Yerington times. [volume] (Yerington, Nev.) 1907-1932, 1915-04-17
ENGLISH IN THE
LYON COUNTY
HIGH SCHOOL

and parent should read. III describes
what the high school is doing for your
bows and girls, and should influence
the parent into taking the greatest OF
interest in the school, informing them
selves as to the studies, object OF
such, etc. Much good comes to the
scholar when the parent shows an IN
terest in that scholars course OF IN
struction:
The language of any people has,
from time immemorial, been one oil
the strongest influences toward weld
ing the interests of that people to-
eether and preserving unIiled, un
broken course in its history. we ma
exneriments in the history of the past,
that have been tried, in which foreign
rulers or nations attempted to take
away a peoples language and to sub
stitute the foreigners tongue; but, In
such cases, after long and severe
struggle, the mother tongue would
eventually win. William the Norman
made such an attempt upon the Eng
lish or AnglS Saxon tongue. Alter
century or more, however, OF con
fict. the Norman French, although a
large infusion of that tongue had come
to stay, practically disappeared and the
Anglo-Saxon prevailed. 1t is this
tongue that still prevails and that is
being used by more and more people
the world over, and its literature that
we are to consider in this article. The
study OF this mother tongue OF ours
is one of the noblest and most repay
ing subjects we can pursue. EmDod-
led in our literature we find veritaDie
mine of the richest ore-the ore OF
truth and knowledge. Since we study
literature in high school for definite
purposes. it will not be amiss to let
some of those aims be known In the
first place. literary study like Ivan
hoe" or "Silas Mariner" furnishes the
student with an enlarged vocabulary
AS well as insight into the correct ways
of using vocabulary Consequently
n large part of the time is devoted to
word-study, which includes such prac-
teal training as the defining and the
spelling OF unfamiliar words, and then
following up this work with hndln2
their correct usage in ACTUAL sentences.
Can anyone doubt the value and the
necessity of the students early acquir-
ing a vocabulary? Is it not the expert
ence of us all that we are unable at
times to find the right word? To be
poverty-stricken in the ability to por-
tray in suitable words the thoughts
we wish TO express? This kind OF lit
erary-vocabulary- study will, however,
meet this need eventually. we are
told that there are about two hundred
and fifty thousand words in the Eng
Ish language and that by the time
person is eighteen years OF age, he
should have command of three or tour
thousand words. Though this number
seems small yet most of our young
neople do not actually reach even this
standard. And yet it is desirable that
they should know more than the tour
thousand limit, in view of the two
hundred and fifty thousand summit,
But the acquisition OF vocabulary,
important and necessary though 1t Is,
is not the paramount interest IN the
study of literature. An ancient writer
once said Know thysclf," and litera-
nOSSlDlD
The young person, or the old, ma
himself. his deepest feelings. and his
highest aspirations all faithfully por-
trayed in the people of the story The
student finds himself-sees mrrored
forth to him the ideal he wishes to
attain; he also sees in a new light the
beginning of the habits and of char
acter that he should avoid and that he
may already have begun in his own
life Literature thus becomes the
strongest source of conscious charac-
building that the young person
can seek. Here also he finds another
interest scarcely less in its value and
possibly greater than any other. 1t is
the world of people he comes in con
tact with--people OF the world, people
of past ages, people of today, the no.
BILE, the true the good, the frivolous.
the evil-mnded, the deceitful-all real
people, yet ideal in their own peculiar
sense and province, people whom the
student will surely meet in the world,
everywhere. For the true author does
not create impossible types in his
books, but types founded on truthful
adherence to nature. The danger to
young people is that they may read
books by authors that write the inn
possible kind of fiction, the sensational,
the ultra-romantc, or the ideal that is