The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-02-15
Time for Reading.
school children and college students now
adays is this:

one OF the cOInlnOHest TtIldEhS udue Ny
! school children and college students now
| adays is this:
''oh, don't have any time to read.'
1t is a significant remark when one
comes to think of it, and the significance
is not to be lost sight of. Most people in
the rush of affairs necessary to mature
life-can truthfully say that they have lit
tie leisure for reading, but if there are
books an acquaintance with which is
necessary to culture. they certainly can
be read by the young who are supposed
to be engaged in gaining that culture. IL
the regular curriculum of our educational
institutions is eating up the time of the
students so that they can really find OPP
portunity for no outside reading, there
ought TO be reform
The great men of the last three hundred
years have begun their education, almost
without exception in miscellaneous read
ing. Some of them omnivorously de-
voured whatever they could get hold of;
others were addicted to some one depart
ment of literature; but nearly all were
readers in their youth. and absorbed, dur
ing the formative years o; their lives, the
masterpieces of the worlds literature.
This is one of the most valuable means of
education that can be devised. What
country boy, grown to manhood and busy
in his Office or at his library desk, will
ever forget the magical hours spent in the
haymow or under an apple tree with
THE Arabian Nights" Don Quixo;e,"
1lxn har ytpDp tod
from the family book case when nobody
was looking? What girl will exchange for
any school room drill the memory of sum
mer afternoons and winter evenings in
the company of Ivanhoe. Romola, or the
folk Of King Arthur's court? Some of the
older readers of this generation, talking
with girls and boys of high school age,
find TO their dismay and sorrow that these
young people regard the reading of Scott,
Dickens, and all the poets as a school
room task, to be lodged whenever posi-
BILE; and they wonder whether children
are different nowadays, or whether the
associations of drudgery and unsympa-
thetic comment have spoiled for these
youngsters the masterpieces of the world.
1t is hard to keep much reverence for
Hanlet's soliloquy' when it brings up the
picture of a stupid grammar school boy
trying TO parse 1t; and when bewildered
head has puzzled over the construction of
THE Lady of the Lake" at an age when
1t was impossible TO understand either
construction or poem, the imagination
lodged in that same head is not likely TO
be kindled in after life by the vision of
SCOTS heroine, or By the music of the
the theatre has done a most important
work for this generation: it has preserved,
for the imaginative youth of the land,
certain fascination in Shakespeare which
is well-nigh destroyed by the cold blooded
analysis and discussion to which some
people subject him. 1t is time for the pub
lie to understand that there is no earthly
sake of culture, unless one is interested in
it. How, for example, can woman all OF
whose ideas are bounded by the church
strawberry festival and the spring house
cleaning b. supposed to understand the
passionate, violent, half-savage character
of that Highland tribeswoman, Lady Mac
beth?
The education OF today is sort of Pro-
crustean bed. The teacher is supposed,
by some supernatural power. to inculcate
Just much love of literature, and no
more, in the mind of each child. Thus a
superficial knowledge of the various great
authors of all time is hammered into the
heads OF children whose literary ideal is
the supplement of a New York yellow
journal, while those who are, by nature
or inheritance, fitted to delight in all lit
erature, have no time or opportunity to
revel in it. II this is true in the lower
schools tits even more true OF the colleges |
For bookish youth. the very best educa-
ton possible is to turn him loose in
library and let him forage. The mind
which is awake and craving fer knowledge
will get at it or starve; what is needed is
intelligent guidance. not examining or
compulsion.