded with the sign. If 
 he can give satisfactory evidence of his 
 scholarship, culture, and ability to teach, 
 it would be silly to insist on the degree. The 
 man from whom I learned more English 
 Literature than from any other. Professor 
 Henry A. Beers of Yale, has never taken nor 
 received a doctorate, but his scholarship 
 is varied, accurate, and profound. He is 
 an excellent example of what I mean by 
 sound culture. When I was a graduate 
 student, I took an ideal course with him 
 (in the literature of the Restoration), a 
 course in which I was the only pupil. I 
 read under his direction, and brought my 
 notes to him at stated intervals. His 
 learning and judicious criticism were a 
 wonderful combined corrective and stimulus 
 to my enthusiasm. And, now that I am 
 getting personal, one of the most brilliant 
 critics and teachers of literature that I 
 ever knew. Professor Lewis Gates of Har- 
 vard, was no doctor; neither is Professor 
 
1 66 Teaching in School and College 
 
 George Baker, the quality of whose scholar- 
 ship and teaching is beyond question ; and 
 the situation becomes positively funny, 
 when we remember that Professor Kittredge, 
 the most erudite English scholar in America, 
 whose name is in the prefaces of hundreds of 
 important books, never received the Ph.D. 
 in course. Perhaps these men would all in- 
 sist on it now : as to that, I do not know. 
 I merely remark that actual scholarship is 
 more important than the sign and seal. 
 
 The number and variety of courses in 
 English Literature are now a notable feature 
 of every college catalogue ; every student 
 feels that he must take "English." There 
 is a practical reason for this which appeals 
 to the student mind. It is simply the fact 
 that every college graduate is supposed to 
 have a fair knowledge of the history of 
 English Literature and of its masterpieces. 
 Most of our graduates live in civilised 
 communities, and in social relations with 
 intelligent people. A large staple of con- 
 
Teaching English Literature 167 
 
 versation consists of books and reading; 
 the exchange of views on poets and noveHsts 
 is one of the great clearing houses of human 
 intercourse. A man with no taste in reading 
 and with no knowledge of English Literature 
 has no real place in modern civilisation. 
 He is just as grotesque — just as much out 
 of his element in modern life as a South Sea 
 Islander would be in a Fifth Avenue draw- 
 ing-room. 
 
 But while this constitutes a strong practi-. 
 cal motive for electing English, it is, after 
 all, the least important reason for doing so. 
 It is, indeed, properly analysed, a Philistine 
 impulse — the desire to obtain as much 
 practical benefit as may be, with the least 
 amount of unpleasant exertion. The real 
 driving purpose of a student who enters 
 upon a year's work in an English course 
 should be higher and nobler than that; 
 and the professor should not teach literature 
 from the bargain-counter point of view. 
 James Russell Lowell said that the chief 
 glory of a college education was that it 
 
1 68 Teaching in School and College 
 
 taught nothing useful — and I find myself 
 in hearty agreement with the truth under- 
 lying this paradox. The study of English 
 Literature is not intended to enhance a 
 man's social value, and the study of English 
 composition is not intended to produce 
 creative writers ; any more than the study 
 of Geology is meant to make successful 
 miners, or the study of Political Science 
 to produce capitalists. I suppose the two 
 greatest teachers of Political Science this 
 country has ever seen were Professor 
 W. G. Sumner and Professor Arthur T. 
 Hadley, both of Yale. I had the privilege 
 of studying under both men, as an under- 
 graduate and as a graduate student. Yet 
 I think I have no more cash in my 
 pocket now than if I had never attended 
 their courses. But the remarks of those 
 teachers in the classroom — the superfluous 
 wealth of splendid minds — are part of my 
 mental furniture to this day. 
 
 Literature is the immortal part of history. 
 It is the interpretation of life. The serious 
 
Teaching English Literature 169 
 
 study of literature increases immensely a 
 man's grasp of life's great problems, and 
 it does more — in the language of the poet, it 
 makes a man's reach exceed his grasp — and 
 what does Philistine America need more than 
 that ? This is, perhaps, why a leading pro- 
 fessor of Civil Engineering said that the best 
 undergraduate course a student could take 
 was any course except Engineering. I also 
 heard a successful engineer, who had forty 
 practical young engineers under his control, 
 say that the chief thing these ambitious 
 men needed was a genuine preliminary 
 academic training, the lack of which was 
 cruelly evident in their work and in their 
 ideas. 
 
 President Timothy Dwight told us in our 
 senior year that the happiest man is the 
 man who thinks the most interesting 
 thoughts. This definition of happiness has 
 not only been of immense service to- me, but 
 I have had the pleasure of passing it on to 
 many hundred men and women. It con- 
 stitutes, I think, the best possible defence 
 
I/O Teaching in School and College 
 
 of a college education in general, and of the 
 study of literature in particular. A man 
 who studies literature is forever hanging 
 pictures on the walls of his mind : life be- 
 comes to him more interesting, and, therefore, 
 more happy as he grows older. His favourite 
 authors are both a refuge and an inspiration. 
 And every undergraduate who finishes a 
 course in English Literature should feel 
 not that he has completed that course, but 
 that he has begun it. If a man does not 
 have the love of good reading in college, it 
 is probable that he will not acquire it later ; 
 the terrible cutthroat competition of modern 
 business and professional life will conquer 
 and dominate his soul. He may become 
 a first-class business or legal machine ; he 
 will never become a man. On the other 
 hand if one really learns to appreciate and 
 to enjoy literature while in school or college, 
 one will always find or make leisure hours 
 for it later. Men usually do what they 
 really want to do ; for where your treasure 
 is, there will your heart be also. 
 
X 
 
 THE MORAL ASPECT OF TEACHING 
 
 NO progression is possible without some 
 loss. Every change, every advance, 
 no matter how necessary, no matter how 
 salutary, is accompanied by the subtraction 
 of something valuable. In contemplating 
 any reform, any forward movement in 
 religion, politics, social life, or education, 
 those who see only the gain in the new condi- 
 tions are the Radicals ; those who see only 
 what has been or is to be lost are the Con- 
 servatives. The question for every thought- 
 ful person, after counting the cost of a 
 proposed new scheme, is to consider whether 
 or not the gain will outweigh the loss. 
 
 In educational affairs, I have no doubt that 
 the elective system is an enormous improve- 
 ment over the old cast-iron required pro- 
 gramme : the introduction of Science, His- 
 
 171 
 
1/2 Teaching in School and College 
 
 tory, Literature, Economics, and Art simply 
 had to come. By the natural law of reaction, 
 most of us went too far in the new direction, 
 and those of us who believed in absolutely 
 free electives had to haul in our horns, and 
 endeavour to regain some of the good we had 
 lost. Now we are crawling back, though we 
 shall never cramp ourselves with the old 
 fetters. Ultimate progress is not straight 
 up, but by a spiral movement ; for the 
 most practicable way to reach the loftiest 
 heights with our human limitations is not 
 by direct scaling, but by a winding ascent. 
 As compared with fifty years ago, a great 
 change has come over the appearance, dress, 
 manners, conversation, and habits of the 
 teacher, especially of the college professor. 
 I have no doubt that a modern faculty meet- 
 ing presents a quite different picture from 
 that of former times. Whatever the old 
 professor actually was, he used to look like 
 a guileless pedant ; now he strives to be 
 and to look like a man of the world. 
 When I was a freshman, some of our pro- 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching 173 
 
 fessors appeared in the classroom clad in a 
 long, black frock-coat, built of broadcloth ; 
 the modern professor wears the same kind of 
 garments, next to his skin and next to the 
 air, as those worn by the undergraduate. 
 A man who entered upon the profession of 
 teaching in the old times used to be regarded 
 as a nun that takes the veil : his more 
 worldly friends admired the sincerity and 
 high purpose proved by such a resolution, 
 but felt, also, a compound of pity and regret. 
 This unworldly, unpractical, eccentric type 
 of professor survives now chiefly upon the 
 stage, both in Europe and in America. One 
 sees him often in the glare of the footlights, 
 but rarely in real life. 
 
 The modern professor is afraid of cant, 
 afraid of being taken too seriously, afraid to 
 preach, but not afraid of the mammon of 
 unrighteousness. He is a member of clubs, 
 and speaks the language of common life. 
 He does not smell of his job, does not talk 
 shop except with his colleagues, and the 
 shrewd man of business who meets him 
 
174 Teaching in School and College 
 
 casually does not guess his calling. This 
 complete transformation from the scholarly 
 recluse to the man of the world has been 
 accompanied with many distinct advantages. 
 Professor and student meet on common 
 ground, without embarrassment, and with- 
 out that secret contempt for each other that 
 men of quite different interests often have. 
 The humanising of the professor helps 
 him also in his relations with the parents of 
 students, and in all his associations with the 
 citizens of the town where he dwells. 
 
 It is desirable for the professor to be 
 human and normal in appearance, manner, 
 and conversation ; he has a mission as truly 
 as the minister of the Gospel. There are 
 certain forms of religion where the clergyman 
 must wear a uniform ; whatever may be 
 the decided advantages of this, and there 
 are many, they are outweighed in my judg- 
 ment by the fact that everybody simulates 
 a respect for the cloth, and it thus becomes 
 more difficult to know men as they really are. 
 The little group changes the conversation 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching 175 
 
 when the man of God appears. This does 
 not apply to the Roman Catholic priest, 
 who performs every day valiant and noble 
 police duty. He goes with authority straight 
 into the households of his parish, just when 
 they are least expecting a visit. A priest 
 told me, and he was a wise and excellent 
 man, that his country parishioners said to 
 him, "Let us know when you are going 
 to call." "You bet I won't !" said he. But 
 the Protestant clergyman who wears a long 
 coat and a white tie throws away his 
 weapons. His chief business is with the 
 ungodly ; but if the ungodly can see him a 
 hundred yards away, the ungodly have time 
 to escape. 
 
 If only this desirable process of humanis- 
 ing is not accompanied by a subtle moral de- 
 terioration, by a lack of conviction, by a loss 
 of high seriousness at heart, by a weakening- 
 of the motive for great and unselfish ser- 
 vice ! A man is a fool to take himself too 
 seriously ; but no man can take his life 
 work too seriously. There are some profes- 
 
176 Teaching in School and College 
 
 sors to-day, in various parts of our country, 
 who cultivate a flippancy in their attitude 
 toward their work, in their attitude toward 
 their pupils, and in their attitude toward 
 themselves. I have even read flippant in- 
 troductions to what are supposed to be 
 scholarly publications. I do not mean 
 humorous and charming prefaces, such as 
 that wonderful old man. Dr. Furnivall, used 
 to write : no, I mean a tone quite different 
 from that. 
 
 The hatred of cant has reached such a 
 plane to-day that many men are afraid to 
 express any moral convictions, and if they 
 do, are said to have no sense of humour. 
 There are a considerable number who would 
 rather be regarded as wicked, rather be 
 regarded as fools, than incur the danger of a 
 reputation of preaching. It is difficult for 
 any man, who looks into his own heart, to 
 give moral advice to another; but if he 
 gives it only when it is sought, he should 
 not be ashamed to express what he deeply 
 believes to be true. This is especially 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching 177 
 
 applicable to a teacher in his personal re- 
 lations with students. There are some 
 who will tell a student he had better not 
 gamble, drink to excess, and cultivate evil 
 associations, and then hasten to add: "Of 
 course I see no moral objection to these 
 things. It is simply on the ground of your 
 health, from the point of view of common 
 prudence, that I am speaking." The 
 fallacy of all this lies in the fact that we 
 encourage our students to love the truth, 
 and to follow it regardless of personal dis- 
 comfort, peril, and pain ; why, then, should 
 we tell them that the only good reason for 
 avoiding sin is because it is bad for their 
 health, and injurious to their career .'' 
 Furthermore, I believe that the average 
 student is more strongly deterred from vice 
 by a belief that it is wrong than he is by any 
 consideration for his health or his future 
 prospects. Whatever may be the case 
 with the wise children of this world, it is 
 moral and religious training that keeps 
 students straight, and not questions of 
 
178 Teaching in School and College 
 
 sociology and hygiene. As a class, they 
 are not selfish enough to be forever thinking 
 of their health, but are gloriously imprudent. 
 Hygiene can never take the place of religion 
 in the education of youth. 
 
 No intellectually honest man can have 
 religious and moral convictions merely by an 
 effort of will ; but it is an enormous ad- 
 vantage for a teacher to believe in something 
 and to believe in it with all his might. You 
 often see teachers smile to-day at the old- 
 style college president, who was a clergy- 
 man, either active or ex, and who taught 
 moral philosophy. But those brave old 
 captains in the army of righteousness used 
 in some institutions to exercise a powerful 
 influence for good, and to give tone to the 
 whole place. A teacher who, whatever 
 his doubts and individual peculiarities of 
 faith, is at heart a sincere Christian, has 
 frequent and wonderful opportunities to 
 influence students toward those things that 
 men of all creeds recognise as good 
 things. 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching 179 
 
 Yet I do not agree with one college presi- 
 dent who in a public address said that no 
 instructor or professor should be admitted 
 to the institution who was not a "professing 
 Christian." Truth is free, and every aspect 
 of it important. I know too many ex- 
 cellent college professors, men of high 
 intellectual standing, who have no reli- 
 gious belief, for me to subscribe to any 
 such statement as that. Furthermore, the 
 students will soon find out, if they have 
 any of that intellectual curiosity which it 
 should be the teacher's delight to arouse 
 and stimulate in them, that there are printed 
 views just the opposite of those that they 
 are taught, and that they are held by men of 
 at least equal intellectual and moral standing 
 as their religious professors. It is impor- 
 tant that students in a university should 
 become familiar right there with the views 
 of history, philosophy, and religion held by 
 professors who absolutely disagree with 
 those of us who are Christians. And when 
 we allude to books or to professors that 
 
i8o Teaching in School and College 
 
 hold opinions that we emphatically reject, 
 care should be taken to see that we do not 
 misrepresent these opinions to our students, 
 underestimate their force, or attempt to 
 belittle their importance. A student loves 
 fair play and an honest antagonist. Im- 
 mensely as I admire Browning, I think he 
 was unfortunate in his statement that fools 
 disbelieve in immortality. I know many 
 men who are certainly not fools, but who 
 believe that death ends all. Give every 
 aspect of the truth a fair chance in a fair 
 field. The Christian ought to be the last 
 man in the world to be afraid of the truth, 
 for he has a philosophical basis, and thus a 
 good reason, for believing in the ultimate 
 triumph of truth. A Christian wants to 
 know the truth, cost what it will. To 
 borrow an idea from Mill, the man whose 
 fear of consequences is stronger than his 
 love of truth has no business to be a teacher. 
 The teacher must be free, and allow others 
 to be so. 
 
 Tennyson says, — 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching i8i 
 
 And dare we to this fancy give, 
 
 That had the wild oat not been sown, 
 The soil, left barren, scarce had grown 
 
 The grain by which a man may live ? 
 
 Or, if we held the doctrine sound 
 For life outliving heats of youth, 
 Yet who would preach it as a truth 
 
 To those that eddy round and round ? 
 
 Well, I would, for one ! I do not believe 
 in telling young men and women falsehoods 
 because they might go to the devil if they 
 knew the truth. If I really believed that 
 dissipation were good for the average young 
 man, I would frankly tell him so. But the 
 facts are just the other way, as is shown by 
 the attitude of those fathers who, when they 
 were in college, lived vicious lives ; are 
 they eager to have their children follow their 
 example in this respect .? Because some of 
 them have subsequently mastered their 
 vices, and are now useful citizens, do they 
 or do they not believe that these sins have 
 done them good, and .''"sir;ted them in their 
 
io2 Teaching in School and College 
 
 life progress ? If they do, they would re- 
 joice to have their sons idle and dissipated, 
 instead of sober and industrious. When 
 they receive a letter from the dean, "I 
 regret to say that your son was drunk last 
 Saturday night," they would feel happier 
 than if he had won a prize. They would 
 exclaim, "This Is splendid ! he is learning 
 life ; he is by way of becoming a man." I 
 once met a gentleman on the train, and, after 
 a long conversation and many questions, he 
 finally discovered that I was a college pro- 
 fessor. He was highly interested, and said 
 eagerly: "My son is going to Cornell next 
 year. What kind of a university is it ? Do 
 you think there is much bumming there ? " 
 He fairly hung on my words as I answered 
 him. I said, "Cornell is a university of the 
 first class ; there are many students ; It is 
 like other great universities, containing all 
 kinds of young men, some noble, ambitious, 
 and clean ; others merely ordinary ; others 
 lazy. Idle, and dissipated." The fond 
 parent then remarked, "When I was a 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching 183 
 
 young man, I was a terrible sport, but I 
 cannot bear to think that my son should do 
 the things that I did." 
 
 Although I believe that it is well to have 
 all shades of thought represented on the 
 faculty of a large university, I would not vote 
 for a college dean who was not a Christian. 
 I regard a Christian faith as one of his as- 
 sets, or, in other words, one of the essential 
 qualifications for the position, like a knowl- 
 edge of Mathematics for Civil Engineering. 
 He is not only the chief of police, he is the 
 student's friend, intimate adviser and coun- 
 sellor. If ever a man needs religion in his 
 work, it is the dean. Now by religion I 
 do not mean a heavenly life insurance 
 policy, which a man sees to once for all, 
 and then goes about his daily task : I mean 
 a life principle. Religion is a jealous thing : 
 it must either have first place in a man's 
 heart, or no place. It cannot be subordinate 
 to any other aim, impulse, or passion. It 
 accepts no compromises. It must either 
 be the master of a man, his great guiding 
 
1 84 Teaching in School and College 
 
 principle, or it is worse than worthless. 
 Christianity is either the most important 
 fact in the world, or it is a myth, like the 
 stories of Mars and Venus. Thus I believe 
 that the so-called denominational colleges 
 have accomplished and are accomplishing 
 vast results for good in our country. For 
 they really believe in something, and stand 
 for something. I hope it is not true, as is 
 often stated, that some of them have 
 really changed their principles to obtain 
 money, selling their birthright for a mess 
 of pottage. 
 
 Whatever may be our notion of a college 
 education, and almost every expert has a 
 different one, culture without character is 
 a poor thing. Unless the majority of 
 students are actually better men when they 
 graduate than when they enter, the college 
 is a failure. 
 
 There is a lot of nonsense talked about 
 "compulsory" chapel, and "compulsory" 
 religious exercises in college. These are 
 really not compulsory at all, any more than 
 
The Moral Aspect of Teaching 185 
 
 a college education is compulsory. If a 
 boy or his parents do not wish that he be 
 required to listen to a chapter of the Bible 
 and a prayer, let him go to another in- 
 stitution where he will not be annoyed. 
 But what better way is there of beginning a 
 day of college life than by hearing a portion 
 of the best literature that the world has ever 
 known, and then asking Divine help and 
 inspiration for the day's problems ? My 
 belief in daily chapel is not based on its 
 democracy, or on the power of numbers, or 
 on the value of making all the students 
 get up early in the morning, though these 
 are splendid by-products : my belief in it 
 is based on the belief that the foundation of 
 a college education should be religious. 
 
 There is a passage in the New Testament 
 that every good teacher understands. It 
 describes how Some One, looking on a 
 young man, loved him. When I think of the 
 college generations of young men, manly, 
 wholesome, unaffected, clean-hearted, that 
 have passed through my classrooms, I often 
 
1 86 Teaching in School and College 
 
 think that I have learned more from them 
 than I have given. What fine fellows they 
 are, and what a privilege for a teacher to live 
 in the presence of perpetual youth ! And 
 when some individual student, all aglow with 
 the light of intellectual dawn, comes to me 
 and asks some question, I cannot help feeling 
 the same emotion that stirred the heart of 
 the greatest Teacher in all history — I look 
 on the young man and I love him. 
 
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