THE TEACHING Of ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1533, 31 August 1912, Page 9

THE TEACHING Of ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P., delivered an iddress on English literature at y=lent Imperial Conference of Teachers Asosiations at Caxton Hall,' Westminster; le said that' theiWvement'i'or-thesa conerencesliad its origin in,ip,'when.it-wJ(S lis good ,-liich every university of thcTSmpire was. epresented. 110 liad his own views about he teaching of English literature. He dm tot believe that knowledge, information, i-ithout something else, was of very much alue. Knowledge and'information joined to human sense '-which' was abl-a effectively to pply that knowledge and information was ho indispensable thing. .They must have hem nil combined. Separately they got irigs and potentates. The wide view, was verythi ng. He had been engaged in li ter■ture all his life —he would not say'with n undeserved success, but with a consulting desire to make his life-work worthy ot .ho thing itself,. He believed there was a noment ■when that love of work was m lauger bv the fact that when lie passed an.■semination .at a certain university m inglisli literature lie received 18 per cent.,fhich was below the necessary 50 per cent if marks required to pass .the examination. ;Ie also got 90.per cent.: in mathematics, lie was absolutely certain that tlie 90 per 'ent. was wholly undeserved in niathenatics, and he was equally convinced that, he 48 per cent, was wholly undeserved li English literature. When jjj» paper :ame lie received it with joy. lucre was nothing he could not answer, and ho was lever happier in his life. He wrote-freely m<l expressed himself concerning Coleridge, Gray, Browning, and Shakespearcle had no doubt with the pride of eighteen, vnd the certainty of eighteen. But there ivas a point of view in what he did. He might have boen wrong, but the examiner should have recognised the fact that there was a man who cared enough about tlic thing to express his own views and r.c wrong. That liad a very -powerful euect upon hint. He sometimes now in his sleep dreamed of the shock he got when lie was awarded -18 per cent, ill English literature. "I never knew who the examiner was," said Sir Gilbert, "but I will stake my life on it that if I met him to-day I should find him just what. I thought him. then." If there 'was one thing he would say to those, who were responsible fcr the guidance of the young it was: "Do not think that your own particular idol, who-' ther it be Buskin or Newman, Carlvle or Ella Wheeler Wilcox, is the only idol that cught to be worshipped. If you find a boy or-girl with an instinct for an author, no : matter how bad or popular—and there is a. point of. proximity in'the two facts—always remember that the chirl' thing'is that the boy. or girl shall have an opinion of his or her own about the tiling." He would; rather have a boy learn tlw sentimental lines of "The old avm chair" aud,feel he cared for it, if it were not high poetry— iiot so high as "Samson Agonistes"—than caTe for nothing at all. Upon this, one of the leading' newspapers had the following comment:- . "A small, perhaps, but ?elect company of young students of English literature will" be grateful to Sir Gilbert Parkc-r for his remarks verterday on the tcachin. 1 ;- of English literature. Ho was speaking to the Impjrial Conference of Teachers' Associations, and he suggested that modern methods had changed for the better. But it is, wo believe, still true that in some examinations knowledge find understandill" of English literature will not save a student from being ploughed in that subject if it is sullied by independent judgment or individual views. Sir Gilbert Parker-, himself, we arc told, had exactly this experience in his youth; he is apparently still sore about it. The trouble is that a sort of mandarin learning tends■ to settle on English literature when it is badly .taught and turns it into a subject about as stimulating to the mind ius tho collection of postage stamps or cigarette pictures. Badly taught, it accumulates a' minute dryasdtist lore of small facts and allusions, and, worse still, it has settled exactly the relationship ot every writer to every other writei, his indebtedness to every influence, and exactly what tho student ought to think about him. The whole thing could be learnod by heart by anyone with a jood memory without reading a single line of finglish literature except the l }«strative quotations. Now any lntolleetunl youth who takes a real interest in English literature is pretty sure to be a stage or two away from orthodoxy and the textbooks. Revolt and ieonoclasm arc the characteristics of youth, and tliev can only be sunoressed at the price pf hypocrisy Either a young student must bo allowed to give his own judgments, however immature, so long as he gives a good account of them and shows knowledge and thought, or else he-must be coerced into falsehoods and insincerities which sicken his soul. There is no doubt which is the sound educational coarse. Of course we w-nuld n(it fce understood to mean that all English literature .teaching and examinations are of the type Sir Gilbert Parker attacked. Well taught, it has the greatest value as a true education of the mind.

But there are still to,'ichors antl examiners who have to learn that their lore must stand >ii> to the assault of youth and not dodgo it, and on that account wo think Sir Gilbert I'nrkcr has ilono a service to tho teaching of English literature by his outspokenness."