Class ULvililT^ 
 Book_J=L_ijL_. 
 CopightN" 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 

 EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE 
 
 ENGLISH COMPOSITION AS 
 A SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 BY 
 
 STERLING ANDRUS LEONARD, A.M. 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, HORACE MANN SCHOOL 
 TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 
 
LB 15-76 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY STERLING ANDRUS LEONARD 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
 •7" 
 
 FEB -7 1317 
 
 ©Cl.A4o3958 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Editor's Introduction v 
 
 Preface xi 
 
 I. The Sources of Composition Projects in 
 Child-Activities i 
 
 II. The Social Group as an Agent in Expres- 
 sional Development 35 
 
 III. The Organization of Ideas 68 
 
 IV. Evolution and Attainment of Expressional 
 
 Standards 114 
 
 Outline 195 
 
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 
 
 English composition has been one of the least 
 interesting subjects taught in the schools. The 
 ordinary student has found the task of linguis- 
 tic expression a dull exercise. Largely because 
 he was provided with no initial enthusiasm for 
 composing, speaking and writing in the class- 
 room have been formal matters unrelated to his 
 personal need to express or communicate his 
 feelings and ideas. The pupil has been forced 
 to observe the rules and niceties of the English 
 language without ever being aware in any vital 
 way of their uses to him. The result is that ex- 
 pression through language has been the most 
 formal and artificial of all the school studies. 
 In spite of years of training, our students fail 
 to become easy, clear, and forceful writers. We 
 are told that the Americans who can speak and 
 write with effective fluency have learned the art 
 outside of classrooms. 
 
 There is something inherently wrong in our 
 methods of instructing youth in the art of lit- 
 erary expression. As measured by the canons 
 of modern psychology, our traditional modes 
 
 V 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 of teaching are flagrantly faulty. It seems the 
 tritest of suggestions to say that a child should 
 have some knowledge of the subject which he 
 has been asked to discuss. Yet it can scarcely 
 be said that we heeded this commonplace truth 
 until a decade or two ago. It was customary to 
 assign him topics for composition upon which he 
 had no real information. If knowledge was sup- 
 plied, it was in the form of "more words about 
 words." The direct, personal, and vital experi- 
 ences of boys and girls were a resource seldom 
 utilized by the teacher of thirty years ago. Now, 
 fortunately, we are asking our pupils to speak 
 of the things they know in an intimate way, 
 trusting that the ever-widening circle of interest 
 will finally bring them to the ability to discuss 
 topics which have a worth to adults. 
 
 But to have knowledge does not imply the de- 
 sire or the power to communicate it. Wise men 
 with minds filled with knowledge are not contin- 
 uously revealing what they know. They are 
 often silent in company because there is no need, 
 no motive for bringing their intelligence to bear. 
 To possess something to say is a fundamental 
 condition of worthy expression, but it is by no 
 means a final one. There must be a motive, a 
 stimulation, which creates the desire or the need 
 vi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 for speech. Defective motivation has been one 
 of the greatest causes of poor instruction in 
 composition. It is a fault persisting in practi- 
 cally all of our contemporaneous classroom work. 
 The largest single problem with which the 
 teacher has to deal to-day is that of getting ade- 
 quate motivation into the composition period. 
 Everywhere progressive teachers are experi- 
 menting in the hope of finding other means of 
 making improved expression vital to elemen- 
 tary and high-school pupils. 
 
 One of the first conspicuous results has been 
 an enrichment of the subject-matter dealt with. 
 We have come to realize that the truth expressed 
 by any one is seldom a purely intellectual mat- 
 ter. Ideas are colored by attitudes. It is this 
 which gives them their vivacity, force, and 
 charm. Yet not until recently have we aimed 
 at the development of feelings, as well as ideas, 
 as part of the content required for speech and 
 writing. Our recent enrichment has developed 
 the emotional side of self-expression, but in an 
 accidental way. The effort was scarcely delib- 
 erate. The teacher realized that children were 
 more readily enlisted in the recital of their per- 
 sonal experiences, which are always colored by 
 personal attitude. But the explanation of this 
 vii 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 success, if given, was that the children were 
 better informed. More in telle ctuaKty was sought 
 by the teacher, but he was fortunate enough to 
 find a vitalizing by-product in the subjective 
 factors of personal experience. 
 
 Much of the failure of schools to develop any 
 literary power beyond that of simple, direct ex- 
 position and narration is due to this neglect of 
 feeling. If it were not for shades of feeling, 
 what we know as literary style would not exist. 
 Its fine variations of form are due not so much to 
 differences of cold objective truth as to the subtle 
 variations of attitude with which we confront 
 reality. Poetic expression is different from the 
 prosaic because of the dominance of the subjec- 
 tive factors in our desire to express ourselves. 
 We shall never thoroughly enrich our composi- 
 tion-teaching until we accept the principle that 
 the development of attitudes is as necessary as 
 the development of an accurate comprehension 
 of the varied world which we are to describe and 
 discuss. 
 
 We must not make the mistake of assuming 
 that training in composition is purely an indi- 
 vidual matter. Most self-expression is for the 
 purpose of social communication. We express 
 ourselves in the presence of other people to gain 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 appreciation or stimulation and to influence and 
 control others. Our whole use of language has a 
 social setting. This truth cannot be ignored in 
 any effective accomplishment in the classroom. 
 The futility of much of our past teaching has 
 been due to our mental blindness to the social 
 function of language. One has only to compare 
 the situation of ordinary conversation with that 
 of a class exercise in oral composition to realize 
 how far we have forgotten the social genesis and 
 purpose of speech. Worthy social conversation 
 cannot be made at command of any person in 
 authority. Ordinary human beings would not 
 endure hearing the same item of discussion re- 
 peated by each person present. Nor would one 
 care to say what every one else has already said. 
 Yet these are some of the striking characteristics 
 of a composition exercise. If we are to make our 
 training real, we must naturalize it, which is to 
 say that we must socialize our teaching of com- 
 position. Nothing is more important to the im- 
 provement of results than that we shall use the 
 full psychology of linguistic intercourse in teach- 
 ing people to talk and write. 
 
 The point of view of this book is novel. It 
 will be radical in its reconstruction of teaching 
 practice. Our need is to understand the full argu- 
 ix 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ment for this new approach to the subject, and 
 to understand what our gross educational expe- 
 rience and our special experimentation have to 
 tell us about the new procedure. For guidance 
 we offer the work of a thoughtful and progres- 
 sive author, who knows through experience and 
 thought the failures which must be avoided and 
 the methods by which we shall achieve a result 
 we have long striven for. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This study attempts a review of current practice 
 in the teaching of EngKsh Composition in the 
 light of present theories of education. Most of 
 the modes of procedure discussed are, I believe, 
 in fairly wide use in grades or in high schools 
 to-day, although many of those objected to have 
 doubtless been discarded by progressive teach- 
 ers, and others noted have been only recently 
 developed and are not generally known. Three 
 points may be taken as the principal suggestions 
 advanced: The first is the ideal of social teaching 
 of composition; the English class is here pre- 
 sented as a group of good-spirited cooperators 
 and critics working upon real projects. The sec- 
 ond is the attempted handling of organization 
 problems as we may suppose that children's 
 minds will work best in mastering them. The 
 third is the apparently fundamental distinction 
 between matters essential for fixation in uncofi" 
 scious habit, on the one hand, and equally es- 
 xi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 sential expressional powers, on the other, to be 
 developed through conscious application of com- 
 position principles. 
 
 Of my indebtedness to other writers, obvi- 
 ously the greatest is to Professor John Dewey, 
 who has stated with most helpful cogency the 
 ideals of education as a social problem. The 
 basic study of the Teaching of English is of 
 course that by Professors Carpenter, Baker, and 
 Scott. Other more exact acknowledgments I 
 have tried to give in footnotes. Chief of my debts 
 for constructive suggestions and for criticisms in 
 revision are to my former colleagues, Miss Edith 
 White, Mr. H. C. Henderson, and Dr. E. O. 
 Finkenbinder, of the Milwaukee State Normal 
 School, and to Mr. C. H. Ward, of the Taft 
 School. Among other friends who have given 
 help too pervasive for more specific acknowledg- 
 ment are Miss Ida M. Windate, of the Wes- 
 tern College for Women, and Professors Joseph 
 Jastrow, Karl Young, and C. S. Pendleton, of 
 the University of Wisconsin, all of whom have 
 been so good as to read parts of the manuscript. 
 Many of my students, particularly in extension 
 xii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 classes, have been very real aids indeed. Above 
 all I am indebted to Minnetta Sammis Leonard, 
 who worked out the basic suggestion of types 
 of child-activities as motive forces, and who has 
 throughout given untiring encouragement and 
 definite, essential help. 
 
 Sterling Andrus Leonard 
 
 Horace Mann School 
 Teachers College, Columbia University 
 September 20, 1916 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 THE SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 IN CHILD-ACTIVITIES 
 
 Nature provided for the communication of thought by 
 planting with it in the receiving mind a fury to impart it. 
 
 Emerson, Education. 
 
 This study is an attempt to discover principles 
 by which effectiveness of speaking and writing 
 may be best developed in grades and in high 
 school. We have to begin with — if we lay hold 
 of it right — children's eager desire to express 
 what interests them. But though the small 
 child insists on your listening to his flood of re- 
 marks, he does not really care enough about their 
 effect to attempt forming any sort of judgment 
 of it. The most absent-minded pretense of heed 
 or assent usually quite suits him. (And unfor- 
 tunately, many people go through life but little 
 better socialized in this respect.) For develop- 
 ing and socializing this crude activity of chil- 
 dren, we find most valuable forces, first, in their 
 curiosity in exploring their surroundings, and 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 second, in their equally keen interest in the live 
 account of other people's experiences, which 
 they get at second-hand through oral or written 
 accounts. Both these sources may suggest in- 
 numerable projects for speech and writing. But, 
 what is more important, a child's absorption in 
 accounts of others' experience can be skillfully 
 moulded into truly cooperative work among the 
 children of a group with vigorous but good- 
 spirited criticism of one another's results.^ 
 
 Good Subjects must come from Vital, 
 Realized Experience 
 
 Where children say things without any idea 
 of what they mean, — often for the mere taste 
 of the words, as in repeating nonsense-rhymes, 
 — we evidently do not have composition — the 
 child's own presentation of his own ideas. Yet, 
 because we have not always realized that true 
 and living experience is the best source of expres- 
 sible ideas, we have too often in school classes 
 got nothing better than acceptable repetition 
 of phrases. We know well enough in theory that 
 only realized or "concrete" ideas — "effective" 
 
 * The relation between the idea of social education and the 
 teaching of composition is best presented in Dr. Dewey's The 
 School and Society, (ist ed.) pp. 65 ff. 
 
 2 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 as opposed to ''formal" knowledge, as Mr. Cam- 
 pagnac puts it ^ — can generate valuable and 
 individual expression. We may well note also, 
 what investigations have specially emphasized,^ 
 that the major interests for a child are happen- 
 ings full either of action or of interest in "per- 
 sons" — first, in the child himself and next, in 
 the animals and humans about him. But we 
 have too often failed to view this matter alto- 
 gether from the point of view of the child himself; 
 we have determined what ideas he should have 
 and have assigned him those; and so our com- 
 position materials have again and again been 
 hopelessly abstract and futile. 
 
 For example, many a grade class in making a 
 trip to the fire house have taken down reli- 
 giously all that the chief told them of the number 
 of men in the department, the amount of their 
 salaries deducted for pensions, and the like, and 
 have copied it cheerfully into themes — to the 
 neglect, in the space they could give to the sub- 
 ject, of what they had themselves observed and 
 
 1 The Teaching of Composition, p. lo; cf . also Dewey's How 
 We Think, pp. 135 f,, and Dr. Bachman's articles in the Ele- 
 mentary School Journal, May- June, 1915 (vol. xv, pp. 491 and 
 
 529)- 
 
 2 Barnes's Studies in Education, vol. i, pp. 15 and 203; 
 Child-Study Monthly, vol. 11, pp. 152-67; etc. 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 realized and could express in their own way: 
 how the men get dressed and down the poles, 
 how the horses are petted and how they respond 
 to an alarm, or how to ring in an alarm from the 
 corner box. Their usual restatement of quite life- 
 less facts is in no real sense composition work. 
 
 It is clear that a child need not actually have 
 set his eyes and fingers on a thing to realize it; 
 it may be born alive of his own vigorous fancy, 
 or he may have imagined it in following some 
 one else's vivid account. Children do gain this 
 enlargement of experience very early; in the first 
 grade, they often study primitive life, and really 
 feel themselves a part of it with their attempts 
 to build hut and sledge and find sources of food- 
 supply.^ So far as their study of history and 
 geography is thus real, it may provide excellent 
 subject-matter and vigorous incentive to ex- 
 pression. But wherever school subjects present 
 flat, indigestible facts, to be merely gathered and 
 stored in memory, whatever the practical values 
 of these as information or as materials for or- 
 ganization study, it appears certain that we 
 ought to keep altogether clear of them as sub- 
 jects for compositions. 
 
 1 For example, Teachers College Elementary School Course, 
 Grades i and 2. • ^ 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 Good Subjects must lead naturally to 
 Expression in Words 
 
 It is to be noted, further, that many ideas 
 which a child quite thoroughly reahzes and is 
 deeply interested in may nevertheless arouse 
 no impulse toward verbal expression. Thus, 
 nothing should be called for in speech or in writ- 
 ing which naturally demands no expression, or 
 which can be better expressed in some other 
 way. In the early grades, certainly, subjects 
 without action — descriptions of things, places, 
 people not doing something — can be best han- 
 dled in drawing or modeling, or else let alone; 
 at least below the high school, subjects expres- 
 sible in time order are probably always prefer- 
 able. Again, we may well hold to the sound 
 idea, formulated by Mr. Chubb, ^ that children 
 should talk and ''write about things seen, rather 
 than felt." There are unquestionably many 
 deep impressions, from pictures such as the Sis- 
 tine Madonna or the Song of the Lark, for in- 
 stance, or from stories with an ideal not baldly 
 stated but illustrated well, which we had bet- 
 ter not analyze and force to expression. That 
 children by preference express objective mat- 
 ^ ^ Teaching of English, p. 184. 
 
 5 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ters when unhampered with requirements is sug- 
 gested by such studies as that of Miss Vostrow- 
 sky.^ 
 
 A, FOUR TYPES OF CHILD -ACTIVITY AS 
 SOURCES OF SUBJECT-MATTER 
 
 Good subjects, then, vv^e may define as such 
 vital reaHzed experiences of the child's own as 
 naturally call for verbal expression — not for 
 drawing or pantomiming or simply for quiet, 
 undisturbed growth. And such subjects are 
 numberless in any child's life day by day. If 
 we examine briefly the commonest types of 
 child-interest and activity, we may discover 
 what children most naturally talk or write about 
 in school or outside it. A suggestive grouping 
 about centers of typical interest is worked out in 
 the University School at Columbia, Missouri; ^ 
 these are (i) hearing or reading stories; (2) plays 
 and games; (3) construction or handwork; and 
 (4) careful observation of human and other ac- 
 tivities or their realization from other people's 
 accounts. Each of these interests provides a 
 great deal of material for expression. 
 
 1 "Children's Stories," Barnes, Studies in Education, vol. 
 
 1} P- 15- 
 
 * Dewey, Schools of To-morrow, chap. iil. 
 
 6 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 Most obviously, his acquaintance with stories 
 may suggest to the child the great funds of im- 
 aginative material at his own command. Thus 
 is developed his fanciful elf-nature. And stories 
 are not handled to the best end if they do not 
 also help make him see the common things all 
 about him as more truly interesting than before 
 — full of mysteries, and of people just as worth 
 while, once you know them, as prince or starve- 
 ling of fairy books. Through his stories the child 
 thus becomes a citizen of two worlds, the very 
 real one of tales and the freshly mystic and 
 strange one just around him. These story in- 
 fluences exhibit themselves in his play at dolls 
 or pirates — indeed, throughout his reactions 
 toward people and events; and they are sources 
 of many subjects and of motives to expression. 
 
 The second and the third typical interests to 
 be noted are children's zeal in games and in 
 handwork and construction of many sorts. In- 
 cidents from play and the like fascinating activi- 
 ties appear to be the subject of subjects for chil- 
 dren's talk. The methods of both games and 
 handwork also interest children in proportion 
 as they attempt more organized projects, and 
 are the source of endless comment and discus- 
 sion. If the school but gives occasion for these 
 
 7 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 vivid and living interests to express themselves, 
 we may. here gain a starting-ground of free and 
 vigorous expression upon which to develop com- 
 position power. 
 
 The fourth type of child-activity to be con- 
 sidered begins with observing the activities of 
 home and community and such nature processes 
 as the ways of birds and insects. We may first 
 encourage children to watch carefully the lay- 
 ing of asphalt pavements or the digging of cel- 
 lars and to discuss and come to understand it 
 in class. Group and individual expeditions for 
 these purposes are likewise valuable, provided 
 only the child does not simply repeat what he 
 is told by workmen and others, but succeeds in 
 relating in his own way what he has understood. 
 
 The Problem of digesting New Experi- ] 
 
 ENCES AT SeCOND-HaND 
 
 There soon appears the problem of helping 
 children handle matters which they cannot them- 
 selves observe, but which they must come to 
 know about if we would get them beyond the 
 circle of their small immediate horizon. How 
 are we to help them realize and express in their 
 own way — not by unmeaningly parroting some 
 one else — such things as they can learn about 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 only through hearing or reading of them? To 
 insure that the child manages the necessary di- 
 gestion of such experiences, we may need to 
 help him gain three desirable ends: (i) concrete 
 basing of his subject-matter upon what he al- 
 ready fully realizes; (2) the fullest accuracy in 
 crediting new ideas to their sources; and (3) 
 adaptation of his expression to his actual au- 
 dience, thus securing its reality to them. These 
 are obviously requirements for handling new 
 materials of direct sense-perception also; but 
 they are the most fully essential, and at the 
 same time are more difhcult to secure, when 
 the subject is learned about indirectly. 
 
 (i) Through fusion of new with old ideas 
 
 This point is merely the usual necessary coun- 
 sel that the child be helped always to realize new 
 experiences by fusing them with .the old. First 
 of all it is apparently well to use as school-com- 
 position subjects, in far greater proportion than 
 we usually have done, what the child can set his 
 own eyes and fingers upon and learn all about 
 unaided by any one else's explanation; this 
 should form the sound base for all later excur- 
 sions. And then, as early as possible, we may 
 well insist that the sources from which a child 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 draws all his composition material — particu- 
 larly where one of these sources is another per- 
 son's account — shall be in ail cases more than 
 one. We all realize that a child's recitation from 
 his book of information about river deltas is 
 many times as vivid if he builds it about an ac- 
 count of applying that information in looking 
 for deltas in streams or making them in gutter- 
 ways near by. But we may gain almost the same 
 end by studying several accounts of any matter, 
 adding probably the help of pictures, and mak- 
 ing the recitation or theme a composite report 
 of these sources. The more this simple principle 
 of comprehending new ideas by linking and fus- 
 ing them invariably with old ones is applied 
 to composition subject-matter, the better we 
 shall probably get on; it appears to be the first 
 principle of success, particularly in composi- 
 tions based on what one reads or hears about 
 merely. 
 
 The purpose of this counsel is simply that a 
 child's expression may be helped to remain al- 
 ways his own — the story his story, an out- 
 growth of his individual experience, which can- 
 not be Kke that of any one else. We may test 
 the value of any composition by the query: 
 Does the child express his idea in a way to show 
 
 10 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 the action of his own sense and mind upon it? 
 This is sometimes difficult to determine, to be 
 sure, since children naturally use the wording 
 of their source of information; and this is right 
 and useful, provided only their account is not 
 mere lifeless copy from talk or book. Yet we 
 can know well enough, provided we really know 
 the child himself. Does he speak with natural 
 vivacity of face and gesture? Is the healthy 
 crudity of his blunt and inexact child-mind — his 
 raw expression, and the staled phrasings he has 
 borrowed here or there — often incongruously 
 mixed with the finer and more precise wording 
 he has just adopted? If so, the chance is that 
 he has recast and fused what he has newly 
 learned with previous experience, and so made 
 it quite his own. A boy writing a story of Brad- 
 dock's conference with Washington expressed 
 thus the general's contempt of the colonial tac- 
 tics: "^Not on your life; gentlemen don't fight 
 like that,' cried General Braddock." The boy 
 had the idea clearly in mind, and that is the 
 prime requisite. At the same time, then, that 
 we plan to help him sharpen his tools for finer 
 or more exact statement, we may well be glad 
 of this very rawness and crudity of his expres- 
 sion; for he has made a gain impossible to the 
 II 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 child who merely reflects the information he 
 gets, with painful accuracy, from a bright, hard 
 surface of mind. 
 
 (2) Through proper crediting 0} sources 
 
 In aid of this principle, wherever the chil- 
 dren's accounts are in any part built on some 
 one else's observation — whether in stories 
 from local history, or industrial processes, or 
 experiences from a wider environment — it is 
 essential always, both in oral and written themes, 
 that they credit as acurately as they can the 
 source of their statements. A child may say, for 
 example, *'This is what old Mr. Jones told me 
 about when there were Indians all around here"; 
 or, "I found this in So-and-so's Geography on 
 page 10." By thus making quite unmistakable 
 the sources of facts or opinions he cites, a child 
 can make possible for himself and for his readers 
 the fair rating of new ideas. And it is only as 
 they learn early to tell in this simple way where 
 they get what they have not directly perceived, 
 beginning with their simple story reproductions 
 and recitations about other new experiences, 
 that children can establish the basis for habits 
 of accuracy and honesty in thinking. 
 
 12 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 The need of testing statements 
 Children may also come, by this route of exam- 
 ining and noting who said this or that, to under- 
 stand and develop the scientific doubt which 
 is essential to real training in thought. They 
 will be spurred by other pupils' challenge to 
 examine more carefully the bases of fact state- 
 ments they have heard or read; and particularly 
 they will, by countless such jolts, be assured 
 both of the difference between observed facts 
 and mere opinions and of the meager value of 
 all opinions which are not backed with so much 
 specific statement of concrete instances as makes 
 conclusion from it safe. When a child insists 
 that killing spiders brings rain and is scoffed at 
 by his companions, we may help him to dis- 
 cover, through his effort to back his opinion, that 
 much more than the authority and the chance 
 instances he has been accepting must be secured 
 as foundation for any solid belief. Thus, through 
 investigating and experimenting, he may catch 
 the first glimmer of a scientific habit of mind. 
 
 (j) Through adaptation of expression to one^s 
 
 audience 
 ^As a third point in helping children to diges- 
 tion of new experience, we must lead the class 
 
 13 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 to demand always that each child adapt what 
 he presents specifically to their understanding. 
 Indeed, growth in the art of writing or speaking 
 may be defined simply as a process of becom- 
 ing increasingly *' reader-minded " — able, that is, 
 to test one's own expression for its actual clear- 
 ness and force to those he intends it for. The 
 child must make his account real to the class 
 by basing it altogether in their knowledge and 
 experience. Thus he may not be permitted new 
 technical terms which a bricklayer, for instance, 
 has told him — hod or mortar and the like — 
 without making clear to his audience just what 
 these things are. In most composition work I 
 have seen, not nearly enough is made of this, 
 the crux and central principle of a social teach- 
 ing of composition. 
 
 In view of the wide range of composition sub- 
 ject-matter that, we have noted, may be gen- 
 erated by children's interest in stories, play, 
 hand-work, and observation, there seems to 
 be no justification for assigning as composition 
 subjects — whatever their importance in other 
 school work — sterile, dry matter that does not 
 represent to the children realized and vital 
 experience. We have noted that realization 
 
 14 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 is the fundamental test for both selection and 
 presentation of material; we must in all ways 
 help children, especially in handling ideas they 
 get at second-hand, to the use and fusion of 
 several sources of information, proper crediting 
 of sources, and most of all, true adaptation of 
 what they present to their audience, so that it 
 becomes actual reality to them also. Thus we 
 can hope to develop in children, first, power of 
 distinguishing, in what they hear and read, be- 
 tween statements of fact and statements of 
 opinion; and second, some true sense of their 
 respective values. 
 
 B. VITAL MOTIVES AND PROJECTS 
 FOR COMPOSITION 
 
 We are next concerned with the definite mo- 
 tives and the specific composition projects 
 which may be developed out of these natural 
 activities of children. There appears to be no 
 need of guiding them toward a formal differen- 
 tiation of their motives in attempting various 
 problems. But usually, in fact, they respond to 
 incentives which we may for our own conven- 
 ience classify as of three types — projects more 
 or less vaguely defined which they think it worth 
 while to carry out. We may call these the 
 
 IS 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 "story-teller" motive, the 'teacher" motive, 
 and the "community worker" motive — this 
 last an interest in good-spirited cooperation 
 upon projects suggested by school or other social 
 needs. 
 
 I. The Story-Teller or Entertainer 
 Motive 
 
 The story-teller motive (by this I of course 
 mean the desire to tell stories, as distinguished 
 from the interest in hearing them) apparently 
 grows from the child's desire to rehearse his 
 own exploits and real or fanciful adventures. 
 It is pleasant for him to go over, simply for his 
 own benefit, the most trivial happening.^ But 
 besides this, a child finds that his effective tell- 
 ing of a story gives him -standing in his small 
 community, whether he celebrates and sings 
 himself or tells of other events. The attention 
 of the group when he succeeds in making a pic- 
 ture live and move before them, their desire, 
 perhaps stimulated by the teacher's suggestions, 
 for more of specific detail — these may lead him 
 to a new and genuine pleasure in holding the 
 attention of others and gaining their commen- 
 dation. This impulse — not for a long time very 
 
 \ 1 Campagnac, The Teaching cj Composition, p. 20. 
 16 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 altruistic, to be sure — has tremendous poten- 
 tiality in the composition class. Their demand 
 that the speaker make his picture and other 
 sense-appeals clear and real experiences, once 
 this is developed under skillful direction, stirs 
 up an eager desire to transfer his experiences 
 and his fancies into just as real ideas for his 
 classmates. 
 
 Story types: Real and fanciful adventures 
 
 Simple chronicles of what the child has ac- 
 tually seen or done and tales modified or cre- 
 ated by his fancy appear to be about equally 
 good stimuli to expression; but they appeal to 
 different children, or rather to different inter- 
 ests in any one child. Provided the stories are 
 made real to their audience, they are successful 
 
 — though on ethical grounds it may be better 
 to see that the child learns to label rightly his 
 fanciful tales. The first-hand experience sub- 
 jects may include accounts of home pleasures 
 
 — romps and story-hours and family expedi- 
 tions — of vacation and holiday adventures, 
 and of good times of the class group. The sub- 
 jects will be wisely limited by the teacher's sug- 
 gestion and influence to what is wholesome; 
 gore and domestic scandal and stories priggish 
 
 17 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 in their account of naughty children or of very 
 good ones are perhaps about equally mis- 
 chievous. 
 
 The chance to tell stories built with the aid 
 of fancy fascinates most normal children; yet a 
 teacher's blunt demand for an imaginative story 
 may quench this interest for a long time if not 
 for good. The imaginary play of children — 
 Indians, house, or school — and excursions which 
 they take with the heroes of their stories prob- 
 ably furnish the chief bulk of subjects. The 
 outhne of a story to be filled in with specific 
 detail as the children imagine it — the story of 
 Faithful Fido, for instance — is one good open- 
 ing. Another comes from starting a lively story, 
 like that of Merlin's Cave,^ and letting the chil- 
 dren finish it to suit themselves. Such a be- 
 ginning as, " 'Well, Fred, what makes you so 
 late?' asked his mother sharply," or, " 'Now 
 you get right out of my kitchen!' cried Aunt 
 Dinah," rarely fails in stimulating most original 
 and happy response. The meeting of a well- 
 known story character in a new place or condi- 
 tion, and the party Mother Goose gave for her 
 children, or Simple Simon and Jack Horner at 
 a fair, are stirring topics. Pictures prove to 
 ^ In Merry Tales, by Skinner. 
 l8 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 be good in proportion as they effectively sug- 
 gest a real story-situation. There appears to 
 be little or no value in inducing children to de- 
 scribe the picture, but the class discussion may 
 help them to look in it for hints of interesting 
 happenings for their stories. Later, topics of 
 this sort may be used with great effect in the 
 effort to make history and geography lessons 
 dramatically real. The meeting of Benjamin 
 Franklin and Mr. Edison on the Styx House- 
 Boat, or of fur-traders and Indians, and the 
 dramatization of scenes in other lands are good 
 examples, provided always the children, usually 
 helped by discussion, have first conceived the 
 affair as a true experience. 
 
 This is, indeed, the crux of the whole matter, 
 particularly in subjects of the children's imagin- 
 ing. If these stories are to be more than a con- 
 fused jumble and unreal stringing of detail, it 
 is evident that they must tie as close to real 
 experience as any other subjects given. This 
 real experience may be that of other stories; 
 but the most successful assignments of this sort 
 appear to be those that introduce a mystic or 
 fairy element into the child's actual surround- 
 ings — "If I had Aladdin's lamp, or the Tarn- 
 kappe,^^ for instance. As with children's com- 
 
 19 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 position subjects in general, we may safely as- 
 sume that these topics are good in proportion 
 as they suggest imagination of concrete mat- 
 ters, and as they are kept pretty clear of attempts 
 to discuss emotions. 
 
 Class discussion to orient projects 
 
 The success of these projects probably de- 
 pends just as much on the way in which they are 
 presented as on the subject-matter itself; the 
 children must have a real basis for understand- 
 ing them, and especially they must be in the 
 right spirit for setting out.^ The most effective 
 aid in this appears to be the free discussion of 
 the subject in class, where many children may 
 suggest what they will have happen to start the 
 story and perhaps to finish it, and thus give 
 useful hints of new departures to those who are 
 slower in getting a start. Given the right direc- 
 tion by the readiest children, this work need have 
 no limit save the possible powers of each child 
 enhanced by the inspiration of his fellows, 
 
 ^ Cf. Elizabeth Hodgson, "Orientation in English Compo- 
 sition," English Journal, April, 19 14 (vol. in, p. 233). 
 
 20 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 The values of these projects: fun, fancy, and 
 observation 
 
 The sort of stories whose basis is actual hap- 
 penings may, under the urge of social demand, 
 stimulate the children to note in some detail 
 interesting sights and sounds and odors in pic- 
 nics and walks to and from school, and so on, 
 to see more color and form and movement, and 
 to gather the most possible of characteristic 
 human detail, as of how people act in disagree- 
 able situations like missing a car. This human 
 interest has particularly large values later in 
 showing how we actually judge people's charac- 
 ter and motive; in particular, it may lead chil- 
 dren to avoid meaningless conventional as- 
 sumptions based on face or dress merely and 
 establish the value of careful observation of 
 what people do and say. The impulse to a 
 child's happy fancy from specific interesting 
 suggestions about imagining people and situa- 
 tions, and the direction to socially useful ends 
 of the ideas thus aroused, may have just as real 
 importance. And whether or not these two in- 
 terests are ever developed into highly artistic 
 powers, they may, at any rate, cultivate fine 
 "habits of harmless enjoyment," and such de- 
 
 21 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 lectable social ends as real appreciation and 
 ability in telling simple everyday incidents and 
 in writing individual letters. 
 
 2. The Teacher Motive 
 
 The child's interest in telling about what he 
 can do or make or what he has seen some one 
 else doing is at first no different from the story 
 motive. His account of how he made a kite is 
 at first but another case of his own achievements 
 passed in review. But give him as audience 
 somebody who really wants to know about the 
 process, and we may transform his conception 
 entirely. He must now serve a practical pur- 
 pose; a new element has entered into his cal- 
 culations. In the case of handwork, the child 
 who is an authority on a subject — making a 
 cake or playing volley ball — may teach the 
 class to do it. A practicable test of success here 
 is having the other children actually do the thing. 
 For instance, one sixth-grade boy explained the 
 process of making a kite — in a vigorous, straight- 
 forward way, but without helpful and definite 
 detail. The teacher said, "Harry, will you please 
 repeat a little more slowly the part about 
 putting the sticks together and fastening them; 
 and, Ellen, suppose you try holding these three 
 
 22 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 rulers just as Harry tells you." At first Harry 
 was a little contemptuous of Ellen's failure at 
 this; but the other boys saw the point and were 
 eager to clear up the confusion. The teacher 
 rightly gave Harry the chance to make his own 
 adjustment, and he succeeded in doing it. It is 
 through such experiment and betterment, with 
 the help of real and practical criticism, that the 
 second significant interest in expression comes 
 in. We may call it the teacher motive. 
 
 Types of explanation-projects 
 
 This type may lead to quite as many impor- 
 tant subjects as the story-teller motive. It 
 draws its material not alone from the children's 
 interest in games and handwork, but also from the 
 whole range of subjects which they learn about 
 both through direct observation and through 
 experience at second-hand, from book or lecture 
 or picture.-^ For examples we may note many 
 practical assignments like letting children give 
 directions for games and exercises which the 
 class are to go through. From their very re- 
 quirement of practicability, these are more diffi- 
 cult to do well than stories, but I have known 
 of their excellent development even in kinder- 
 » See p. 8. 
 
 23 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 garten. It is necessary to start with simple ones 
 — playing keep-away with bean bags, telling 
 riddles or puzzles, or directing dramatizations 
 like that of The Wind and the Sun. These pro- 
 ceed to devising games for number work and 
 language drills and planning special exercises 
 for occasions like Halloween — all of them pro- 
 jects requiring very clear explanation. In high 
 school the children may come to explanation 
 of complex and difficult games like baseball for 
 those who want to understand it and don't. 
 The type should include also investigation and 
 report on all sorts of things that the children 
 care to know about; the wash- wringer or the 
 ice-cream freezer at home becomes deeply in- 
 teresting to most children if the mystery of its 
 working is well suggested to them. And these 
 simple mechanical principles, thus worked out 
 and explained by the children to whom they 
 appeal, will form a basis for such later investi- 
 gations of the working of industries as have been 
 suggested. 
 
 The teacher type of theme subjects includes 
 other matters of explanation, such as clarifying 
 the meaning of difficult sentences in textbooks 
 and other reading, explaining old proverbs and 
 maxims by illustration from the children's own 
 24 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 experience, and the like.^ Where they can do 
 their own interpreting and perform the func- 
 tions of critic and teacher for one another, a 
 healthy stimulation of the spirit of research is 
 induced that should carry young people deep 
 enough into any difficulty. 
 
 Values of the explanation-projects 
 
 The purpose of this whole type of subjects 
 and problems we have grouped under the teacher 
 motive is to give one's audience useful ideas; 
 these must, therefore, be made utterly clear 
 before everything else. Through this require- 
 ment enters the necessity for more definite and 
 perfectly exact details, as in the case of the boy 
 who explained making a kite; and as we shall 
 see later ,2 these have somewhat different re- 
 quirements as to beginnings, organization, and 
 the like. Just so far as the child has done or ob- 
 served interesting things that he thinks he can 
 make practically clear to his classmates, these 
 themes have a very solid hold on his interest. 
 
 3. The "Community- Worker" Motive 
 
 But this t3^e of motive, good as it is, is hardly 
 so socially valuable as the sort of projects, read- 
 * , Cf . pp. 13 and 28. 2 Chap, in^ 
 
 25 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ily initiated in a social class, which demand the 
 common action of the group for carr^^ing them 
 out. These require of the child the utmost in 
 effective expression to make clear the details 
 of a plan which he has worked on because he 
 considers it important to the group and which 
 he presents to them for judgment. His project, 
 to be successful, must command the sympathetic 
 understanding of his "age-fellows" and enlist 
 cooperation. The sort of subjects with this key- 
 motive we may call the "community-worker'* 
 topics. They grow out of the observation, dis- 
 cussions, and activities that center around group 
 or neighborhood needs. 
 
 Types of projects in meeting social needs 
 
 The community worker finds plenty of com- 
 position projects to keep him busy in aiding the 
 smooth running of his school and wider neigh- 
 borhood. He may usually begin in the most 
 immediate environment with noting how to 
 make the schoolroom and yard attractive places 
 to work and play in. Many teachers arrange 
 to let the children write necessary letters, — 
 requests, orders, and so on, — and see to the 
 school or branch public library, checking up 
 books and getting and returning them. This 
 26 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 may call, too, for reports and plans; the pupil 
 librarians may tell about the sort of books most 
 read and make recommendations, or gather 
 opinions from children and from outsiders and 
 discuss them. 
 
 This may extend almost automatically — as 
 in the IndianapoKs and Chicago schools, for 
 example,^ to examination of the neighborhood 
 and formation of projects for vacant-lot gar- 
 dening, cleaning up alleys, and innumerable 
 other improvements. One grade class worked 
 out quite a complete investigation of the ex- 
 penses and dangers of scattering paper, refuse, 
 and glass about the parks after picnics. And 
 there are other manifestations of good social 
 spirit, such as the Boy Scouts demand, which 
 can well be taken account of in composition 
 classes and illustrated by stories and incidents. 
 All these subjects arise spontaneously enough, 
 in a socialized classroom, from the ideas which 
 flood upon the child. Thus he learns to be ob- 
 serving and to form his own conclusions about 
 needs and injustices, because he discovers that his 
 teacher and his classmates listen eagerly to what 
 he finds absorbingly important to talk about. 
 
 1 "Schools of To-morrow," pp. 93 /. and 97; Bulletin of 
 U.S. Bureau of Education, No. 642. 
 
 27 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Values of community-worker projects 
 
 All this should be of the greatest value. To 
 get the cooperation of his class group and of 
 other people in solving the problems he attempts, 
 a child must explain very clearly the facts he 
 has noted which have led him to desire some- 
 thing done, and he must present them so vividly 
 as to win assent and action. He must also be 
 able to work with others and value their con- 
 tributions. The projects of the community 
 worker thus use the thinking of the children and 
 their powers of expression to meet actual social 
 problems. In connection with the study of 
 local and wider civics later, this furnishes mate- 
 rial for the most lively sort of discussion and 
 debate and for the formation of ideals. 
 
 The Presentation of Opinions 
 
 One further point seems worth noticing here; 
 we might, indeed, differentiate a fourth type 
 of motive to expression if it did not overlap and 
 include much of the last two we have been con- 
 sidering. A great deal of what the child has to 
 explain or discuss from his interests both as 
 teacher and as community worker is not state- 
 ment of observed facts, but presentation of his 
 28 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 original opinions or of opinions he has seen rea- 
 son to adopt. All that we as teachers need do 
 here is to help him and his friends toward see- 
 ing just where opinions enter. They need to 
 know that these are not facts, but their indivi- 
 dual conclusions, and that the why — the fact 
 details they have observed — is the interesting 
 and important matter in these regions. A 
 child^s presentation of opinions is often merely 
 explanation of his position — making it quite 
 clear. Whenever, in interpreting a sentence 
 that has caused difficulty, or in giving his rea- 
 sons for liking a favorite game, he meets with 
 differences of opinion, explanation automatically 
 becomes argument. However, the sole new fac- 
 tor thus introduced is a desirable sharpening 
 of motive for hunting out more fully concrete 
 detail; in procedure there appears to be no 
 essential difference so far as the child may be 
 expected to see. It is rather the distinction be- 
 tween such facts as he can observe or collect on 
 good authority, on the one hand, and his own 
 or anybody else's opinions on the other, that 
 appears to be alone fundamental here.^ 
 
 Many good projects in elucidation of opinions 
 
 * Cf. "As to the Forms of Discourse," English Journal, 
 April, 1914 (vol. Ill, p. 201). 
 
 29'. 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 suggest themselves: There are explanations of 
 familiar proverbs, like ''Don't count your chick- 
 ens before they're hatched," with every-day ex- 
 amples from the child's own experience. Others 
 may arise from candid examination of popular 
 superstitions.^ Again, the child may defend his 
 explanation of a sentence by citing other hap- 
 penings in the story — various revelations of 
 Lady Macbeth's or Puss-in-Boots's characters, 
 for instance — or his favorite game by a glowing 
 account of its values and joys. One amusing 
 little girl supported her preference for the Fourth 
 of July instead of Thanksgiving by describing 
 the prettier dresses one could wear then. Her 
 male opponent was annoyed and derisive, but 
 the majority, including even some of the boys, 
 voted for the joys she had vividly portrayed, 
 and the teacher pointed out to her opponent that 
 he could have won his case only by a still more 
 alluring account of the pleasures of turkey and 
 pie. Formal and thorough study of what consti- 
 tutes effective argument must come in more adult 
 courses designed to teach these things, but chil- 
 dren can certainly gain very practical hints on 
 the subject in the sturdy give-and-take of a fairly 
 umpired social classroom. It is to be hoped that 
 " ^ See p. 13. 
 30 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 each one will be encouraged to hold his opinions 
 stanchly against whatever adverse wind till he is 
 given a solid reason for change, and to change 
 frankly when he sees good cause for doing so. It 
 seems particularly necessary that teachers lead 
 always toward discovery of the constant presence 
 of opinions in all that the children hear and read, 
 and to suggest the ways in which these can best 
 be valued and presented. 
 
 Projects that reach beyond the Class ] 
 Group 
 
 There remains for discussion one final branch 
 of this wide subject of composition motives 
 and projects. Topics of any sort which all the 
 group have examined and discussed or which 
 they all know about do not need or suggest 
 further organized expression before the group. 
 To expect this or insist upon it, as many teachers 
 are tempted to do, cannot but be unnatural 
 and deadly. But such subjects may promote 
 other excellent projects. Wherever possible, 
 there should be discovered occasions for pre- 
 senting these matters to other audiences. The 
 class projects may be widely varied by themes 
 in which the children really imagine themselves 
 a body of village councilors, or a band of cru- 
 
 31 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 saders, or anybody whatever, and adapt their 
 stories or explanations to these people. Or they 
 may actually speak or write to other classes, 
 or to their own parents, or to any one who 
 may be got to care about their experiences and 
 projects, and try to gain interest or assent. 
 Sometimes upper classes write fairy stories and 
 the like and send or read them to children in a 
 lower grade. An informal assembly period in 
 which each grade or class present their experi- 
 ences in investigation or study is excellent. So 
 is a systematic interchange between schools in 
 different localities — a help particularly in real- 
 ization of geography or history. I know of one 
 high-school class who prepared a series of ex- 
 hibits, pictures, and diagrams on paper-making, 
 a local industry, and a set of themes each pre- 
 senting a definite phase of the subject, and sent 
 these to a Southern school from which had come 
 a request for the information. If the sugges- 
 tion had accompanied these that the Southern- 
 ers prepare and send a similar account of the 
 cotton industry, there would have resulted such 
 a complete social interchange as I suggest. 
 
 32 
 
SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
 
 Motives for Written Composition 
 
 (a) Preservation of specially good work 
 
 (b) Publication — reaching a wider audience 
 
 Written composition, like the oral work, 
 should grow naturally from the conversations 
 and discussions of the children. Writing may 
 often suggest itself because there is not class 
 time for all the children to talk; the proposal 
 may then find favor that each one write his 
 story. We find that a frequent motive is the 
 desire to preserve an idea that pleases the 
 child because he has thought it through and 
 found it interesting and worth while. More 
 socially valuable in its results is the desire, al- 
 ready suggested, to reach a wider audience than 
 the class — the child's parents, or a sick class- 
 mate, or children somewhere else. One phase 
 of this is the interest in publication. The school 
 paper is a useful outlet for this social impulse, 
 and letter-writing is probably its most universal 
 and valuable expression.^ 
 
 * Many high-school teachers have found unusual value in 
 starting groups of children into experiments in amateur jour- 
 nalism. Infonnation as to national associations of amateur 
 journalists can be had of Mr. M. W. Moe, Appleton High 
 School, Appleton, Wisconsin. 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Upon the basis of natural child interests and 
 activities as sources of composition subjects, 
 we have in this chapter seen some of the motives 
 which urge children to self-expression: those of 
 the story-teller or entertainer, of the teacher, 
 and of the community worker. The second and 
 the third type frequently include interest in ex- 
 plaining or defending opinions by showing the 
 facts — actually observable matters — on which 
 they are built. All of them may lead to the de- 
 lightful possibilities of talking and writing for 
 other audiences than the social class group, and 
 thus are found still more new and fascinating 
 motives. The possibilities of this sort, both real 
 and imaginary, are so numerous that there 
 should be little reason for working overmuch 
 in one type, with resultant narrowed interests 
 and limited expressional development. And there 
 seems even less excuse for themes brutally de- 
 manded, or for ill-tasting assignments covered 
 with a transparent syrup of assumed motive. 
 
II 
 
 THE SOCIAL GROUP AS AN AGENT IN 
 EXPRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 't is the school- 
 boys who educate him. 
 
 Emerson, Culture in Education. 
 
 So soon as a child has an experience or a prob- 
 lem that absorbs his attention, we all have noted 
 how eagerly he proceeds to crude, enthusiastic 
 attempts at expression. And in the interests 
 that thus arise we have discovered many mo- 
 tives which, in their possibilities at least, are 
 truly social. But, even given these impelling in- 
 terests, his powers of expression are as yet quite 
 unsocialized. His observation, though quick, 
 is inaccurate and wavering, and his power of 
 organizing and stating his ideas naturally trails 
 considerably behind that. Moreover, he has, 
 as we have noticed, little if any judgment of 
 the effects he actually secures and no idea of how 
 he can gain better ones. We come, then, to the 
 central problem of this study: How, stirred by 
 such interesting problems requiring expression, 
 can the school class be knit into a social group 
 
 35 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 organized for mutual help, and aided to move 
 steadily forward in the arduous way of attain- 
 ing effective expression? 
 
 The Motive Force toward Cooperative 
 Work 
 
 It has already been suggested ^ that we shall 
 attempt to use for this purpose a third motive 
 force, in addition to the interests already dis- 
 cussed, first, in expression itself, and second, in 
 varied exploration and adventure. This force is 
 the children's interest in other people's accounts 
 of worth-while experience. The present chapter 
 presents a discussion of how we may transform 
 children's naive pleasure in what is told them 
 into a truly valuable creative and cooperative 
 interest in making one another's stories the best 
 possible. We shall then be able to seek the most 
 practicable method by which the social response 
 of such a class group, as cooper ators and audi- 
 ence, may be brought to bear in helping chil- 
 dren carry out their projects to the best advan- 
 tage and develop true composition power. 
 1 Chap. I, p. 2. 
 
 36 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 Two Stages in Evolving a Social Class 
 Group 
 
 (i) Free and Unstudied Talk \ 
 (2) Prepared Compositions 
 
 In considering this development there have 
 appeared to be two convenient stages: ^ The 
 first is unstudied and free conversation, whose 
 ideal is simply encouraging freedom of expres- 
 sion and interchange of experience. This is not 
 generally composition, but it is an essential 
 preliminary. The second is prepared compositions, 
 whether oral or written, made ready for a defi- 
 nite, but in most cases quite informal, purpose, 
 and to be judged by the class as a cooperative 
 group of keen but good-spirited critics. Because 
 confusion of these two stages has sometimes had 
 the double bad effect of formalizing and con- 
 straining the unstudied group conversation and, 
 on the other hand, of permitting slip-shod effort 
 to pass where only prepared and careful work 
 should, it seems worth while to differentiate the 
 two as sharply as possible. 
 
 ^ This division is suggested by Miss Mary B. Fontaine, Su- 
 pervisor of English, in her Course of Study in English jor the 
 Charleston, W.Va., Public Schools, 1916 (p. 4). 
 
 37 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 The spirit and values of free discussion 
 
 First, then, as to informal talk in the class- 
 room. The initial v/ork in any class, whether 
 in grades or high school, should probably in 
 all cases be free discussion of real human in- 
 terests — small happenings on circus day and 
 the like. This is pleasantly started in kinder- 
 gartens in the "morning circle" talk. Its suc- 
 cess must, of course, depend almost wholly on 
 the power of suggestion and the fine spirit of 
 the teacher. 
 
 As a recent writer says of the kindergartner, 
 such a teacher must "resemble the tactful hos- 
 tess guiding the conversation into desirable 
 channels. She must ignore the unimportant and 
 undesirable contributions and select for em- 
 phasis such remarks as will best serve the group. 
 She must value each contribution for its indi- 
 vidual effort. . . . Thus is developed courteous 
 attention and ability to share experience." ^ 
 Campagnac discusses inimitably the idea of 
 such conversation, where children are per- 
 mitted, not required, to talk, and where the 
 teacher, if he holds off properly and otherwise 
 
 1 Minnetta Sammis, "The Kindergarten as a Socializing 
 Agency," Western Journal of Education, April, 191 2. 
 
 38 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 shows himself socially desirable, may be ap- 
 pealed to and asked to talk also.^ 
 
 This quite unstudied conversation has such 
 great value that it should, I believe, have its 
 place much further on in the school grades than 
 it generally does. It is Hke the sort of recitation 
 which Dewey calls "a social clearing-house/' It 
 helps to discover many new interests, and gives 
 the teacher a definite idea not otherwise obtain- 
 able of the children's individualities and en- 
 vironment. Perhaps most valuable of all, it 
 helps to bring a social spirit into the class — a 
 freedom and spontaneity without which com- 
 position work as we are here considering it can- 
 not possibly be carried on. 
 
 Its direction and criticism 
 
 For furthering natural talk among the chil- 
 dren, the teacher may be aided by some read- 
 justment of the classroom organization. We 
 readily see why small groups can better join in 
 friendly talk than can large classes. Again, 
 where the pupils sit so that each sees everybody 
 else and the speaker does not have the horrid 
 necessity of addressing backs of heads, good 
 conversation is much more natural and possible. 
 
 1 The Teaching of Composition, pp. 31-33. 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Our present classrooms are designed chiefly for 
 securing a maximum of order and dispatch. 
 ParHamentary practice is demanded in the cus- 
 tom of addressing the teacher always, and is 
 parodied in the waving of right hands for recog- 
 nition. Such a formal arrangement is better 
 fitted to the recitation of assigned topics or to 
 the giving of prepared themes; it is doubtful 
 whether such seating and method can be made 
 to secure the most possible of the union and 
 cordiality of spirit particularly essential to this 
 conversation type of language study. Wherever 
 possible, then, the seating should be rearranged 
 when we wish to have conversation — best with 
 a small number of children at a time grouped, 
 perhaps, in a circle or semicircle. Where this 
 is impossible, they had all better squirm into 
 position for seeing one another when they talk, 
 and each should thus so far as possible feel that 
 he is addressing his mates rather than talking 
 for or to the teacher. 
 
 In the primary grades, particularly, such free 
 discussion may well comprise a major part of 
 the composition work proper.^ But unlimited 
 
 1 Story reproduction, presentation of plays written by some 
 one else, and exact recitation of matter from texts, we all, of 
 course, recognize as necessary; but as these do not appear to be 
 
 40 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 and rather formless talk is, of course, only a be- 
 ginning of the way. From the start, we may 
 work toward holding ever more closely to a 
 definite subject of conversation, selected fre- 
 quently by the children, and trying to bring out 
 as many interests as possible in connection with 
 this. The teacher may well have increasingly 
 definite purposes and guide the conversation 
 skillfully in ways he regards as desirable. Thus, 
 in our free play of conversation we begin at 
 once to introduce some simple principles of 
 organized and effective speech, especially that 
 of an unfettering limitation and holding to a 
 subject. 2 
 
 The question of corrections in conversation 
 We must consider here a further point — the 
 advisability of corrections at this stage of the 
 work. We find the speech habits of children 
 many times fearful and painful. And there may 
 perhaps be place, even in our free conversation, 
 
 composition in the sense of this study, — the child's own organ- 
 ization and expression of his individual experience, — it has 
 seemed well to discuss these separately with other topics — 
 word-study and sentence-structure and the necessary drills — 
 that are parallel and contributory to composition work proper. 
 (Cf. chap. IV.) 
 2 Cf. chap, m, pp. 68,/. 
 
 41 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 for correction of a very few of the worst mis- 
 takes in the kindly, incidental fashion of the 
 kindergartner — "We say it this way." Best of 
 all, the teacher who wants to prepare a clear 
 plan of campaign will, in these days of getting 
 acquainted, set about tabulating the most fla- 
 grant errors of speech and deciding where to 
 begin organized attack. But, as we shall see 
 later, ^ the effective work we do in bettering ex- 
 pressional habits will be done chiefly through 
 definite study toward good habits in special 
 periods for the purpose. In our conversations 
 we may well leave these matters largely if not 
 altogether alone. It is only as we get sponta- 
 neous and unstudied talking first that we can 
 hope to do effective work toward raising stan- 
 dards later. 
 
 The transition to prepared composition 
 
 Very early in such conversations as we have 
 discussed, there usually appear brief incidents 
 — perhaps two or three sentences only — which 
 first show possibilities of evolution into work of 
 the second type — prepared compositions. Form- 
 less as they generally are, the teacher may well 
 help the children toward making a crude evalua- 
 * Chap. IV. 
 
 42 
 
FUNCTIONS OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 tion of these. It is first important to see that 
 the critics offer hearty commendation of what- 
 ever shows real effort. But to be of most use, 
 this appreciation should be accompanied by 
 suggestions of how to make the story more live 
 and effective. Thus, the class may praise as 
 interesting a bald statement or two about a 
 spaniel's retrieving; but they may ask also for 
 further matters of interest, as, what sort of dog 
 he was, and how far he swam. A beginning is 
 thus made at right evaluation of a story of 
 good details that have been observed — actual 
 sense-experience. 
 
 Three Processes of Organized 
 Composition 
 
 Among these criticisms in the impromptu 
 class talks, there may presently (in grade three 
 or four, I think, at the earhest) come the pro- 
 posal, perhaps from the children themselves, 
 that they each look about and tell next day 
 something that they have noticed. This, rightly 
 met, may be made the basis for actually intro- 
 ducing the second, entirely different sort of com- 
 position work: themes got ready by thoughtful 
 prevision for carrying out a specific project. 
 Now, in the development of themes or corn- 
 
 43 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 positions proper, there may be noted three im- 
 portant processes in which all the class take 
 part: The first is thorough preliminary discus- 
 sion ; this should lead to careful planning of his 
 work by each child. The second, following the 
 child's presentation of an oral or written theme, 
 is criticism by all the class of each one's work 
 to show its values and to suggest how it could 
 be better done. These are simply more defmite 
 developments of the free conversations. The 
 third is a systematic campaign of study, based 
 upon these, to achieve better organization and 
 clearer, liner, and more vigorous modes of ex- 
 pression. 
 
 First, group canvass of ways and means 
 
 The proposal that each child prepare a small 
 story to tell next day may therefore be consid- 
 ered crucial and dramatic, as Mr. Bennett 
 would say. It is first of all to be promptly 
 cmi)hasized as an excellent and valuable sug- 
 gestion; and from this, the class may proceed 
 at once to the first stage of organized theme 
 work, class discussion of the project and of 
 serviceable ways and means. First may come 
 specific suggestions of subjects to be presented, 
 as that they all tell next time of some trick of 
 
 44 
 
FUNCTIONS OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 a favorite pet, or the like. And in particular it 
 should be brought out most clearly that each 
 one had better tell of only one thing about his 
 pet, not more, — so as to have room in the time 
 the class can fairly allow him for details that 
 will make the story real, just as in the case of 
 the dog's retrieving.^ Such limitation, informally 
 suggested, is, I beheve, the basis of prevision 
 study — the first step in the long way of help- 
 ing children to organization of ideas.^ All this 
 preliminary canvassing which we have noted 
 makes a pleasantly simple sort of assignment, 
 initiated so far as possible by the children them- 
 selves and guided by their enthusiastic sugges- 
 tions of what they each will talk about. 
 
 The presentation of prepared themes 
 
 The result next day should be small, roughly 
 planned bits of narrative, fairly distinct from 
 the artless and unpremeditated babble that we 
 have mainly had thus far. Such planned stories 
 are very like the drawings which children make 
 after their preliminary crude attempts at a prob- 
 
 ^ Well discussed in Speaking and Writing English: A Course 
 for the Lawrence, Mass., Elementary Schools, by Superintendent 
 B. M. Sheridan, pp. 19-22. 
 
 2 Chap. Ill, pp. 68 /. 
 
 45 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 lem have led to the counsel that they notice 
 more closely and try again. ^ There should, that 
 is, be more sticking to the point the child has 
 chosen, less fumbling, and possibly somewhat 
 more true and clear expression. To emphasize 
 the added importance of the occasion, we may 
 suggest that each one tell his story from the 
 front of the room, just as the teacher does, and 
 that he also wait afterward to hear how the rest 
 like what he has given. Since this is a position 
 the child has taken before in retelling stories he 
 has read, it need not embarrass him. We may 
 encourage him, too, to be deliberate and unhur- 
 ried, not to spoil everything by scramble. 
 
 But we should guard particularly against the 
 danger of damping the spontaneity and joyous- 
 ness in expression that we have so far taken care 
 to foster. The timorous may be encouraged by 
 good example. Most important of all, every 
 one should be clearly shown that he faces no 
 pecking or chilly critical spirit, but has the help- 
 ful and sympathetic interest of his audience. 
 And there should surely be expected and per- 
 mitted quite everyday and childlike ways of say- 
 ing things, checked by no demand of for7nality. 
 Under these conditions only can these prepared 
 
 ^ Dewey, The School and Society (ist ed.), pp. 57-59- 
 
 46 
 
FUNCTIONS OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 themes be, as they should, quite as delightful 
 and spontaneous as the previous talks — but 
 better because they are results of forethought. 
 
 It seems essential that the child have hJs 
 chance undisturbed by any interruption till he 
 has finished what he has to say. And it is usu- 
 ally an excellent idea for him to give first, if he 
 likes, his own criticism of what he has done. 
 This often comes most spontaneously; more 
 than one boy has thrown down his notes and 
 cried, "Please let me do this another time; I 
 haven't it ready." Because he was failing to 
 hold his audience, he has discovered the neces- 
 sity for thoughtful organization.^ 
 
 Second, the initiation of class criticism 
 
 After the child has given his theme and per- 
 haps his own criticism, we may initiate the sec- 
 ond process, the attempt at specific evaluation 
 of his work by all his classmates. The one who 
 has told a story may remain before the class, 
 those who have a point to make perhaps stand, 
 and the speaker calls on them; they thus talk 
 to him instead of discussing him in a discon- 
 certing fashion. The teacher is moderator or 
 
 ^ Told by Miss Lally, of the Chicago University Elemen- 
 tary School. 
 
 47 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 umpire; but he is at best one of the group and 
 a good-spirited helper. He can make himself 
 less prominent and schoolmasterish by sitting 
 at the back of the room, perhaps having one of 
 the class as chairman to call the speakers and 
 keep order. 
 
 It is of the greatest importance that the class 
 be really left free to make the evaluation of one 
 another's work themselves. We grown people find 
 it difficult to realize that children's thinking 
 and expression cannot be fairly judged by our 
 more mature standards. Their way is a way 
 of formlessness, of scattering interest in large 
 wholes and irrelevant details, and absence of 
 clear discriminations and relations. Only ex- 
 pression that is in a measure inexact and rough 
 really can represent a child's own effort,^ and 
 so such expression alone is of value. Must we 
 not, therefore, first discover what is the child's 
 manner of thinking and speaking, and what he 
 admires, as revealed in the class judgment? 
 And then, appreciating the individual value of 
 his best statement of an experience, as well as 
 the need of making it more social and effective, 
 we can work in sympathy and patience to help 
 him see more fully and finely, think in more 
 * Cf. pp. lo-ii. 
 
 48 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 keen relation, and master the tools and forms 
 for adequately communicating his growing 
 thoughts. ^ 
 
 Hence, really studying the natural class criti- 
 cism of a child's effect and then helping to en- 
 lighten and ripen that judgment probably repre- 
 sents our wisest course. For after all, the whole 
 matter of more effective expression can be im- 
 portant only in relation to its social function- 
 ing. If we are to achieve real improvement, it 
 seems clear that a child must always realize first, 
 through the class discussion, that he has lost or 
 weakened his effect through unprepared, thought- 
 less work, or unsocial forms, or lack of clearness 
 and vigor in his expression. He will best come 
 in this way to appreciate what he needs to work 
 for. 
 
 The spirit and the purpose of class criticism 
 
 The spirit and the purpose of this class evalu- 
 ation are altogether determinative of its effect. 
 The attitude in criticism which we should seek 
 to cultivate, by both example and suggestion, 
 is that of hearty cooperation by all the group 
 in a creative interest in the story — ■ an eager 
 desire, that is, to make it most true and real 
 and thus share in its pleasant experience, rather 
 
 49 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 than to tear it down so that one's ov/n story 
 may show forth more resplendent. The teacher 
 certainly, and so far as possible the children, 
 must come to realize, as McMurry has it, that 
 when a child "works carefully with a genuine 
 purpose, the result is excellent, no matter w^hat 
 the critic may think." ^ Real improvement in 
 any particular demands especially ready and 
 hearty commending. Only in so far as this 
 spirit obtains can the social teaching of com- 
 position become a reality. 
 
 But the important end of this class discus- 
 sion is to develop principles of criticism; only 
 as we secure thoughtful basing of the children's 
 evaluations can we hope to avoid the random, 
 fowl-like pecking at small verbal infehcities 
 which George Meredith ascribes to the pedant, 
 and really accompHsh effective study of our 
 problems. So far as possible we may allow the 
 pupils to think out reasons for their own judg- 
 ments by asking them to tell always why they 
 commend one way or suggest another, and to 
 answer and discuss such opinions freely. Under 
 the teacher's unobtrusive guidance they should 
 in particular be helped to test story or explana- 
 tion by asking: Did we see his pictures, so that 
 
 1 Charles McMurry, Special Method in Language, p. 44. 
 50 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 we felt as if we had been there? or, Can we actu- 
 ally succeed in doing what he told us in the ex- 
 planation? 
 
 Suggestions as to details and organization 
 
 The class may naturally be interested first 
 in the vividness and interest of the details pre- 
 sented. The teacher's care will be to see that 
 there is frank and hearty commendation of what 
 is worth while in this. The critics may further 
 request more of the same sort, and make specific 
 suggestions of what they think would be inter- 
 esting. There may be particular note, too, of 
 good organization — of the child's having sens- 
 ibly limited himself to one point, for example — 
 and criticism of fumbling and forgetting. Since 
 the child has had time to think first, we should 
 also certainly expect a minimum of repeating 
 and wandering and the like. If he leaves the 
 story proper through not having thoroughly and 
 definitely hmited it, — as when he fails to com- 
 plete the account of his dog's retrieving in order 
 to tell of other tricks and adventures, — the class 
 criticism should enforce and give point to the 
 suggestion for doing this better next time. Also, 
 unnecessary fumbling and going back, which the 
 other children often heartily condemn, as well 
 
 51 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 as forgetting essential things and telling them 
 only when asked for them, may help him and 
 us to see that we must know what our essential 
 points are and order them very simply before we 
 try to talk or write. In these ways the need of 
 careful prevision may be made most clear — a 
 need naturally intensified as the children meet 
 more complex difficulties of organizing story ma- 
 terials and other problems that they find worth 
 undertaking. And thus the group criticism be- 
 comes a strong force back of the study of pre- 
 vision methods, which we have already started 
 and which must be carried far if the children 
 are to meet intelligently many fascinating ex- 
 pressional problems.^ 
 
 The special difficulties of criticizing mode of 
 expression 
 
 We come finally to the problem of class criti- 
 cism upon the child's mode and form of expres- 
 sion. In all composition, correction and criticism 
 of these points appears to be the hardest prob- 
 lem, the most fatal in results when ill-handled, 
 the least amenable to successful attack. In so 
 far as we agree that the primary essential for 
 true composition work is the child's possession 
 
 * C£. chap. Ill, pp. 68^. 
 52 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 of experience and of interest in presenting it, we 
 shall no doubt realize that we cannot secure our 
 best results in the subject by centering our at- 
 tention or that of the class upon correct forms 
 and diction, as we have too often done. It is ob- 
 viously essential, in order to establish effective 
 ways of securing ends the child desires, to help 
 him remove many deterrents to his effect, trim 
 rough edges of expression, and straighten wam- 
 bling ideas. But it appears necessary first to se- 
 cure a mode of procedure which shall, so far as 
 possible, do no harm — result in no choking and 
 inhibition of children's delightful spontaneity in 
 expression. Mr. Chubb in his classic discussion 
 of this subject says: ''We know that teachers are 
 only too prone, for ' clearness' ' sake, to change 
 into a flat, commonplace, and narrow accuracy 
 . . . [children's] literary surprises, which, while 
 they may not pass muster under textbook rule, 
 are to be more than tolerated on the score of 
 their fresh and savory quality and rich connota- 
 tion." ^ Whatever the spirit of the teacher in 
 criticism, it is inevitably reflected by the class. 
 We are, it may be hoped, getting well beyond 
 the stage of everlasting nagging revision of 
 children's statements. Attention to matters so 
 * Teaching of English, p. 201. 
 53 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 numerous can cause merely confusion and dis- 
 traction of attention from the points the child 
 can actually master and from whatever ideas he 
 has to express. We have probably seen clearly 
 enough both the choking and inhibition of ex- 
 pression and the unsatisfactory gains produced 
 by that method. In place of the daily and hourly 
 classroom correction of children's errors, we 
 must discover if we can a more effective pro- 
 cedure. 
 
 For securing useful class criticism' of chil- 
 dren's manner of presenting their ideas, we must 
 first of all encourage the group judgment in 
 commendation of whatever is well expressed, 
 — of fineness or clearness or vigor of presen- 
 tation, and pleasing form and manner, — just 
 as in discussing ideas and their organization. 
 It is particularly needful to commend a child's 
 show of improvement in any of these respects. 
 But again, criticism means the most possible 
 only when it is definite in working toward bet- 
 terment.^ In this, good criticism is different 
 from bad simply in the matter of a cooperative 
 and creative as opposed to a picking and tearing 
 
 ^ Cf . The Teaching of Elementary Composition and Grammar 
 (State of New Jersey, Department of Public Instruction, 
 1913), p. 15. 
 
 54 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 spirit in the class critics; and this spirit it is the 
 special business of the teacher to guide and 
 develop. His further duty, we have noted, is 
 to enlighten this class judgment and, by raising 
 its standard, to raise also the level of achieve- 
 ment of the children in the group. We shall 
 consider in detail later ^ specific ways for work- 
 ing toward these ends, as regards both establish- 
 ment in habit of essential correct forms, and 
 growth in power of consciously applying needed 
 principles of choice and structure. 
 
 Conditions for Written Work 
 
 The same preliminaries are necessary for 
 written as for oral work : class discussion of pro- 
 jects, thoughtful individual planning, and en- 
 couragement of deliberateness of expression to 
 avoid the evils of slapdash haste. Allowing a 
 child to become careless in this matter of de- 
 liberateness — to confuse the rough-scribbled 
 notes, which it is important only that he under- 
 stand himself, with the painstaking work which 
 alone is worthy of handing to some one else — 
 may start habits fatal to decent work later. The 
 distinction is parallel to that between free and 
 unplanned conversations and organized, delib- 
 * Chap. IV, pp. 114/. 
 55 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 erately given oral themes. But again, we must 
 note particularly that writing has so many spe- 
 cial difficulties of form which are likely to dull 
 children's keenness that we should take pains 
 not to demand too much writing and not to 
 allow ourselves or the class too stringent criti- 
 cism. We ought most certainly to require no 
 more formality and exactness of expression here 
 than in prepared oral work. 
 
 The proof-reading of written work 
 
 There is one special point in regard to writ- 
 ten work on which it seems important to go into 
 detail. This is the writer's own careful proof- 
 reading of what he has done before he lets it go 
 to any one else. There appears to be good rea- 
 son for a child's letting his writing cool for a 
 time — perhaps overnight — before he attempts 
 correcting it; he is more likely to find his errors 
 then. Success in this essential process must 
 depend further upon his having opportunity 
 to go over his work several times, note only 
 one point at a time, and right every mistake he 
 can discover. And special training in proof- 
 reading is in all cases needed; it is not often 
 carefully enough attended to. Because the writer 
 will usually pass over his mistakes unnoted, — 
 S6 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 since he knows what he really meant, — we 
 may frequently need to have another child read 
 a theme aloud and show its writer, by inevitable 
 hesitations and stumbling, that the manuscript 
 was not prepared, in punctuation and spelling 
 and the like, for some one else's quick and easy 
 understanding. Since we assume that the writer 
 had, of course, an experience or a project that he 
 really wanted to make known, his failure to se- 
 cure this effect should prove the most effective 
 lesson possible. And we can repeat this testing 
 of his work as often as may be necessary to 
 demonstrate the need of conforming to social 
 standards. Thus we may make clear and effec- 
 tive in each child's mind the idea of proof-read- 
 ing his own work as well as he can — of self- 
 correction. The special value of written work, 
 aside from the teaching of its necessary me- 
 chanics, is undoubtedly what a child may thus 
 learn through it — the possibility of going over 
 for himself what he has written, discovering mis- 
 takes, and bettering the expression before any 
 one else has opportunity or need to see the work. 
 
 A checking-up by class pride 
 
 But even with the best of training, the care- 
 ful attention of the writer himself is rarely suffi- 
 
 57 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 cient; we must call on the cooperative interest 
 and communal pride of the class to check up 
 work. Particularly, whatever will go beyond 
 the class limits and represent all the group to 
 some one else must be the best the children's 
 fair judgment can make it, most of all in regard 
 to such socially acceptable forms as all of them 
 know. But this should be a long way from mean- 
 ing correction or marking of all mistakes by 
 the teacher and recopying of all work. We may 
 hope for insistence in correction upon those 
 few points which have been given complete at- 
 tention until they are quite fixed in habit, and 
 upon the particular matter which is in process 
 of fixation at the time.^ For these essentials no 
 proscription can be too severe, since they are 
 a minimal but absolute requirement. In other 
 matters we may allow the class to present help- 
 ful and constructive suggestions, and we may 
 make a reasonable few ourselves, provided we 
 are very sure indeed of our wisdom and our 
 powers of restraint; but outside a rigid and small 
 limit, we had best realize that these are sugges- 
 tions, not by any means prescriptions. 
 1 Cf.pp. 114/. 
 
 58 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 Making the class judgment graphic 
 All this is fundamental for the reason that 
 the whole effectiveness of work toward better- 
 ing children's speech and writing appears to 
 rest on the force of social judgment represented 
 by the class criticism. This, to a child who has 
 tried to interest or inform or influence his fel- 
 lows, is a tremendous force. It can be made 
 very concrete when papers are pinned on the 
 bulletins or shown on a screen or when work is 
 written on a board; the entire class may give 
 judgment on written work as a whole then. 
 Reading aloud adds the appeal to the ear, an 
 excellent test for many points; but the eye is 
 the sole judge of the form-conventions needful 
 in writing. In the case of a manuscript so care- 
 lessly prepared that the necessary changes will 
 make it bad-looking, the class judgment, if the 
 writer's pride does not act first, may decree that 
 the child rewrite it; but this penalty should, I 
 think, be reserved for such occasions only. A 
 best-possible first attempt is probably many 
 times more valuable than a paper almost fault- 
 less from recopying; and again, second or third 
 copies are often progressively worse than the 
 first because they represent hateful drudgery 
 
 59 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 and a tired, staled mind. Rewriting to do a 
 thing better should of course be permitted with- 
 in reason. 
 
 In making this class judgment more deter- 
 minative, we may gain much by a method of 
 putting it in graphic form. A plan that seems 
 very satisfactory in the working out has been 
 developed by Professor C. S. Pendleton, of Wis- 
 consin University and the Wisconsin High 
 School. After all the themes of a set have been 
 given or read before the class, each child hands 
 in a folded ballot, unsigned, with a grade for 
 every theme including his own, and a tabulation 
 of these grades — from E to P — is bulletined. 
 Again, the children may by vote select certain 
 papers for exhibition on the bulletins, or for 
 preservation in files, or for publication or pres- 
 entation before the assembly or elsewhere; or 
 they may decide which of the letters they have 
 written is the best actually to send; or by a like 
 process refuse acceptance or publication to 
 other work. This vote may include judgment 
 on the appearance of the manuscript. 
 
 The question of correction marks on papers 
 
 As to the indication of mistakes on pupils' 
 papers, many teachers would end the regime of 
 60 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 wholesale red ink by proscription of any mark 
 on a paper; they would substitute class work on 
 common errors, blackboard themes, and, where 
 mistakes persist, conferences of the individual 
 writers with the teacher or, for correcting one 
 or two specific forms, with a pupil critic. And 
 they would require each child's hunting out his 
 mistakes for himself, unaided by suggestive sym- 
 bols.^ Thus, a pupil might have on his paper, 
 or on one page of it, simply the number of mis- 
 takes of a given sort, like failure to indicate a 
 sentence; it would be his business to attend to 
 these matters before his paper could be accepted. 
 For keeping effective track of pupils' work, a 
 most practicable arrangement is the theme- 
 card for each pupil — first suggested by Pro- 
 fessor Barrett Wendell and developed by Pro- 
 fessor C. S. Baldwin. On this card the most im- 
 portant elements of weakness and of strength 
 in each theme may be briefly noted — whether 
 form-matters, wording or sentence structure, 
 or larger aspects of organization. These notes can 
 then be made use of in conferences and in check- 
 ing up later themes for recurring tendencies. 
 
 » Klapper, Teaching of English, chap, vii; Orr, "A Revolt 
 and its Consequences," English Journal, November, 1914, 
 (vol. Ill, p. 546), etc. 
 
 61 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 It seems clear that for such essentials as we 
 have once established,^ the only standard we 
 can hold is either one hundred per cent accom- 
 plishment or zero; a youngster either has these 
 mastered or he has not; there is no place for 
 gradations and middle ground. It is possible by 
 holding to such standards to establish a true idea 
 of thoroughness and honesty in these matters. 
 And it may be hoped that teachers would not 
 be so likely as under the usual regime to extend 
 this method into rigid and deadly insistence that 
 every infelicity be reworded. In advocating re- 
 straint in these matters, we cannot call too 
 strongly to mind the huge difficulties of good 
 expression, especially in writing — most of us 
 do not find it altogether simple for ourselves — 
 or insist too heartily that the forms demanded 
 shall in every case be very few and adequately 
 prepared for before they are demanded at all. 
 
 Methods and values of conference 
 
 This, of course, means frequent conference 
 with the backward pupils and checking up to see 
 that essential points grow toward establishment. 
 Well-handled conference with those who have 
 
 ^ As to the method of such establishment, see chap, iv, pp. 
 136/. 
 
 62 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 failed to master a needed form — secured any- 
 where during study periods or while the other 
 pupils are writing — may be made the most 
 effective part of the teacher's work in composi- 
 tion. And of course the uses of conference are 
 not confined to correction of wrong forms. It 
 is even more valuable in helping toward con- 
 scious mastery of points of clearness or artistry 
 of expression. The teacher here represents the 
 class judgment. And while he may well offer 
 suggestions that are in advance of what the 
 class could give, he must exercise the greatest 
 care that they are not above the individual 
 child's level of seeing useful relations or dis- 
 criminations of word or idea. It is generally 
 well merely to suggest specific betterment and 
 leave the child to work out his own method. It 
 is hoped that reducing the number of things to 
 be worked for and so concentrating on them as 
 to secure their establishment may result in a 
 more than compensatory saving for the teacher, 
 not alone of red ink, but of nerves. 
 
 The Third Process of Prepared Compo- 
 sition — Organized Study 
 So much for the child's organization and prep- 
 aration of his oral or written themes and for the 
 
 63 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 class help in correction and criticism of what he 
 presents. We come, then, to the third process 
 already mentioned for working out preparec' 
 compositions: organized study to raise the class 
 standards of thought and of expression. The 
 teacher's best ofhce here, it has been suggested, 
 is to help enlighten the communal criticism and 
 discussion, to make it constantly keener while 
 keeping it fair and friendly, and to attempt for- 
 mulating principles of both organization and 
 expression. Thus, we may succeed in making 
 children's composition development a slowly 
 upward spiral movement, in which we return 
 again and again to the same sorts of problems in 
 story-telling or explanation or discussion and 
 meeting of common difhculties, — but each time 
 discover, together with more complex difficul- 
 ties, greater power and sureness in handling them 
 and in judging our own and other people's re- 
 sults. Out of these expressional problems dis- 
 covered in the class discussions, attempted 
 orally or in writing, and criticized by the class, 
 should, I maintain, come all the study of tech- 
 nique that we need attempt, whether of organ- 
 ization, wording, or sentence-building, or the 
 forms and mechanics of speaking and writing. 
 In the actual work of the children on vital prob- 
 
 64 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 lems, the teacher discovers their needs and lays 
 plans for campaigns to bridge over deficiencies 
 and clear impasses. And surely no other diffi- 
 culties need be attacked than those the children 
 actually encounter in their carrying out of real 
 and varied projects in the schoolroom day by 
 day. 
 
 We have thus far in this study seen how, from 
 the formless, non-social talk of little children, 
 the combined forces of (i) vital subject-matter 
 opening up projects requiring expression, and 
 (2) an interested group of cooperative workers 
 and critics may aid in the development of really 
 effective expression. The needs of a small so- 
 ciety for entertainment and information and 
 for cooperation in solving common problems — 
 needs that may reach far beyond the limits of 
 the group — require more and more thoughtful 
 and formed expression. Thus first arises dis- 
 cussion of projects and of how to carry them 
 out, and this in turn may lead to the carefully 
 planned oral or written theme. 
 
 The second factor, we have noted, is the class 
 criticism of each child's performance — their 
 appreciation of what is good in ideas or method 
 and their suggestions of better ways. This judg- 
 
 6s 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ment, under the teacher's guidance, must be 
 made as fair as possible, and above all its spirit 
 must be helped to become truly cooperative 
 and creative. But we may also encourage the 
 children to keen exaction, as well as commen- 
 dation, of each one's best, and even to impa- 
 tience — shown with all possible courtesy, but 
 unmistakably — with inattention to what they 
 all know to be requisite — with lack of prepara- 
 tion and with carelessness of essential forms, and 
 the like. 
 
 Finally, from this class criticism may come the 
 initiation of organized study, directed by the 
 skillful judgment of the teacher, to insure better 
 meeting of problems. This may well arise in 
 appreciation of what is organized and expressed 
 with clarity and vigor and beauty, or in realiza- 
 tion of the need of forms or conventions. It 
 may proceed oftentimes to long and arduous and 
 determined work to help gain the best results 
 in attempts at expressing experiences and the 
 ideas to which they give rise. The general proc- 
 ess of composition development may then be 
 represented roughly as follows : — 
 
 Vital subject-matter both stimulate the child's raw 
 
 plus and non-social impulse 
 
 interest in other help to socialize to expression 
 
 people's experiences 
 
 66 
 
FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 
 
 The remainder of this study is concerned 
 with systematic examination for discovering and 
 applying principles, first, of thought organiza- 
 tion or prevision, and second, of effective oral 
 and written expression.^ 
 
 * Chief emphasis is here put upon compositions directed to 
 the class audience or judged by them. But there are, of 
 course, other sorts. In particular, there is value in certain 
 intimate bits of autobiography or opinion which pupils will 
 write for a really sympathetic teacher, but, particularly in the 
 high-school years, would by no means publish before the class. 
 
 For the half-dozen forms in each year's work which the 
 class have fully canvassed and ranked as quite unacceptable, 
 I am now using but one correction symbol, a star (*). Each 
 appearance of this star in a theme margin cuts off a large 
 slice of the grade, which, aside from this, represents the ideas 
 and their expression, without relation to forms (cf. chap. iv). 
 Under this system, these particular mistakes quickly drop 
 away, and my attention is left comparatively free for con- 
 structive criticism. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS 
 
 A. LIMITATION AND GROUPING OF SUBJECT- 
 MATTER 
 
 How THE Need of Limitation comes to 
 
 BE REALIZED 
 
 We have seen how, in the free conversations of 
 the classroom and in their attempts to give pre- 
 pared themes, children may be helped to dis- 
 cover the inadequacy of unorganized, hit-and- 
 miss stories and explanations.^ They will come 
 to realize that these, to be effective, need to have 
 abundance of concrete detail. Thus they may 
 discover for themselves that they will do well, 
 in the brief time that the group can fairly allow 
 each member, to limit themselves to a single 
 point or brief incident; for example, that they 
 had better make very clear one step in fur- 
 nishing a doll house, rather than try to explain 
 the whole process. Obviously this principle of 
 * See pp. 45 (and footnote); 51. 
 68 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 limitation must not be forced too far with little 
 children; for they probably see at first, in a huge 
 experience like a circus or a fire, only rather un- 
 defined high lights and bits of vivid color, and 
 they cannot present much detail of appearance 
 or sound or the like on any one point of it. But 
 gradually, as they come to realize, from the class 
 suggestion and demand, the value and interest 
 of specific points well presented, — things they 
 have touched or smelled or seen, — they may 
 try to observe more closely and accurately a 
 variety of interesting details: things funny or 
 significant of character like a man elbowing his 
 way through a crowd, or details necessary for 
 understanding a process like making a kite.^ 
 
 For example, if the story is of Johnny's rescue 
 from the water at the picnic, the point may well 
 be made that we had better leave out every- 
 thing about the occasion save that one matter — 
 begin, perhaps, with Johnny walking with bra- 
 vado on the log. over the river, and end with his 
 being pulled out dripping and screaming. To 
 make this one thing a real happening by means 
 of concrete detail will certainly occupy a young- 
 ster's time and best attention in preparing a 
 page-long story or a short oral theme; he will 
 1 See chap, ii, p. 22. 
 
 69 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 only spread haphazard over a larger subject. 
 This approach toward limitation to what can 
 be given so specifically as to make it an actual 
 experience for the audience is probably the first 
 step to be taken, whether in the lower grades or 
 in high school, toward helping a child organize 
 the ideas he has to express. 
 
 Determining on the Most Effective 
 Details 
 
 Having so limited a subject, a child may next 
 go through it and discover all the things he wants 
 to tell; perhaps he will jot them down roughly. 
 It is well for the child to get before him all his 
 ideas, so that he will not forget any essential 
 matters — to make, as Professor Slater has it, 
 "a complete mental inventory" on the subject.^ 
 For instance, in planning a story of the rain that 
 stopped the picnic, he may want to note down 
 a good many details — remarks and giggling, 
 overturned baskets, and colhsions in the scurry 
 to shelter — so that the most possible of this live 
 detail may be at hand when he wants it.^ Such 
 an exercise as listing and selecting possibly use- 
 ful details for a story or a letter may be worked 
 
 ^ Freshman Rhetoric, chap, i, p. 5. 
 
 2 Cf. Baldwin, Writing and ispeaking, pp. iii and 122-23. 
 
 70 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 out often on the blackboard by the whole class; 
 it appears to furnish excellent preparation for 
 talking or writing. In doing this, we will help 
 each child, so far as he can, to be conscious of his 
 readers' or hearers' needs — to think the story 
 from their point of view — in order to make the 
 incident he is to tell a real experience to them 
 and thus win their interest. But this is prob-- 
 ably not a thing we can tell him with much effect 
 as a general principle; he will best learn his 
 weakness, as we have seen, from the actual re- 
 sponse of his audience to the story he attempts; 
 then we can help him to formulate a better plan 
 of attack for his next project. 
 
 The Problem of Grouping Ideas 
 
 The next large principle for a child to learn 
 is the necessity and the method of stating to 
 himself beforehand the main points or ideas he 
 is to present, so that he may know exactly what 
 he is about and where he is at each moment of 
 his progress. Finding out how to do this in very 
 simple stories in the primary grades is the first 
 step toward learning to group the ideas of large 
 and complex experiences later. And certainly 
 it is an inescapable preliminary to arranging 
 the points — the subject of the second division 
 
 71 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 of this chapter.^ Hence the present section will 
 consider the child's most effective mode of learn- 
 ing to sort out the ideas he wants to express 
 and throw them into small heaps or bundles for 
 his own convenience in presentation and for his 
 reader's in understanding him. 
 
 In many good courses in drawing, the impor- 
 tance of planning is discovered in ways similar 
 to this. For example, in the section on Art in 
 the Teachers College Elementary School Course^ 
 Grade I, we learn how the teacher or the class in 
 friendly fashion criticizes the child's rough draw- 
 ings: "Your picture tells me that these people 
 were larger than their house; is that what you 
 mean?" — and the like.^ The next time, the 
 children are helped to do better by trying to de- 
 scribe their picture first or sketch in the relative 
 positions and sizes. It is a parallel to this that 
 I am suggesting as a mode of approach to the 
 subject of organization in composition classes. 
 
 First Type: the Plan for Small, 
 Familiar Stories 
 
 For the small, limited subject which the chil- 
 dren may be encouraged to attempt first, the 
 
 ^ Pages 90^. 
 
 2 Chapter on "Art," page 49 (1908). 
 
 72 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 planning required is not a very difficult matter. 
 We may begin it as soon as the children have 
 gained freedom and confidence in telling their 
 prepared stories before the class — probably in 
 the fourth grade. For developing the first ideas 
 of how best to set about their work here, we may 
 help them to see how the stories which they know 
 are built. From their retelling of stories in the 
 kindergarten and the first grades many of them 
 have doubtless come to discover and use the 
 plan of their author without at all realizing it. 
 Now, when the need for consciously planning 
 their own work comes, it may be time to work 
 out definitely the scheme of construction in sev- 
 eral stories they already know well. By going 
 through The Discontented Pine Tree^ for instance, 
 it is easy for the children to discover the string 
 of incidents which compose it and probably to 
 tell it all in a sentence like: "This story tells 
 how an unhappy little pine tree wanted glass 
 leaves, then gold leaves, and then green leaves, 
 but at last it was glad to get its own needles 
 back again." Making such a plan sentence 
 is a matter simply of telling shortly what hap- 
 pened next throughout the story. ^ But in its 
 crude way, this elementary process represents 
 ' Cooley, Langttage Teaching in the Grades, p. 31. 
 73 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 the essential beginning of grouping for organiza- 
 tion and stating as a few practicable points the 
 ideas to be presented. We may speak of this 
 result as the plan the author probably used in 
 writing his story. 
 
 Flanning the children's own small hits of 
 incident: the plan sentence 
 
 Exercises like this, repeated many times for 
 all sorts of stories the children know, may be 
 made the basis for their own beginnings in or- 
 ganization. When the children have frankly 
 criticized one another's attempts at stories as 
 fumbling and, in the words of one Polish boy, 
 "all under another through," it should probably 
 come as a most acceptable suggestion that they 
 try using the scheme of the author of The Dis- 
 contented Pine Tree. At once the class as a group \ 
 may attack some very small incident they have 
 in mind and work out a plan sentence for it. 
 In the story of Johnny's accident at the picnic 
 — rather than the whole picnic, of course — the 
 sentence might be, "This story is about what" 
 Johnny was doing to be smart, how he gave a yell 
 and fell in the river, and how Mr. Jones pulled 
 him out sopping wet." By way of an introduc- 
 tion to more complex problems later, it may be 
 74 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 useful sometimes to put each small part of the 
 plan between parallel lines, as in this plotting of 
 Epaminondas: — 
 In this story are: — 
 
 Epaminondas's 
 
 His 
 
 His 
 
 first visit 
 
 second 
 
 third 
 
 to his 
 
 visit: 
 
 visit: 
 
 Aunty: the 
 
 the but- 
 
 the 
 
 cake 
 
 ter 
 
 puppy 
 
 and so on to — 
 
 Epaminondas 
 ^ at home: 
 the pies. 
 
 
 Obviously, these plan sentences will not ap- 
 pear in the theme itself, any more than in the 
 stories the children have read. They represent 
 simply the necessary preparation. They should 
 first be worked out by each child as a study in 
 prevision in a number of exercises, and both the 
 plans and the stories built on them discussed 
 by the class. Later the class may be asked to 
 give the plan sentence which must have guided 
 the child who tells or reproduces a story. It^ 
 seems most necessary to cultivate in children 
 the power of watching for the organization of 
 what they hear and read and planning carefully 
 what they want to tell; and it is probably in sim- 
 ple units like this that they can first learn to 
 
 75 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 do so. Thus, in grades or even in high school, 
 where we find children without ready power both 
 of discovering the organization of stories or other 
 small units and of planning a like simple organi- 
 zation for the one-topic subjects that they must 
 be able first to present, it is likely that our first 
 step in guiding them toward ability in organiza- 
 tion should be to help them work out the basic 
 sort of problems that we have so far considered. 
 
 Organization Study in More Complex 
 Problems 
 
 Only when these earliest projects have been 
 handled pretty well individually by the children 
 of any group can we pass on to the organi- 
 zation of larger subjects by the same sort of 
 method. The first work on more complex prob- \ 
 lems may consist of bringing to a point the con- 
 versation about some broad experience common 
 to all the class — perhaps the camp life of In- 
 dians. This may be carried out purely as an 
 
 organization exercise — not of necessity in prep- 
 
 aration for any theme. First, as various inter- 
 esting points are suggested, the teacher or a 
 pupil may note them on the blackboard. It is 
 obviously best not to attempt handling too 
 many details at first; but some fifteen or twenty 
 76 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 may perhaps be taken down to work on. It is 
 evident that there will be a great deal of over- 
 lapping, and broader and lesser points mixed 
 higgledy-piggledy. The teacher may now sug- 
 gest: "Suppose we put these in three or four 
 groups or columns something like the happen- 
 ings in Epaminondas, so that we can see them 
 more clearly. What shall we call these groups?" 
 The pupils will make many more or less valid 
 suggestions and debate them; so far as practi- 
 cable, the class decision should probably deter- 
 mine. Though a good teacher's suggestion rightly 
 carries greatest weight, in cases like this it should 
 rarely be prescriptive. In proportion as he truly 
 realizes that there are usually as many good 
 ways of organizing materials of a complex ex- 
 perience as there are live and interested people 
 to attempt it, the teacher will wait for goodr- 
 suggestions from his class and encourage their 
 efforts at intelligent criticism of those given. 
 If various pupils propose methods which the 
 rest do not endorse, each may sometimes be al- 
 lowed to work out his plan in full and defend it; 
 the upshot of the discussion may well be that 
 each method is fairly practicable, depending, of 
 course, on the precise purpose the child is work- 
 ing toward. 
 
 77 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 All the details suggested may next be can- 
 vassed, some doubtless rejected, and the re- 
 mainder sorted into such rough groups as the 
 class have settled upon, perhaps in parallel col- 
 umns.^ The final step of the grouping experi- 
 ment with such a problem of the children's real 
 experience may often be the construction of a 
 crude sort of outline, built on the model of the 
 plan sentences the children have already made. 
 In the case of studying Indian life, the result in 
 grade eight or nine might be something like this: 
 "I'm going to tell about (i) the Indians' te- 
 pees; (2) their hunting and fishing; and (3) how 
 the squaws prepared the food. 
 
 "(i) In this part comes how they made the 
 tepees out of poles and skins and orna- 
 mented them. 
 " (2) This tells the weapons the Indians used 
 and how they trapped animals for their 
 skins, chased buffalo, and speared fish. 
 "(3) Here I'll tell about what they cooked 
 things in, and how they skinned animals 
 and roasted them, and boiled meat and 
 corn by putting hot stones in the water." 
 
 * This stage of the process and the subsequent arrangement 
 of points (cf . p. 90 of this chapter) is well illustrated in Klap- 
 per's Teaching of English, chap, vi, pp. 64-66. 
 
 78 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 Teachers must, I believe, cultivate surer power 
 of judging the adequacy and practicability of 
 very rough plans, and must help children in 
 special exercises like this to group and arrange 
 their ideas efifectively. The problem of arrange- 
 ment is considered as a separate process in the 
 second part of this chapter.^ 
 
 Similarly, as soon as the stories the children 
 read go beyond the stage of brief chains of inci- 
 dents which they can represent readily in a plan- 
 sentence, a wider type of organization is requi- 
 site. Of course it is possible to present the plan 
 of Rip Van Winkle as a succession of small 
 points, such as: a description of the village; Rip's 
 shiftlessness and laziness; his wife's tongue, and 
 so on. But this is cumbersome and bungling, and 
 the whole can be seen far better when these 
 points are grouped into two or three larger divi- 
 sions — perhaps (i) Rip's life in the village; (2) 
 his mountain adventures; and (3) his return. 
 The same procedure may likewise be used with 
 the findings of all sorts of observations and class 
 expeditions in nature-study or civics or indus- 
 tries, with the review of materials for geography 
 or history, and in attempts to correlate the 
 matter of several school subjects. Even mem- 
 » See pp. 90/. 
 
 79 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 orized facts, though they are of little or no com- 
 position value, may be used to advantage in 
 this sort of organization lessons. In listening 
 to one another's compositions, too, it is of the 
 greatest value to have pupils make note of main 
 divisions and report on their practicability. 
 
 The value of study of organization 
 
 The importance of this sort of study makes 
 it apparently well worth presenting in detail; 
 for it is a phase of school work in which too little 
 specific help seems to have been given in the 
 past — often only the general and rigid and 
 usually futile requirement that teachers demand 
 from children the logical ordering of their ideas 
 and the organization of composition outlines. 
 The result has been that college teachers find 
 the great majority of students who come to them 
 unable, in spite of tireless drill in outlining and 
 briefing, to work out the main divisions of chap- 
 ter or essay, no matter how obviously organized. 
 We do not in fact, I believe, teach children to 
 study and "read in ever larger units" as Pro- 
 fessor Hosic has expressed it. A contributory 
 cause for this may possibly be that while we 
 have given attention freely to the paragraph, 
 and usually centered our study in it, we have 
 80 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 carried on little organized development of topics 
 beyond the single-paragraph unit. For what- 
 ever we mean by the term in formal rhetoric 
 I believe that most people, teachers included, 
 inevitably associate the word with the inden- 
 tion on the page. And while such paragraphs 
 as we study in grades and high school may ap- 
 pear as main units or topics of a piece of work, 
 it is obvious that in any large whole they do not. 
 It is only, then, as we carefully group and or- 
 ganize into larger units or topics the ideas we 
 derive from the study of paragraphs, in some- 
 what the fashion we have followed in working 
 out larger units of this second type of organiza- 
 tion, that we shall gain satisfactory results in 
 reading and study in grammar grades and high 
 school. Studies in grouping subject-matter such 
 as those outlined above appear to be the most 
 helpful approach to this problem. We may best 
 handle them first as exercises for all the class; 
 and indeed, for any problem presenting new 
 difficulties, class study usually proves to be the 
 best method of discovering varied suggestions. 
 Later we may assign projects of the sort as in- 
 dividual problems. Thus we may work steadily 
 at the central point of the difficulties of previ- 
 sion. 
 
 8i 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Early themes not to he written on such large 
 
 outlines 
 But it seems well to come back to the idea of 
 limitation of subject with which we set out in 
 this chapter. As this study is trying to develop* 
 it, composition is the expression always of real- ^ 
 ized experience, and must be so taught as in- 
 variably to present problems for truly concrete 
 and specific statement. Hence the suggestion' 
 appears essential that the materials organized 
 in the lessons just cited had better be used as 
 composition subject-matter in the elementary 
 school only as each child selects for his topic one 
 definite small part of the subject — in the study of 
 Indians, for example, the weapons for hunting 
 and fishing, or the process of boiling food. The 
 time or space at the grade school child's com- 
 mand averages probably a page or a page and a 
 half of written work or a slightly larger unit of 
 speech. Within these limits he can present the 
 most that he has perceived directly or in imagina- 
 tion, and thus make his experience a real one to 
 his audience, on only a fully limited subject. 
 There is the further advantage in such a pro- 
 ject that each child is provided with something 
 to express that he can himself organize and 
 82 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 handle independently of the class outline of the 
 larger subject. 
 
 The organization and writing of longer themes 
 
 When the time comes for the writing of longer 
 themes, these may be naturally enough devel- 
 oped, either by having various groups of the 
 children take each a part of the subject, or the 
 same pupil develop these phases one after an- 
 other at different times. Thus there may be built 
 a theme on an entire large subject like Indian 
 Camp Life. But all the themes which are to be 
 combined must, of course, be written with the 
 idea of their working harmoniously together, 
 and they must be criticized with that in view. 
 This problem need hardly be attempted very 
 often below the eighth grade. It seems neces- 
 sary that the children be really able first to 
 organize smaller topics by themselves and write 
 on them effectively, and that they have gained 
 through the planning of larger units some power 
 of grouping the ideas of their experience into a 
 small number of topics convenient for han- 
 dling. It is on this basis that they may best be- 
 gin the transition to longer pieces of work. As 
 each of the groups which the children made for 
 the Indian study, for example, contains a series 
 
 83 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 of points or incidents like tliat of the smaller 
 stories they have previously organized, they 
 know how to handle these. But there are diffi- 
 culties in getting equally appealing and valu- 
 able subject-matter to cover the whole ground, 
 and particularly in stretching children's atten- 
 tion over the process of constructing and criti- 
 cizing a large composition whole. In high school, 
 as the child's power of sustained effort grows, 
 he may be encouraged to organize for himself 
 and prepare as a single project, first, themes with 
 two large topics two or three pages in length, 
 and later, larger units such as we have seen the 
 class as a group learning to get into shape for 
 handling. The sole necessary condition appears 
 to be that the child undertake only those prob- 
 lems which he can handle by himself with some 
 reasonable confidence and success. But up to 
 the emergence of this type of theme, it seems 
 very doubtful indeed whether it is at all impor- 
 tant, except in the case of dialogue, to teach 
 anything but one-paragraph themes. 
 
 We have considered so far two types of or- 
 ganization, or what we may, if we prefer, call 
 one type in two distinct stages of complexity. 
 The first consists of a number of small points or 
 incidents, like those in such stories as The Dis- 
 84 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 contented Pine Tree, which can be summed up 
 in a single easy survey — stated perhaps in a 
 plan sentence; this may be represented so — 1|||||. 
 The second, when the speaker or writer has more 
 details than he or the reader can readily keep in 
 mind in this way, we may represent as a grouping 
 of several simple units such as that above, so — 
 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 — to whatever range of topics and sub- 
 topics. It is worth noting that few topics — 
 two or three or four — generally form a better 
 basis for organizing one's own thought or for en- 
 abling some one else to grasp it than do a larger 
 number. But attempting to present materials 
 under the headings "Introduction,'' "Body," 
 and "Conclusion" — an apparent outgrowth of 
 Aristotle's unassailable but unfortunately ap- 
 plied remark that a story must have a begin- 
 ning, a middle, and an end — is, of course, no 
 true grouping of the ideas, and should, I main- 
 tain, never be accepted as a substitute for one; 
 it is the "Body" that must be grouped. The 
 same may be said of biographical outlines under 
 the outworn and obvious headings of "Birth 
 and Parentage," "Early Education," and so on, 
 or presentation of mental, moral, and physical 
 benefits. 
 
 85 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Third Type; Interpretive Organization 
 
 For what we may classify as interpretive 
 work — the expression of opinions of any sort ^ 
 — a further step is needed in the grouping pre- 
 paratory to writing or speaking. It may be 
 seen that the development of this type, whether 
 it is argumentative or purely explanatory, cen- 
 ters about a statement of opinion; we might 
 represent it, as different from the other two, so: 
 
 /The arrows are supposed to 
 represent observable facts or 
 other valid data, and they are 
 ~" to be thought of as underlying 
 the opinion, whether simply 
 ^ I ^ making plain its meaning and 
 bearings or enforcing its ac- 
 ceptance. We may note here that this is the sole 
 type of writing which has an interpretation sen- 
 tence or statement of the upshot of the whole 
 matter: the subject under discussion, that is, 
 plus the predicate, the author's statement of his 
 conclusion about it.^ 
 
 ' * Cf. chap. I, pp. 13 and 28. 
 
 * The familiar term "topic sentence" apparently includes 
 (a) sentences suggesting or naming the subject of a paragraph 
 or larger unit — a sort of title-sentence; (6) the plan sentence 
 
 86 
 
 o. 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 The children early meet this interpretive form 
 of writing and speaking, as we have seen, in their 
 attempts to develop an explanation of what is 
 difficult or a defense of their practical judgments, 
 such as, "We ought to do this way about it." 
 Clearly, before he sets out on this way a child 
 needs' to have his judgment definitely and un-"^ 
 mistakably worded as the center of his notes 
 or plan, to make clear what he is supporting or 
 explaining. Probably he had better write it, 
 then, at the head of his list of points. For all 
 the examples, the details he gives, as of cause or 
 effect and the like, are there for its clarification 
 and support. Obviously, in completed work this 
 sentence may be the center of either a para- 
 graph or part of one, a chapter, or any larger 
 unit. But the child's first and chief acquaint- 
 ance with the form is made in the short, one- 
 topic oral themes in which he defends a pre- 
 ference, tells what ought to be done about 
 something, or explains a general statement — • 
 a proverb, for instance, or a difficult sentence 
 from his text or story — often by examples from 
 his everyday experience. 
 
 which we have been considering; and (c) the interpretive sen- 
 tence, used only in this third type of composition. 
 
 87 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 The values of study in this type 
 
 This whole study of interpretive organiza- 
 tion has fundamental values which, I believe, 
 we rarely secure — a failure that we have not 
 often realized. By way of experiment, some of 
 us have asked many classes of normal-school 
 juniors and seniors — high-school graduates all, 
 and about to become teachers — to study the 
 first chapter of the McMurrys' Method of the 
 Recitation and find a statement of its princi- 
 pal idea. Next day we have asked them to write 
 out from their open books its central or topic 
 thought, a sentence that should sum up the 
 whole matter. It happens that in the twelve 
 pages of the chapter this thought is restated in 
 various forms no less than seven times. Yet 
 only from ten to fifteen per cent of each class 
 have usually succeeded in getting the sentence 
 fairly stated in some form — never more. It is 
 not wholly these young people's fault, I believe. 
 They simply have not been taught the essen- 
 tials of various types of organization, and par- 
 ticularly that of larger units than the single 
 paragraph, about a central or topic sentence. 
 
 We have so far seen that children, in the or- 
 88 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 ganization of their experience for its effective 
 
 expression, may well begin with a decided limi- 
 tation of the subject to be handled, so as to give 
 place, in the time each one may fairly take, for 
 full and concrete details. They should proceed 
 next to reviewing these details and selecting such 
 as will best serve the purpose in hand, and then 
 to grouping those chosen in the simplest manner 
 possible. Real and sound grouping according 
 to one of three simple types is here presented 
 as the true basis of the prevision problem. The 
 first type is a mere string of very simple inci- 
 dents or points, as in children's bits of narra- 
 tive of their adventures. The second consists 
 in putting into a few convenient groups of such 
 points a number of details too large to be han- 
 dled in the first way, as in the account of Indian 
 life or the story of Rip Van Winkle. The third 
 tjrpe, the method for explaining and supporting 
 one's opinions, is accomplished by massing all 
 the ideas or groups of ideas to be presented about 
 a central thought or judgment — a subject for 
 discussion plus a predication about it — to show 
 that they all underlie or support that judgment; 
 this is illustrated in explanation of sentences, 
 debate about projects, and the like. 
 It has seemed essential to go so far into detail 
 
 89 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 about the subject of grouping ideas and to leave 
 the parallel development, that of arrangement, 
 to the following section, simply because the 
 grouping of ideas seems to have been the place 
 of least success in former teaching of composi- 
 tion, has had the least attention, yet is after 
 all the basic and necessarily preliminary process. 
 
 B. ARRANGEMENT AND CONNECTION OF 
 MATERIAL 
 
 Arrangement oe Ideas — A Problem in 
 Psychology 
 
 To complete the study of organizing ideas for 
 composition, there remains consideration of 
 their arrangement and connection. The need 
 for arranging points to be presented is gener- 
 ally expressed in a demand for logical order. 
 But the difficulty is by no means met with a 
 knowledge of such useful, direct highways of 
 thought as Aristotle's categories. For since 
 real composition is a matter always of adapting 
 materials of one's own experience to the com- 
 prehension of some one else, the problem has 
 to be studied always in relation, not alone to- 
 the subject-matter to be expressed, but also to 
 the precise knowledge and capabilities of the per- 
 son who is to view it. The one governing idea 
 90 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 of all these methods of arrangement for composi- 
 tion prevising may be stated in a sort of key- 
 principle of the arrangement methods: Related 
 ideas must be kept together, in an order that is clear 
 and easy for the reader to follow. 
 
 Four Types of Arrangement 
 
 Four large types of arrangement of ideas for 
 the purpose of making them easily understand- 
 able to a reader or hearer are discussed in this 
 chapter. The first and almost universal one is 
 time order; it is used probably in nine tenths of 
 the cases where ideas are presented in words. 
 But it is not by any means all-sufficient; modi- 
 fications of time order are necessary almost 
 from the start of composition work in providing 
 for the proper beginnings of stories and explana- 
 tions. Besides, the demand for force and vigor 
 in organization appears early, and gives rise 
 to the second arrangement method discussed, 
 the emphasis principle. Again, clearness is by 
 no means always to be attained through time 
 order; and so there must be developed a third 
 broad group of principles which we may sum- 
 marize by noting that they suggest telling basic 
 things first. These also are, of course, combined 
 with the time order in many cases, but they so 
 
 91 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 fundamentally modify it that they have to be 
 considered as a distinct method. And finally, — 
 probably one of the latest relations to be de- 
 veloped in children's composition work, — it 
 is sometimes most practicable to present sense- 
 impressions as they are observed in their space 
 relation; this is the fourth type of arrangement. 
 
 The Earliest Arrangement Problems — 
 Time Order 
 
 In the early work which children do in com- 
 position, arrangement is a matter of practically 
 no difficulty. As appears to have been demon- 
 strated by many experiments, these should be 
 quite simple narratives and, later, processes 
 which move straight forward in time order. We 
 have seen in our consideration of grouping and 
 plan sentences how the child may be helped to 
 learn the value of a simple sort of prevision for 
 his own stories through seeing it in others' work 
 and discovering its lack in his own. There is 
 little further to the technique of oral or written 
 work at this stage — the type of practically all 
 the composition in the elementary schools. How- 
 ever, additional points soon require attention. 
 For instance, the audience may often note scant- 
 iness of detail or of needed information especially 
 92 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 at the start of a story or process. In an explana- 
 tion, the speaker may very often have failed to 
 tell just what he was explaining, and after he has 
 finished, the children may remind him of their 
 confusion. It does not take much class discussion 
 to clinch this point firmly; an explanation, we see, 
 must always tell first what it is explaining. 
 
 There is a somewhat similar need in stories, 
 but the matter is rather more delicate and difii- 
 cult there. To demand that every incident the 
 children write or tell must begin according to 
 formula with such sentences as, "I was going 
 south on Third Street with Willis Jones about 
 four o'clock last Friday afternoon," will go a 
 long way toward killing all originality and 
 spontaneous happiness in expression; it must 
 also produce very bunglesome results. It ap- 
 pears not to be a true principle in any case; 
 good stories rarely start so. To be sure, some- 
 thing of time, place, and persons is always 
 needed, and the children, with their natural in- 
 terest in specific names and occasions, will very 
 probably ask for it. But there is a yet more im- 
 perative demand; the thing to do at the start 
 of a story is to stir the interest of the audience.^ 
 
 * Cf. C. S. Bailey, For the Story-Teller, chap, iii: "When the 
 Curtain Rises"; cf. also the emphasis principle, p. 94. 
 
 93 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Next in importance comes what the class need 
 in order to make the story real and clear; what 
 this is may be derived from their demands in 
 criticism. It seems probable that if we attempt 
 to formulate this — I doubt whether we shall 
 need to do so — it will appear something like: 
 We must always tell early whatever the audi- 
 ence need to make the story opening clear and 
 vivid. 
 
 The Emphasis Principle 
 
 So far, we have discussed merely how simple 
 may be the prevision, built on a plan sentence 
 and in direct time order, for such early prob- 
 lems as telling a brief incident with descriptive 
 detail or explaining a process. A second arrange- 
 ment principle often proves helpful in these 
 stories — discovered perhaps in grade five or 
 six — and of greater value still to later types 
 of composition work. We often feel hopeless at 
 the ragged endings of small incidents and the 
 like; the child sometimes stands awkward, un- 
 certain himself whether he has finished what 
 he had to tell. Then, from a group discussion 
 of how to meet this problem, the children may 
 come to value the contribution which special 
 attention to the placing of details may make. 
 
 94 
 
 J 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 The need of getting interest in story beginnings 
 has suggested that we begin with vivid or striking 
 detail — action or color or the like ; we may now 
 see the even greater value of saving for the end 
 something significant or unexpected — something 
 that tells most about the persons in the story 
 or the upshot of the happening. The teacher 
 need not look far to find in short stories many 
 excellent examples to illustrate and enforce this 
 important point. In every case, I believe, we 
 should encourage for these places concrete details, 
 and not general impressions or other opinions. 
 
 Thus, we may note that what we first observe 
 about people is often some extreme of dress or 
 action; this naturally comes early in our ac- 
 count. But in most cases what is far more 
 significant about the person — a small bronze 
 veteran-button, or an unobtrusive, kindly word 
 or action — is not so quickly discoverable; it is, 
 besides, the one best thing to reserve to the last 
 to make us acquainted with him. Likewise, a 
 good thing for the first of a story is action or 
 other observable detail which at once and sharply 
 strikes upon the attention. For the end comes 
 best the idea which gives the story its individ- 
 ual and sometimes surprising turn — reverses 
 the movement of its plot or our estimate of its 
 
 95 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 characters. A classic example is, of course, Mau- 
 passant's The Necklace; The Wolf and the Three 
 Pigs likewise represents the principle. Good and 
 effective details about people all around us may 
 be observed and massed to give a like final effect, 
 as of a boastful boy confronted suddenly with 
 real danger, or of a man sitting, buried in his 
 newspaper, in a street car, who discovers that 
 his wife has stood for some time watching him. 
 The idea of limitation already developed may be 
 helpful in suggesting that the story end promptly 
 after this determining incident. Children's small 
 stories may be helped to gain remarkably in 
 firmness from study to use this simple emphasis 
 principle. And its later application to many 
 other types of themes such as descriptions and 
 arguments is too well known to require more 
 than mention. Next to realization of the value 
 of specific sense-detail, this is, I believe, the 
 most significant principle for securing vigor and 
 interest in children's compositions, whether in 
 grades or in high school. 
 
 The children have worked, up to this point, 
 to gain a good grasp on arrangement of limited 
 subjects — incidents and processes, chiefly in 
 time order. Except for the suggestions already 
 developed about starting right and about ar- 
 
 96 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 ranging one's observings for most emphasis, 
 both the simple stories children tell and their 
 explanations of how to make a cake or a rabbit- 
 house or to ring in a hre alarm may be made 
 quite clear by chronicling them in the order of 
 happening. And there is ahnost no end to these 
 subjects which children may discover and which 
 they must learn to handle mth real facility be- 
 fore they attempt more difficult arrangements. 
 To be able to tell or write a small incident shorn 
 of needless tag-ends and so filled with live de- 
 tail that it reconstructs an experience in the 
 imagination of its hearers is one of the most 
 generally useful forms of art. Many teachers 
 who have helped normal children in this, with- 
 out blocking their way with needless criticisms 
 and formulary exactions, know how beautifully 
 a majority of them — even the most unprom- 
 ising sometimes — come to such power in a 
 social classroom. Thus is developed one of the 
 most pleasant social graces, the basis of charm- 
 ing conversation and letter-writing. It prob- 
 ably deserves more school time and far more real 
 help in the way of tactful constructive criticism 
 than we usually have given. 
 
 97 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 The Principles of Bases First 
 
 Only when children are reasonably sure of 
 their ground in this matter of time-order stories 
 and process themes — not perhaps before the 
 seventh or even the eighth grade — may they 
 profitably attempt more complicated types of 
 arrangement. They should now have grasped 
 definitely, through working it out in innumer- 
 able plain problems, the value and method of 
 grouping their limited subject-matter and build- 
 ing a plan sentence to develop it on. There now 
 comes the need for solving problems that will 
 not yield to an attack in time order. From the 
 studies here begun, we may hope with wise 
 guidance to bring to light the third, probably 
 the most significant and practicable of the prin- 
 ciples of arrangement. It consists of two modes 
 which for convenience we may call the group of 
 putting basic things firsts and includes giving first 
 {a) the apparatus and the principle of a game or 
 other process, and (6) what is known to the reader 
 or is easy for him to grasp. In our discussion 
 of how to secure digestion of experience ^ we have 
 already come upon the most important princi- 
 ples and procedures in this group. 
 * See chap, i, pp. 8-14. 
 
 98 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 The apparatus and purpose first 
 The first problem to require one of these 
 methods may very probably be the attempt to 
 explain an interesting game. The boys, perhaps, 
 want to teach the girls captain ball. The girls 
 are interested, and very courteous in trying to 
 make the best of what the boys tell them; but 
 actually they can't get much out of it. Here 
 usually the teacher must show to what the fail- 
 ure is due, and the class may then set to work 
 on a plan for making the subject clear. It de- 
 velops that the first essential in this case is to 
 know the court or ground used and the mark- 
 ings on it; to begin at the beginning of the game 
 without knowing this is merely confusing. Yet 
 even when we have the apparatus in order and 
 understood, our natural tendency to go right 
 ahead is likely to make us omit something else 
 that is essential; we may neglect altogether to 
 tell what it is all about. Very likely it will re- 
 quire the breakdown of a second attempt also 
 to demonstrate that as near as possible to the 
 start in such explanations as this, but generally 
 after the account of the grounds or apparatus, 
 the point or purpose of the whole must appear. 
 A good deal of practice on problems of this type 
 
 99 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 is necessary; they demand pretty close thinking. 
 And finally the class may attempt stating this 
 principle for themselves as essential to many 
 cases of the sort, particularly for games and 
 processes — whether captain ball or cards or 
 cookery. This is the first of the essential ar- 
 rangements under the head of basis first; we 
 may call it the principle of giving apparatus and 
 purpose first. Of course grade-school children 
 are able to handle only fully concrete and ob- 
 servable cases of this; and even of these, the 
 more complex examples like baseball are prob- 
 ably quite beyond their power till the later years 
 of high school. 
 
 The known and simple first 
 
 The second means of arranging with basis 
 first appears when the class attempt such an 
 eminently social project as explaining for a 
 smaller child, or for some one who lives in a 
 different place, some matter quite definite and 
 clear to the writers. Corn-growing may be thus 
 obvious to prairie farm-children or shaft-sink- 
 ing to those in a mining district. Or a child may 
 investigate some observable new matter like 
 horseshoeing, and, as he begins without know- 
 ing anything about it himself, have the advan- 
 
 lOO 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 tage of better imagining the needs of his hearers. 
 The best way of studying the problem of ex- 
 pressing such matters is to have the child tell 
 what he knows before the class. He may then 
 be helped to discover that his success is in pro- 
 portion to his care to start with what his friends 
 already know or can easily build up from their 
 actual experience, as his teacher will probably 
 have suggested to him in the preliminary dis- 
 cussion. For instance, he may tell them that a 
 horse's hoof is like a finger nail, only all one nail 
 and very thick over the whole bottom of the 
 foot. Or he may compare veins of metal to the 
 filling between layers in a cake, and the shaft 
 and cage to a bucket in a well or an elevator 
 going down into the earth. Where he fails, as 
 he will in greatest measure do at first, we may 
 help him to discover that he has not thus fig- 
 ured on what his audience can best see first, 
 and built on that. Teachers and texts are sup- 
 posed to know and use this arrangement prin- 
 ciple above all others; to the extent to which 
 we realize and develop its possibilities in our 
 pupils, we may make it extraordinarily valuable 
 for getting the children into a teacher attitude 
 toward the subjects they attempt to tell about. 
 We may call this the principle of telling first what 
 
 lOI 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 is known or simple for the reader or hearer. A 
 great many exercises in this type richly repay 
 the effort of working with them. Their chief 
 object is to determine how we must begin and 
 proceed to make what we know a reality to peo- 
 ple who have not the opportunity of observing 
 it for themselves. As a preliminary study, then, 
 we need to discuss in class, not alone the limi- 
 tation and grouping, but the precise experience 
 and knowledge of the people whom we are go- 
 ing to interest and help with our explanation — 
 as in the case of the paper-making themes ^ — 
 and how best to meet their needs. 
 
 The two arrangement methods which we have 
 just been considering present specific directions 
 for giving basic things first, essential to clear- 
 ness in explaining any but the most utterly sim- 
 ple matters: beginning with (i) fundamentals 
 like the apparatus or purpose in a game, or (2) 
 the phase of the subject known to the audience 
 or most readily comprehensible to them. Each 
 method is worth long and careful experimenta- 
 tion and thoughtful class criticism of results 
 secured. For a child must himself come to real- 
 ize the need of these in his one-topic themes on 
 facts of his concrete experience and, with the 
 * See chap, i, p. 32. 
 102 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 help and suggestions of teacher and classmates 
 in discussion, master their difficulties; if he 
 merely has the principles dictated to him and 
 is directed to apply them, he will scarcely gain 
 power which will serve him in high school or 
 afterward for mastering the longer, complex 
 problems which he must organize and present. 
 
 Problems of Arrangement in Visual 
 Description 
 
 The sketch outline first 
 
 The type of arrangement remaining to be dis- 
 cussed concerns the ordering of details accord- 
 ing to their position in space; it is used most 
 often in recording observations which cannot 
 be handled in time order — descriptions of 
 rooms and landscapes and personal appearance, 
 for instance. Such problems, indeed, appear in 
 a most rudimentary form in the child's attempt 
 to give a sentence or two of descriptive detail 
 — of his dog or chum — in the incidents he 
 tells. The story-teller or other early type of 
 theme has small place, to be sure, for extensive 
 account of still life — buildings, and people not 
 doing something, and the like.^ But the audi- 
 ence, stimulated and encouraged in their inter- 
 » Cf. chap. I, p. s, 
 103 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 est in vivid impressions, may come early to ask 
 for and to approve details of color and shape 
 and the like as well as of sound and movement. 
 In adding a sentence or two of this sort, the 
 children may presently find out the necessity 
 for the outHne of what they describe — person 
 or animal or boat. The class may want to know 
 the size of the child in the story and whether he 
 was fat or lank; for we often want the author to 
 help us see his own hero, not leave us always to 
 make up one. How much the encouragement 
 of questioning of this sort heightens the effect 
 and where it begins to be overdone must be de- 
 cided by watching carefully the children's actual 
 responses. 
 
 In the smallest efforts of this sort to give a 
 clear visual impression, the basis is laid for the 
 final type of arrangement which we shall con- 
 sider here: For describing anything, we learn, its 
 outline must be given early, much as a painter 
 blocks in his figures or sky-hne before adding de- 
 tail; and then the details must be arranged in it. 
 This outline may be the shape of harbor or val- 
 ley, like Stevenson's description of the Bay of 
 Monterey, or it may be the conformation of the 
 land — "fields of wild hill that ran east and 
 south" — or it may most often, in children's 
 104 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 work, be the sketch outline of a figure; F. Hop- 
 kinson Smith has "a thinly constructed mili- 
 tary gentleman, all sword and mustache." It 
 should be distinctly noted that this principle 
 demands not a vapory sentence of "general im- 
 pression,'^ whether at start or finish, but a spe- 
 cific frame to fit details into. Indeed, the whole 
 art of helping children in writing and speaking, 
 as this study urges it, is based on the idea of 
 showing them how to search out and give not 
 general but specific details. Thus they may help 
 their readers or hearers to get clear sense-im- 
 pressions of action or object or whatever is pre- 
 sented, whether as a basis for coming at conclu- 
 sions or merely as a piece of experience. While, 
 therefore, there can be no objection to the child's 
 adding his impression or opinion where he wants 
 to, I beheve that this is not the ideal of stories 
 and descriptions that we should work toward. 
 Further, as would seem to be shown by Miss 
 Vostrowsky's brief study already referred to,^ 
 it is probable that the child will most often omit 
 them, in this narrative-description type espe- 
 cially, if he is simply encouraged to tell what he 
 perceives. A child's vigorous account of hap- 
 penings he has seen, given naturally out of class, 
 1 Barnes's Studies in Education, vol. i, p. 15. 
 105 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 may well be contrasted with the strings of gen- 
 eralization which are sometimes accepted as 
 themes in grades and high school. 
 
 But the child's visual details in stories and 
 the like remain for a long time only fugitive 
 and brief; we will best, I think, come to longer 
 problems of arrangement of details in space very 
 late, though their use in numerous geography 
 topics, like accounts of harbors and river val- 
 leys, may secure their introduction possibly in 
 grade seven or eight. It has been suggested be- 
 fore ^ that ideas which can be handled better 
 in some other medium, like drawing and model- 
 ing, had better not be forced into speech or 
 writing. When the need does come for studies 
 requiring space arrangement, whether in geog- 
 raphy or other problems, it seems best that the 
 themes called for be distinctly shorter than is 
 usually expected — |>erhaps five or six sentences 
 only at first. There appears to be no question 
 whatever that we have badly overworked this 
 type, quite out of proportion to its presence 
 and usefulness in talking and writing outside 
 the classroom; a concrete detail or two selected 
 to really individualize is most effective in de- 
 scribing, 
 
 * See chap, i, p. $. 
 io6 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 Details given in arrangement in space 
 When such a problem has been attacked by 
 working first on the outline to be sketched in, 
 we may next help children in arranging their 
 details in the outline. The plan they adopt may 
 be any one that shows the relation of their points 
 in space; connectives are helpful here. The sole 
 requirement is that they do not jump about, 
 aimless and flea-like, in presenting what they 
 have seen. In describing the harbor, they may 
 begin at the breakwater and proceed by the 
 channel to the slips, for instance. Only simple, 
 practical subjects like this are worth attempting. 
 The child must first develop a definite and work- 
 able order of details for his account and be able 
 to present his oral or written theme so that he 
 can get the criticism of the class on its actual 
 effect. 
 
 The prevision of most of the small problems 
 the children handle can best be completed by 
 the single plan sentence already discussed : "My 
 story tells about the blacksmith's anvil and 
 forge, then how he shapes and fits the shoe, 
 and then how he nails it on," for instance. 
 Whether this appears in the actual theme or not 
 107 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 — there is no need for it in most cases — it is 
 the conclusion and test of prevision. 
 
 The danger of methodizing organization study 
 
 Such a discussion as this of specific ways of 
 grouping and arranging details is likely to be 
 misleading: the impression is almost inevitable 
 that one way or another is certainly valid al- 
 ways for meeting a given sort of problem. On 
 the contrary, though for certain cases, like ex- 
 planation of a game, usually only one way is 
 quite practicable, what will work best in most 
 cases is a combination of methods, and any pos- 
 sible approach is good according to the actual 
 clearness and interest it produces in practice. 
 For example, a visualization succeeds directly 
 in the degree that it shows skill in its combina- 
 tion of (i) the principle of giving the outline 
 early and the other details in space order with 
 (2) the method of putting the vivid first and 
 the significant last for emphasis. The procedure 
 in a social class may then consist first of dis- 
 cussing various ways of handfing a given com- 
 position problem. The result of such discussion 
 should be to determine which methods are best, 
 by testing their effect in actual oral or written 
 themes and criticizing fairly and keenly. All 
 108 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 this is to be conditioned by the knowledge that 
 there are really a great many possible ways of 
 arranging the materials of almost any com- 
 plex problem. 
 
 Each stage of developing ability in thinking is 
 thus the child's social experimentation in carry- 
 ing out actual projects to the best of his ability. 
 From his partial success he must learn to do bet- 
 ter through his fellows' judgment of his perform- 
 ance. 
 
 The Use of Connectives 
 
 We may consider briefly the problem of con- 
 necting the parts of topic or theme. Wherever 
 a new idea comes in — whether it is a reason, 
 an example, or an added point or incident of any 
 kind — we must make sure that the reader 
 knows its precise relation. Even if it is but the 
 subordinate part of a sentence, we try to obvi- 
 ate an instant's doubt. This is as useful as 
 guide-posts at turnings in strange country, or, 
 as a recent writer says, as the lamp-posts with 
 street-signs upon them in the city.^ Children's 
 attempts to work out this problem in high school 
 are bunglesome enough at first, but lessons on 
 the great variety of possible connectives and 
 * Rice, College and the Future, p. 34. 
 109 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 numberless exercises will reinforce the class de- 
 mand that a pupil not only think but express 
 his idea of the relative meaning and importance 
 of his points. Only from years of practice can 
 one learn to make transitions that are unmis- 
 takable, but neither raw nor baldly repetitious. 
 We may be content, in grade and high-school 
 work, to leave the art to ^'follow how it can." 
 It is only in narrative and descriptive forms that 
 the need of artistry outweighs that of specific 
 clearness, and even here it is a matter which 
 we probably cannot work at bludgeonly with 
 prescription and correction. 
 
 We have seen in the course of this chapter 
 how the growth of children's power both of group- 
 ing and of ordering their ideas may be some- 
 what definitely furthered. The grouping we 
 have for convenience divided into three types: 
 (i) the small, simple unit; (2) the massing of 
 two or more units or topics like the first; and 
 (3) the grouping of ideas or topics about an in- 
 terpretive sentence. Such grouping, it has been 
 urged, is the fundamental and essentially first 
 process of organization. When children can really 
 handle simple units of the first and third types, 
 and can further select ideas of a larger experi- 
 
 IIO 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 ence and throw them into a few groups as in 
 the second type, they are capable of mastering 
 in practical fashion most problems of organizing 
 their own ideas. 
 
 There follow the methods of arrangement for 
 clearness and force. Besides the preponderant 
 and most useful and natural (i) time order, 
 there is required for vigor (2) the emphasis prin- 
 ciple of putting striking ideas at the beginning, 
 but most significant ones at the end. For mak- 
 ing explanations clear, it is essential to discover 
 and use the various principles of (3) putting 
 basic things first — either what is fundamental 
 like the apparatus and purpose of game or proc- 
 ess, or what is known or simple for the reader. 
 Finally, for problems of visual observation we 
 need to use the arrangement of (4) putting the 
 outline first and fitting the details in space rela- 
 tion into it. 
 
 As to children's actual method of work in 
 solving organization problems, it is likely that 
 there are many good individual methods, but 
 none to be assigned in general. Some may really 
 do best to write first in mad and scrabbled 
 haste, for themselves only, and then revise, and 
 thus clear their thoughts before they attempt 
 talk or writing for any one else; these need to 
 III 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 remember that a thing written, as Stevenson 
 puts it, "more than half convinces" us that it 
 is adequately expressed, and that we sometimes 
 have to fight free of its particular wording. Most 
 people, probably, do better to make lists of 
 points, cast out and add, and draft at least a 
 rough grouping before writing connectedly at 
 all. This has the double advantage of making 
 reasonably sure of the organization and some- 
 times also smoothing the way with a felicitous 
 expression noted down. The only point that we 
 can make arbitrarily for every pupil is that com- 
 petent grouping and arrangement — whether 
 mental, oral, or written — is absolutely requi- 
 site to speaking or writing that is of value for 
 communication. The main lines of organiza- 
 tion as suggested in this chapter are intended 
 to represent the sort of thinking one must do 
 in meeting typical problems. 
 
 If the treatment of organization thus given 
 has seemed like a formulizing which would go 
 far in the ancient ways of stifling children's in- 
 terest and individuality in expression, we may 
 need to remember that we have attempted re- 
 viewing briefly a course of development that runs 
 through all the elementary and high-school years 
 and that is, of course, far from accomplished then. 
 
 112 
 
PREVISION OF IDEAS 
 
 The principles here derived, above all, are not 
 intended for prescription and memorization, but 
 should be come at by experiment, criticism, and 
 discussion; if they are then formulated, it should 
 generally be in the children's own way. Organ- 
 ization power is here presented as a matter of 
 increasing skill in dealing with every sort of 
 problem in real expression. The mode of growth 
 suggested is by the socialization of children's 
 thinking through the criticism of a cooperative 
 audience. 
 
IV 
 
 EVOLUTION AND ATTAINMENT OF 
 EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 Respect the child, respect him to the end, but also respect 
 yourself. . . . You are trying to make that man another you. 
 One's enough. Emerson, Education. 
 
 A. MINIMUM FORM-ESSENTIALS AND 
 THEIR ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 We have attempted to gain some view of the 
 best means for building a social group of chil- 
 dren interested in expression because they wish 
 to achieve common ends, and of the ways in 
 which such a group may help children in organ- 
 izing the ideas they have to express. But this 
 essential prevision is, of course, only one phase 
 of the expressional problem. There remains to 
 be considered the more generally discussed and 
 probably far more difficult problem: How may 
 we best work toward more true and artistic ex- 
 pression of the individualities and experiences 
 of children? As has been suggested, the motive 
 force which we shall attempt to use here also 
 is the cooperative effort of the group to work 
 out in common projects requiring effective ex- 
 pression. 
 
 114 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 Two Large Types of Expressional 
 Difficulties 
 
 We shall attempt to discover a successful mode 
 of campaign against these difficulties first by 
 grouping them into two distinct classes: ^ 
 
 A. What we may by correction brand as so- 
 cially acceptable or unacceptable forms — posi- 
 tively right or wrong. 
 
 B. What we may better criticize as simply 
 more or less clear and forcible and pleasing ways 
 of expression. 
 
 It is obviously impossible to decide exactly 
 what forms are so far displeasing as to deserve 
 proscription and what may just escape it. And 
 yet I believe it can be shown that certain necessary, 
 largely arbitrary forms of speaking and writing 
 can be best established through sharp and unre- 
 mitting attention to them as tite acceptable forms till 
 they are quite fixed in habitual and almost uncon- 
 scious reaction, whereas other matters quite as 
 essential can be better attended to in other ways. 
 
 Four Sorts of Arbitrary Form-Conventions 
 
 By way, then, of attempting a practicable 
 
 division, it seems convenient to put into the first 
 
 * The importance of this division was first suggested to me 
 by Miss Edith White, of the Milwaukee State Normal SchooL 
 
 115 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 class (A) four types of form-conventions to be 
 established as habits: (i) Grammatical forms 
 may be taken to include all essential inflections 
 and distinctions between parts of speech, to- 
 gether with such idioms as the proper expres- 
 sion of the negative. If these are essential, they 
 must be drilled thoroughly into habit; for it 
 seems to be in no other way than as unconscious 
 reactions that such forms serve any very useful 
 purpose, in speech at least. They. extend from 
 exclusively arbitrary ones, like you were, — the 
 specific form having no more reason than has 
 a starched collar, — to those like lie and lay 
 which demand some logical discrimination of 
 the idea and sorting out of right forms from a 
 mixed mass. But all are alike classed here as 
 forms because of the need and the possibility 
 that they may, if rightly handled, be reduced 
 to unconscious habit. 
 
 The same thing is true of (2) punctuation. The 
 correct forms for quotations and for end-punc- 
 tuation of sentences may be learned simply by 
 drilling them in — a '^ brutal act of memory." 
 The marking-off of non-restrictive phrase and 
 clause modifiers, to be sure, often involves such 
 close discriminations of idea that it never, per- 
 haps, becomes unconscious habit. But in the 
 116 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 measure that it is possible, as it certainly seems 
 desirable, for necessary punctuation principles 
 to become practically automatic, they are to be 
 considered in the list of forms. The same is 
 obviously true of (3) essentials in spelling and 
 pronunciation. There remain in this category of 
 forms (4) certain further courtesies of speech 
 and writing, such as decent posture and address, 
 good appearance of manuscript, clear-cut enun- 
 ciation, and avoidance of positive vulgarity in 
 expression like coarse slang and argot. 
 
 That the list of forms thus presented contains 
 matters distinctly important to effective and 
 therefore socially good expression is sufficiently 
 apparent. To attempt without knowledge and 
 heed of them to *'play the showman" to one's 
 possessions courts inevitable failure, because the 
 attention of the spectators is unfortunately di- 
 verted to the uncouth dress of the puppets or 
 to the ungainly puppet-master. 
 
 The Question of Minimum Essentials 
 
 As we look at this problem of achieving ac- 
 ceptable forms, its complexity sometimes seems 
 fearful and hopeless. Perhaps for this very rea- 
 son, the method of attack has too often been a 
 mad haste to cover all points at once; that is, we 
 117 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 have given attention in every school year to 
 each in turn of almost numberless matters. As 
 a result, schools and teachers are everlastingly 
 being charged with failing in just the essen- 
 tials that we are considering. And, indeed, any 
 lapse in these matters is so evident as to call 
 sharp and immediate attention. The retort of 
 most teachers, too, has been upon those of classes 
 below them. Yet there appears to have been 
 small lack of conscientious earnestness all along 
 the course. Consequently, it appears that many 
 teachers are coming pretty rapidly to doubt the 
 efficacy of the daily and hourly correction of all 
 errors — the patient marking with red ink and 
 revising, the persistent, wearisome checking and 
 recasting of children's statements — which have 
 been the regular order of the English teacher's 
 day. If we do honestly question the method we 
 have faithfully tried, if we wonder whether, in 
 face of the forces against us, we have not been 
 attempting too much in the matter of accep- 
 table forms, is it not worth while at least to 
 examine the ground which it is altogether im- 
 perative that we cover, and try to fix the corres- 
 ponding amount which we can really expect to 
 achieve adequately, thoroughly, and finally? 
 Recent investigations have seemed to throw 
 ii8 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 some rays of hope into this dark district and to 
 offer the chance of a clearer view. For example, 
 the investigators of children's speech errors in 
 the Boise, Idaho, schools discovered that ten 
 per cent of the total came from mistakes in the 
 principal parts of only four verbs — do, come, 
 see, and go.^ This, though it may not be wholly 
 typical, seems to indicate the kind of help such 
 form investigations may give us. Dr. Klapper, 
 indeed, believes that the gross habitual speech 
 errors of children, which the elementary school 
 needs to eliminate, in all number but about thirty 
 to thirty-six.^ Similarly, Dr. Charters's ^ in- 
 vestigation in Kansas City demonstrated that 
 nearly half the errors in written work there 
 (forty-six per cent) arose from various forms of 
 failing to recognize and indicate sentences; 
 thirty per cent came from omission of periods.^ 
 Various studies have done a similar service for 
 
 * Earhart and Small: " English in the Elementary School," 
 Elementary School Journal, vol. xvi, p. 32. 
 
 2 Teaching of English, p. 32. 
 
 * Charters and Miller, A Course of Study in Grammar based 
 on Investigations in the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools, 
 Table B. Bulletin, January, 1915, Education Series 9. Pub- 
 lished by the University of Missouri, Columbia. 
 
 * It should be noted, however, that these figures represent 
 written work from the second grade on, and are not distrib- 
 uted. 
 
 119 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 spelling. There seems to be need in every con- 
 siderable school system for thoroughgoing and 
 expert study of these problems of forms to de- 
 termine their boundaries and area; but enough 
 has been done, apparently, to show the general 
 topography and to suggest that attention rightly 
 given to a few regions will make the whole less 
 rugged and impenetrable-looking. 
 
 Decision as to what is really essential in these 
 fields is of course impossible to reach finally 
 without further most careful investigations. 
 The Study of Language Sensibility, by Professor 
 Joseph Jastrow, — to be pubhshed shortly, — 
 promises to reveal most as to the judgments of 
 cultivated people on certain forms usually con- 
 demned wholesale and without discrimination 
 of relative objectionableness. It is a pleasing 
 and hopeful thing that classifications of errors 
 in the making of courses are now generally 
 made in the Hght of broader knowledge of what 
 is acceptable English usage to-day — in knowl- 
 edge, at least, of what the makers of dictionaries 
 have concluded to be actually national and repu- 
 table present usage — and are not based on only 
 the dogmatic fiat of purists. It begins to look as 
 if an enormous lot of forms that we have in- 
 sisted on may not actually be worth the tre- 
 
 120 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 mendous effort of proscription and correction. 
 Dr. Reynolds, for example/ suggests that many 
 which we have rigorously attended to — com- 
 prising, he thinks, fully one half of the bulk of 
 most rhetorics — are actually questions of di- 
 vided usage and should be let alone; and that 
 still other forms we have painfully inculcated — 
 like the quotation within a quotation — are really 
 valueless to the children who try to learn them. 
 
 Minimum Form Essentials for Each 
 School Year 
 
 A specific, if merely tentative, determination 
 seems necessary, before we approach the prob- 
 lem of how to accomplish our aims here, as 
 to the forms which are necessary and attain- 
 able for each particular grade group or school 
 year. The result we should undoubtedly aim 
 at is such thorough establishment of the essen- 
 tial forms that they will function in the street, 
 at home — everywhere the child has occasion 
 to speak or write. That is to say, we should 
 aim at one hundred per cent accomplishment 
 of a few things rather than ^'sl namby-pamby 
 achievement of about seventy-five per cent" 
 
 1 "For Minimum Standards in English," English Journal, 
 June, 1915 (vol. IV, p. 349). 
 
 121 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 in a more complex problem.^ We know how sel- 
 dom such full accomplishment as this is reached 
 even with regard to the most obviously funda- 
 mental matters; we realize also that we have 
 against us, in m^any cases, the whole force of 
 home and neighborhood heedlessness and ignor- 
 ance. How are we to reach our aim? 
 
 If our method is to effect such thorough fixa- 
 tion of the right form in habit that the correct 
 reaction will quite supplant the incorrect, it seems 
 obvious that we cannot attack so many mis- 
 takes at once as we have done. We have appar- 
 ently failed oftenest because we have let our 
 conscientiousness prescribe such a host of cor- 
 rections that the child is unable even to remem- 
 ber them. While he is attending to one, trying 
 hard to get that quite established, other mis- 
 takes naturally creep in. Now, we are tempted 
 to draw his attention to these, with the result 
 that he breaks the chain of habit formation he 
 has begun and fails to remember the first point. 
 "Thus we actually keep him at work on a prob- 
 lem that is too complex for him — that has more 
 items than his span of attention can possibly 
 embrace. We keep him fluttering, and he can- 
 not settle down enough to learn anything. It 
 » Cf. Reynolds, "Minimum Standards," op. cit. 
 122 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 is all a haze to him — in some cases, a grue- 
 some darkness.'' ^ Dr. Klapper insists that not 
 above three to six specific bad habits of gram- 
 mar and idiom can be thoroughly eradicated in 
 each school year, in average classes. ^ And if 
 we are to take as our standard full attainment 
 of each correct form we attempt, we must de- 
 cide to settle upon a definitely minimal stan- 
 dard probably no more numerous than these. 
 It is reasonably certain that success here de- 
 pends almost wholly on the teacher's willingness 
 to pass by not only a host of minor mistakes 
 and infelicities of expression, but even for some 
 time a large part of the positive and very bad 
 errors the children are guilty of. For it is evi- 
 dent that we must concentrate our force on one 
 point, or very small and closely related group of 
 points, for a far longer time than we generally do 
 at present, instead of attacking several at once, 
 diffusing attention, and confusing our pupils. 
 
 Tentative Sketching op a Minimal List 
 BY Grade Groups 
 
 It is clear that such definite standards can be 
 best set only by each school or school system 
 for its own use. Once they are set, it should be 
 
 1 Dr. E. 0. Finkenbifader. « Op. cit., p. zz. , 
 
 12S 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 demanded that every child promoted to a given 
 grade have complete mastery of the essential 
 forms for the grade he is leaving, or be so spe- 
 cifically conditioned that his next teacher may 
 know precisely where to go to work. If the 
 standard is to be so rigorous, it must of course 
 be absolutely minimal. Merely as a trial sketch, 
 quite tentative, and based as yet on no thor- 
 ough investigation, I may be permitted to sug- 
 gest the following minimal form conventions. 
 The list is presented here with the idea that it 
 might be used as a basis for study and experi- 
 mentation in specific schools and fundamen- 
 tally revised to meet the test of use. Each school 
 system must no doubt incorporate local mistakes; 
 however, it will probably be best not to increase 
 the list, but to make compensatory reductions, 
 since what is here given is supposed to represent 
 the amount that can be done thoroughly in nor- 
 mal time and conditions. 
 
 (i) Grammar and idiom 
 In the matter of grammar, the most flagrant 
 errors may be attacked first. Those which have 
 logical or other discriminations at the root of 
 them, like the lie and lay or shall and will distinc- 
 tions and those between adjective and adverb, 
 124 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 can be worked with systematically only late in 
 the course;^ but this does not mean that certain 
 specific idioms cannot well be noted early as 
 correct, and drilled in. The method proposed 
 for most of the elementary-school study of these 
 matters, indeed, is that type forms of this sort 
 be drilled into habit to serve as standards for 
 reference — something like Matthew Arnold's 
 touchstones of poetry. It is of course meant 
 that of the list determined on for any grade 
 group, the forms should be divided among the 
 teachers so that each is responsible for only the 
 three to five forms of his own list. 
 
 We may suggest quite tentatively, then, as 
 minima in grammar and idiom: (a) for grades 
 one to three, / did, I saw, and have seen, I lay, I 
 came, I have nH any, you were, I have gone; (b) for 
 grades four to six, he said (past tense), I was 
 
 * The minimum of essentials in formal grammar (Cf. (i) and 
 (2) below and pp. 156-67) should probably include recogni- 
 tion: (i) of the sentence; (2) of the parts of speech; (3) of 
 clauses as distinct from phrases, and the chief uses of both; 
 (4) of the distinction between main and subordinate proposi- 
 tions; (5) of complete verbs; transitive verbs (voice) and 
 linking verbs, with objects and predicate attributes;^tense. 
 
 It is intended that simply these points be thoroughly 
 understood, always by the test of use in the sentence, and 
 without any refinements of sub classification whatever. It 
 should be possible to complete in grades eight and nine. 
 
 125 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 lying down, he does nH, an apple, may I?, with you 
 and me, do as I do, looks like me, let it go, he 
 plays well, and there were three chairs; (c) for 
 grades seven to nine, if I were you and if I had 
 been, I wish he had been, if he should come, shall 
 we go?, the scenery in these places is beautiful; 
 the principal parts of nine or ten more verbs; ^ 
 agreement of pronouns with everybody, a person, 
 etc. For the later high school — if only some 
 thirty-six forms have been fully attended to — 
 there should remain little of this sort of thing 
 besides the further needful systematizing of 
 points previously mastered. 
 
 (2) Punctuation 
 
 In the matter of punctuation, since realiza- 
 tion of the sentence unit causes such enormous 
 trouble (forty-six per cent in the Charters study), 
 it seems reasonable to suggest that this receive 
 constant and perhaps exclusive attention till it 
 is mastered, perhaps till the end of grade six.^ 
 However, since quotations and the word of ad- 
 dress are natural to use in writing much earlier, 
 that topic also may, perhaps, be threshed through 
 
 » Cf. the Bois6 List. 
 
 » Cf. Speaking and Writing English (Lawrence, Mass., 1915), 
 by Superintendent Bernard M. Sheridan, pp. 14-17 and 93. 
 
 126 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 in its very simplest form. When the sentence 
 is realized and punctuated always as a unit, we 
 may attend to its interior punctuation; prob- 
 ably by the end of the eighth school year we 
 'jhould have completed: (i) the series; (2) gram- 
 matically independent words and phrases; (3) 
 the compound sentence with a conjunction. 
 Probably main statements unconnected gram- 
 matically had better be thrown into separate 
 sentences at this stage. The children will have 
 noted the semicolon in their reading and should 
 learn its value; but though some of them may 
 use it with more or less success, it is probable 
 that its formal teaching should come later. The 
 growing use of subordinate clauses in these 
 grades usually creates the added difficulty of 
 their mispunctuation as sentences, and this 
 battle must be firmly fought. Possibly in the 
 ninth year we may begin considering the semi- 
 colon in its sole important use for high-school 
 pupils — to show closer relation than pointing in 
 separate sentences, for statements not joined by 
 a conjunction. Obviously, real mastery of each 
 of these points requires first a grasp of a simple 
 grammatical principle underlying, and it is neces- 
 sary in approaching each to develop a thorough, 
 practical understanding of this principle. 
 127 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 For the last three years of high school there 
 remains the really difficult matter of fixing in 
 habit the distinction between restrictive and 
 non-restrictive modifiers, whether phrase or 
 clause — adjective, adverbial, or appositional. 
 The right marking of appositives is a part of 
 this difficulty, and should, I beUeve, hardly 
 be attempted much before this point. Punc- 
 tuating the adverbial clause before the subject 
 belongs here also. The careful study of punc- 
 tuation in high school should consist in help- 
 ing pupils to apply in numberless cases the prin- 
 ciples they have already learned. If a pupil has 
 mastered the five or six points here listed, he 
 will probably be able to punctuate clearly and 
 adequately; other matters of finesse, I am con- 
 vinced, can very wisely wait for his college study 
 of composition, in case he ever attempts to use 
 the subject as an avenue to literary activities. 
 
 0) Spelling and pronunciation 
 
 Spelling words can well be selected from the 
 
 children's own writing, checked by the lists of 
 
 Dr. Ayers and Dr. Jones.^ If simply the *'one 
 
 hundred demons of the Enghsh language" in 
 
 ^ L. F. Ayers: A Scale for the M casuremmt of English Spelling, 
 Russell Sage Foundation, 1915; W. F. Jones: A Concrete Investi- 
 gation of the Materials of English Spelling, South Dakota Uni- 
 
 128 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 the Jones study could be mastered by the end 
 of grade six, a really immeasurable load would 
 be lifted from the backs of teachers beyond 
 that grade. It need hardly be said that the 
 words given in spelling must not be all that the 
 child understands in reading and may find later 
 use for, but only those that it seems worth while 
 and reasonably certain that he needs in his nat- 
 ural daily life now. If one hundred per cent of 
 efficiency in spelling these can really be fixed 
 as the pupil's ideal, an interested observation of 
 such matters which we will try to induce also 
 must avail to maintain his usage of correct forms 
 beyond the small vocabulary that we can establish 
 irremovably in school spelHng lessons. For pro- 
 nunciation, too, there is need for fixing a small 
 number of right habits, and surely none for wast- 
 ing time to inculcate the ways of speech of one sec- 
 tion — the short a's, for example — in preference 
 to the acceptable, recorded speech of another. 
 
 {4) Further essential courtesies of speech and 
 
 writing 
 Further socially necessary courtesies we may 
 well leave, so far as possible, to the developing 
 
 versity, 1913; see also the article on High School Spelling, by 
 Mr. Lester of the Hill School, English Journal, vol. v, p. 404. 
 
 129 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 taste of the pupils. The Horace Mann Course 
 in Art, Grade One, says: *'No effort is made to 
 impose a more refined standard [of color] upon 
 the child, for it would not appeal to him." ^ The 
 child who is brought to the point of dawning 
 taste will grow quickly enough away from the 
 raw crudities of his speech and of his environ- 
 ment; but where he is living frankly in the stage 
 of delight in blatant color and scent and raw- 
 ness of life generally, it will do little good to 
 preach or prescribe more artistic expression in 
 words. This question of taste, also, belongs 
 rightly to the following section.^ Yet even in 
 the region of forms, a very few of these mat- 
 ters should probably be settled upon by the 
 consensus of class judgment, guided probably 
 by the teacher's suggestions, and thereafter de- 
 manded invariably by the pupils — for instance, 
 a simple, uniform arrangement of theme- or 
 letter-headings, to be developed as we shall see 
 later,' a decision as to margin and indention, 
 and a like standard in the matter of posture 
 and enunciation in speaking. Likewise, what the 
 class may be able, with the help and suggestion 
 
 1 Teachers College Elementary School Course, 1908, page 55. 
 8 Section B, pp. 153/. 
 » Page 138. 
 
 130 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 of their leader, truly to realize as quite undesir- 
 able — cheap or smart or the like — may be 
 quietly branded by the common judgment as 
 unacceptable, and really eliminated. 
 
 But here again, the teacher or supervisor 
 with a too-tender linguistic conscience may force 
 and demand far too much, with the result that 
 really important points — flagrant violations 
 and essentials of form — go by the board, and 
 nagged, dull, inexpressive children come to be 
 the rule. Whatever may be a teacher's personal 
 attitude toward expressions rightly listed as 
 colloquial, for example, — even though he may 
 prefer for his own use on every occasion the 
 precise formalities of literary expression, ^ — it 
 seems clear that he has no right in grades and 
 in high school to proscribe and grub diligently 
 out the good colloquialisms in the everyday 
 written and oral themes of his pupils. The ques- 
 tion appears to turn on whether we wish in 
 these grade and high-school years to cultivate 
 excellent homely expression to fit the daily, in- 
 formal occasions that we all have to meet most 
 
 ^ On this point, see the section, " Schoolmasters' English," 
 on p. 309 of The Teaching of English by Carpenter, Baker, and 
 Scott ; also the chapter on " Schoolmastering the Language," 
 in Lounsbury's The Standard of English Usage. 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 often, or a rather bookish and formal type ex- 
 clusively. But by colloquial usage I of course 
 do not mean vulgarism or barbarism or dialect 
 of any sort; I mean good colloquialism. And, 
 indeed, it would not probably be necessary to 
 urge this point at all if it were not that collo- 
 quialism appears to be very commonly regarded, 
 even by the makers of studies and courses, as a 
 random collection of all sorts of mistakes not 
 otherwise classified. Thus, in recent courses one 
 finds like I do and he donH side by side with 
 such expressions, equally reprehensible, appar- 
 ently, and alike proscribed, as lots of and quite 
 a few and go slow and company for [sic] dinner. 
 This seems truly unfortunate, since it means 
 condemnation of whatever is correctly rated 
 colloquial and is thus in really good standing, 
 and results in its prompt eradication so far as 
 courses and teachers can avail against it. The 
 question of how to work at the proper time for 
 a desirable establishment of power in formal 
 and literary expression is discussed later. ^ Cer- 
 tainly we desire that children's talk and writing 
 should be always couched in reasonably accept- 
 able forms; it should be decent in tone and so- 
 cially pleasing; but it should not be judged by 
 » See pp. i79#- 
 132 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 a standard that is ideal in so many respects that 
 it is unattainable in any. 
 
 We have noted a merely tentative list of the 
 form essentials that should be achieved before 
 any other matters of form are attempted in 
 given school years or groups of grades. In aver- 
 age classes, this division of composition study 
 should probably take but a small part of each 
 yearns language time. In districts where there 
 is excellent home speech, comparatively little 
 of this should be needed — sometimes practi- 
 cally none on matters of grammar and idiom. 
 In districts of foreign speech or especially bad 
 English, on the contrary, these same points 
 may take most if not all the time that can rea- 
 sonably be given to achieving standards of good 
 form in expression. It has been suggested that 
 the conscientious teacher will gain greatly — 
 in particular will have a more useful, complete 
 view of the difficulties he has to contend against 
 and will realize what he can and cannot possibly 
 do — if he keeps under each child's name a list 
 of his flagrant mistakes which it seems impera- 
 tive to eradicate. Where actual need of forms 
 is found in expressing interesting experiences 
 and discussing common problems, it can be 
 hoped that correction of forms, organized as 
 
 133 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 here suggested, in any school district, might re- 
 sult in a few habits functioning automatically, 
 not only in but also out of school. The major 
 time and attention should certainly be left for 
 the suggestive criticism which may help to ele- 
 vate the class standards of clearness and posi- 
 tive effect in thought and speech and writing.^ 
 
 Treatment of flagrant violations listed for later 
 study 
 
 But before we take up the actual method for 
 establishing the forms thus listed, it is well to 
 attempt answering a sincere question as to the 
 practicability of what we have discussed. Some 
 teachers will doubtless ask with concern: "But 
 what about the many positively wrong forms 
 — even flagrantly bad habits of speech — which 
 do not appear either in the hst of requirements 
 for a given year or in that for supposed earlier 
 attainment? Will not these fix themselves im- 
 movably in habit?" It may, indeed, happen 
 that these do get more firmly fixed, though we 
 may perhaps console ourselves with the reflec- 
 tion that, after all, children's habits are pretty 
 green and plastic if properly handled. How- 
 ever v/e answer, the fact certainly remains that 
 * See pp. 153/- 
 134 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 we can deal in effective, permanent fashion — 
 gaining real results in habits — with but a few- 
 points of form in a given year, and that at least 
 till we have our minima perfectly achieved, we 
 had better work away on those only. And again, 
 much ignorance and crudeness, at least in pri- 
 mary children's expression, will be presently 
 outgrown an)rway. 
 
 It should, no doubt, be added that flagrant 
 mistakes that are found in the minimal list for 
 a given school, but are not up for correction or 
 review in that year, — if I had been there, for 
 example, or the punctuation of non-restrictive 
 elements, — may sometimes be quietly cor- 
 rected, usually by the substitution of the right 
 form on a pupil's paper or in his speech. I have 
 an idea, indeed, that this will be more effective 
 in satisf3dng the teacher's scruples than in doing 
 much to establish the desired form in the chil- 
 dren's habits. And the method must certainly 
 be used sparingly, with tremendous inhibition 
 of the impulse to tamper, if it is not to become 
 a painful agent of stultification. We have a 
 difficult way to steer between such correction 
 as maims and kills the children's joy in ex- 
 pression, on the one hand, and ineffectual, un- 
 checked, and unguided babble, on the other. I 
 135 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 have suggested that the surest way of helping 
 individual teachers is most likely to be by hold- 
 ing strictly to the attainment of a few minimum 
 requirements. Certainly we have a right to 
 demand in addition such common-sense, stern 
 inhibition of conscientiousness as shall leave 
 complete and vigorous, not uproot and kill, the 
 pupils' eager delight in talking and writing in 
 the social classroom. And the psychologist now- 
 adays suggests that calling attention to a form 
 before we are ready to give full, unremitting atten- 
 tion to its establishment can probably have no other 
 result than confusion and repression. 
 
 Two Stages in Establishing Essential 
 Forms 
 
 There remain to be considered the means by 
 which minimal form essentials, once agreed upon 
 for a given grade or school, can be best handled 
 for their complete establishment in habit. For 
 a successful attack we may conveniently note 
 two stages: first, the child's realization of the 
 need and usefulness of the right way for gaining 
 his ends; and second, his thorough mastery of 
 the form — its establishment, so far as possible, in 
 his unconscious habit. The force which we shall 
 find most effective in both these processes is the 
 136 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 children's eager desire for effective communica- 
 tion of what is in them, corrected by the class 
 demand for what they all agree to be socially 
 acceptable, as a reasonable courtesy which each 
 speaker must show if he wants to be heard. 
 
 (i) Realization of the correct form and of its 
 value 
 
 Since the matters of form which we are here 
 considering are for the most part quite arbitrary 
 conventions, at least to the children's view, and 
 most of them altogether unknown to the major- 
 ity or to all the class, and since violations are 
 so common as often to constitute the rule of 
 practice, much preparation is generally necessary 
 before the class as critics can take charge of de- 
 manding any one of these forms in the speech 
 and writing of the group members. For the 
 first step — often realization of habitual use of a 
 wrong form and always of the true usefulness of 
 a particular right one — we may attempt to repro- 
 duce in class the conditions which probably gave 
 rise to the convention we are aiming to establish, 
 and by suggestion help the children to discover 
 the one that represents correct usage. 
 
 For example, we may let the children them- 
 selves decide whether they wish to permit slouch- 
 
 137 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ing and mumbling in those who speak before 
 the class, or to demand good posture, forthright 
 address, and clear enunciation. This end may be 
 largely secured by praise of excellent manner, 
 but probably it will require also condemnation 
 of what is bad or unsocial. Similarly in regard 
 to headings and margins: those who have tried 
 both methods need not be reminded how far 
 more effective than rule-of-thumb prescription 
 in these matters is giving the children freedom 
 to experiment — as they do in drawing, for ex- 
 ample — to see what placing of work on their 
 papers and what form of heading looks best. 
 When the class have made experiments, they 
 may compare their own with better work and 
 p>erhaps vote on what form is most pleasing — 
 if necessary, guided by the teacher's suggestion. 
 Thereafter they should be encouraged to de- 
 mand observance of that fonn in all cases as a 
 requisite social decency. 
 
 In matters of punctuation a somewhat like 
 judgment may be secured. We may let the child 
 in the primary grades, for instance, try to read 
 aloud what he has written at dictation, or, bet- 
 ter, as was suggested before,^ let some other 
 child read each one's story aloud. The pupil 
 1 See pp. 56-57- 
 
 138 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 who has written eagerly of his experiences wants 
 his story appreciated. But from the inevitable 
 hesitations and stumblings of his reader, he may 
 come to realize the failure of what he has done 
 to secure its effect of immediate comprehen- 
 sion. As another aid, the teacher may write a 
 story on the board at the children's dictation 
 and ask them for the marks that will make it 
 easiest to read. In all these cases the children 
 will probably look in their books to note the 
 forms they have already understood, but have 
 not yet discovered as essential to their own 
 uses. A like procedure is possible in the upper 
 grades and high school — the discovery of a new 
 punctuation form, for instance, through the fail- 
 ure of a reader to get the exact meaning in- 
 tended. Where a pupil here has tried earnestly 
 to express ideas requiring somewhat more com- 
 plex marking than he is used to, it may need 
 only the honest puzzlement of another child to 
 emphasize the need of looking up and using cer- 
 tain forms. 
 
 The case with spelling, pronunciation, and 
 correct grammar is rather different because 
 need can hardly be shown so evidently there. 
 Probably the best beginning is to encourage the 
 children in being fully alive to new forms in what 
 
 139 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 they read and hear and in discussing these in class. 
 Thus, when we find Who ^s been lying in my bed ? 
 in The Three Bears we may label this as the right 
 form, and sharply contrast it with the wrong 
 one that some of the children may use in telling 
 the story. The idea must be made quite clear 
 that only this right form is acceptable. Most 
 forms of this sort are so altogether arbitrary — 
 and often, as in the case of spelling, so unrea- 
 sonable — that no discussion is generally pos- 
 sible save "We say it this way.'' Some degree 
 of satisfaction in following conventions, or more 
 often the discomfort following their breach, is 
 apparently the only force we can invoke here. 
 
 (2) The fixing of essential forms in habit 
 
 Of course, in all these cases the child's real- 
 ization that he has need of some sort for a given 
 form is but a very short step in the way of its 
 estabHshment in his everyday use. It is an ini- 
 tial incentive along the way; but this is a hard and 
 tedious travel at the best — really almost end- 
 less ; and reaKzation of need will rarely be so sharp 
 as to prick most grade-school children, at any 
 rate, very far along it. What must be accom- 
 plished is, of course, the training of hands or 
 speech centers, usually with the breaking-down 
 140 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 of wrong connections, to do what the child has 
 come to see is worth doing — an affair of un- 
 ending repetitions where must be no shirking 
 of the hard, steady pull, no suffering of excep- 
 tions to occur. But we may at the outset note 
 the waste of relying upon sheer repetition. When 
 dogged determination, on the child's own part 
 or that of his teacher, keeps him at his task, such 
 a quantity of good energy is used in forcing the 
 process forward, or in resisting it, that too little 
 apparently is given really to make the form a 
 part of the child himself. It is wasteful, grace- 
 less grind. And then, in number of repetitions 
 the stimulating environment of the home and 
 the street has us at a thousand disadvantages. 
 
 Motivation of Drill Lessons 
 
 If we are to insure the highest measure of 
 success, then, we must follow Dr. McMurry's 
 dictum: "Drills must be made sharp by the 
 presence of motive.'' ^ How are we to supply 
 the necessary living motive? Means of drill are 
 as plenty as blackberries: transcription, dicta- 
 tion, filling blanks, learning grammatical names 
 and principles, and so on. Doubtless these are 
 all more or less valid means of habit formation 
 
 1 How to Study, p. 191. 
 
 141 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 — more, it appears, in proportion as the drills 
 themselves have reasons or motives that appeal 
 to the child as worth while or interesting. But 
 it is probable that the most effective means we 
 shall find will be those in which the child's pride 
 and interest in what he has to express and in 
 doing the thing well is reinforced by the class 
 demand and the needs of a social situation. 
 
 In the matter of manuscript form, for in- 
 stance, if a child copies from the board the com- 
 posite class story that was suggested above, ^ 
 because it is in part his own and worth preserv- 
 ing and perhaps showing his admiring friends 
 at home, he has a motive for doing the thing in 
 the best possible form. Under the stimulus of 
 such a need for good results, the forms of manu- 
 script headings and margins which the class 
 choose to adopt and require may simply be copied 
 by each child from a model on the board, and 
 then tried in the writing of individual themes, 
 until the desirable form becomes habitual. Simi- 
 larly, effective and appealing subject-matter 
 gives force to the suggestion that it be copied 
 or written at dictation and preserved for a real 
 purpose. All such v/riting will of course have 
 to be excellent in its form, and thus will help 
 1 See p. 139. 
 142 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 to establish necessary habits. It is hardly a 
 good plan to break in upon the budding impulse 
 to expression with a demand, during assignments, 
 that certain forms be held in mind. An unusual 
 and horrible example was furnished me by one 
 fourth-grade teacher who discoursed and ques- 
 tioned for ten minutes on details of heading and 
 indention and then baldly announced the theme 
 subject. But where it is given in friendly and 
 courteous fashion, the caution to the overim- 
 pulsive that they take plenty of time to see just 
 what they are about before they start to work, 
 seems to be frequently in order and useful. 
 
 For establishing right grammatical forms, 
 motivated repetition may again be the best key. 
 In all the school years, but particularly in the 
 early ones, story-telling and dramatization may 
 have, among other delectable values, that of 
 fixing correct forms the author has used, — for 
 instance, the correct verb phrases in The Three 
 Bears, already noted. Such live dramatization 
 and games as are suggested for learning / have nH 
 any, in Speaking and Writing,^ can usually be 
 repeated indefinitely; they suggest many pos- 
 sible variations to both teachers and pupils, and 
 they are most likely to hold absorbed attention 
 * Maxwell, Johnston, Barnum, Book i, pp. 1-5. 
 143 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 throughout. Indeed, there seems to be every 
 reason to trust the effectiveness of good Hve 
 games that appeal to the children, for drilling 
 on this sort of forms. In the higher grades these 
 may often be made into team competitions of 
 one sort or another. Once the right forms are 
 used freely in play, it seems reasonable to sup- 
 pose that they are most likely to crop out spon- 
 taneously outside the schoolroom. Again, if a 
 child learns by heart verses from the poems he 
 studies because he is eager to recite them at 
 home or at a school assembly, his work need be 
 no stupid grind, but a vigorous and cheerful 
 giving of sturdy attention. 
 
 In the six high-school years, of course, there 
 appears need to replace these adventitious in- 
 terests so far as possible by realization of the 
 value and meaning of specific conventions. 
 Here, through the study of so much formal 
 grammar as can be made to function unmistak- 
 ably in his work day by day, a child may come 
 to see as much reason as can be found back of 
 the arbitrary forms which he must memorize and 
 apply. Here too we may succeed in making the 
 steady pull of achieving correct forms a process 
 of persistent fighting by each child for ground 
 he needs in important operations projected by 
 144 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 him and his classmates. Given living realiza- 
 tion of the use to which he can put a particular 
 idiom — the exact meaning of if he was right 
 about this, or ercen if he had said that, to fit the 
 facts of a situation — it seems clear that any 
 sort of quick and vivid drill may be successful 
 
 — repeated as many times as necessary, and 
 made effective by brevity and good spirit and 
 sharp centering on only one point to be mastered. 
 
 Punctuation seems likely to yield to no other 
 attack than this of unceasingly applying each 
 principle to nmnberless specific cases. No par- 
 ticular urge seems possible except perhaps that 
 of appealing subject-matter in the examples 
 used — best, doubtless, from the pupils' own 
 writing — and the constant pressure of real- 
 ization that forms, if they are to be useful, 
 must be got right and unquestionably mastered. 
 For perhaps the most difficult problem in this 
 region — that of establishing a sentence sense 
 
 — Superintendent Sheridan ^ notes the value of 
 mastering the idea fully in speech first. Encour- 
 agement of the habit of marking the sentence 
 end by dropping the voice and pausing, without 
 any interruption of and-a and the like, appears 
 to be one of the early essentials for teaching oral 
 
 * Speaking and WriimgEttgUsh,ipi>.i/^-i'j. Lawrence, Mass. 
 
 145 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 composition. It may perhaps be achieved best by 
 suggestion of ease and deliberateness in talking 
 in the social classroom. It must then be discov- 
 ered as essential to written work also and unre- 
 mittingly applied there, with no avoidable intro- 
 duction, meanwhile, of other rules of pointing. 
 
 In the use of all these means for establishing 
 necessary form-conventions there is need of 
 the teacher's greatest resourcefulness. The chil- 
 dren themselves, if they are alive to the problem, 
 may often present new and valid ideas for work 
 and study, and these are likely to be most use- 
 ful; but the teacher must always be ready be- 
 forehand with his own attack. And it must be 
 brief, but come day after day, and often several 
 times a day, on the same form or small group of 
 forms, not rapidly scatter attention over three 
 or four different points. A good deal has been 
 done toward collecting helpful suggestions of this 
 sort; but it is after all the ingenuity and the pleas- 
 ant spirit of the teacher heartily aiding the class 
 at their problem that are most important here. 
 
 Use of Forms in meeting further Real 
 Problems 
 
 The one best way of establishing a form perma- 
 nently — once it is so far initiated in this fashion 
 146 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 that the children feel little uncertainty about 
 it — is, I believe, to suggest to the children real 
 problems of expressing their own ideas which 
 require the particular convention for their best 
 accomplishment. These will best be projects 
 such as grow naturally from the children's real 
 interests. Thus, study and drill on punctuating 
 quotations may naturally be followed by prob- 
 lems of stories requiring dialogue or of drama- 
 tizing parts of stories. Accounts of people's 
 characteristic ways, for example, of course de- 
 mand that we hear what they say. Here, then, 
 are two different sorts of quotation form, for 
 dramatic scenes and for stories, including almost 
 numberless problems. Since the forms in ques- 
 tion have had attention freely and recently called 
 to them, the pride of the child in his own work 
 may first be enlisted for thorough proof-reading,^ 
 and, once he has accomplished this to the best 
 of his ability, the pride of the class may next be 
 called on for checking up his work. We should, 
 however, see to it even then that the child him- 
 self corrects his mistakes unaided if he possibly 
 can do so. 
 
 1 See chap, iii, p. 56. 
 
 147 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Enlisting Cooperation on Specitic Form 
 Matters 
 
 It is probable that the usefulness of this type 
 of work could be enormously increased if the 
 parents of each child, and in departmental work, 
 certainly, every one of his teachers, were to re- 
 ceive a card stating the form matter which the 
 class was just then working to establish, and 
 probably those also which were supposedly fixed 
 in habit already, and asking that these specific 
 points receive attention outside the English 
 classroom also. Of course this would have to 
 be skillfully maneuvered. But where the list 
 was very brief and definite, help from many par- 
 ents and from all other teachers should be pos- 
 sible to secure.^ In any case, it should certainly 
 be possible, once we make the list of matters to 
 be achieved each year really one of a few mini- 
 mum essentials, and not a numberless confusing 
 array, actually to fix them in habit in the course 
 of a school year without diverting necessary 
 interest and attention from what is the true 
 
 * The most valuable chapter in that interesting book, Pro- 
 fessor R. W. Brown's How the French Boy Learns to Writer 
 appears to me to be his discussion of " Organized Language 
 Tradition " (chap. viii). 
 
 148 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 central purpose of composition, the individual 
 organization and statement of experience. 
 
 The Time Necessary for fixing an 
 Essential Form 
 The length of time that we must spend on 
 concentrated attention to any form is not diffi- 
 cult to determine. Unswerving fixation on each 
 specific point should probably continue till every 
 pupil in the class either never uses the wrong 
 form even in free and heated discussion, or, if 
 he does, immediately recognizes the mistake 
 without any correction from outside — show 
 of hands or the like. The erring will often be 
 helped sufficiently by a sensation of lowered 
 class temperature, so sharp that even the least 
 sensitive cannot escape it. The class themselves, 
 that is, will have come to demand the newly 
 acquired correct form, and will ruthlessly pro- 
 scribe as inexcusable all ignorance or heedless- 
 ness. So, until, one by one, each of the small 
 list of forms drilled upon and required in each 
 grade is so fully fixed, we should encourage the 
 children in their criticism to make ruthless de- 
 mands. The device recently suggested in the 
 English Journaly^ of having all children look for 
 * Pauline Cope, "Round Table," February, 1916 (vol. v, p. 134). 
 149 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 such violations by any member of the group any- 
 where and report complete statements and names, 
 and then of deputing committees to write out 
 all such reports on the blackboard each week, 
 should be successful in proportion as few and 
 specific points are looked for. Upon this taking 
 over by the group of standards discovered to be 
 correct and essential, the teaching of composi- 
 tion may most surely rely for their thorough 
 estabhshment. It is no doubt obvious how very 
 few form matters in any school year can be 
 really brought to the point of complete absorp- 
 tion into the class consciousness and into the 
 habitual reactions of each child. But I venture 
 to insist that no other result is worth much con- 
 sideration in this problem of essential forms. 
 
 The aim of the whole study of forms is intelli- 
 gent seK-correction by every child without the 
 aid of any one else. This should of course apply 
 to both his oral and written form equally. The 
 suggestion ^ that no correction marks be placed 
 on papers certainly seems reasonable and neces- 
 sary as regards these matters which we have 
 thus firmly established. Until a child has come 
 first to the point of making his own correc- 
 tions in proof- reading, and even beyond that, 
 
 1 Cf. chap. Ill, p. 60. 
 
 150 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 to actually checking the mistake before it ap- 
 pears, attention to the form in question has not 
 gone far enough in his case. And I believe that 
 such one hundred per cent attainment in the 
 small list of forms for each year should be de- 
 manded of every normal child. Only in this way 
 can each teacher know where to start toward 
 accomplishing his particular share. This may 
 seem almost a policy of blood and iron; but pro- 
 vided the list is limited and specific enough, we 
 need hardly inflict outrage on the originaUty or 
 spontaneity of any youngster. Its clearness and 
 practical possibility of attainment should make 
 such a standard a salutary influence. 
 
 It is sufficiently obvious that some thirty-six 
 errors in grammar and idiom, a very short list 
 of punctuation rules, and a minimum require- 
 ment in spelling, form of manuscript and of oral 
 address, and the like are a long way from com- 
 prising all the endless hst of matters which are 
 daily and hourly corrected in most grades and 
 high schools. And it is, of course, optional with 
 school and teacher to select as minima whatever 
 matters seem fully essential. It is here suggested 
 simply that the choice of such a list be made 
 always in the widest attainable view of what is 
 
 151 
 
.J 
 
 ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 acceptable English to-day and in practical knowl- 
 edge of what children can actually, fully accom- 
 plish in given time and under given conditions. 
 We have canvassed, so far, the jorm contentions 
 which may be regarded as making composition 
 minimally acceptable and which children in 
 average school conditions can actually master. 
 Beyond these of course lies the vast range of 
 matters, certainly quite as important, for sug- 
 gestive criticism and, through this, gradual 
 development of more clear and forceful and 
 artistic expression. These we shall discuss in 
 the section following. The basis of the division 
 between the two types seems unmistakably 
 useful — that forms and matters of greater 
 effectiveness in expression come from different 
 sources and are unlikely to be achieved by the 
 same treatment. It is only, then, a few conven- 
 tions necessary to decent social speech and writ- 
 ing, not any more positive attainments, that 
 we have considered in this section (A). It is 
 hoped that the mode of treatment suggested — 
 keeping hard at one thing at a time — may be 
 effectual in getting these matters out of the way 
 with the most swiftness and least pother, so 
 that we can give major attention in composition 
 classes to more positive ideals. 
 152 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 B. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS 
 
 IN SENTENCE-BUILDING AND IN 
 
 WORD CHOICES 
 
 Beyond the small region of absolute forni re- 
 quirements already canvassed there is, of course, 
 a long and hard way to travel toward really 
 effective expression. For children's speech and 
 writing, even were it fully correct, is necessarily 
 awkward and inaccurate and rawly crude. It 
 is now redundant, and now gaping for needed 
 words. It has next to no effectiveness in relat- 
 ing ideas, but is infantile either in stringing sen- 
 tences together or in chopping them short. It 
 is too often crass and cheap and tasteless. All 
 this, of course, is simply sajdng that a child's tools 
 are very blunt. He sees details keenly, but wav- 
 eringly — not of course with the sweep and 
 completeness of the trained observer; and his 
 verbal expression naturally lags far behind his 
 ideas. 
 
 Reasons for Differentiating 
 
 Form conventions and 
 Modes of positive effectiveness 
 
 The commonest tendency in the study of 
 wording and sentence-building in composition 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 classes, just as we have seen in the matter of 
 prescribing forms, has been to proceed by de- 
 liberate inculcation of more apt and accurate 
 words and more expressive sentence-structure. 
 I believe, however, that the problem of diction 
 and of sentences is so radically different from 
 that of form estabHshment as to require a radi- 
 cally different method. On the one hand are 
 form conventions requiring full establishment 
 in habit; on the other, principles oi moee clear 
 and vigorous and beautiful statement, demand- 
 ing ordered growth in a child's thought-power 
 and appreciations before he can make effective 
 use of them. There are naturally many border 
 forms difficult if not impossible to classify; but 
 the basic distinction seems to be valid and prac- 
 ticable. 
 
 As we shall see in considering the development 
 of more effective wording and structure, the 
 child here again makes the discovery — for in- 
 stance, in regard to the placing of modifiers — 
 that a given way of expression has not had the 
 effect he desired, whether because the thing 
 was not entirely clear or because it was not most 
 forcefully and aptly said. He may have to make 
 this discovery repeatedly, as he has done in using 
 unacceptable forms, before he is roused to see 
 
 154 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 that a certain useful principle is essential to his 
 success at this point. Very much as in the study 
 of organization, we may now proceed to help 
 him discover and formulate such principles as 
 he can come at - — as of need of specific and apt 
 wording or of clear reference or of more force- 
 ful relation of ideas. But unlike the rules of end- 
 punctuation of sentences, for example, the appli- 
 cation of any one of the principles so derived 
 appears to require invariably, in the meeting 
 of each particular problem in expression, live 
 and conscious search for the best solution — 
 for the most accurate and vivid word or the 
 strongest construction. In other words, we have 
 to deal here not with exact rules that we can 
 learn to apply automatically, but with wise 
 counsels which we must adapt to the needs of 
 each new situation; and probably no two cases 
 ever respond to precisely the same treatment. 
 It seems clear that none of the matters that re- 
 main to be considered can ever become affairs of 
 imconscious spinal reaction or muscle memory, 
 as apparently most form conventions can do. 
 Patient, multitudinous application of each prin- 
 ciple is indeed necessary. However, as the aim 
 here is not to fix habits, but to develop rapidity 
 and sureness in dealing with original problems 
 
 155 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 of expression, the effective method of work will 
 differ also. 
 
 Three Remaining Types of Expressional 
 Ability 
 
 The remaining problems of composition teach- 
 ing which we shall discuss under this general 
 topic of gaining effectiveness in expression may- 
 be conveniently grouped into three tjrpes: The 
 first is growth in abihty to construct transpar- 
 ently clear and forceful sentences. The second 
 is achievement of accuracy in the choice of 
 words to convey the exact idea. The third is 
 development of true artistry in fitting words 
 and phrases simply and aptly to their purpose. 
 Attainment in all these, it is maintained, must 
 be the expression of increase in both mental 
 keenness of perceiving ideas and relations, and 
 fineness of tact and taste in expressing them. 
 
 The Development of Effective Thought- 
 Relation IN Sentences 
 
 First as to sentence construction: For setting 
 out in this, we may well wait till the child, with 
 the increasing complexity of his experience, 
 finds need of expressing ideas in more close and 
 accurate relation. In the course of earnest efforts 
 IS6 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 to make a point clear, he may presently find that 
 his meaning really has not been grasped, per- 
 haps because his sentence is clumsy or indistinct. 
 Or we may need sometimes to direct the chil- 
 dren's attention specifically to such weaknesses 
 in expression as illogical sentence planning or 
 thought-relation, since they may else continue 
 for too long a time to accept very rough equiva- 
 lents for accuracy and clearness. But here we 
 need most especially to note that it is only as 
 children succeed in grasping and realizing more 
 close and varied relations in thought that they 
 can see the need of increasing their range and 
 power in construction of sentences to express it. 
 For example, we may take what is perhaps 
 the most important and the least regarded sen- 
 tence principle, that of accurate relation, whether 
 coordination or subordination of ideas. Most 
 children apparently think chiefly in a stringy 
 fashion, and their method of expression is chiefly 
 a chain of and and so sentences or chopped-apart 
 simple ones, for a long time after their teachers 
 set to work to check and correct them for it. 
 The result is that arbitrary prescription and 
 correction are too likely to be employed for 
 carrying the point. But once the majority of 
 the pupils can be expected to use complex sen- 
 
 157 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 tences freely and naturally and to appreciate 
 the closer relations shown by this type, definite 
 studies in relating thoughts in numerous ways 
 besides the compound type may be made most 
 valuable. I do not of course mean that many 
 children should not or will not use such sen- 
 tences earlier, but merely that specific class at- 
 tention to developing the principle will hardly 
 be most useful before this. At the proper time, 
 not, I think, much before the ninth school year, 
 we may help to discover weakness of effect in 
 sentences used by the children themselves, and 
 with this, various specific ways in which thoughts 
 and ideas may be put together in sentences — 
 an essential bit of thorough grammar study. 
 
 Then, to help this in functioning in the chil- 
 dren's own speaking and writing, useful exercises 
 may be given in sentence-massing — for in- 
 stance, taking two or three familiar statements 
 in clear relation and combining them in various 
 ways, to show the generally superior effect of 
 the complex form or the simple type with its 
 less important thought expressed in a phrase. 
 In such study it is most essential of all to note 
 the necessity of subordinating the really minor 
 element; this point appears to be often slighted. 
 We may next encourage children to experiment 
 
 158 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 freely in the problem and to discover from the 
 class judgment what effect they gain. Above 
 all, we may lead the class to watch for and com- 
 mend ways which their classmates achieve of 
 constructing strong and clear sentences, or 
 cases in what they read or hear in which the 
 meaning is given unmistakably and with the 
 right impact. Thus, through the untiring study 
 of this principle illustrated by examples from 
 the best work that the children come in contact 
 with and from their own best expression, we may 
 bring them to a point where they criticize keenly, 
 but fairly, cases of stringy or babyishly short 
 sentences, weak coordination with and or sOy 
 and false subordination of important elements. 
 The child thus criticized may try to make his 
 sentence better, or he may call on his critic for 
 help. But it appears to be only through long, 
 patient study and revision of this sort that a 
 child masters any point of sentence structure 
 and makes it thoroughly useful to him. 
 
 Principles of effective sentence-structure 
 
 Such study as this of sentence-relation, lead- 
 ing to thorough and conscious but, so far as 
 may be, unhampering attention to each matter 
 in the child's everyday speech and writing, is 
 
 159 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 needed for handling each of various principles 
 of sentence structure. If only five such prin- 
 ciples could be taken up in the grammar grades 
 and high school, each one till it was mastered 
 reasonably for practical use, I believe that chil- 
 dren would come out of the study with some real 
 power of thinking and building effective sen- 
 tences and with a great corresponding gain in 
 abihty to see logical relations of ideas. We may 
 consider the necessary points in this order; 
 
 (i) Placing of modifiers and reference of pro- 
 nouns for unmistakable clearness — begun 
 perhaps in grade six or seven. We may point 
 
 ^ out to children that matters of this sort, even 
 when they are possible to be understood, are 
 not well handled when there is either real con- 
 fusion on the reader's part or, worse still, 
 when he turns aside from the ideas to note an 
 awkwardness or a bit of unintended humor — 
 Besant's clumsy "He admonished perpetually 
 the boys to keep still," or "The can-washing 
 was not always done very well by the farmers, 
 so now the dairy washes all of them." These 
 points are generally, I believe, given enough 
 attention in most present courses. 
 
 (2) Effecting clear and strong relation of sentence- 
 elements — already discussed. This includes 
 all that is usually presented under sentence 
 160 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 unity, and more. It may be stated: Thoughts 
 should be clearly and strongly related, in sep- 
 arate sentences, in parts of a compound sen- 
 tence, or in subordinate clauses or phrases. 
 As perhaps the chief principle of logical sen- 
 tence-structure this appears to need the most 
 time, beginning, probably, about grade nine. 
 
 (3) Holding to sentence plan.^ This means simply 
 knowing what the sentence subject is — what 
 one is talking about — and remembering. It 
 avoids, At the age of six, my grandparents died. 
 He was deaf, due to measles, and An earthquake 
 is when — , as well as all the troubles traced 
 to loose participles and other verbals. This 
 principle may appear in grade nine or ten. 
 
 (4) Putting in striking places the elements that 
 deserve most emphasis — at the end or the 
 crest of the sentence or out of their normal 
 order; this last appears to be the secret of the 
 force in periodic sentences. Attention to it 
 probably pays little before the second or third 
 year of the high school. 
 
 (5) Building like ideas alike — parallelism of con- 
 struction; as an especially nice refinement of 
 thinking, this may best receive attention rather 
 later than (4). 
 
 These, I believe, are the important principles 
 
 of sentence-structure — matters distinct enough 
 
 from the arbitrary rules of case and agreement 
 
 * Cf. Baldwin, Writing and Speaking, p. 4- 
 
 161 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 and idiomatic phrasing previously discussed, be- 
 cause they are both discovered and applied in 
 conscious discrimination of thought-relations. 
 
 Organizing and limiting the study of sentence- 
 structure 
 
 It is, I think, fairly obvious that no mere mem- 
 orizing and reciting and chance application of 
 these construction principles, one after another, 
 can be expected to do much good. That we do 
 not compass their reasonable mastery in many 
 high-school English courses is probably due most 
 of all to the fact that no one principle is recog- 
 nized as sufficiently important to merit sole 
 consideration for a long enough time. To be 
 sure, formal recognition of these principles and 
 of particular type-examples can be readily se- 
 cured in the grades where it has been suggested 
 that they be introduced; and this is commonly 
 enough achieved. The essential mastery, how- 
 ever, of which this is but a preliminary process, 
 means thorough and unremitting practice on 
 each principle. We need to apply each one in 
 numerous exercises in sentence building; and 
 we can make these vigorous and interesting in 
 so far as a child realizes the need of firmer and 
 clearer sentences in his own expression. This is 
 162 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 not an affair of a few days; it requires rather all 
 winter and even several severe successive win- 
 ters to fix a single ideal of structure. But, in- 
 complete as our results must be in grades and 
 high school, I believe we shall find that work 
 like this is quite decidedly worth while. 
 
 We may note briefly also the due and essen- 
 tial Hmits to such study. Just as in the correc- 
 tion of form errors, the teacher must take most 
 particular care that neither he nor the class 
 critics are permitted to become heckling and 
 finicking in their criticism and attempts at bet- 
 ter sentences. We dare not permit ourselves to 
 forget that children's minds are not adult and 
 mature, that their sentences will almost always 
 be far less exact and finished than we could de- 
 sire, and that to expect anything else, far less 
 to demand it, is in the highest degree harmful 
 and unprofitable. We may, for instance, find con- 
 stant temptation to work toward niceties of parallel 
 structure in grades where it is probable that the 
 pupils are not ready for so precise a form; it is 
 doubtful if many of them even of high-school 
 age can handle it at all. It is too easy, also, to 
 become over-careful and higgling about accurate 
 pronoun reference and modifier-placing — mat- 
 ters which we could express more logically our- 
 163 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 selves, but which are clear enough so far as the 
 children can honestly see.^ The worst result 
 that could possibly be gained from such study 
 is the overeasy one of making a class finical and 
 nagging in tearing apart each other's sentences, 
 petty in pursuit of trivialities, lost to the ideal 
 of honest appraisal of the interest in the projects 
 that their classmates present. If we are to avoid 
 this, we must, I believe, realize fully that the sug- 
 gestions about sentence building which we study 
 are not precepts to be applied arbitrarily to any 
 situation whatever, but matters of judging bet- 
 ter and -worse effect — even though sometimes 
 much better or very much worse. The chil- 
 dren's work must be valued always by their 
 actual success in attaining their aim in the social 
 class, and this must be always an audience of 
 keen but fair and true cooperators who appreciate 
 the best workmanship in expression. We must 
 encourage prompt condemnation of guerrilla 
 pettifogging wherever we discover signs of it. 
 Finally, ideas to express and real freedom and 
 naturalness and readiness in expressing them 
 are, we have been constantly insisting, far more 
 important in grades and high school than any 
 
 1 Cf. Palmer's translation of the Odyssey. Introduction, 
 p. xxiv. 
 
 164 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 sentence- technique, however finished . Only when 
 the necessary principles are applied in revising 
 none but cases which the class can realize as 
 distinctly lacking in clearness and vigor, then 
 can we be sure that the exercise may really help 
 in increasing power of thought and expression, 
 and not in futile harrying. The teacher's judg- 
 ment is nowhere more important, and it seems 
 quite evident that it must, if it is to be most 
 valuable, be based in thorough realization of the 
 class needs and capabilities. 
 
 As to the value of such long and determined 
 but carefully delimited campaigns as we have 
 been considering for the mastery of sentence 
 principles: We have noted that true gains are 
 probably to be achieved only by study instituted 
 because the children have come or have been 
 brought to realize that their sentences lack 
 ejffect and that they have need of a given struc- 
 tural principle. Thus begun, such study needs 
 to be untiringly carried out, by first developing 
 clear and simple principles and then applying 
 them in numberless cases of construction and 
 revision — mostly of the children's own work — 
 to practical conquest of means of effect. Mas- 
 tery of a few basic ideas in this fashion may 
 mean a quite notable contribution to the child's 
 i6s 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 conquest of his own mind. I do not mean that we 
 can secure for children such adult mastery of 
 these problems as is represented in the ability of 
 the trained and gifted writer to see keenly and 
 instantly what ideas in his mind belong in one 
 sentence, what ones should gain chief effect by 
 being given principal rank, and by what types 
 of relation and structure he can best express the 
 complex. The orator Fox, we are told in Pro- 
 fessor Palmer's essay, ^ could "throw himself 
 headlong into the midst of a sentence, trusting 
 to God Almighty to get him out." But most of 
 us who try it from day to day know from our 
 failures that this is an affair of many more years' 
 painstaking and thoughtful experience than can 
 be even realized by the high-school pupil. ^ The 
 point for him is simply that through continued 
 heedful notice of excellent sentences and through 
 other pupils' criticism of his failures in effect, 
 he may gain some conscious ability to think the 
 relations of ideas and the best ways of express- 
 ing these before writing or speaking. That this 
 shall not become an affair of hampering and 
 overprecise deliberation, but a gradual and 
 
 * Self -Cultivation in English, p. i6. 
 
 2 " Will you tell me, ' Oh, — any one can write prose pass- 
 ably well '? Can he, indeed? — can you, sir? " — Quiller-Couch^ 
 On the Art of Writing, p. 30. 
 
 166 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 healthy growth in clearness and robustness and 
 readiness of expression, must rest almost entirely 
 with the common sense of the individual teacher 
 in governing and directing the class criticism 
 and keeping it sound and good-spirited. 
 
 Achievement of Accuracy in fitting 
 Words to Ideas 
 
 For gaining accuracy in word choices — finding 
 those that fit the precise idea exactly — much 
 the same process of growth is necessary. We 
 of course want children's vocabularies to grow 
 with their widening experience, so that, as 
 they look sharply into that experience and dis- 
 criminate among their new ideas more exactly, 
 they may be more ready with terms for express- 
 ing themselves truly and effectively about it. 
 But here it seems even more necessary to in- 
 sist that pointing out differences between words 
 must be perfectly meaningless except where 
 the child realizes his inaccuracy as deterrent 
 in some fashion — either to his own clear think- 
 ing or, more usually, to his making himself 
 clear to his audience. Further, such processes 
 as correction of a child's words and prescrip- 
 tion of new ones must be altogether futile un- 
 less the child has some specific experience as 
 167 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 a basis for seeing the difference and thus can ap- 
 preciate how one word is actually more useful 
 and exact than the other. That is, as in the case 
 of sentences, growing keenness of thought must 
 precede the demand for a new expression. To 
 be sure, a direct route to making thought keener 
 is apparently helping achieve understanding of 
 distinctions in meaning among words. But it 
 is likely that we have oftenest worked quite 
 too hard on that end of the problem, without 
 making sure that the discriminations we have 
 urged were both quite comprehensible and truly 
 useful to our pupils. We have too long contin- 
 ued cheerfully to assume that enforcing dis- 
 tinctions between terms like verse and stanza — 
 apparently a mere technical distinction with- 
 out authority in present good usage, in spite of 
 the determined stand of many a purist — is a 
 gain in vocabulary or mental keenness or both. 
 Many lessons suggested and taught seem to 
 add only fog and confusion. Where lists of de- 
 scriptive or appreciative words are given a 
 child, it would seem to require a rather robust 
 idea of what he wants to say, a real experience 
 to express — something that is not at hand in 
 too many cases of this sort — and it would also 
 appear to demand sincere guidance and great 
 i68 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 judgment on the teacher's part to keep a pupiPs 
 composition from becoming a sickly mess of 
 verbiage. To illustrate a common sort of word- 
 study by an actual example: A primary teacher, 
 coming upon the word dwell in the children's read- 
 ing lesson, remarked, ''Here's a nice word for 
 you to use, children." And the children, some 
 of them, used it. This might, I admit, have 
 been worse; the teacher might have hit upon 
 abide, which is rather less possible to find real 
 use for; or she might have prescribed and ham- 
 mered-in the word with the idea of forcibly feed- 
 ing gaunt young vocabularies; these things also 
 have been known to occur. But was n't her per- 
 formance at best a wasteful misdirection of the 
 children's energies? Does the word dwell rep- 
 resent a possibly valid distinction, or add any- 
 thing, except a pretty archaic flavor, to chil- 
 dren's expression? And again, — a consideration 
 that appears vastly more important, — is n't it 
 often the scorn with which healthy-minded 
 children regard this sort of thing that makes 
 most of them relapse into content with fourth- 
 grade vocabularies, even for writing university 
 freshman themes? This last point seems to me 
 particularly well worth looking into. 
 
 Our attempts to aid children's development in 
 169 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 these regions should, of course, have their begin- 
 ning in the careful study of children's own attempts 
 to express their real experience and of the class 
 criticism of that expression. On this basis we will 
 best give major attention to encouraging the child 
 in new and absorbing interests in exploration and 
 adventure and in careful attempts to give the 
 group of his friends the clearest possible view of his 
 new ideas. Thus we first of all motivate the study 
 of new words by the child's own discovery that he 
 needs better and sharper tools for fashioning 
 clearly and presenting ideas inchoate in his mind. 
 He will then best attain his desired ends by 
 observing carefully the best expression of like 
 ideas which he can discover. We may need 
 simply to direct him where to find matter whose 
 ideas and statement are within his comprehen- 
 sion and related to his needs. But it seems es- 
 sential also to awaken in him a constantly keener 
 interest in new words that appear in all his 
 reading and in the speech of those about him. 
 We can better say preserve and widen this inter- 
 est; for it is so natural and sharp in little chil- 
 dren — is so clearly a means of their growing 
 out of the stage where all animals are bow-wows 
 to the surprisingly large vocabulary of average 
 first- and second-graders — that it must surely 
 170 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 be very bad handling which could dull it com- 
 pletely. Yet, somehow, it does apparently dis- 
 appear before most children enter high school. 
 If a child is but kept always eager to get full 
 meaning out of useful words he comes upon — 
 to visualize them, and find the black shape of 
 their letters stuffed with new ideas which he 
 is free to explore, and with a history and inter- 
 esting relationships — I think we need only to 
 encourage and direct, never to compel or even 
 urge most youngsters to reach a really tremen- 
 dous extension of experiences and powers of ac- 
 curate expression year b)^ year. The teacher will 
 also do well, provided he has taste and discrimi- 
 nation, to employ in his own speaking the widest 
 possible variety of usable and right words, keep- 
 ing always within the range of possible needs of 
 his pupils. He may do this with avowed inten- 
 tion, but he must take pains to make clear the 
 precise use of new words he introduces. 
 
 We may, then, help the child to get a real 
 personal experience out of new words — to real- 
 ize them and relate them into his life. If a 
 teacher asks often, "What does this word make 
 you see? Does it remind you of anything you 
 have seen yourself?" and the like, though he 
 may apparently move tangent to the logical de- 
 171 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 velopment of story or lesson, he can, I believe, 
 succeed in bringing back to it more of under- 
 standing and appreciation than would otherwise 
 be possible. And there is of course place and 
 need, in both grades and high school, to do this 
 sort of thing in special word-study periods, using 
 as material particularly well- worded sentences — 
 best of all from the work of the class. Deriving 
 the exact meanings of shy and nimble and fangs 
 and their differences from less expressive and 
 specific words which the children have used for 
 lack of better must depend on making definite 
 associations with ideas that the child has from 
 previous experiences. By making such asso- 
 ciations very clear and real, we may have good 
 hope that he will then use the words naturally 
 in useful and natural fashion, without any pre- 
 scription at all. Indeed, as a child grows in this 
 sincere interest in the marvelous things that 
 words can reveal, there may be need rather to 
 hold in his vagaries and enthusiasms with atten- 
 tion to the demands of true effectiveness, whether 
 tested through actual comprehension by his 
 audience or his own and their good taste. But 
 the attempt to use true and specific words de- 
 serves always to be stirred and encouraged, 
 even when its results seem poor or grotesque. 
 172 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 All this, of course, means many pleasant and 
 cheerful uses of the dictionary when the chil- 
 dren are ready for this — not a stern and un- 
 gracious reference to it for the spelling of words 
 merely. It may mean also happy excursions 
 into the history of common expressions. The de- 
 light of natural children in the original meanings 
 of baffle and gingerly, for instance, should go far 
 to help them in adding such interesting and use- 
 ful words to their vocabularies. A most fruit- 
 ful study of word-use consists in having written 
 on the blackboard before the class all the spe- 
 cific equivalents they can suggest for a general 
 word like walked: strode, ambled , waddled, and 
 so on almost indefinitely.^ The children here 
 generally gain a pleasant sense that their word- 
 store for definite expression is far wider than they 
 have supposed and has delightful possibilities. 
 And such intense interest and understanding of 
 the possibilities of words, once gained — or kept 
 — can hardly escape reaction in better command 
 of ideas and clearer realization of new experiences. 
 
 Of course there is here again the possibiHty of 
 
 carrying study and criticism too far; we need 
 
 an accurate and understanding touch with our 
 
 pupils if we wish to stop before this ceases to 
 
 * Cf. Baldwin, Writing and Speaking, pp. 146-48. 
 
 173 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 serve a useful purpose and becomes mere jug- 
 glery. If it is to remain true and sound and fruit- 
 ful, it must always have specific reference to chil- 
 dren's real problems of speech and writing. And 
 provided it has this relation, we need rarely, I 
 think, prescribe or even suggest lists of words 
 usable in meeting a descriptive or other prob- 
 lem. The needs of the situation and the creative 
 and helpful spirit of the class criticism should 
 be sufficient for gaining quite satisfactory re- 
 sults. The ends we most desire here may be 
 stated as (i) a sense, gradually evolving out of 
 the vague inaccuracy of children's minds, of 
 need for exact, specific words; and (2) a defin- 
 itely directed habit of observing new words — 
 or, better still, a sense of the usefulness of known 
 expressions to one's own expressional purposes 
 every day. That this is more valuable to 
 gain than any amount of specific insistence on 
 particular discriminations — that it is indeed 
 their only deeply important fruition, scarcely 
 appears to need argument. 
 
 Gaining Aptness and Artistry in Word 
 Choices 
 
 But Just as words must be perfectly fitted to 
 the meaning a child wants to convey, so they 
 174 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 must also be fitted to his audience or readers 
 and to the exact purpose he has in hand — an 
 affair of artistry. This is perhaps a more diffi- 
 cult subject even than the other; and I certainly 
 believe that the bad results of pecking and 
 nagging correction are worse in these matters of 
 taste than in any other. We have noticed that 
 in a similar domain, that of taste in color and 
 design, good courses are built on a principle 
 which appears to be equally important to Eng- 
 lish teachers. The Horace Mann School Course in 
 Art,^ in discussing how to better the child's 
 "elemental aesthetic preferences, '^ explains the 
 matter in this way: "Decorations that have good 
 coloring are shown to him, and he compares his 
 designs with these and criticizes his own. He 
 is also shown the effect of combining tones of 
 the same color, and of a touch of black or dark 
 brown in certain combinations. In this way he 
 gradually grows away from the use and from 
 joy in the use of crude colors. By the end of the 
 first year many children show a considerable de- 
 gree of feeling and taste in their selections and 
 combinations. '^ ^ In composition, on the other 
 hand, we have probably had too much prescrip- 
 
 ^ Teachers College Elementary School Course, 1908, Grade I, 
 p. 55. 2 Q^ Sargent's Fine and Industrial Arts, pp. 2y jff. 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 tion of opinion by teacher and text. But re- 
 construction of the child's taste seems not to ac- 
 complish itself in that way. I realize, of course, 
 that many children's preferences in words seem 
 quite too raw and crude for a sensitive teacher 
 to endure tamely; but so also is the boy's corre- 
 sponding taste in neckties and the girl's in scents. 
 To elevate these is a matter of deeper, more 
 difficult requirements than are met by deter- 
 mined and horrified proscription of slang. If we 
 must have proscription, we have noted that it 
 may be most effectively secured through the 
 deliberate class judgment and not through the 
 insistence of the teacher alone. Certain specific 
 crudities of expression may doubtless be thus 
 determined against by the class judgment and 
 ranked with such unacceptable forms as "you 
 was." But after all, the success of an attempt 
 to elevate taste must probably depend rather 
 upon tactful suggestion and upon help through 
 the influence of excellent speech and writing. 
 
 We may, then, encourage the child and his 
 cooperators to look consciously for the most apt 
 and vigorous and fine expression of their ideas. 
 What we should try thus to establish is a sense 
 of better personal satisfactions as well as stronger 
 effects to be had from careful attention to the 
 176 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 words that say a thing most satisf yingly, whether 
 in recitations or in writing verse. But it is prob- 
 ably of no more effect to inveigh against sur- 
 face manifestations of raw taste or heedless- 
 ness of art, whether cheapness or slovenHness 
 in word choices, than it would be to forcibly 
 fasten on the boy a black tie instead of the green 
 and purple one he prefers, and require him to 
 wear it in the hope that he would come to like 
 it. It seems that we shall be far more likely to 
 succeed if we let him take his choice among 
 haberdashery with a generous amount of bright 
 but really good color and thus come naturally 
 toward better judgments of his own in the matter. 
 
 Forces working toward artistic expression 
 
 There seems no reason to question that the 
 prime force in these attempts to increase chil- 
 dren's taste should be the hearing and reading 
 and study of beautiful expression, just as their 
 level of appreciating exquisite line and color 
 may be raised in part by the study of beautiful 
 pictures or designs. There is of course — what 
 is always spoken of in this connection but too 
 rarely used — the influence of such fine and 
 rhythmic English as the Bible and the Book of 
 Common Prayer and the most simple and per- 
 177 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 feet poetry read day by day. And, of course, 
 
 — probably more directly influencing them, — 
 there should be the example of the teacher's good, 
 vigorous speech — certainly not cheapened by 
 what is vulgar in slang or in affectation, nor 
 priggishly precise and pseudo-literary — and of 
 the best artistry in the work of other children. 
 Yet we cannot be sure of gaining the most effect 
 unless we undertake definite study of good 
 literature, by which we may perhaps be per- 
 mitted to mean all fine and effective expression, 
 by the children as well as by the masters. We 
 need to examine numberless words and compari- 
 sons such as the child himself may find useful 
 for making his expression vivid and artistic. 
 Attention to bringing out all the picture in 
 phrases like Lanier's "the humped and fishy 
 sea'' and "the huge and huddling sea" often 
 repays us most richly. Old Ironsides, again, 
 contains many examples of effective phrasing. 
 If we ask the children what they see when they 
 read such lines as "the meteor of the ocean air" 
 and "the eagle of the sea," and what the poet 
 meant to suggest by the comparisons, we find 
 them discovering all sorts of interesting things 
 
 — many of these, perhaps, quite absent from 
 the writer's mind, but almost all valid and in- 
 
 178 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 teresting. If they really get the ideas suggested 
 by such words — see the pictures and hear the 
 sounds that the poem suggests of sea-battle in 
 storm — they may gain not alone a thorough 
 and hearty appreciation of the verses and a vivid 
 experience, but a new idea of the possibilities 
 of quite simple words and comparisons which 
 cannot but affect their raw ways of expression.^ 
 And then we need to encourage them, both 
 by commendations and by suggestions as to 
 bettering their own attempts at expression, to 
 make use of what they find pleasing — this cer- 
 tainly not a process of prescription and insis- 
 tence, but of gradually evolving standards 
 chosen and followed both by the group and by 
 each child for himself. In directing this growth, 
 the teacher has most need to see to it deter- 
 minedly that he does not foist his mere predilec- 
 tions upon the children as ideals. 
 
 Toward adapting expression to audience and 
 purpose 
 
 A final point in this study of taste in words 
 is considering how to adapt expression to its 
 
 ' Hay ward's The Lesson in Appreciation is excellent on this 
 point. The subject of poetic expression is beautifully presented 
 in Max Eastznan's The Enjoyment of Poetry. 
 
 179 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 purpose. When a child studies Irving happily, 
 he can hardly escape the suggestion of using cer- 
 tain archaic or heavily bookish expressions, in 
 retelling the story or in writing one of his own. 
 His classmates may agree that expressions like 
 cognomen and wight and inveterate propensity 
 give the right flavor to a story of antique spirit 
 and humor, and are pleasant too to try in story- 
 telling. Many delightful experiments may thus 
 be made throughout the grades — in the proper 
 speech for giants and enchanted animals and 
 Revolutionary heroes. But the children may 
 also note specifically that wording suitable to 
 cases like these by no means fits simple every- 
 day expression. Thus they may come to make 
 still more important studies in adapting what 
 they have to say to its most effective expression 
 for a particular audience. They may discover 
 that what one uses for letters to other children 
 is n^t altogether the thing for a formal occa- 
 sion, and that an invitation to the superintendent 
 or one's aunt for a special school celebration 
 will be worded differently from the way they 
 ask a neighbor over to play. The experiments 
 already suggested ^ in imagining the class to be 
 various dignified bodies and in actually address- 
 1 Chap. I, p. 31. 
 180 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 ing other groups of people, whether in speech 
 or in writing, may all be excellent; and as the 
 children become interested in the attempts to 
 judge a piece of work as it would actually be 
 received in a given situation, they may grow to 
 understand that story or explanation or plea must 
 fit its purpose not alone in clearness but in apt- 
 ness of expression. They should discover that 
 although successful expression by no means 
 comes flatly down to its hearers' level in vul- 
 garity or incorrectness, for instance, yet it must 
 be suited to their appreciation. Lincoln's leg- 
 endary resolve that his expression should always 
 be understandable by such an unlettered boy as 
 he was did not mean, as any one can find by 
 reading his unsurpassed prose, that he confined 
 himself to words of two syllables or to rough 
 and elemental ideas; but his speech and writing 
 were both transparently understandable, and 
 vigorously, richly beautiful. The schoolmaster 
 Roger Ascham states what seems a most appro- 
 priate ideal for the teacher: **He that wyll wryte 
 well in any tongue must followe thys council 
 of Aristotle, to speake as the comon people do, 
 to think as wise men do." ^ 
 
 1 From his Toxophilus, quoted in Krapp's Modern English^ 
 p. 245- . 
 
 l8l 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 There seems to be much in this for English 
 teachers to chew upon. We are rather too apt 
 to neglect the careful cultivation of homely ex- 
 pressions — such, for instance, as Professor Bald- 
 win Hsts in his Writing and Speaking ^ — the 
 expressions that give life to language without 
 transgressing in the way of vulgarity and crud- 
 ity. Such informal and live wording, above the 
 common level of the street and the homes of 
 most children, but never shot over their heads 
 to suit anybody's ''toploftical'' ideals, should, I 
 believe, be the practical and everyday standard 
 of the elementary or high-school teacher, both 
 in his own expression and in that which he en- 
 courages from his pupils. It is this sort of power 
 that, not alone the boy or girl who goes to work 
 after the sixth or eighth school year, but rather 
 that every one, whatever his intellectuality or 
 culture, needs every day in speech or letters or 
 other informal expression. Attaining this should 
 be the first aim of the teaching of composition. 
 Good colloquialism, as defined by the dictionaries 
 and illustrated in numberless examples of ex- 
 
 ^ Pages 43-47; 144-46; cf. the same writer's "The Secret of 
 John Bunyan," in Essays out of Hours (p. 75), and Quiller- 
 Couch On the Art of Writing : chap, v (" On Jargon ") and pp. 
 285-89 ("On Neologisms"). 
 
 182 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS ' 
 
 cellent and informal use, is precisely the level 
 of expression which I am here suggesting — re- 
 moved on the one hand from the vulgar and dia- 
 lectal and incorrect, and filled on the other with 
 a life and suitableness and homely clarity that 
 formal and literary speech or writing has in only 
 exceptional cases. Formality we may well work 
 toward, whenever need for it appears, by devel- 
 oping appropriate situations. But these may 
 not appear most naturally, perhaps, till the period 
 of bombast and declamation which average chil- 
 dren reach about the middle of the high-school 
 period. For everyday English speech and writ- 
 ing, the appropriate ideal seems to be the best 
 usage of the best users of the language in their 
 informal and unstudied expression.^ 
 
 We must certainly hold reasonable stan- 
 dards of correctness and clearness and good 
 taste if we would help children to widely effec- 
 tive expression; but we must never limit our 
 standards by narrow, prejudiced restrictions if 
 we do not want them to encircle and choke all 
 expressive impulse through the confusion and 
 horror of constant proscription. As a practical 
 measure it may be worth suggesting that a 
 teacher will do well to consult at least the ob- 
 1 Cf. p. 131. 
 ^83 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 servations of present best usage in the reputable 
 dictionaries, and his own careful observation 
 as well, rather than accept merely the judgment 
 of his personal taste or any other criterion not 
 widely based. If from children's crudity and 
 heedlessness we may help them by guiding their 
 slowly maturing appreciations, through discom- 
 forting stages of garish and blatant wording, of 
 wild-growing euphuism, of exultation in all that 
 is most trite and outworn, to achievement at last 
 of some understanding of the beauty in simple 
 and concrete and homely expression, we shall 
 probably have led them far in the v/ay of highest 
 attainable artistry. That this growth must be 
 inspired always by the best examples, really 
 understood and appreciated, is doubtless evident 
 enough. 
 
 Making Use of Good Examples of 
 Expression 
 
 (i) Reproduction and imitation 
 
 For the child's actual use of what he discovers 
 as possibly valuable in the literature which the 
 class carefully study, there are two distinct 
 methods. The first is consciously re-using the 
 ideas or the technique of the work. In various 
 184 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 places we have noted the relation of story-repro- 
 duction and the presentation of dramas writ- 
 ten by some one else, to grasp of organization, 
 fixation of correct form conventions, and devel- 
 opment of effective wording and sentence-struc- 
 ture. Recitation of matter well organized and 
 stated in a text, or committing to memory — 
 where the children express what they really 
 understand — may have related values. And 
 finally, deliberate, prescribed imitation of models 
 lies apparently in the same category. For imi- 
 tation problems present not alone the expres- 
 sional project — where the method permits and 
 recognizes a true project — hut also the specific 
 method for its solution. 
 
 All these ways of reproducing other peo- 
 ple's technique or ideas, though they have, I be- 
 lieve, by no means the same values as original 
 composition, appear to be of good effect in pro- 
 portion as the child has a real interest in the 
 thing he is doing and thus makes his performance 
 not stupidly mechanical, but alive. Whether he 
 is putting his own spirit and individuality into 
 what he speaks is not difficult to determine. We 
 may have the testimony of his voice and whole 
 bearing as to whether he is presenting a real 
 experience or words only. Then too, we have 
 
 ?85 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 long, I hope, passed the stage in educational 
 practice where absolute accuracy is wanted in 
 children's work of this sort; except of course in 
 necessary recitations of mere fact, we desire the 
 child's personal touch to what he gives. If his 
 emendation is inferior to the story itself, the 
 children will be prompt enough in telling him 
 so, and comparisons thus instituted and dis- 
 cussed are excellent training. 
 
 (2) Application to original problems of methods 
 discovered 
 
 But different and, I believe, greater values 
 may be had where a child simply comes against 
 the problem of expressing a live and important 
 experience of his own and must find out for him- 
 self what use he can make of principles and 
 methods of work that he has discovered in pre- 
 vious study of models. Given such a problem — 
 and without it composition as we are consider- 
 ing it is impossible — I submit that the child 
 had better be left quite free to develop his own 
 aim in attacking it, generally with the stimulus 
 of the class discussion, and solve it as best he 
 can in his own way rather than by any one 
 method noted or required. The wise guidance 
 of the teacher must of course be devoted to sug- 
 186 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 gestion of real projects that are fully within the 
 powers of the children to solve, but that they 
 must stretch their minds to compass. If he 
 will see to it that these problems often need 
 for their effective meeting methods which the 
 children are just then discovering in story or 
 text, he can without any prescription succeed 
 in bringing their newly gained knowledge to 
 bear on constantly new and increasing difficul- 
 ties. 
 
 And however much we may be inclined to 
 chafe sometimes at bungling and roundabout 
 means of handling what seems to us a perfectly 
 obvious difficulty, I believe we have need to hold 
 ourselves pretty sternly in hand and allow the 
 class, if they can, to propose various modes of 
 attack, condemn those that fail under fire, and 
 select the most practicable. In some cases, like 
 the explanation of a game, they may discover 
 that only one arrangement can be made fully 
 clear; in others, where many approaches are 
 possible, the class may decide that the ways are 
 best which show a clearly original handling, 
 fusing the results of previous study and experi- 
 ence and producing an individual way of or- 
 ganization, or finely specific or poetic wording. 
 A good example of an experience so vividly 
 
 187 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 realized as to result in new and apt expression 
 is given in Dr. Dewey's The School and Society, 
 where one child wrote that the water pulls and 
 another that it tore the calcium out of the rock.^ 
 Normal children with ideas and experiences that 
 they really want to talk or write about rarely 
 need more than the stimulus of the class discus- 
 sion to give them various methods of work from 
 which to select; and they can generally see the 
 point of group criticism when they fail in a cum- 
 brous or inept method. Indeed, there are very 
 real values once in a while in having the chil- 
 dren set to work on a live project unaided and 
 uninspired even by the class suggestions, to dis- 
 cover what level of attainment each one has 
 reached through the previous meeting of prob- 
 lems — a sort of composition test. Only in the 
 cases of the hopelessly dull and sodden, I be- 
 lieve — in work, at any rate, beyond the pri- 
 mary grades — should any prescription of spe- 
 cific method be needed save perhaps as a quite 
 temporary crutch. 
 
 Thus the study of literature, rightly ap- 
 proached, not alone suggests new and interest- 
 ing experiences and projects for expression, but 
 many good ways of meeting problems that the 
 * Page 68 (ist ed.). 
 i88 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 child's interest and activities from day to day 
 lead him to attempt. This study of models to 
 find out the ideas and methods back of their 
 construction should bring the children to greater 
 consciousness and heed of the methods of effec- 
 tive expression and a gradually evolving freedom 
 and artistry. It is hardly too much to say that 
 every normal child has potentialities of some 
 artistic development. And provided he is not 
 hemmed in too far by prescription, but only 
 checked and guided by the evolving demands 
 of his social group for greater effectiveness — 
 clearness and vigor and beauty of expression — 
 there is the greatest probability that he will 
 achieve power of meeting the facts of his experi- 
 ence with keen attention, organizing them with 
 respect to their relations and significance, and 
 expressing with some effect the ideas that he 
 has need and motive to discuss. 
 
 The Ideal of the Finished Product 
 
 It seems worth while to canvass briefly the 
 subject of the standards by which we shall judge 
 children's attempts at expression, for there is 
 the special danger in our study of excellent 
 models that we shall come to hold for children's 
 work the standard of adult and finished products. 
 189 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 But if we appraise the work of immature minds 
 in the light of what we ourselves are inclined to 
 call excellent — by adult judgments upon ac- 
 curate wording and sentence relations, mature 
 organizations according to relative values, and 
 the like — the result is pretty certain to be fatal. 
 In the matters of organizing ideas and building 
 sentences, letting our criticisms go ahead of the 
 child's understanding only means his "angry 
 confusion" and distraction of attention from 
 essential matters that he is capable of mastering. 
 In criticism of wording, there may ensue not 
 only these results, but either the child's unnat- 
 ural overshooting into a vulgarity of pendantic 
 stereotyped expression apparently to fit his 
 teacher's demand for formal literary usage, or, 
 far more frequently, a reaction into contempt 
 for all fineness of expression and content with 
 a barbaric and meager and stupid English worse, 
 if possible, than his first state. On this point 
 every teacher should find most valuable several 
 references to the Ideal — or Golden Calf — of 
 the Finished Product in Dr. Miller's Psychology 
 of Thinking} "The ideal of the finished product 
 is absolutely vicious," he insists, "except as it 
 functions to determine the remote goal." ^ 
 * Pages 109-14, 121-22, etc. ' Ibid., page 112. 
 
 190 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 The most valid conclusions from this consid- 
 eration of developing standards of expression, 
 then, appear to be somewhat as follows: — 
 
 First, since both forms and standards of effec- 
 tiveness in expression rise from social need, the 
 first step in improving work should probably 
 be a child's realization that he needs better ex- 
 pression, and that a given form or mode of or- 
 ganization may prove valid and effective. 
 
 Second, the essential form-conventions, since 
 they must simply be fixed ineradicably in habit, 
 need to be worked toward one at a time till they 
 become practically unconscious reactions, and 
 this without confusing correction of points not 
 yet mastered. 
 
 Third, principles of sentence-structure and of 
 word-choice for clearness and artistry, like those 
 of organization or prevision, must also be under- 
 taken one at a time; but the best mode of at- 
 tack in this case is different: The child must 
 work to discover, in repeated attacks on his 
 own real problems, what mode of organization 
 or sentence building or what word will gain his 
 effect, try any method he can discover or de- 
 vise, and thus come to formulate principles of 
 structure or discriminations in the meaning or 
 aptness of words and phrases. 
 191 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 Fourth, the child's study of good literature 
 and the frank criticism of his own work by the 
 whole class are the guiding forces in this ad- 
 vancement. 
 
 Fifth, whatever judgments the teacher at- 
 tempts to make of the clearness or artistry of a 
 child's expression must be based, not on a com- 
 parison with adult standards of excellence, but on 
 a full understanding of what children of a given 
 mental age can do and of what the class will 
 naturally approve and condemn, and always in 
 the fullest possible specific knowledge of the 
 powers and difficulties of the individual child. 
 
 To sum up: principles and forms must be ap- 
 proached only as their need is clearly estab- 
 lished; as undivided attention can be given each 
 one till it is fully established; and in a method 
 suited to gaining the best effect, whether this 
 is drill on forms or thoughtful exercise on rela- 
 tions and discriminations. Attack that is not 
 prepared, concentrated, and determined has 
 little chance for success. Particularly, the ever- 
 lasting attempt to criticize work and to estab- 
 lish discriminations and principles according to 
 ideals too fine or remote for the comprehension 
 of the pupil must be always not alone futile, but 
 positively harmful. 
 
 192 
 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 It has been the aim of this study to present 
 a development of expressional pov/er in chil- 
 dren through the cooperation of a truly social 
 class. For this, we have seen that composition 
 subjects may best arise naturally from the 
 child's vital interests, as projects that appeal 
 to him ; and that composition probably develops 
 best through group discussion, careful organiza- 
 tion of ideas, cooperative criticism, and organ- 
 ized study, based always in needs realized by 
 the pupils, for discovery and use of good methods 
 of work. It may safely be assumed, I believe, 
 that the subject so developed may produce re- 
 sults not only of power of expression in individual 
 children, but of ability to take interest in com- 
 mon projects and to cooperate in friendly fashion 
 for their achievement. It is only as we see the 
 study in these largest relations, and not as an 
 affair merely of chastening and expanding the 
 verbal powers of the boy or girl, that it becomes 
 clear how different a subject it is coming to be 
 from the sodden, idealess drudgery of themes 
 swoopingly red-inked and at the earliest pos- 
 sible moment thrown into the waste-basket. 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 For socializing the children's eager but non- 
 social joy in expression, we shall attempt using 
 two other natural child-activities — 
 
 1. The child's direct experience suggests expres- 
 sional projects 
 
 2. His interest in accounts of other experiences 
 both 
 
 a. leads to further expressional projects, and, 
 h. more important, may be developed into co- 
 operative work and creative criticism by the 
 group 3 
 
 I. THE SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PRO- 
 JECTS IN CHILD-ACTIVITIES 
 
 A. Natural child-activities suggest many subjects 
 for expression — 
 
 1. These must be vital and concrete — whether 
 direct or at second-hand — and full of activity 
 and personal appeal 2 
 
 2. Four typical interests — in stories, play, hand- 
 work, and observation — suggest various lines 
 
 of composition work 6 
 
 3. Experience got at second-hand is of value only 
 when thoroughly digested 8 
 
 B. The vital projects thus originated are of three 
 
 types, based on (i) the story-teller motive, (2) 
 
 195 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 the teacher motive, and (3) the "community- 
 worker" motive 15 
 
 1. The story-teller motive is to celebrate one's 
 self and to entertain others with real or fanci- 
 ful adventures 16 
 
 2. The teacher motive is to explain games and 
 processes, difiSculties in studies, and the like 22 
 
 3. The community- worker motive is to coop- 
 erate in meeting real social needs . . . . 25 
 
 4. In projects like (2) and (3), we may help 
 children to see that valid opinions are based 
 primarily on observable data 28 
 
 5. Many situations suggesting a wider audience 
 introduce the motives to written work ... 31 
 
 a. to preserve what is especially well done . 33 
 
 b. to publish beyond the class group ... 33 
 
 II. THE SOCIAL GROUP AS AN AGENT IN 
 EXPRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 A. We need first to discriminate two stages in ex- 
 
 pressional development: (i) unstudied, happy 
 talk, and (2) prepared composition 37 
 
 There are three processes for the class group in 
 developing prevised compositions — 
 
 B. Group discussion may select interesting projects 
 and canvass methods for carrying them through 44 
 
 As a result, each child should proceed to careful 
 planning and deliberate expression, doing in his 
 own way his share of the group project .... 45 
 196 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 C. The class criticism of each child's work should 
 commend honest effort and suggest specific bet- 
 terment 47 
 
 1. The spirit of the class evaluation must be a 
 creative interest in making each one's work 
 the best possible; its aim is to develop prin- 
 ciples of criticism 49 
 
 a. We need to see that the prepared themes 
 
 are allowed to be free and spontaneous and 
 childlike, just as in conversation .... 50 
 h. We may seek first suggestions as to the 
 ideas and their organization 51 
 
 2. Criticism of manner of presentation should 
 commend improvement, make specific sugges- 
 tions, avoid heckling, and resolutely demand 
 minimum essentials 52 
 
 D. The criticism of written work has special prob- 
 lems 55 
 
 1. As too severe demands are speedily fatal, we 
 should hold no higher standards than for pre- 
 pared oral work 56 
 
 2. Plenty of time and training for proof-reading 
 
 for a few specific points is essential .... 56 
 
 3. The class pride must also check up the writers, 
 
 for form essentials especially 57 
 
 a. The ideal is one hundred per cent attain- 
 ment of a few possible points 58 
 
 b. We may make the class judgment graphic 
 
 by publishing composite grades, awards, etc. 59 
 
 4. For corrections and correction-symbols, we 
 
 197 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 may perhaps substitute (i) class and black- 
 board work, (2) pupil correction of a few spe- 
 cific points, and (3) conferences 60 
 
 The third process of organized composition work, 
 systematic study of prevision and development of 
 expressional standards, is the theme of Chapters 
 III and IV. 
 
 III. THE ORGANIZATION OR PREVISION 
 OF IDEAS 
 
 A. Limitation and grouping of subject-matter is the 
 first step in prevision 
 
 1. Class criticism may help the child to select and 
 
 develop only one thing 68 
 
 He next discovers need for grouping the 
 ideas he selects 71 
 
 2. In the first type of grouping, the plan may 
 be shown in a sentence listing ''what happened 
 next " through the story 72 
 
 3. The second type consists of throwing larger 
 wholes into a few convenient groups ... 76 
 
 a. A plan sentence, as in (2), naming the 
 groups, and a hke sentence for the details in 
 each, makes a simple, practicable outline . 78 
 
 b. Children must not for a long time try han- 
 dling the whole of such large subjects, but 
 single phases only 82 
 
 4. The third organization-type is a grouping 
 about an interpretive sentence — the writer's 
 conclusion 86 
 
 198 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 B. Arrangement and connection of units of subject- 
 matter — a parallel process — seems dependent 
 on the success of limitation and grouping; four 
 large types of arrangement are noted .... 90 
 
 1. Time order, the all but universal arrangement, 
 is varied first by the demands of the audience 
 for — 
 
 a. the project stated first in explanations . . 92 
 
 b. vividness and interest in beginning stories 93 
 
 2. For firmness and force in various types of 
 themes, the emphasis principle suggests — 
 
 a. striking details put first 94 
 
 b. unexpected or significant ones reserved for 
 the last 95 
 
 3. For clearness in explanations it is essential to 
 put basic matters first — 
 
 a. in games and other processes, the apparatus 
 and the principle or purpose 99 
 
 b, in all cases, what is known to the reader or 
 hearer or most readily comprehensible . . 100 
 
 4. In describing visual perceptions — in geogra- 
 
 phy, etc. — it is generally necessary — 
 
 a. to give first the specific sketch-outline . . 103 
 
 b. to fit in concrete details according to their 
 arrangement in space 107 
 
 5. Connectives may be developed for showing 
 relations with unmistakable clearness; we may 
 work for artistry later 109 
 
 199 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 IV. THE EVOLUTION AND ATTAINMENT 
 OF EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 
 
 This problem is here divided into two distinct 
 phases: 
 
 A. The form conventions essential to be established 
 in unconscious habit come within the groups: (i) 
 correct grammar, (2) punctuation, (3) spelling 
 and pronunciation, and (4) further needful cour- 
 tesies of speech and manuscript form . . . .115 
 
 1. It is first essential to determine upon so few 
 essentials of present usage that we can fully- 
 master them 117 
 
 2. We must next find how many and what 
 forms we can establish one hundred per cent 
 
 in each school year, and fix these 121 
 
 3. In this establishment, two stages are neces- 
 sary 136 
 
 a. Realization of the right form and of its 
 
 value through reproducing such conditions 
 as probably gave rise to the form . . .137 
 h. Complete fixation of the form through (i) 
 drill with social motivation and (2) use of 
 the form in solving real problems . . . 140 
 (i) This requires careful proof-reading and 
 resolute checking-up by the class . . 147 
 
 (2) We need also cooperation from out- 
 side the class 148 
 
 (3) The aim is intelligent self-correction . 150 
 
 B. The development of effectiveness in sentence- 
 building and in word choices requires growing 
 
 200 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 keenness and accuracy of thought and fineness of 
 taste 153 
 
 1. Unlike the process of form-fixation, realiza- 
 tion of need, discovery of broad principles of 
 structure, and conscious work to apply these 
 makes up the procedure here 154 
 
 2. Study of sentence-construction may aid in 
 developing children's powers of viewing ideas 
 
 in relation i5^ 
 
 3. Achieving accuracy in wording means grow- 
 ing appreciation and practice of clear and spe- 
 cific statement 167 
 
 4. Development of artistry in word choices needs 
 to be based on appreciation of fineness and fit- 
 ness of expression i74 
 
 5. We may make use of literature studied 
 through (i) reproduction or imitation exer- 
 cises; and, far more valuable, (2) attempts 
 by the pupils to adapt methods they dis- 
 cover to the meeting of their own problems 184 
 
 6. If we attempt to apply the standards of adult 
 literature in criticizing children's work, how- 
 ever, the results are Hkely to be disastrous . 189 
 
 Social composition projects, arising naturally 
 from children's vital interests, discussed by the 
 class as cooperators, carefully organized and 
 solved by each child in his own way, and criti- 
 cized in a creative spirit by the class, form the 
 basis of this study. Such projects, completed by 
 study of method based always on needs discov- 
 201 
 
OUTLINE 
 
 ered, should result not only (i) in power of in- 
 dividual expression, but (2) in ability to take in- 
 terest in common aims and work with others for 
 their achievement.