The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1896-10-13

The teacher of the Elementary Eng
lish class did his duty right well, and
l was not surprised to hear that he had
the largest mixed school in the Islands
and was one of the most successful
teachers. His method of teaching gram
mar, and the method generally, is q
decided advance upon the old system
inasmuch as a free use is made of the
/ blackboard instead of relying so much
upon book learning. His method, too
of teaching writing was excellent; but
this was his own idea and not obtained
from any formulated method.
In the Primary Reading class the
| lady teachers heart was evidently in
her work. Her advice to the pupils
was of the abstract value, but her in
structions, it struck me, were not the
outcome of a formulated method. They
were simply the result of her own OBJ
! servation.
! The teacher for this class, on an
other occasion, had not arrived, so the
! Director undertook the duty. Through
out the sum and substance of his re-
marks was, Get at the thought" This
was all very we'll for a man who was
unexpectedly called upon to take a
class. | looked upon it as so much
padding, and that he would have done
very much better had he prepared him
self. But when he the next morning
hammered away on the same theme, 1
naturally asked myself, What amount
of thought is to be got at from the
baby sentences of the dog barked,
the cat mewed,' and the COW Jumped
over the moon'?" 1t would have been
infinitely more to the point to give
the pupils lessons in reading. There
are remarkably few good oral read
ers Oral reading has been sadly neg
lected in the past, and the new schools
apparently make no better provision
for it's teaching.
Now for the new books. Take the
grammar in use at the high grade
schools English Grammar and Com
position" by Swinton. The author or
compiler claims it to be a great ad-
vance upon the old style. 1t is an adj
vance only in hair-splitting classical
ton This our friends the Yankees
apparently revel in and carry to an
absurd extent. The author pulverizes
the language into atoms and then en-
deavors to find rules for each inf1nit-
esimal particle. l mentioned this TO
+
mer school, and he said:
Yes, it is like breaking an arm off
Minerva in order to discover the beau
ties of the statue
| look upon the work as literary
curiosity. 1t is excellent for philo-
logists, but philologists are the few.
grammar is required for the many.
How many adults, apart from teachers,
remember even the simpler rules of
grammar? What need, then, of this
endless and tedious classification
myself learned from "Allen and Corn
wallis English Grammar book about
one-fourth the bulk of the more pre-
tentious tome embodying the new
method. [ find in perusing the new
grammar that it does not assist me to
write or speak any better English than
l learned under the old system.
On one occasion I listened for lit
tie while to a gentleman who was
teaching the English Grammar class.
He had written on the blackboard, L
am that person" He wished to know
whether the word person" was in the
first person or the third His own idea
was that it was in the third person,
but one of the teachers thought it was
in the first person. The teacher of the
class then wrote another short SEN
tence to further illustrate his mean
ing, and finally he wrote Il am he"
This proved his point beyond all quib-
BILE. From his own statement this
question had cropped up at the pre-
vious meeting of the class. 1t had
therefore exercised the minds of tea
cher and pupils through portions of
two lessons
But after all. does it matter the f1ut-
ter of a fan whether that person be
deemed to be in the first person or the
third? No rule of grammar is hiring
ed. 1t is only the ever-tedious CLASH
fication that is at stake
Next as to the new aids-the lectures.