University of Texas Bulletin 
No. 2403: January 15, 1924 

The English Bulletin 
NUMBER 11 
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY FOUR TIMES A MONTH, AND ENTERED AS 
SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POSTOFFICB AT AUSTIN. TEXAS, 
UNDER THE ACT OF AUGUST 24, 1912 

The benefit. of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are es~ntiat to the preeervat'io~ of a free govern­ment. 
Sam Houston 
Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. • • . It is the only dictator that freemen acknowl­edge and the only security that free­men desire. 
Mirabeau B. Lamar 
The English Bulletin 
Number 11 
Editors: ERMA M. GILL 
L. W. PAYNE, JR. 
J.B. WHAREY 
The English Bulletin is intended as an organ for the expression of opinion by teachers of English in Texas concerning pedagogical and other problems that arise in their work. It will appear from one to three times a year. 
Copies of this bulletin will be sent free, on application, to any teacher of English in Texas. Address University Publications, Uni­versity of Texas. 
CONTENTS 
AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL, by 
R. C. Harrison----------------------------------------------------------------------------5 
THE 	USE OF CLEAR AND CORRECT ENGLIS~ AS A REQUIREMENT FOR GRADUATION, by L. W. Payne, Jr. 31 
SOME PROBLEMS IN. THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH COM­POSITION, by Anne Aynesworth------------------------------------------38 
THE MINIMUM OF LINGUISTIC TRAINING NECESSARY FOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS, by Hallie D. Walker______ 54 

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 
A Consideration of Present Tendencies and Needs in the Light of the 
Development of the High School and the Evolution of Ameri­
can Literature as a Subject in High-School Curriculum* 

BY R. c. HARRISON, Profesfior of English, 
SOUTHWEST TEXAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 

One wonders, if one stops to think of it, whether there is a more universal or a more potent influence in per­petuating human experience and human ideals than the persistent custom, among all peoples, of "observing days" ­of commemorating significant events in a people's history. Birthdays, anniversary days in the life of an individual or a nation, stimulate the individual or the group to fur­ther achievements whose worth is to be measured by the extent to which such an individual or group keeps a proper balance between the lessons of the past and the tasks of the future. It was this commemorative impulse that made the year just past, the tercentenary of the great Folio of 1623, of such importance in re-evaluating Shakespeare. It was partly this impulse which has recently stimulated a recon­sideration of Whitman's place in American letters. It is this impulse which often stimulates leaders of educa.tion to take stock of the past and to attempt to order the future by the lessons which the past affords. 
Just so the present decade, to the teacher of American literature in the high school, furnishes an excellent oppor­tunity to pause for reflection, for it marks the centennial of both our first significant and distinctively American litera­ture, and our first free public high school, which is dis­tinctively an American institution. This statement is not made in disparagement of the high place which such a man as Franklin holds in our national life, nor is it meant to decry the services of the more exotic Latin Grammar Schools 
*Paper read before the English Section of the Texas State Teachers' Association at Fort Worth, November 30, 1923. 
of Colonial and Revolutionary ,days, or of the academies which flourished from the Revolution to the Civil ·War. Indeed, it is well known that these two types of schools were largely the stock upon which the modern high school was grafted. But it requires only the mention of a few significant dates to remind us of the relative importance of the 1820's in the development of both our literature and our high school. Certain facts related to this simultaneous origin and development are vitally significant, I believe, in trying to decide now, or at any other time, what place really should be given American literature in the high school. 
In contemplating the beginnings of our national literature which was of sufficient merit to take a place among the contemporary literatures, one recalls several landmarks of the 1820's. In the first place, Irving's Sketch Book missed the beginning of the decade by only a year. Within the decade, among his other works, appeared Tales of a Trav­eler, Columbus, and the Conquest of Granada. Within the same decade appeared Bryant's first volume of poems and Cooper's The Spy, The Pioneers, The Pilot, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, and Red Rover. Within this decade, Emerson was graduated from Harvard, and emancipated, along with a few other New Englanders, from Calvinistic Puritanism. Within this decade appeared the maiden lit­erary efforts of Hawthorne and Longfellow, and the puerile 
verse which caused William Lloyd Garrison to seek out the future author of Snow-Bound and New. England's greatest abolitionist. And within this decade appeared two editions of the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, without whose service to poetry, criticism, and fiction America's pride in her national literary achievement would materially suffer. 
As for the beginnings of the high school in America, it is well known that the decade under consideration saw our first two public free high schools, both of which were estab­lished in Boston : one for boys in 1821, and a similar one for girls in 1826. It was in this latter year, 1826, that the Massachusetts Legislature passed a law providing for the establishment of other public free high schools in the im­portant towns of that state. It was in the next year, 1827. 
that the legislature of the same state provided for ma­
terially broadening the curriculum of the high school to 
meet the needs of the high-school graduate who might not 
desire or be able to go to college. Thus in the decade of a 
century ago was launched our first state system of high 
schools.1 
It would be interesting to follow here the rise of the high school in its struggles with the earlier Latin grammar schools and academies through the first half century of the high school's existence. But we must content ourselves on this point with only a notice· of the fact that through this half century (approximately 1825-1875), even though there was a pronounced struggle between the academy and the high school, two dominant notions about the function of secondary education persisted: (1) It must prepare for college and (2) it must prepare for life. Along with these two notions went two others, no less persistent: (1) Uni­ve~sal education, an inalienable right, is necessary to the perpetuation of a democracy; and (2), a corollary to this, a democracy should freely use its school system-and this of course includes its curricula-to perpetuate the tradi­tions and ideals upon which the nation was founded. The ·first of these dual notions fastened upon the American high school the stupendous task of preparing students for col­lege, or for life as a citizen if the student was not able or disposed to go to college. The second notion has bequeathed to our times an endless contention about the aim, the con­tent, and the method of teaching literature in the high 
school.2 
1Three very valuable works dealing with the development .of the high school in America are E. E. Brown's The Making of our Middle Schools: Longmans, Green & Co., 1914; J.E. Sto-qt's The Development of the High-School Curricula in the North Central States from 1860 to 1918: University of Chicago Press, 1921; and A. J. Inglis's The Rise of the High SchooZ in Massachusetts: Columbia University Press, 1911. 
2To some . extent of course this question has affected elementary schools. But by reason of the fact that the student is more concerned with literature in .a formal way in the high school, the contention has centered mostly in the latter type. 
Now, literature, of course, more poignantly even than history, gathers up ideals into memorable, beautiful, and enjoyable forms. But it is not hard to see that the essen­tially serious and didactic mind of the American people has seized upon this fact, and has undoubtedly abused it in the name of both patriotism and religion; and yet it cannot be successfully disputed, I think, that the American public school has, blunderingly or otherwise, perpetuated the American genius, whether this genius was embodied in an autobfography of a great philanthropist, an address of a great general or statesman, a . hymn of the Sage of Concord, a commemoration ode of a scholar and poet, or in the im­mortal lyric of a youth who dared rush from the pleasant halls of an American college across the Atlantic to "a Rendezvous with Death" where Democracy was in a mortal gi:-apple with Autocracy. 
But the literature of patriotism, we might well urge, is only one great type, which always receives new emphasis when a country is concerned about its safety. Our flags are now furled, the parade has passed, and the diabolical machinery of war has ceased its ravages on land, on the sea, in the air. The hymns of hate and the peans of con­flict have given way to the literature of peace. This, a far greater literature in scope, if not in intensity, deals with 
· other fundamental human experiences-love, nature, death, religion, humanity, moral life, the past, and innumerable other impulses and ideals that may be caught up into the novel, the drama, the lyric, and the various other types of literary expression. Does our literature which finds its in­spiration, not in the din of battle nor in the contemplation of the cause of strife, have sufficient scope and merit to challenge a re-evaluation, a new emphasis in our public schools? To deny that it does is to forget such facts as that after the destruction of the Armada came the literature of Shakespeare's day. 
And indeed there is scarcely anything more obvious than a widespread consciousness since the great World War,3 
~iswell known, the movement antedates America's entrance into the war by at least five years. But there is no doubt that the war gave a greater impetus to it. 
that a new era in our national literature is upon us. In­terest in contemporary literary activity certainly was never greater in this country, nor perhaps in England. We need not stop here to pass judgment upon the quality of the out­put, though we have some rather clear and positive convic­tions on this score, which will be expressed in the proper place. But the witnesses of a renewed and popular in­terest in literature are indisputable. New poets through­out the land are turning out numberless volumes every year. These same poets are going throughout the length and breadth of the land singing their verse and lecturing about it. The press is groaning with quantities of verse which is now being collected into volumes by the author, now going into periodicals, and now getting into anthologies which go everywhere. Literary clubs without number are studying modern poetry, drama, and fiction. Societies are fostering production by offering prizes for all types of literature. Critics are applauding here and condemning there. A veritable renascence is seen in the digging up of letters, journals, and fragments of older authors. There is no limit to the enthusiasm in the literature of today. 
It is easy, of course, to see how this universal, quickened sense of literary activity is giving no little concern about the emphasis we should place upon the newer literature in the high school. One needs only to look a little into current magazines to learn that the battle is raging around three points in particular: (1) Should not American literature, in relation to the older and larger literature of England, receive relatively greater attention in the public high school than formerly? (2) Is it not time for some shifting of emphasis from the greater mid-nineteenth century writers to some of the more outstanding figures in contemporary American letters? and (3) Is it not time to include in the high-school curricula considerably more of our national literature written since the first great creative period? Teachers of English are well aware of the fact that for the last ten years or more, there has been much "throwing about of brains" op all three of these questions. The battle has raged in our professional journals, in the more literary periodicals of the day, and in the books of criticism of 
· which there is no end. The fight has been carried into the secondary schools, into the smaller colleges and universities, and even into the greater graduate institutions of the coun­try ; and there is no sign of a truce in sight. 
In the meantime the curricula of high schools, colleges, and universities are including more and more of con­temporary literature, particularly more of contemporary poetry. The enthusiasm for such study is running lighter in the order of schools thus named. Recent examination of a considerable number of courses of study in the high schools of the country reveals a very marked tendency to include a rapid survey of modern writers, particularly the poets. Current catalogues of the junior and senior col­leges of the country, both denominational and state-sup­ported, show that a majority of all types of colleges are, by including some kind of study of modern American litera­ture, looking in the direction of a re-evaluation of our na­tional literature. 
We may move up one step higher yet. Dr. Arthur Hob­son Quinn of Pennsylvania University, in a paper entitled "American Literature as a Graduate Study,"4 read before the Modern Language Association in 1922, gave out, among other significant facts, the following: (1) That there were at that time (two years ago now) seven graduate schools in this country giving a high class of graduate work in Ameri­can literature every year, or on alternate years; (2) that there were seven other universities giving mixed courses of a high order annually; (3) that other universities not so 
4A full account of Dr. Quinn's study may be found in The Educa­tion Review for June, 1922. The fact that this paper is the result of the organization in the Modern Language Association of a section devoted to interest in graduate work in the colleges of the country is noteworthy. Dr. Killis Campbell, of the University of Texas, was the first chairman of the section, and it was at his request that Dr. Quinn made the study. It should be noted that Dr. Quinn's report, so fast do things happen these days, by no means indicates the breadth of the movement as suggested in his paper two years ago. 
advanced as these were looking up in the amount of Ameri­can literature given as graduate work; (4) that theses on American literature given in graduate schools reveal a marked growth in both breadth and depth; (5) that the number of undergraduate courses in American literature is increasing everywhere. 
On the whole, there is a disposition, and a very consistent one, it seems to me, to re-focus American literature, to get a new perspective which will necessarily call for some shift of emphasis, not necessarily from the older writers to the new out of deference to the enthusiasm for the things of the hour, but simply because time has made necessary a new evaluation. · Indeed some of the older and more neglected writers are even more popular today, and cer­tainly better understood, than they were in their own time, as is shown by the present attitude towards such authors as Thoreau, Poe, Emerson, and Whitman. In fact, the modern age claims to have had a large part in the "dis­covery" of such significant men as Thoreau, .Melville, Whit­man, and others. But before we venture a tentative sug­gestion as to the nature of the shift of emphasis in teaching American literature, and indeed in order to .understand what we believe to be an adequate, consistent reason for the shift, let us look from the standpoint of their develop­ment, at certain matters vitally connected with the teaching of American literature in the high schools. I have in mind here, (1) the aim of instruction in literature; (2) the con­tent of the course, especially for the high schools ; ( 3) the method of teaehing; ( 4) the development of the American spirit in our literature. We shall then be better able to consider (5) some suggestions in regard.to the reorganiza­tion of the course, or a shifting of emphasis, which is in some ways, I believe, eminently necessary. 
I have already alluded to the consistent and persistent Americ~n conception that democracy should perpetuate it­self by public education, and to the corollary of this, that it is the chief business of the school, with its curriculum and everything else, to train the people of the country for citizenship. To confirm this, I need only remind the reader of the renewed interest and activities in this direction dur­ing the last ten years, more especially the last five years­or since the great World War. What was true of the last war was just as true of the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. ·certainly the first two of these wars placed into our high-school curricula a vast amount of material whose value in the inculcation of patriotism may be entirely sound, but whose claim to the realm of literature, especially in the face of other valuable American literature which has received little attention, is hard to champion. There come times when such material should pass, not out of the cur­ricula, I should say, but into the background where a fairer judgment can be obtained of its aesthetic value. 
But let us not digress too far before looking at a few other facts in regard to the evolution of the aim of the teaching of literature in our public schools. Though we are concerned here chiefly with the high school in its century of development, a glance back of the beginning of the nation emphasizes this persistent didactic aim of instruction in the schools. Even while piety and grammar held sway in sec­ondary education in New England-in the elementary and grammar schools-the aim of education was the betterment of citizenship, for it was the conviction of our forbears, almost for the first two centuries of our history, that eligi­bility to citizenship implied eligibility to orthodox Christian­ity of a pretty straight-laced type. In the Blue-back Speller which succeeded the N ew England Primer, Noah Webster in the "advertisements to the reader" emphasized the more politically didactic aim, and his idea of the nature of the content of the schools, when he lamented the fact that the "writings which marked the Revolution" were accustomed to "lie neglected and forgotten," though they were "per­haps not inferior to the creations of Cicero and Demos­thenes." Twenty-five years after the establishment of the 
first high school in the country, twenty-four million copies of 
The English Bulletin 
this estimate of the political pyrotechnics of the Revolution were in the hands of American children in the public schools. 
·It were too long to follow closely this same estimate of the orations and political pamphlets of the Civil War and of the World War. Perhaps even yet the fire of these works has not cooled sufficiently for us to handle them without pedagogical gloves. Even the late war was responsible, perhaps expediently for the time, for temporarily reviving for consumption in the high school orations, political docu­ments, and the like, whose chief characteristics were pa­triotic propaganda rather than literary merit. Similar con­temporary material was recently put in the high-school curricula for the same purpose. But now that the country has settled down to peace conditions, and is in the midst of a great renaissance in literature as such, there is an in­sistent demand for broadening both the aim and the con-. tent of the work in American literature. 
As has been indicated, along with the dominant notion that the function of English teaching was to keep the pa­triotic fires burning, went the idea that the function of the high school was to prepare one for college or the university. Roughly speaking, from about 1880·to 1910, the universities which received students on their diplomas from high schools very largely dictated the classics used in the high schools. This influence of Uniform College Entrance Requirements to colleges reached its height about 1890, dominated to a large extent the classics taught in the high schools from 1890 to 1910, and has been on the wane since. The decline of this organized force is clearly seen in the transferring of the matter of accrediting high schools from state univer­sities to state departments of education.5 This latter move­ment indicates the widespread desire on the part of the high schools to expand their curricula in accordance with the 
°For brief but adequate accounts of the history of the effect of Uni­form College Entrance Requirements on the curricula of the high schools from 1880 to 1910, see J. E. Stout's The Development of the High-School Curricula in the North Central States from 1860 to 1918, particularly Chapter X. 
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broadening purpose of high school education and yet retain for their graduates the privileges of entrance into the uni­versity. The dominant democratic ideal to which we have referred several times demands that education be provided for all alike, and the part that this expanded curriculum has played in bringing more students into the high school has been a large part of the justification of the newer plan. 
"What has all this to do," one may ask, "with the aims in teaching American literature?" Dr. James F. Hosie, in the Teachers College Record for September, 1923, puts the matter aptly, I think, when he says, "If the so-called course in literature in the high schools is to maintain itself, it must build up a more convincing program. . . What high school literature needs and must develop is a functional or­ganization. Each step in the course must perform its con­structive service, a service apparent not only to the teacher but to the student. The student must enter upon the work of the term with a clear view of the goal, move toward it by certain and well-planned steps, feel from time to time that appreciable progress is being made, and lay down the task at the end with the bright hope that next year there will be a new world to conquer."6 Dr. Rosie's tentative suggestion looking towards a new organization leads him to state that the purpose of the courses in literature should be four-fold: 
(1) Teaching the. student how to read; (2) enabling him to get an understanding of the American spirit; (3) giving him a fair conception of the English-World back-ground of American literature; and ( 4) teaching him to find his way in a library. The first of these aims-teaching the student how to read-is quite broad, including not only the apprecia­tion of the types of literature as such, but suggesting the organization and approach of subject matter. The fourth -teaching the student to find his way in the library-is in­tensely practical, but contemplates, of course, the student in the larger cities, whereas only about one out of every three or four students who attend high schools has the ad­
6Teachers College Record, September, 1923, p. 339. 
vantages of the larger library. The other two aims­getting an understanding of the American spirit, and getting a fair conception of the English-World back-ground -I should be inclined to accept for their full value. In­deed, I feel relieved. thus to take my stand with those who still believe in the permanent and practical value of the real humanities, rather than with those who believe that the training which enables a student to make a cedar chest is better than that which helps him to enter with sympathy into the riches of "To a Waterfowl," "Israfel," ."The Con­cord Hymn," "When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloomed," "Columbus," or that remarkable group ·of modern poetic tributes to the memory and personality of Lincoln. 
The discussion of the evolution of the purpose of teach­ing American literature has necessarily touched upon the development of the content of the course for this subject. And a perspective of this development in three rather well defined stages will help us to a better understanding of present_qo:n:ditions and tendencies. These stages may be designated as follows: (1) The period of introduction of American literature (1875-1890) ; (2) the reign of uni­form entrance requirements (1890-1910) ; and (3) the period of renascence and experiment (1910-1924). 
It may strike one strangely, at first, that American lit­erature in the high school is only a half-century old; but such is the case, for the few short selections from American authors which found their way into the Readers up to about 1875 are negligible so far as their worth as a body of lit­erature used for aesthetic appreciation is concerned. At abo.ut this time Harvard and a few other colleges began to· require some knowledge of the classics (chiefly English clas­sics) for entrance, which movement stimulated attention to the teaching of classics in the high schools. The Amer­ican literature which first found its way into the curricula. of the high schools was in the nature of short selections, chiefly from Irving and Cooper, and from the New England 
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group of authors whose days were already in the yellow leaf. The "Reader" or the "Compendium of Literature" was the text, and the method was "a critical study," the nature of which is indicated by the language taken from a catalogue of a Mid-western city school in 1880. The only selections from American literature were samples of the Sketch Book, Thanatopsis, Bunker Hill Oration, and The l'ision of Sir Launfal. The point of view is indicated by this language of the catalogue: 
These works are to be studied critically. Unusual expressions, figures of speech, interesting words, are all to receive careful attention.7 
Naturally as the colleges began to feel a need for some uniformity in entrance requirements, this uniformity be­gan to show up in the classics, English and American, sug­gested or oftener designated by the colleges for study in the high school. As the courses of study for high schools and the instructions for prospective candidates to colleges amply show, this movement led to the more critical study of fewer, but larger, units of literature in the form of "edited classics." By 1890 the Uniform College Entrance vogue was on, and, though it grew more liberal both in the number of classics included for "critical study" and for "reading," its supremacy lasted for approximately twenty years. In order that we may see more definitely the place American literature occupied among the classics studied during this second period, I give here a brief analysis of a "suggested course of study for the typical high school," in 1903.8 That the course proposed at this date was accept­able to the proposers and to the public is confirmed by the fact that in a reprinting (1914) of the same work in which it occurs no reason was seen for a change. The plan iives 
7J. E. Stout, The Development of the High-Sehool Curricula in the North Central States from 1860 to 1918, University of Chicago Press, 1917, p. 141. 
scarpenter, Baker, and Scott : The Teaching of English (1903), pp. 301-302. 
only the classics recommended for intensive study for the average four-year high school. The ratio of English to American authors for the entire ~our years was 19 to 7; the ratio of English to American selections or groups of selections was 28 to 6. The types of English literature to be studied included the noveI, the epic, the metrical romance, and other varieties of longer narrative poems, the formal and informal essay, the biography, and the lyric. The types of American literature were only the novel, the metrical romance or tale, the essay, and the lyric. The English clas­sics were distributed very well throughout the four years. All but two of the selections from American literature were put in the second year, at which place a text in American literature was proposed. For the fourth year not a single selection of American literature was proposed. All the greater English authors from Chaucer to Browning were represented. Except indefinitely under the head of "selec­tions from Lowell, Bryant, and Emerson," not a single American classic written since 1855 was proposed. And the lists for supplementary reading showed something like the same relative emphasis. 
The third perfod, or period of Renascence and Experi­ment, in the development of the curriculum for American literature has brought about a decided disposition to recon­sider the relative value of English and American classics for the high-school student, to shift the emphasis from cer­tain of the long-accepted American authors to others whose vogue is newer, and to put into the high-school curriculum 
(and that of the colleges as well) a far greater portion of contemporary American literature than has been included heretofore. It was seen that the greater body of American literature studied in the high schools up to 1910 was written in the best days of the older New England group-around the mid-nineteenth century. The tendency, indeed the ac­complishment, of the last fifteen years has been to bring American literature in the high schools up to date by in­cluding more and more of the representative work of authors produced since 1870. This includes such bodies ·of literature as the regional short story, whose vogue lasted from 1870 to 1900; the modern novel, which goes back to the best days of Howell~ and Mark Twain (around 1880); and the essay, the drama to some extent, and the new poetry, which have a new interest for the literary public today. 
This chronological following up of the increasing amount of American literature in the curricula of the high schools inevitably leads us to notice for a moment the claims of con­temporary literature to a place in our high schools. This is the place in our discussion which brings us to the thickest of the fight today. Now I recognize, I think, what a serious business it is to choose the fundamentals of literature for the high-school student, who must suffer or prosper in later ~ife largely according to the tastes he has developed for literature during his adolescent days. I have no quarrel with the-person who insists upon the value of time in testing a work of literature, if he does not insist that time is the sole test; nor do I have any quarrel with the one who in­si~ts that the major part of the high-schoql student's brief, intensive study should be put on works that have .stood the test of time. But in the teaching of literature in the high school there are other considerations than that which concerns itself with labeling literature as good, better, best, or even the old and the new. There is, for instance, the finding and development of interests; the direction of read­ing after interests are ascertained; the building up for the student of at least the elementary criteria by which any literature can by judged-these and many other matters, as every teacher of literature knows, must be carefully and . conscientiously weighed. But, to put the matter briefly, I am in favor of including a very considerably larger pro­portion of contemporary literature in the high-school cur­
riculum for the following reasons: 
(1) The high-school student, by his very nature, is an adventurer who likes to touch life-this present life-at as many angles as possible. A varied experience-some­tJ:iing that will give him travel, romance, a look-in at the seething life of business now going on in the world, a peep at the ways of the society of this hour-these and a hundred other things are what he demands. He is not the mature critic that his teacher is, and it is well that he i1:f not; other­wise he might miss that full and varied reading which is so essential to giving him a fund of experience which will later enable him to interpret better both life and literature. What the · "movies" do not supply, modern literature in a large measure does. 
(2) A modern story, novel, or poem-whether essen­tially great or not-is often, by reason of its immediate closeness to the student's interest, his idiom, and his un­sophisticated taste, the best approach to a more pretentious and more searching study of a similar work of considerably greater worth. To illustrate, I believe the student who might not at fii:st catch the full significance of Browning's "How They Brought the Go6d News,'' can hardly fail to do so after he has read Vachel Lindsay's "The Bronco That Wouldn't be Broken." To say the least, he will have a fuller and richer experience, a broader and deeper sym­pathy with life after he has compared the two poems. I can easily conceive of Penrod's leading one to Tom Brown's School Days; or, if he get only Penrod, he has done well. A note from my own experience in teaching will illustrate. I have actually precipitated upon unliterarily inclined boys such writers about negro life as Irwin Russell, Thomas Nelson Page, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Joel Chandler Harris, and Francis Hopkinson Smith with such stories of modern negro life in the southern city as Roy Cohen's "On the Light Bombastic Toe," "Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star," "The Fight That Failed," and the like. I see t:ne esthete, with his voluminously "edited classic" before him, throw up his hands in holy horror and exclaim Saturday Evening Post! But I am not disturbed. I had rather lead a student to "Marse Chan" by way of the Saturday Evening Post than to "Many Marriages" by way of the syndicated Sunday sup­plement of the St. Louis Post Dispatch-an illustrated edi­tion of Many Marriages written down to popular taste. There is an exotic naturalism, a morbid pessimism, in many disillusioned persons like Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, and others, which the high-school student should not be led into. I do not deny a certain value to be derived from these works when the proper time comes, but that is after the high-school age. Luckily the normal, action-and character-loving boy or girl in the 'teens finds little interest in psychoanalysis, Freudianism, and ·exotic naturalism if a more objective and inherently wholesome outlook on life is to be had in such genuine and artful American works as The Oregon Trail, The Rise of Silas Lapham, and The Gentleman from Indiana . 
. (3) A vast amount of modern life is now being caught up into fiction, poetry, biography, and the essay, and these forms are the best means of bringing this life, in its fuller significance, to the student. To speak only of poetry, we have modern rural life in New England as seen in Frost's "Mending Wall" and "The Death of the Hired Man," or in Robinson's "Isaac and Archibald"; the rush, the bigness, the material heartlessness of the city as seen in Carl Sand­burg; the buoyant, progressive, optimistically epic life of the West (in spite of the Main Street vogue) as seen in Vachel Lindsay; the New York of Untermeyer and Lola Ridge; the nature and folk interests of the New England coast, as seen in Amy Lowell's poems and Joseph. C. Lin­coln's Ballads; the early frontier life of the southwest and the idyllic beauty of the South as seen in Lomax's Cowboy Ballads, in Karl Wilson Baker's nature and reflective poems, in Hilton Ross Greer's Voices of the Southwest. These suggestions indicate the nature, and the value to the student, of modern life put into modern poetry alone. 
(4) The forms of literature-the very media of artistic expression in English-are gradually being modified and broadened in modern times. New verse patterns, as seen in Sandburg, Miss Lowell, and others ; occasional deviations from the well made Poe-pattern of short story; the more flexible and whimsical personal essay; the one-act play; the dialogue sketch-these and other types and patterns are expanding the media of literary expression, are within 
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easy grasp of the student, and are constantly growing more indispensable to the person who desires a ready approach to much good literature of the day. 
(5) I am not so hypercritical as not to believe that a considerable amount of good poetry and prose-literature that will stand the tests we set for older literature-is now being produced. Let me illustrate with poets again, for it is more convenient to my. purpose here, and I can speak with more assurance about poetry than I can about prose. Such poets as Masefield, Gibson, Davies, and De La Mare in England, come readily to one's mind. But _I am con­cerned at this juncture with American writers. Personally, I believe that for presentation in high schools at least, Frost and Lindsay are two of the best. There is little work of eit11er poet that will not call out a hearty response from high-school students. Robinson, Sandburg, Amy Lowell, Sara: Teasdale, Edna Millay, Louis Untermeyer, Witter Byn­ner, Bliss Carman, Grace and -Hilda Conkling, Arthur Guiterman and Don Marquis (for we must have our laugh), the Benets-here are over a dozen, and of course I have left out from one to a half-dozen of your favorites-and per­haps even of mine. Not that all of the poetry of all these poets should receive extended attention-by no means. But there should be an introduction, which is easy to make in these days of anthologies and printing for popular con­sumption, and such an introduction will, I believe, vastly help in the ways which I have already iridicated. 
The essential facts in regard to the evolution of method of teaching literature can be put in a few words, and the bearing of this upon the place American literature should take in the high school readily seen. The persistence of the plan of using a classic as material for syntactical anal­ysis and memory gymnastics may be clearly seen by a re­mark made to me recently by a young lady who attended a prominent high school in Texas since 1900 :9 "I think I 
9This young lady's experience was by no means indicative of condi­tions peculiar to Texas. There is abundant evidence to show that the methods here spoken of were characteristic of the average American high school, to far too great a degree, up to about 1910. 
diagrammed every sentence in Macbeth," she said. I asked her how she liked the play, and her answer was a unique commentary on a method of teaching literature-"Never again !" Though a pedagogue myself, I accepted her frag­mentary answer as adequately meeting the requirements of "clearness, simplicity, and force." An extreme case, you may say, but it indisputably shows how far from the spirit of literature the student was kept. Let me give anothe1 impression of the teaching of literature, which is recorded by a modern humorist, Mr. Ring W. Lardner, whom Carl Van Doren characterizes as a "Philologist among Low­brows." I take this excerpt from Lardner's "What I ough1 to of Learnt in High School," in the November, 1923, num­ber of The American Magazine. 
English literature was the baby that called for deep thought. They would make us buy a little booklet with one of the classics in it like, say, the Ancient Mariner. Then they would tell us to take it home and study the first ten stanzas and master the meaning of same. Most of we boys done our studying at a 10x5 table with six pockets in it, but when we come yawning to recita­tion the next day they was no way for the teacher to know whether we had spent the night trying to get Coleridge or the 14 ball. 
One of the boys or gals would get up and read the first few stanzas followed by questions in regards to same. 
'Teacher: "Mr. Brown, what is an ancient mariner?" Mr. Brown: "Why let's see. It's a, it's a kind of a old sailor." Teacher: "And what is meant when it says 'he stop­peth one three'?" · 
Mr. Brown: "Well, well, it means, it means he stopped a man. They was three men and he stopped one of the three." 
Teacher: "Mr. Starkweather, what is a loon?" 
Mr. Starkweather: "It means somebody that is kind 

of 	crazy." (Aside) "Like a lot of teachers." (Laughter from admirers of Mr. Starkweather.) Teacher: "Let's have quiet. Now, Miss Millard, ex~ 
plain the line 'eftsoons his hand dropt he'." 
23
Miss Millard: "It means that pretty soon right away he dropt his hand." · Mr. Starkweather (aside): "He didn't even have a 
pair." Teacher: "Let's have quiet." One month to six weeks would be spent solving the 
hidden meanings in the Mariner and then we would delve into the mystery of the Lady of the Lake, Idylls of the King, and etc. All and all we read six or seven or Tennyson's and Milton's and Scott's best sellers and read some of them twice and studied them line by line, but to show how baffling they must of been, why I can't recite a whole verse correct from none of them today whereas I can reel off a verse and chorus of Good-by Dolly Gray which come out that same year and which I can't remember studying at all. 
It would be interesting to hear Mr. Lardner, who attended high school in Michigan, and the student from Texas com­pare notes. I am confident that audiences of such a col­loquy, though they came from East or West, would find·mu­tual interest in the topics discussed by these ex-students of the North and the South. 
Without following in detail the evolution of the method 
, of teaching literature, it is sufficient to say that it has gone from the devitalized, analytical, philological, superimposed practice of killing interest in a classic to the more human, socialized plan of calling out the student's spontaneous, aes­thetic reactions to li~rature; from a deductive handling of petrified, critical opinions in which the student, for lack of training, could not share, to an inductive motivated build­ing up of criteria by a fuller and more varied reading of lit­erature; from the memoriter, unrelated plan of piling up dates, historical facts, and catalogues of works and authors not studied, to a more sensible selection of classics to be studied, and a more vital use of the histories of lfterature; from an almost utter neglect of the psychology of adoles­cence-the high-school age-to a utilization of indispens­able facts of psychology and methodology. In all this there may have been some losses, but the gains are incomparably · greater. 
The third point for which I wish to contend is that it is high time we were readjusting our idea about the relative value, to the high-school student, of English and American literature, as well as our idea about the existence of a sig­nificant American spirit in our literature. I have already alluded to the necessity of a refocusing of our national lit­erary achievement, and to the necessity of shifting em­phasis so as to get a more consistent and more just estimate of certain authors and of the literature as a whole. I am so much in accord with Professor Stuart P. Sherman, whom I regard as our stoutest contender for this point of view, that I shall let him speak here. 
"In the course of the last hundred yea:rs, our literature has outgrown its youth and its poverty. It is abundant, and it is becoming mature to the verge of sophistication. It has acquired a history, it has developed critical tenden­cies, it has participated in successive movements, it has produced schools and has evolved styles, it has discovered wide ranges of new material, it has made significant inno­vations in form, it has even put forth dialectical branches from a sturdily rooted vernacular stock. It has been sub­ject to many influences, but it has also been widely influen­tial. It exhibits all the resources and powers of a national literature. At no very distant period in the future, its bulk and diversity will be so immense that Americans will either be obliged to give it the central place in their programme or reading, or they will be obliged to remain ignorant of their own national culture and its chief instrument. At the · present time, it is a most conservative estimate to say that nine-tenths of our university teachers are more competent to discuss the literature of England than the literature of America; and the actual quantity-not to speak of the quality-of instruction provided in the higher study of our own literature is relatively insignificant." Continuing, he says : "This is obviously. not a happy state of affairs for native letters; yet this condition is the natural consequence of a careless acquiescence in the contention that American must always be a part of English literature. Our national literature will never hold its due place nor perform its proper work in our consciousness till we reverse the or­thodox contention and declare instead, that the older Eng­lish literature must forever be a part of American Litera­ture.. . . It is only by using our native literature, by keep­ing it current, by making it saturate the national conscious­ness-it is only so that we can make our history serve and enrich and inform us, and give to our culture the momen­tum of a vital tradition."10 
It is well enough for the graduate student to keep a just sense of proportion when he is making a comparative study of English and American literature. But for this graduate student turned high-school teacher to parrot off to imma­ture students the jargon of hypercritical pessimists or text­book makers who look only eastward, is damaging in the highest degree. If all that is said were true, the high­school student could not understand it. For instance, what could be more useless or damaging to the high-school stu­dent than this from John Macy's The Spirit of American Literature: "You can define certain peculiarities of Ameri­can politics, American agriculture, American public scho9ls, even American religion. But what is uniquely American in American literature? ... The American spirit in litera­ture is a myth, like American valour in war." Like Ameri­can valour in war indeed! The last date of the printing of Mr. Macy's book is 1913. I wonder if this statement will be revised in the next printing! Again, H. L. Mencken, among the most disillusioned, non-adjusted, and pessimistic egoists in this country, in diagnosing our national literature in the Yale Review for July, 1920, speaks of "its faltering feebleness, its lack of genuine gusto, its dearth of saiient personalities, its general air of poverty and imitation." Again he says: "Intellectually, we remain an undistin-• guished colony, cautious, eager for praise, and ever willing to be led." "The thing that ails the literature in the United States," he throws out with ego-centricity, "is precisely 
10"For the Study of American Literature," Yale Review, April, 1923, pp. 471-472. 
what ails the general culture of this country, and that is a 
lack of civilized aristocracy." I imagine Mr. Mencken 
would find congenial atmosphere in company with a certain 
notable exile in Holland. He might at least appropriately 
express a loyalty to an alien aristocracy which many un­
assimilated house-guests of Uncle Sam could not express 
during the World War. 
No, the high-school student of American literature has 
nothing to gain in the inculcation of American ideals or in 
the way of enlightenment in art by being crammed with a 
diet so foreign to the truth and to his American make-up. 
He had better be spending his time reading Emerson, or 
Whitman, or Mark Twain, or Booth Tarkington, or Vachel 
Lindsay, or Robert Frost. 
I come finally to some tentative suggestions in regard to 
organization and procedure in teaching American Litera­
ture in the high schools. These suggestions, I hope, have 
been anticipated in what has gone before. The organiza­
tion I have in mind is one, I believe, toward which we are 
tending. I believe, too, that it better serves the purpose, 
the content, the method, and the inculcation of the American 
spirit in literature, and will, better than our traditional 
plans, develop in the student a desire to read, a capacity to 
enjoy, and an ability to interpret literature, than does the 
system which lacks that synthesis, that unity in variety, 
that organization so necessary for teachers of American 
literature, if, as Mr. Hosie says, we are to make our pro­
gram for this subject in the high school convincing. 
Let me say, first, that the plan does not involve such a 
radical change as to upset the equilibrium of even any ,teacher who has leaned rather heavily upon the organiza­tion dealt out to him in the traditional texts. In fact, it in­corporates and utilizes both the chronological and the type method of presentation, and, quite as significant, has ,re­gard for the psychological and spiritual make-up of the adolescent high-school student. Let us, for want of a better 
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term, call it the subject or nucleus method. For instance, there has been no more dominant note in American litera­ture and American life than the pioneer spirit. The body of literature that has accumulated around this theme is very significant in both quantity and quality, and it includes practically all types of extant literature that a student en­counters in the high school. The pioneer spirit in its broader sense-what an array, and what a miscellany comes trooping to one's mind! Whitman's Pioneers, 0 Pioneers!; Parkman's The Oregon Trail; Cooper's The Deerslayer and all the rest of the Leatherstocking series; LongfeJ. low's Miles Standish; Franklin's Autobiography; Emerson Hough's The Covered Wagon and North of 36; Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery; Bok's The Making of an American; Miller's, Lowell's, and 'Lanier's poems on Colum­bus; Lindsay's Santa Fe Trail; Whitman's and Bryant's poems on the Prairie; Mark Twain's Roughing It and Life on the Missi!.9sippi; Bret Harte's tales and poems; Willa Cather's 0 Pioneers and My Antonio; Howell's A Boy's Town; Garland's Main-Traveled Roads; Hay's Ballads; Ser­vice's Spell of the Yukon; Miller's A Ship in the Desert and Kit Karson's Ride; Lomax's Cowboy Ballads; Stewart Ed­ward White's Daniel Boone; Louise Pound's Ballads; 0 Henry's Heart of the West; and I have left out many more important and more pertinent to the pioneer spirit. I mentioned these as they came to my mind, without any regard whatsoever to chronology, type, or relative merit. 
Now throw these into chronological order, and you have the great pioneer spirit in America from its discovery to the present hour-and you have linked to it all the com­mercial, social, political, and aesthetic development the country has known. It is well, it is necessary, indeed, for the student to get a unifying, chronological sequence. Let him get it, but in a motivated way, from his history of American literature, from his American history, and from the apt comments of his better-read teacher. This is his chronological synthesis. Again, throw the list into types, and you have run the whole gamut of the lyric, drama, and the rest. Let the class-work and the student's writing and note-keeping provide for some consistent logical organiza­tion by types. Here is a logical, if somewhat mature and academic synthesis. Now, using a wise selection made with due regard to literary importance and the student's capacities and tastes, proceed simply with the theme-the pioneer spirit-the most natural and inherently the most logical synthesis of the three plans here named. The in­evitable result will be a deeper and saner interest, a better sense of proportion, and a far more effective training in literature as such. 
The psychological, as well as the synthetic value should be obvious. Clearly the student will not read either in class or as supplementary work all of such a list as I have given, even if he had the library facilities. But with this wealth and variety of material dealing with a great national im­pulse, he will find somewhere along the line a ready entree into the subject, and be better prepared to pursue it in his own way, supplemented by the direction of the teacher, who should be guiding with due regard for the student's capaci­ties; his tastes, and the relative worth of the works studied. The class-study may still deal with the mountain peaks. But the student may simultaneously be roaming in the con­tiguous hills or even in the valleys-for literary values are relative. The heights are never reached by a single bound­
"All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone." 
The effect of unity then becomes somewhat like the ar­tistic unity in a play, say that of King Lear. The filial in­gratitude shown to Lear by his two nefarious daughters is, of course, the theme of the main plot. This is strengthened by the same theme as we watch it develop through diabolical machinations of Edmund against his innocent brother, and father. Add to this the atmosphere of a pagan, legendary background and the powerful disturbances in nature during the stormy night, and we have a triple harmony and syn­thesis which fastens itself on the sympathetic student ere he is aware. The work thus induces an interpretation which invites attention to the poet's great art. So it is with the study of American literature when the student is allowed to follow a theme which invites his attention to other phases of that theme which deepen its significance for him. 
A further and larger aspect of this synthesizing will be apparent when we remember that the various large lines of literary interest are continually crossing and recrossing. They may diverge, or converge, or run parallel. But they inevitably touch now and then, making one conscious of a vital relation. Thus the literature about the pioneer spirit connects with the literature about the Indian, or about the negro, or about the democratic spirit in America, or about industrial development, or about social development-end­less, in fact, are the·connections affording easy transitions and a logical and intricate synthesis which motivates and vitalizes the study of American literature. 
That the drift has been in the direction of something like this for the last few years is quite evident when one looks at the trend of textbook-making for high schools and col­leges, as well as at the abundance of criticism which con­cerns itself with the evolution and the present status of American literature. The whole tendency is a natural out­come of the fact that our literature, as Professor Sherman says, "has acquired a history, has developed critical ten­dencies, has participated in successive movements, has pro­duced schools and acquired styles, has discovered wide ranges of new material, has made significant innovations in form, has even put forth dialectical branches from a sturdily rooted vernacular stock."11 Such titles as The Story of Our Literature, The Great Tradition, The Amer­ican Spirit in Literature, The Spirit of American Litera­ture, Literature and Life, The Genius of America-these 
and other studies familiar to teachers of English indicate the wide-spread consciousness of the new conceptions of 
uyaze Review, April, 1923. 
our literature, as well as the desire to interpret this litera­ture more adequately than it has been interpreted in the past. As the problem affects the teacher of American lit­terature in the high school, there are several matters to con­sider which the limits of this paper-already too long­forbid. Two fundamental matters I merely mention are library equipment for high schools and the training of teachers of American literature in the colleges and univer­sities of the country. In both of these matters there are many hopeful signs of encouragement. Let us hope that within the present centennial decade the momentum thus far acquired will bring us to far greater achievements with our American literature in our American high school. 
THE USE OF CLEAR AND CORRECT ENGLISH AS A REQUIREMENT FOR GRADUATION 
BY L. W. PAYNE, JR., PH.D., Professor of English, 
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 

It is a generally accepted principle in our American col­leges that every candidate for the bachelor's degree shall show at least a reasonable facility in the use of English; and· it is now usually taken for granted that at least as many as two elementary courses in English shall be re­quired of all candidates for any form of the bachelor's de­gree, even in special schools such as those of engineering, law, and the like. Naturally there have arisen among the various colleges certain difficulties in the standardization of the requirements in English; and naturally, too, the evaluation of the candidate's ability to write clear and cor­rect English has been usually judged more or less me­chanically on the basis of his having attained a mere pass­ing grade in the one or two required elementary courses in English. It is, howevel'., plainly evident to those who are acquainted with the facts, that numbers of our college grad­uates cannot express themselves in clear and correct Eng­lish. The student may be able to scramble through his set themes and exercises in the English classes, and yet, when thrown on his own resources in the every-day use of Eng-· lish, he proves to be practically illiterate. It would seem, then, that a fair test of a student's ability to use clear and correct English would be his every-day use of English, his more or less extemporaneous quizzes and examinations, let us say, rather than his set themes and exercises prepared for the English closs, and with .the help of dictionaries, grammars, and kindly neighbors: 
College students, like other mortals, are human. When they go into English classes, they know that they are to be graded on the quality of their English in everything they say or write in those classes, and hence they take particular pains to meet the requirements of good form so long as they are under the direct supervision of the English teacher. They also know that in the other subjects of their college course their professors and instructors are concerned pri­marily with the content or subject-matter of the quizzes and examinations and that little or no attention will be paid to the formal correctness or even the clearness or in­telligibility with which this subject-matter is presented. In other words, most of the ·teachers in college courses, while giving full credit for content, pay absolutely no at­tention to the English used by their students. This failure on the part of the instructors to penalize bad English in­evitably leads the students into careless and indifferent habits in the form and manner of their expression. Stu­
. dents who have made fairly good records in their freshman and sophomore English work have been known to show a steady decline in their ability to write good English in their junior and senior years. The usual excuses offered by stu­dents for this evident decline in the form of their English are: (1) In most of their courses facts and outlines are demanded in preference to clear and full statements; (2) haste in taking down great masses of notes, syllabi, digests, leads to scrappiness and fragmentary forms in the written tests; (3) the demand for brevity and condensation in the so-called modern efficiency methods militates against ful­ness and correctness of expression. 
The laxness on the part of the majority of instructors in applying the requirement for a reasonable command of clear and correct English by all students in all studies has led the faculty of the University of Texas to pass a formal resolution specifically demanding of every candidate for a bachelor's degree proof of his ability to use clear and cor­rect English in the every-day routine work as shown in his quizzes and examinations. This requirement, duly printed in the catalOgue, reads as· follows: 
The student must, before May 15 of his senior year, show such ability to write clear and correct English as to satisfy the Committee on Students' Use of Eng­
33 
lish. To promote the habitual use of clear and correct 
English, the written work of every student in all his 
courses (theses, reports, quizzes, examination papers, 
etc.) is subject to inspection by the committee. It is 
the duty of each member of the teaching staff to require 
that his students shall be careful in their use of Eng­
lish, to give due weight in the making up of grades to 
the students' use of English, and to report promptly to 
the committee, submitting the evidence, any student 
whose use of English is seriously defective. Each ses,. 
sion the committee will pass on the written work of 
every student above the rank of freshman. If any stu­
dent be found deficient, the committee will prescribe 
for him such work as in its judgment is proper, and 
this work must be done to the satisfaction of the com­
mittee before the student can obtain his degree~ 

(Catalogue, p. 115, 1922-23.) 
In a large institution like the University of Texas the functioning of the Committee on Students' Use of English becomes a rather difficult matter. In the following para­graphs we shall try to set down the methods used by the committee and also draw some conclusions as to the effects of the work of the Committee on the student body as a whole. 
The personnel of the ·committee is such as to represent all of the schools and most of the departments of instruc­tion. The chairman must be an English teacher of profes-. sorial rank. There are two other English teachers on the committee to assist the chairman in the reading of papers, and there are representatives of the schools of engineer­ing, law, business . administration, and education, and a special representative of the sciences. The work of the committee is as equitably divided among these committee­men as possible, each member being held responsible for a certain number of students, usually within his own depart­ment, and each one being expected to sift out by the best methods which he can devise for his particular group the students who are weak in English. When these students are found, their names, with the concrete evidence in the form of quizzes, papers, etc., are reported to the chairman of the committee, who proceeds to examine the papers, call in the students, and assess the necessary penalties. While the committee meets in formal session only occasionally, and · then only to decide on methods of procedure and to parcel out the work, its operation is continuous throughout the session. Any professor or instructor at any time in the year has the privilege of reporting any one of his students to the committee. The chief trouble we have found, how­ever, is that the professors seldom. take advantage of this privilege. 
The committee has found it necessary to make out at the beginning of the fall term a complete card catalogue of the candidates for degrees, the cards showing the previous English grades and the present year's courses of each senior. Seniors whose previous records in English show clear A and B grades are "cleared," unless, of course, some one of them happens to be specifically reported later by one of his instructors. Seniors whose grades are low in Eng­lish, or whose records show conditions or repeated courses in English, or those whose credits in English have been. transferred from some other institution, are subjected to stricter scrutiny. Fall-term quiz, or examination papers are secured from their instructors, read by the English in-· structors or other members of the committee, and definitely passed on by the beginning of the winter term. Oppor­tunity is thus afforded of assigning to seniors additional work in English during the winter and spring terms pre­ceding their graduation. In most cases the weak seniors by concentrated effort on their English are able to bring up their deficiency during the last two terms of their senior year. Only about ten per cent of the seniors are ever called· before the committee, and only about twenty-five per cent of these are assigned additional work. Last year six seniors were forced to defer their degrees on account of the· English requirement, and there is likely to be an equal number held up during the present session (1923-1924). 
It is plain that it would be practically impossible for the committee to examine the English work of every student 
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above the rank of freshman, for that would involve the survey of some of the work of 3400 students. The commit­tee operates on the assumption that all students who are still pursuing English courses are in a way supposed to be still under supervision of the English department and still in the process of improving their command of English. All freshmen and practically all sophomores and a great many juniors and seniors in the College of Arts are thus "cleared" on the basis of the fact that they are still taking English courses, though in cases of transfers and students with weak records in English, the instructors of the English classes are warned that these students will require special attention. Generally it is assumed tliat it is a safe policy to leave these students to the tender mercies of their English instructors, at least for the time being. 
Some cases . reported to the committee deserve only a warning or perhaps a bit of advice as to methods of self­improvement in English. A few students have been set to private study on some handbook of English, and some have been made to hand in from twenty to sixty pages -of cor­rected exercises in these handbooks. Such assignments are sometimes found to be necessary because of the inability to adjust the student's schedule so as to make additional class-• work in English feasible. 
At various times during the year, the members of the teaching staff are urged to report from their classes any students whose work they find deficient in English. We have found in practice that only a small number of the faculty members pay any attention to this appeal. The committee does not wait for the professor to report the stu­dents who are weak in English. The members of the com­mittee go to the instructors and call for the quizzes and ex­aminations of certain students whose records in English indicate weakness in the subject, and thus, and thus only, is the committee enabled to sift out the weaklings in English_ and to apply the necessary remedy. 
All cases examined by the committee are recorded and in case additional work is assigned, the record is checked up later by a specific report from the instructor who conducts the assigned work. When the instructor reports that the student has made sufficient progress to justify his advance­ment toward the degree without further practice in English, the student is "cleared" for graduation, unless, of course, he is later reported by some other instructor. In such cases additional work may again be assigned before the student is allowed to proceed to graduation. 
The work of the committee is growing more and more important, and its functioning more and more necessary, and, we hope, more efficient from year to year. The reasons for the existence and the efficient functioning of such a com­mittee are evident. We are admitting each year an ever­increasing number of poorly prepared students, particularly poorly prepared in English; and in the case of the Univer­sity we are receiving each year a larger number of transfer students from other institutions where the elementary train­ing in English is even more unsatisfatory than it is in our own freshman and sophomore classes. To protect our de­gree, to protect our students, and to protect the general public, we are more and more in need of demanding a stricter enforcement of the requirement for the use of clear and correct English. The faculties of the foreign lan­guages, I understand, are enforcing more strictly from year to year the requirement that each candidate shall show a fair reading knowledge of at least one foreign language. It is all the more important that a stricter interpretation of the requirement for a reasonable knowledge of English be enforced. 
The effects of the functioning of the committee have be­gun to be felt by both the members of the faculty and the student body. Naturally it has taken a considerable time for the committee to hit upon the best methods of operation to secure the desired results, and naturally it has taken some time for the real meaning of the work of the committee to sink into the consciousness of the student body. But when something like fifty advanced students are called before the committee, when something like a dozen seniors are put to 
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work in freshman English, when something like half a dozen of these are forced to forego or at least defer their degrees, the whole student body suddenly begins to become conscious of the fact that English is a fundamental require­ment for the degree and that it will behoove every one who looks forward to taking the degree to pay particular atten­tion to the quality of his English, not only in the English classes, but in all his class work in whatever department. The effect is undoubtedly salutary. 
The final aim of the committee is not to kill off but to strengthen the weaker students. Of course, if the committee functions legitimately, it will prevent some students from graduating each year, but its aim is to conserve rather than destroy. The student is given every opportunity for im­provement. His papers are shown and his specific errors pointed out to him, and in every· case where a penalty is as­sessed the student is made to realize the justice of the sen­tence passed on him. The assignment of extra work in English is regarded not as a penalty, but rather as an opportunity for improvement. The student recognizes that it is for his own good that the assignment is made. He also· sees the justice of protecting the reputation and good name of the institution. He does not wish to go out from the institution with the marks of illiteracy upon him, nor does he wish to bring opprobrium upon his alma mater; hence in almost every case the student is satisfied with the action of the committee. 
SOME PROBLEMS IN THE TEAC.HING OF ENGLISH 

COMPOSITION* 
BY MISS ANNE AYNESWORTH, Profesfior of English, 
SUL ROSS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 

Tom Sawyer, I think, would have made a model teacher of composition.. One can imagine his students clamoring for the privilege of writing an essay, scheming to inveigle him into assigning a theme, bartering with him, even as did his playfellows who handed over their treasures for the privilege of white-washing a panel of the fence. Yes, Tom Sawyer would have solved the one great problem of the teacher of composition-how to make theme-writing desir­able, enjoyable. And that, say what we will of the problems of teaching composition, is the one big problem. Prepara­tion of text assignments, ·class recitations, conferences, quizzes, mechanics, parallel reading, and all the other de­tails of the course will fall into line, once we kindle in our students the glow of composition, the pride and joy of creat­ing, of self-expression. The task is not an easy one, but the obstacles in the way. of its accomplishment are more subjective than objective. Those of us who fail will find the explanation not so much in overcrowded classes, limited time, or the inadequate foundation of our students, as in ourselves. "Fool,'' said the sonneteer's muse long ago, "look in thy heart and write." And the composition teach­er's guardian spirit today might paraphrase that counsel: "Look within thyself and inspire thy students to write." 
Is it too much an elaboration of the obvious to say, then, that the most important factor in the problem of making theme-writing interesting is the teacher, his personality, his attitude toward life and toward his work? A teacher of composition, more, perhaps, than any other instructor, has need of what a college president of my acquaintance places 
*Paper read before the English Section of the Texas State Teachers' Association at Fort Worth, November 30, 1923. 
'first on his list of qualifications for a teacher-a radiant personality. He should be a person of broad sympathy and genuine enthusiasm, keenly, eagerly interested in "the warm and palpitating facts of life." No disgruntled person of narrow views and arid philosophy should attempt to teach :young people composition. Nor should the person who has not an abiding faith in the value of his task, a profound respect for the significance and dignity of it; and, as Mr. William Trufant Foster, in his "The Morale of the School," puts it, a "capacity for illuminating today's lowly labor with high and remote purposes."1 A teacher of com­position with a pride and joyousness in the performance of his task dignifies the work of writing a theme, makes it an achievement worthy of the student's best effort, worthy, too, of the teacher's interest and sympathy. To such a per­:son the reading of papers will never be mere mechanical drudgery. "Grading themes," cried one desperate instruc­tor, "is the most soul-deadening, mummifying process in the world. I'd rather scrub floors." And she had better scrub ·floors. But I do not believe she would do even that well until she learned to get some fun out of her work. Why, the stupidest theme has some reflection of personality, and even stupid people are alive~and flaunting a challenge to one to make them less stupid! That composition teacher, then, who merely "grades" papers, who is bored by the themes he reads, who lacks the vital spark of joyous, in­fectious enthusiasm, should not teach. He should sell oil stock, perhaps ; he should not tamper with composition. 
So much for the teacher's attitude toward life and toward his subject. What of his attitude toward his students, those whom he is to lead to self-discovery, whose tastes he is to revolutionize, so that the things they once hated they shall
• 
now love-themes, for instance? Surely no teacher has greater need of tact, of sympathetic understanding and interpretation than the composition teacher. He it is who must know the students better than they know themseives, 
tThe Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 131, p. 18. 
who must discover their possibilities, and lead them to that discovery. He must have unlimited power of inspiring self-confidence. He must know, somehow, the time and labor that went into an F theme, and appreciate the tragedy of the failure. He must share the joy and triumph of an A or a B-sometimes even a D. Nothing important to the student should be trivial to him. He must be able always to get the student's point-of-view, the youthful, buoyant out­look upon life and the student's little world. That point of view will not be readily conceded to him. There is an as­sumption among students that all teachers-English teach­ers in particular, probably because of the difficulty of their subject-are old in years and in thought. Many of us have chuckled over some such delightful bit from a freshman theme as this one quoted by a writer in the Atlantic Month­ly: "Although nearing thirty, she had something still of the spring of youth in her step." Against their better judgment, then, the instructor must convince his students. that he is young in spirit. They will never put it just that way, but they will admit, after a while, that he is not "hard­boiled,"-a very opprobrious term, that, in the vernacular of youth,-and in time they may even proclaim him a good sport. Beyond that praise, mortal teacher can not hope to go. Then it is he will have won his entrance to the stu­dents' confidence, the inner workings of their minds and hearts. After that his task may be accomplished by phe­nomenal patience, plus indefatigable energy, plus a sense of humor. If the instructor is of the type which, as mis­sionaries, would expect all of the heathen to be speedily con­verted, burn their idols, and live exemplary Christian lives ever after, he will not succeed. That is not the way of the heathen npr of the student of composition. Both are given to apostasy; both cling tenaciously to their graven images. One should have the missionary spirit of service, but he must not take himself too seriously; he must be able to smile at his own failures. And always, unrelentingly, he must work. I am tempted to say that unless he is more interested in his F students than in his A students the com­position teacher will not succeed. The F students are a bigger challenge to his powers, a bigger triumph when they are saved. The A people the average instructor can teach. Let us accept them as a gift from the kind fates, an antidote for too much of the. commonplace, perhaps, but remember that the F people are our real opportunity. 
The one important problem of the composition teacher, I have said, is making his students want to write. And the outstanding problem within that problem, you may accuse me of saying, is being born with the right gifts. Shall we :pot rather say it is testing ourselves, seeing what is lack­ing, cultivating the desired qualifications? It is the problem, then, of setting up and of attaining our ideals as teachers of composition. But, given all the innate power/3 any teacher should have, plus the acquired characteristics so es­sential in a teacher of English, we shall find baffling, specific problems upon whose solution depends our ultimate task, making the writing of themes natural and desirable. The primary object of a composition course, we say, is to teach the student to write clear, readable English. The average student does not do this. He can not write clearly because he cannot apply the principles he recites so glibly; he can not write readably because he has, or thinks he has, noth­ing to say. Our tasks are, then, to give our students more of the art, the actual doing, rather than science and ab­stract theories, and to lead them to a broader range of in­terests. And these ends may be attained by means of care­fully directed recitations, parallel reading, and theme-writ­ing. 
In the classroom we find innumerable evidences that the student is developing no thought power. The average stu­dent does not know how to study. He memorizes rules, recites them word for word, and thinks he has discharged his duty. He can tell you in detail the difference between exposition and description; yet if you assign an expository essay he will in all probability describe the thing he was asked to explain. The fault is largely ours. Too often we give quizzes that call for little more than a reproducing of text material. The student gets the idea that the object of the test is to find out how much he knows. He must give information. In a composition class there should be no question in an oral or a written quiz that can be answered solely from the text. Every question should demand some thought, some application on the part of the student. If the class is studying coherence and emphasis, the teacher should not ask how these principles are observed in the writing of 
a . theme. The question should be more specific : How would you secure coherence and emphasis in a paper on "Writing a Theme"? Students will answer glibly that they get coherence by arranging material in the chronologicai, simple-to-complex, or enumerative, order; emphasis by placing the most important points in the most important places, and by giving them most space. They will not think it worth while to say what those important points are. By careful questions they may be led to see that it is as absurd' to give all the possible orders of arrangement when only one is used as it would be in telling how to make biscuit, to give the general and irrelevant information that yeast, soda, and baking powder are used to make bread rise. They may be led to see the opportunity they missed, that of giving con" crete illustrations, referring definitely to the topic assigned. Questions and suggestions may result in some such outline as: choosing a subject, collecting material, planning or out­lining the essay, writing and revising it. The discovery follows that the chronological order is used. Then it will be easy to show the absurdity of getting emphasis by plac­ing the most important point last, when the important point 
(which is, as the teacher must lead them to see, planning the essay) must logically come before writing and revising. By such questions we may lead our students to realize that composition is an art rather than a science, that text ma­terial is worthless unless it is applied. 
But while we are developing the ability to think clearly we must not neglect that other problem of giving the stu­dent more to think about. We must convince our classes that a composition course touches life at many points. 
There is a tendency among students to pigeon-hole their English, to treat it as a thing peculiar to the English class, a thing to be folded away at other times like their Sunday clothes. It is salutary sometimes to find what our course connotes to our students. "What did you get," I asked a correspondence student, "from your study of rhetoric in the· high school? What is the purpose of rhetoric?" Her an­swer was: "Rhetoric is tarring up [and by the slip in spell­ing she spoke more suggestively than she realized] pieces. of literature.to see how they were written." Too often it is just that. And our so-called composition courses · are too often limited to the study of rhetoric. We might profit­ably dispense with a formal text-book in compositionclasses, but if we must use one, we should not limit our subject­matter to its pages. We should not lay out too definitely the text-book ground we must cover. We should make .our courses-flexible, broad in their range. How can we show our students the broadness of our field? Oral composition, that much abused, much debated hobby of late years, furnishes an opportunity. Where it is possible, each stu­dent should select a magazine which he is to read each month. He may comment briefly in class on the articles he found most interesting. Short reports may be assigned on. subjects that will acquaint students with present-day af-. fairs. The habit of reading the daily paper should be en­couraged. Students should be familiar with the names of rulers and ministers of other countries ; they should know something of foreign affairs, strikes, prison conditions, the little theatre; they should look up articles on folk lore, the development of A~rican Universities, political questions, prominent people of the day, poetry, moving pictures-the: greater the variety the better. · Out of this will come ma-· terial for themes. Out of it will grow the realization that English deals with life. Interesting, live discussions can not be over-estimated. They give an opportunity for the student's natural desire for self-expression, and from this oral comment it is but a step to expressing in a theme ideas that can not, for lack of time, be discussed in class. We 
may, of course, carry the practice to extremes, after the manner of the modern mother, who allows her child to destroy the furniture, on the grounds that she must not check interest and self-expression. But the skillful teacher does not fear digressions. He can relate practically any topic to the lesson, or he can swing the discussion back to the starting point. 
Thus through class work that stresses the concrete and that opens doors to great funds of vital, interesting ma­terial, we work toward our goals of leading our students to apply principles and of giving them material to which, in­cidentally, the principles may be applied. Parallel reading, less directly, less apparently, perhaps, but not less surely, achieves the same ends. · No composition course, for all the present-day insistence on practical value, on fitting stu­dents for business life, is worthy the name of an English course if it does not implant in the student a love of litera­ture, a love that finds expression in ea0ger, voluntary read­ing. All too frequently the student's attitude toward out­side reading is, to quote Mr. Chesterton, that of a man who wishes "to swallow a story like a pill that it should do him good afterward," rather than "to taste it like a glass of port that it might do him good at the time." For all their train­ing in the study of a classic, many students do not know how to read for fun. . At first, I think, no prospect of writ­ten reports should hang over the heads of the students. We should avoid the word report altogether and set aside cer­tain class and conference periods for the discussion of the books. It is well to begin with the ones likely to be most interesting. A student who is not fond of reading will find himself developing a certain proprietary interest in his book, a loyalty to it, a desire to make it appear at least as well as his neighbor's book. He will discover good points he had not seen before; some of his classmates may ask to read for their next assignment the book on which he has reported. But here a word of caution is needed. The teacher should encourage absolute sincerity. No student should get the idea that he is expected to say he likes a book, or that his dislike may affect his grade. The instruc­tor, of course, should supplement what has been said, subtly bringing out the fine points that are overlooked. One of the advantages of such a discussion is that it gives the student a definite idea of the things worth observing in a book. Plot, quite naturally, will be his first interest, but gradually he may be made to see the fineness of the characterization and the methods of portrayal used. Of. style, I think little should be said at first, though it is well to ask the students to read to the class passages that seemed to them fine or beautiful. The value of the book will, perhaps, be most dif­ficult to get at. A student's final estimate of a thing de­pends on whether it is pleasing or not, whether the char­acters are admirable or objectionable, whether the story ends happily. Through class discussions he may see, as in no other way, that the test is how well, how truly the writer has done the thing. "I didn't like a single one of the char­acters in Emma," one student may declare; "they are all so silly." And quickly from another student comes the pro­test: "But I know some people just like them. They are real folks." There will be students, too, in every class who help the instructor in leading the other students to see the absurdity of clinging to childish ideals of literature, of in­sistence upon fairy-tale endings. Written reports may come later, and as the student has learned from these dis­cussions a sense of values, an appreciation and enjoyment, his essay will be, not the mere summary that book reports are so likely to be, but a frank, natural expression of his opinion, of what he got from his reading. 
·1 cannot omit the problem of dealing with our students' requests for current novels as parallel. We make a serious mistake, I think, in excluding present-day books from our reading lists. .Literature is life, we teach our students­not past life, but life in the present as well, life in the mak­ing. They must not feel that literature is a finished thing, the production of men who are all dead. Many of the books we are asked to "count" as parallel are, of course, worth­
less or even harmful, but we gain nothing by telling a stu­dent bluntly that his favorite best-seller is sentimental trash. We arouse in him thus a prejudiGe against the literature we want him to like, and lose our opportunity. We should not let him count his selections (he will read them anyway) as parallel reading, it is true, but we need not tell him too plainly our reasons. We may ask him to read one of George Eliot's works and compare it with his present-day novel. It is possible, though the chances are against us, that we may be able to lead him to discover for himself the sentimentality, shallowness, and falseness of his book. It is well, too, to suggest as substitutes for the student's un­wise choice some of the best of present-day books. We should not fail to make up our reading list largely from the older classics, but we need not guard them too jealously against the claims of later fiction. A student who was reading Main Street a few years ago read next, at the teacher's suggestion, Vanity Fair, and made an interesting comparison of the two books as to purpose, method, beauty, and truth. 
I have tried to show that, while the contribution of out­side reading to the composition course is an indirect one, it is nevertheless a vital one. More than any other work of the course, perhaps, parallel reading contributes to the solution of our problem of giving our students deeper and fuller experience; hence the importance of giving them the right attitude toward reading, of developing their taste for the best. Meantime, it is our task to help the student dis­cover what he wants to write, as well as what he wants to read. He knows his own interests, of course, but it will not occur to him that they have any connection .with a theme. Jn conference-and the value of regular personal confer­ences cannot be overstressed-the teacher has his opportu­nity of knowing the students as individuals, of discovering their tastes and their hobbies. A boy, whether he plays or not, will enjoy discussing football. At a suggestion he will write on the game, on the qualities of a good player, or, perhaps, on the part the school plays in making a good 
team. The student interested in science will gladly write an account of a field trip or an experiment. The radio en­thusiast will be eager to tell something of his hobby. Most students are interested in "Some Improvements I Should Suggest for My Home Town." Character sketches have an :appeal if presented in the right way. "Suppose you were Dickens, or Thackeray, or Thomas Hardy," we may say to a student; "what person of your acquaintance would you put into your next book? Why? How would you do it? Write something about this character, showing his most interesting traits." "School Spirit" has a wide appeal. Students like to develop a paragraph from some such topic :sentence as: "College spirit deman_ds more of us than at­tending rallies and yelling at games." But it is not my purpose to furnish a list of theme subjects. Rather, I would illustrate what has already become a commonplace, that theme material must be related to studen.ts' lives. 'l'hat point is stressed in a recent text-book, one pasage of which I cannot refrain from quoting: "Forget that you -ever wrote a 'theme,' and ask yo'urself now: 'Should I like to write?' Of course you would-if you could. And you can. You have had, and you will have, some experiences that will not be repeated exactly" in any other life-that no one else can express exactly as you would express them. And the art of expressing what you have experienced, what you think, what you feel, and what you believe can be learned. 
"If you stop to consider the matter, you will realize that :self-expression is one of the laws of life.-Hence the more quickly you learn that successful self-expression is one of the greatest pleasures in life, the more readily you will be ·able to turn energy in the right direction, and the more fun you will get out of the process."2 
Students respond eagerly to the challenge of those words. Theme-writing takes on a new interest, their own experience a new importance and dignity. But even when we have 
2Manly, John Matthews and Rickert, Edith: The Writing of English, :pp. 3-4. 
made the student see the relation between his. experience and his themes, the problem is not completely solved. · On the question of subjects for essays we have two extremes among instructors-those who are accused, and perhaps justly, of trying to make writers of their students, and those who insist upon fitting people for practical life, for business life. In an article, "The Public Contacts of the English Teacher," in a recent issue of the English Journal,3 Mr. J. 
W. Searson of Nebraska stresses very forcibly the practical aims of the composition course. Teachers should make as­signments, he says, that bring their classes into contact with labor, thrift, savings. They l:}hould visit bakeries, blacksmith shops, and factories. Students should be asked to write on what they would do to improve their business or to increase returns if they were proprietors of moving picture theatres, confectioners, bank presidents, milliners, bakers, traffic policemen. The practical value of such as­signments is obvious; Mr. Searson nowhere implies, how­ever, that business efficiency is the sole objective, that we should stop with the practical, the utilitarian. And yet there are some teachers to whom this is all of fitting stu­dents for life. Improving business, increasing returns! One is tempted to cry out in the words of Markheim to the dealer: "A hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, Man, is that all?" "Make the student say what he means," demands the business world. Make him say what he means-yes. But make him mean more. 
A broad, fine conception of our aim is that of Professor Hibbard, quoted by Mr. Charles Robert Gaston in an article, "Pegasus and Kit," in the English Journal for February, 1923. "The fundamental purpose of English," Professor Hibbard says, "is life-interpretation of life, the relation of the student to life, and a revelation of what a student may do with life."4 Our theme subjects, then, should call for something more than mere putting together of facts. They should make some appeal to the imagination. They 
3The English Journal, Vol. XII, pp. 450-459. 
4The English Journal, Vol. XII, p. 92. · 

should develop iri the student the ability to see the signifi­cance of the finer, deeper things about him. A writer in the Atla,ntic Monthly some years ago, in a clever little essay, "The Daily Theme Eye," said of the cultivation of this power: "It has clothed the daily walk with interest, the teeming, noisy town with color and beauty." He learned to watch for and treasure incidents that were sharply dra­matic or poignant. He found in the surroundings of his life "a heightened picturesqueness, a constant wonder, an added significance." Suppose our students are going to be clerks, farmers, real estate agents. Will they be poorer clerks and farmers and agents for developing imagination, spiritual resources, thus adding to the pictures for "that inward eye which is the bliss," not only of solitude, but of drudgery and drab hours? Despite the accusations of bankers and managers of business concerns that our Eng­lish fails to function in practical life, despite the criticism that we are trying to train writers, I insist that all this is a vital part of the composition course. Is the music teacher trying to train all her students to be great musicians? I;S she failing to prepare a girl for practical life when she trains her to love and appreciate music? Is the teacher of literature failing? Is the student to believe that all the revelations of truth and beauty are reserved for the great and the wise? Are they all embodied in literature? Is there not something left for him-not to put into literature, but to discover for himself, to feel, and enjoy, and try to express? I refuse to accept as my goal merely giving a stu­dent the ability to write clear, well-organized, accurate Eng­lish, though even that goal I often fail to reach. Unless I make life richer for him, train his eye to read the fine print in nature, I fail. Unless I arouse in him the power to inter­pret life, to discover beauty and spiritual significance in the commonplace, I fail. I refuse to be satisfied with training only for clear thinking. Somehow I must train for th~ understanding heart as well. 
But while I am training him thus, I need not neglect the practical side. The need for training in clear thinking, in 
University of Texas Bulletin 
organization, is unlimited, and every piece of written work affords opportunities for such training. There is the out­line, usually regarded by the student as a device of the evil one. It must be a part of every piece of writing. It may lose some of its dark mystery if the students work out in class a composite outline for some simple theme which they later develop from it. As they outline the specimens from their texts, too, they may learn, to their surprise, that the plan is not an arbitrary thing, but a logical, natural stage of construction. Outlining in class should awaken in stu­dents at least a pleasure or interest comparable to that familiar one of taking a mechanical toy or a clock to pieces to see how it was put together. And meantime, it is wise, now and then, to ask for a copy of the outline for a theme before that theme is written; to give a conference on this outline; to revise it, and make it a better guide for the stu­dent's use. 
On matters of form we have two extremes. There are instructors who stress accuracy of spelling, punctuation, and grammar until, in this age of complexes, we may say that they have a mechanics complex. And there are others -more dangerous, perhaps-of the sentimental type, who insist that attention to formal matters kills originality. I said more dangerous, because originality is not often snuffed out by insistence on good form, whereas much slovenliness of thinking and writing results from a lofty disdain for these matters. "If my theme sounds as if it were carved out of granite," wrote a talented, but careless young stu­dent who took offens.e at my comments on the form of her paper, "attribute it, please, to the fact that I am devoting all my time to commma blunders and fragmentary sen­tences." But her theme did not have the carved-granite sound, and her pride in the victory she won that year over bad habits in mechanics was second only to her joy in say­ing a thing well. We may, it is true, stress matters of form until we give our students a distaste for them. There is a warning worth heeding in this protest from a college student in one of my classes a few years ago : "If you in­
The English Bulletin 
vited me to dinner and served dried beans with every course, 
should not accept any more of your invitations. Too much punctuation and parsing are the driest of dried beans." But usually, I think, the student's attitude toward matters of form is a reflection of the teacher's. Too many instructors admit, if not by word, at least by manner, that they consider the teaching of mechanics monotonous drudg­ery. We should not assume an apologetic air when we teach punctuation, grammar, and sentence structure, but should make our students feel · that there is a dignity in conforming to good standards. The real logic, the prac­tical, time-saving value of punctuation we shouid strive to make apparent. Many of the student's mistakes are due, of course, not to ignorance but to haste and carelessness, the habit of handing in the first draft of a theme, It is a good plan to ask that the first draft be submitted with the finished theme, and to compare the two in conference. . The student, against his will, perhaps, is proud of the difference between them, proud of his increasing ability to correct his errors. I suppose it is unnecessary to say that the teacher should never make corrections for the students. He should call attention by marginal comments to all errors, and then require the student to correct these errors in writing and bring the paper to conference. His corrections are fre­quently worse than the original error, but after the attempt he is in a more receptive attitude toward the teacher's sug­gestions. 
On the matter of style I have little to say. Clearness, of course, is the first objective. A wider range of words, the use of the specific rather than the general term, variety of sentence structure, smoothness-these the instructor may emphasize. Spontaneity, humor, grace~ and rhythm we should encourage, but not overstress. Development of the ability to appreciate good style, to realize that a thing is well said, comes often from the reading of themes in class. No work of a great writer can so inspire a student to try to write effectively as can a pleasing paper written by some one no older, no more experienced than himself. He may tell you blusteringly that of course he couldn't write any­thing as good as that, but you know that in his secret heart he believes he can-and means to try. Informal essays, more than any other form of composition, perhaps, awaken an appreciation of spontaneity, of pleasing expression. "After studying this volume of Atlantic Monthly essays," wrote one of my usually matter-of-fact students, "my thoughts are like ponies that have been pasturing on pep­per grass." I pass over the authenticity of her implication as to the effect of pepper grass on ponies; it is of little im­portance as compared to the freshness of the thought and its expression. The instructor should be on the alert to note even slight improvement in style and to commend a thing forcibly or gracefully said, if only one short phrase in a dull paper. He should demand no more of his students than the proverbial clearness, but in his heart he should hope for­and expect-more. 
He will read many papers, of course, that are neither forceful nor clear, but he must not indulge in self-pity as he surveys the stack of themes. He must not let his students get the idea that, as in their grammar~school days, "the teacher gets kep' in too." His attitude toward themes will in the end be their attitude. His promptness in returning papers will be taken by his students as an indication that he could scarcely wait to read what they have written. His criticisms, too-and every paper returned should bear a written comment,-are a great factor in arousing in the student an attitude of interest and pride in his theme. They should be sympathetic; they must be genuine, and yet -seeming paradox-they must, on every honest effort, sound some note of praise. If they are piquant and fresh, so much the better. Sometimes it may be necessary to startle a student by a sharp criticism, but such comment as the famous classic attributed to a professor in the Univer­sity of Chicago, though merited by students who are wast­ing time in an advanced elective, should be sparingly used with young students. I can not refrain from quoting it as an example of what one should not write on high-school and freshman themes. Said the heartless professor : "Your vocabulary is mean and poor, but amply sufficient for the expression of your ideas." 
I said in the beginning that the biggest problem in the teaching of composition was making OlLr students want to write themes-in other words, making theme-writing a natural and pleasurable task. I did not say an easy task. The attitude I have tried to stress is not the ostentatious "0-Let-Us-Be-Joyful"-which too often means the elimina­tion of all real labor. It is not the attitude of those victims of coddling, for whom the composition course must be made pleasant, even at the sacrifice of all real purpose. It is not the result of sugar-coating or disguising work. Rather, it is the attitude of one who works hard, and knows that he is working. It is that rarest and finest of pleasures-the joy of doing a difficult, but worth-while, thing. If a lad in a manual-training course comes from the machine shop, his face alight with pride in the cedar chest or the table he has made; if a girl in home economics is aglow with joy over the making of a dress or a loaf of bread, I refuse to belleve that we cannot bring to that same boy or girl a kindred glow of pride in a pi~ce of written work well done. To believe it would be to resign myself to the all too gen­eral assumption that the urge for expression, for creation, in the human heart finds expression in the material rather than in the spiritual. 
THE MINIMUM OF LINGUISTIC TRAINING NECES­

SARY FOR HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS 
OF ENGLISH* 

BY MISS HALLIE D. WALKER, Teacher of Journalism and Business English, 
NORTH DALLAS HIGH SCHOOL 
One who has left the beaten track of traditional English for Business English and Journalism may seem an inap­propriate one to·discuss this question, and perhaps if the chairman of the English Section had not known me in the days when I trod the ''traditional English paths," he would not have chosen me to talk to you about the minimum lin­guistic requirements for teachers of English ; for he might have expes::ted me to say that Latin and Greek and Anglo­Saxon are unnecessary luxuries in this day when we are trying to get the child ready for his place in the business world. 
However, the thing that the vocational "crank" is trying to do is not so far removed from the thing the "dyed-in-the­wool" classicist is trying to do, and since I am a kind of combination of these two extremes, the ideas I have to sug­gest will probably not be so very different from yours after all. 
In the first place, of course, the educator, vocational or cultural, is trying to develop the child, and unless he can do this, his efforts are useless. You cannot teach a child even how to do manual labor intelligently unless you teach him to think. 
The chief thing we are trying to do in English work is to help the student express himself .. Of course, we are try­ing to teach him to love literature-a point that I shall touch upon a little later-but to inspire him to put his own thoughts into words, simple though the thoughts may be 
*Paper read before the English Section of the Texas State Teachers' Association at Fort Worth, November 30, 1923. 
and crude though the first efforts at expression may prove, is a greater thing even than to teach hi~ to read what other men have written. I have found that the child tries harder to express himself through the work in Journalism than through the traditional English work because it gives him a thrill to see his work in print. I have found, too, that his greatest deficiency in self-expression is due to lim­itations of vocabulary, and probably all of you who teach English find the same thing. Ward-school students, high­school students, college students-all use over and over again the same limited vocabulary. Their productions have an insipid flavor, largely because they lack vivid, concrete terms in which to clothe their thoughts. Some educators object to the requiring of the learning of new words and call it mere parrot work, but, as George Herbert Palmer says in "Self-Cultivation in Engli~h," we cannot learn new words withou:t gaining new ideas. Wholesome vocabulary drill, the right kind of word study, is one of the most stim­ulating forms of work a teacher can devise. Those of you who have sat in one of Miss Roberta Lavender's classes or have heard her talk about etymology know just how vivid and stimulating this word study can be. 
Even for the appreciation of literature one needs to study words. I would not go so far as Ruskin goes· in Sesame and Lilies when he insists upon tracing every word back to the orjginal Greek or Hebrew in irder to get the meaning of a passage in Milton's Lycidas, but is not his policy a better one than that of those modern pedagogues who call any in­telligent, intensive study of an English classic "picking the poem or the play to pieces" and who advocate a kind of ~'hitting the ground in high places" in the reading of litera­ture? The plea that the child should read good literature chiefly to learn to enjoy good books is all right, but how is he going to get the highest form of enjoyment out of what he does not really understand? 
Our language is, as we all know, made up of many dif­ferent elements. The ideal teacher of English must know something at first hand of several of these languages, for if he does not, how can he develop in himself the language feeling that is so necessary for the one who is to write or to teach others how to write, to interpret literature or to teach others to interpret literature? 
I should say, then, that the teacher of English should have at least two years of college Latin (after three or more years of preparatory Latin in a secondary , school), two years of Greek in college (probably beginning Greek in col­lege), and two years of historical English (Old English and Middle English). I might also suggest two years of a modern language, but I realize that I have already checked off six out of the twenty courses leading to the B.A. degree and that you will probably remind me of the fact that a prospective English teacher should take also a few courses in English literature, in History, and so on. 
Let us consider, first, the question of Latin. Has it not been your experience as a teacher of English that the child who has had even a year of Latin can be picked out in an English class? He can reason out the meanings of words of Latin derivations, whereas the student who has had no Latin has to run to the dictionary every time he meets a new word. If this is true of students, it is true of teachers; those with a good foreign language foundation can better stimulate to word study those who have had no foreign language work 
Some, as I have already said, object to intensive work in the study of English and call it hair-splittlng, but surely there is nothing that develops accuracy of thought and clearness of expression more than does the intensive study of words. "Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle." Once get a child fired with zeal for learning new words, and his attitude toward his work is changed. His zeal may lead him to extremes like that of the freshman college girl who wrote on a theme, "Wind and rain are the usual concomitants of such weather," but he is on the road to better things. And it is through the study of the Latin element of our language that much of the help in vocabulary building is to come. 
The study of Latin, too, has given to many a person a clearer idea of English grammar than he had before. Many a student gets to college without knowing the difference be­tween a clause and a phrase, a participle and an infinitive, and while probably there are not many English teachers in Texas in this sad condition, no English teacher is going to be hurt by too good an understanding of grammar. That the pedagogical reaction against the study of English gram­mar has been a great mistake is the earnest conviction both of many English teachers and of many foreign language in­structors. 
So far I have been speaking of the value of Latin. Un­fortunately, I have myself had no courses in Greek, though I am aware of the benefits that have come to many from the study of Greek. I quote a short article taken from the Chicago Daily News. (These articles from which this is taken were not written from the professional standpoint but were sent in by people in all walks of life. They have been reprinted by the American Classical League.) The article reads as follows : 
Why Study Greek? 
The question never presents itself to a boy or girl, "Shall I study Latin or Greek?" It comes in the form, "Shall I study Latin and Greek?" If you have time or opportunity for only one of the classical languages your choice will naturally be for the Latin. But the reasons for studying Greek are essentially the same as those for studying Latin. Latin gives you a lot of good things. Greek gives you some more. While the reasons are ·the same, they apply with varying force to the two languages, as I shall now try to show. 
1. 
Greek, like Latin, is a help in understanding the structure of English sentences. This is true of Greek for the same reason that it is true of Latin, and, I believe, in an equal degree. 

2. 
Greek, like Latin, is a help in learning and remem­bering the meanings (and shades of meanings) of many English words. English has not borrowed so many words 


from Greek as from Latin, but it has borrowed a consider­able number. The borrowing from Greek is of later date. (Here the writer gives examples of words like analyze, syn­tax, politics, athletics, etc.) 
3. 
Greek, like Latin, is a help in spelling. In the list of 100 frequently misspelled words, which I have previously mentioned, fourteen are Greek. The laws of euphony­"pleasing sound"-in Greek are rather strict, and certain combinations of letters are always required by the Greek. When these combinations have been learned, the spelling of words of Greek derivation is not difficult. 

4. 
And now the real reason-mental stimulus, culture, enjoyment. I have said that much of the world of ancient Greece comes to us through the Latin. It does, but it comes at second hand. The Greek literature is just as well worth having at first hand as is the Latin. Some of these pleasures must wait for your maturer years, but you must make the beginning of your journey toward them in your youth. In philosophy, in poetry, in history, in oratory, Greece has furnished some of the greatest names of all time. 


In the third place, the teacher of English should know something of Old English and of the changes which took place in our language that developed Old English into Mid­dle English and Middle English into Modern. There is much in the development of our grammar (the shuffling off of inflectional forms, for instance), and of our vocabulary that is clearer after a study of Old English and Middle English. Chaucer's and Milton's yclept becomes intelligible when one recognizes y as the natural outgrowth of the Old English ge-, the prefix of the past participle. The sym­bol "Y," commonly miscalled "y" in such expressions as "Ye olden times" and "Ye house beautiful," is more intelligible when understood as the Old English thorn (th) ; and many . speeches in Shakespeare make better sense when we know the older meaning of some words. For example, in King Lear when Shakespeare has Edgar, posing as crazy Tom, say, 
"But mice and rats, and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for seven long year." 
he is not intending the speech as part of Tom's craziness­at least not his use ·of the word deer, for the Anglo-Saxon deor meant animal, and it was only in later years that it came to be limited to one special kind of animal. Shake­speare was only going back to an older use of the word. One might multiply such examples, but that is not neces­sary. 
If in your college work you had no courses in Old English, let me make a plea with you to take some of this work in the next summer school you attend, for you will find that the study of our earlier language has far more bearing upon present-day life than you had dreamed. 
One point I have neglected which ought not to be passed over, and that is the value to the teacher of English litera­ture of a first hand knowledge of world masterpieces in other languages. Those of you who have read the Aeneid in the original, those of you who have studied Cicero and Horace, have a knowledge of Latin that no translation could possibly give you. Those of you who have read the Iliad and the Odyssey in the original or have studied Beowulf have a breadth of feeling for literature that will enable you better to teach English literature. Just as we cultivate a language sense, we must cultivate a literature sense, and we cannot do this merely by reading our own present-day literature any more than we can be socially as broad as we ought to be if we know riobody except the people who live on our own street. To be a real teacher of English, one must be, in his humble way, a real scholar; and a thorough study on the part of prospective English teachers of as many languages as they can take in their college life will fill our English classrooms with those who will begin to build real scholarship for the coming generation.