Literature in the Elementary SchoolMacClintock, Porter Lander
General
Literature in the Elementary School
MacClintock, Porter Lander
Literature -- Study and teaching
programme that seemed to reflect the teacher's desire to give the
children within the grammar school all the reading that they ought
reasonably to be expected to have up to maturity.
The choosing of literature for use _in school_ creates immediately
several important conditions. The bit chosen is elevated at once into
the dignity and isolation of a discipline, and is set apart from matter
to be read once and casually, for recreation or amusement, at home or in
hours of intellectual play, to the single child or a small group of
homogeneous children. In view of the fact that the specimen is being
chosen for use in class, it must be broad and typical, appealing, as it
were, to the universal child. It must not be merely fanciful, freakish,
satirical, or witty, because, while there is pretty sure to be some
child in every class who would appreciate its flavor, the others would
not, and could not be brought to such appreciation. It should not be too
imaginative, since it must make its appeal to a group whose experience
has been of many kinds and degrees, and it cannot count upon any uniform
body of apperception material that has paved the way into a very
delicate or very pervasive imaginative atmosphere. It must not be too
emotional, because the teacher must be aware of the hysterical children
in every class, and because it is next to impossible to tune up any
social group as large and as mixed as the class to anything like a high
emotional unison or complete artistic like-mindedness. What the class,
that composite child, needs are such things as display the broader,
simpler aspects of life and art, such as call out in them the simpler
and more direct responses.
If one is giving a story or a poem a single reading, and reading it
merely for recreation, he may pass so lightly over the details, and may
so handle its structure, that its weaknesses and faults may not appear,
or may easily be lost sight of in the emphasis laid upon the pleasant
and successful aspects. But a bit of literature selected for the class
must be worth while in every particular; it is to be lingered over,
digested, assimilated; it must be fitted to stand out in the light of
searching criticism--and the assembled class soon comes to be a very
acute and exacting critic; it is to stand the test of individual
question and community judgment. If, therefore, it is to become, as one
must hope, a part of the children's experience, a contribution to their
artistic and moral well-being; if it is to be a bit of real education,
it must be sound in structure, trustworthy in detail, satisfactory in
issue. No matter how simple it is, it should be good art, and chosen
upon the same critical principles that one would apply in choosing good
literature of any degree of complexity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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