The sun., 1919-07-20
ON CLIPPING WINGS: ENGLISH"


cine man of American letters, but once in a
while his concoction went to the spot. We are
thinking at this moment of his observation that
young people who set out to become authors seldom
achieve anything in authorship The main thing
we hold against the home school combination a
wing clipper is that it encourages, if it doesn in
culcate, this purpose at the very start.
In grammar school, as we tried to illustrate here
week ago, the child with unusual aptitude for ex-
pressing himself on paper is likely to take some
harm from injudicious appreciation. In grammar
school, however, they have not yet begun specif-
cally to teach him how to write Spelling and gram
mar both altogether desirable about the extent
of curriculum interpostion in his writing destiny.
The next stage of Writer'S Progress such as
a HoGARTH might linn is high or preparatory
school Here begins our national organized effort
at quantity production of litterateurs
To call the English courses such an effort
would probably be resented by the educators who
devise the courses They would protest that nothing
is further from their aim, that all they seek Is to
provide the student with a command of language
and an elementary acquaintance with good htera-
ture, which every one ought to have, whatever his
trade or profession is to be.
The Mill.
But what does it come TO in practicei 1t comes
to the discussion and dissection of series of war
horse classics. 1t comes, or came in our time 1--WE
understand that leaven is now at work. to
singularly useless year of rhetoric, which is the
botanizng of admired styles including such out OF
style ones as ADD1soNs and MAcAULAY's. 1t comes
to picking out the Topic Sentence and the Transi-
tional Word; to telling the story of Sir Rogers
courtship or the landing Treasure Island in your
own way-as if the original way had not been
fairly adequate to the job; to a certain amount OF
telling your own material in your own way, subject
to blue pencil that will duly mark Bad Diction or
Redundancy or Fine Writing 1--WE have known
it to occur) Pathetic Fallacy to the manhandling
of one or two poets from the standpoint of prosody,
and the maltreatment of certain plays by col
laborator in text book making whose name was
WILLIAM SHAKEsPEARE; finally, perhaps, to the
taking apart and putting together of an ancient
and honorable Grafton by EDMUND BURKE.
That last item may be valuable mental discipline
(anything toilsome and souless is valuable mental
disciplined, and presumably does furnish exercise
for youthful logical faculties. But what is EUCLID
for, in another branch of the curriculum 49,.
We are not out to nveigh against the public edu-
cational system generally particularly. That can
be left to Prof. DEWEY and the hundred-handed
Mr. WELLS Indeed, after demonstrating that the
common system of teaching English" runs young
persons through wringer well calculated to
squeeze all the English out of them, could,
on a bet reverse our engine and reel off quite an
argument to the effect that weak literary turn
does man or woman more harm than good, and
that anything which fosters te elimination Of the
literary unfit is blessing to society.
Teaching How to Write.
But hang society! All we are interested in inst
now is the relatively minor fraction of it which
wants and hopes to write and will continue to want
and hope no matter what you do. Whatever the
cultural purpose behind the high school course in
English, the performance Except the SHAKEs-
PEARE part, which is sort of heavy religious OBJ
servance) is one steady drive at one definite objec
tive-to make the student see how ADDISON and
MACAULAY and LOWELL did it, and get him doing
likewise. The whole, business, and the subsequent
business in liberal arts college, is founded on the