The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-09

obserVant child, he'd have a prett.
 hard time, for he wouldn't have any
 body to blame for everything. ."-Chica
 go Post.
 Point of View.--Duffer-The favorit
 in the third race yesterday fell In tht
 stretch, and the jockey was instantl!
 killed.
 Buffer-Horrible!
 Duffer-I should say it was horrible
 Why, I had $15 on the horse to win.-
 Chicago News.
 FRESHMAN ENGLISH AT HAIR
 YARD.
 A real human document is new
 book by couple of Harvard instruc.
 tors of freshmen in which the public Is
 permitted to see what freshmen actu-
 ally know of the art of expression. With obvious candor these teachers
 have put the phenomena of the class
 room on exhibition. One purpose is
 to show what manner of training in
 accuracy of speech young men get at American preparatory schools, and how
 Harvard tries to meet the deplorable
 condition. The exhibit is of much in-
 terest as showing how slight as yet is the conception held by most prepara- tory teachers of the need of true seeing, ! straight thinking and exact speech as l the basis of education.
 | Style and skill are too much to ex- pect, under the most favorable con- ditions. from young men of eighteen. But there is an inexcuEable lame method apparent when boy, who has been studying his mother tongue for ten years or more, is actually able to go to college with such clumsiness of express sion as IS betrayed in this book. A college boy who can write of a woman's "noze" and "cheaks," of a mans whit and humer,' Is unfort- unately not a freak In any freshman class in any American university. It Is incredible how such spoilers can squeeze their way through the entrance examinations. That they are not re- manded back to study their spelling book shows a weakness on the part of complacence on the part of the teachers of secondary schools.
 But the responsibility for the out rageous spelling of boys in New York state lies at the door of the State Board of Regents. They have the making of the standard, If the annual Regents examinations in our grammar schools were more searching in spelling, our teachers would not be so content to scamp that branch for the sake of an enriched" grammar school course. One fanciful If attractive branh after another has been added in our gram mar schools till the teachers In depair say that they simply cannot get the moments needful to teach spelling with the old fashioned rigidity. That our youth in college are able to rival the seventeenth century in the irregularity of their spelled words is shameful fraility in American education. Their splendid maturity of mind in other di- rections does not compensate for this want of bottom precision
 The daily themes which the Harvard freshman is required to write and to present to his instructor reveal also, in general, painful and monumental habit of inaccuracy in telling things.
 Inaccuracy of expression Is here the sure mark of careless seeing and sleepy thinking. A boy who has passed the high force course in English and then is able in a theme to make sentences which by their structure tell strange if involuntary untruths may charge his mendacity to his former teacher, For it is the first business of teacher of English composition to teach a pupil to observe correctly and to record his impressions truthfully.
 To go back another step, it Is the leading duty of teacher of grammar to make @ pupil comprehend that the aim of grammar is to enable us to tell the truth. We suspect that the diff culty is that very few elementary and teachers comprehend that themselves. If they did see this ethical side of language study, the daily gram mar lessons might stride along with animated interest and our American youth might have bit of reverence for the words that proceed from their mouths as the responsible signs of the inner things.
 This moral essential in the study of | language involves no larger effort on the teachers part To challenge pu piTs statement that, ''when one goes hunting they should have a good gun," as conveying an untruth, takes no more time than to correct it lifelessly as being ungrammatical; and it has the | advantage of enabling the pupil to see how he should have challenged 1t him. | self by the most familiar and primitive 
 This Harvard document also evinces | much that is hopeful It presents | ], succession of facsimile freshman | themes adorned with the instructors | criticisms; and these are followed by | he rewritten versions of the same | hemes by the same students. The | criticisms, some scathing. some droll | md some encouraging, are all geared ! 0 throw the student back into his own l nind to inspire him to disentangle his ,wn confusion, and to get right express ion by the use of his own rudimentary | rood sense These written versions | how how readily boy is able to re- 1 pond to demand for self-regulation n his written speech. In the happy common sense of this method of turn ng a boy to explore his own mental averns and to make charts thereof, 1t s possible to discover how so many |