ENGLISH AS WE WRITE IT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 273, 15 September 1944, Page 8

ENGLISH AS WE WRITE IT

"We Should Look to Other Sources Than, Just The Schools For The Causes of Decline’’-Says

DR.

K. J.

SHEEN

in this article for "The Listener"

EADERS of the daily papers will have observed the ripples of controversy spreading on the subject of education. The secondary schools were in it from the beginning: they had an old quarrel with the authorities over their salaries, a quarrel which dates from pre-war days. The primary service was quickly involved: it bore within it the seed of strife~- the New Educationalready in some circles scarcely to be mentioned without blasphemy. The headmasters' of the private schools have recently opened what promises to be a heavy raid of leaflets. The Church has not been slow to raise its voice. I have no figures, but a strong impression that (in the newspapers) the percentage of space devoted to education is rising. John Citizen is beginning to prick up his ears. Even — and this is what prompted this article-the university is clearing its throat and preparing to have its say. : The latest speaker is Professor J. Rutherford, of the Department of History, Auckland University College. His remarks, however, are not concerned so much with history, as with the reading and writing of English and with intellectual’ standards in New Zealand students generally. The professor minces no words: he speaks "trumpet-tongued." Roughly one-quarter of his History I. class of 147 students are, he says, "illiterate in the-sense that they cannot write English sentences reasonably clear in meaning and reasonably correct in grammar and spelling, such as would be required in the Sixth Standard. Pupils have not been taught at school to read accurately and profitably, and the average capacity for clear, relevant thought is remarkably low." These comments have also been publicly approved by Professor J. R. Elder, the retiring Professor of History at Otago. The professors have opened a rich field of argument. We are all interested to some degree in our own language. We ate its users, its moulders and makers: if we are not teachers of it, we have at least all been taught it, We like to think, also, that we are a literate nation, and it comes as a shock that so many of those who should be our elect are classed as illiterate. We can, of course, dismiss these remarks as intemperate or dyspeptic, but a distinct uneasiness re mains. Before we gird ourselves, then, to destroy the wretched secondary school teachers, who seem the immediate authors of all this, or to drive out the Director of Education, or to purge primary school and kindergarten, it would be well to scrutinise our social conscience a little more narrowly and allot responsibility where it is due. Anxiety About Cultural Standards The very first thing to observe is Nhat anxiety about cultural standards,

and recognition of the decline in ability to use, understand, and appreciate our own’ tongue, is far from being confined to New Zealand. This fact alone would put us on our guard against any specificially local cure, E. G. Biaggini, in his book, English in Australia, issued in 1933 by the Australian Council for Educational Research, has this to say on this very point: : "Merely to say then that this is the outcome of wrong methods of teaching by teachers unfitted for their work would be a false and extravagant assertion; rather does it seem more reasonable to conclude that these ways of thought are so general that their roots run deep in the ordinary mind and that there they are continually nourished by. prevailing social influences, To tax the teacher alone with a general sin, would, I think, be most unfair, and a proper share of blame must be placed on the shoulders of the parent, the parson, the public man, and the Press." (Add "radio and cinema"-K.J.S.). "It is true, perhaps, that a teaching genius could effect wonders, but if a part of the function of the normal schoolmaster is to overcome a host of surrounding evil influences, and to undo in a few hours what less enlightened people have done in many, it is altogether too much to expect from him, and he is engaged in a losing battle. And in a civilised world, at any rate, this is as it should be;’for the business of the teacher is to develop and not to impose a culture. If this proper state of things is reversed and ‘culture becomes a class-room rather than a social product, we shall get from the school prigs rather than gentlemen, pedants rather than cultivated men. A language is a living thing, and those who speak English best invariably learn it in private life." Practical Tests Biaggini’s book and the succeeding volume The Reading and Writing of

English (1936) deserve to be read by anyone interested in this problem, if only because they substitute for hasty impressions and unsupported assertions a carefully documented survey over at least one portion of the field-the exercise of discrimination and taste in reading. Since they come from ‘our closest neighbours, they are necessarily of particular value, and the state of affairs they disclose in Australia in the city of Blankville could easily be paralleled in New Zealand. The author himself says: "There is no reason to suppose that towns in the other British Dominions, or in the United States of America, or in England itself, would make a better showing." The method adopted by Biaggini was to submit representative passages of English, good and ‘bad, and ask a wide range of "students to select the better passages, and to comment on their selection. The group, which included university students in their second and third years, commerce students (first and second years), training college students, and schoolboys, totalled over 200. The tests vary in degree of difficulty but are usually exceedingly simple, involving a "comparison of good literature with absurdity." Further, use is made of the English material offered ‘by advertising and the Press, so that the tests are not strictly literary. This is all to the good. As F. R. Leavis says of Biaggini’s work: "Its peculiar virtue is that it starts at so unpretentious a level. The distinctions of value represented. by his groups of passages will hardly be questioned either by his ‘intelligent layman’ or by the sophisticated sceptic who argues with Arnold Bennett that ‘taste is still relative.’ " The extracts given are too long t* quote satisfactorily, but the results are interesting and at times surprising. In general they confirm all that any critic of English among students could say. University students fare-no better than the other groups and, indeed, of them all it is the whining schoolboy with his satchel who comes off the best. This last fact is again a very clear indication that we should look to other sources than just the schools for the causes of decline in English. Biaggini warns us specifically against expecting miracles even if improvements were made in the existing teaching methods ' of English: f "Were emsting repressions in present teaching methods removed, there is no implication that a cultural millennium would follow. To remove repressions is good, but it is a negative rather than a positive process, and were it done, it would produce improvements rather than work miracles. Genius and ability can work within, or if need be, defy any (continued on next page)

(continued from, previous page) discipline, an¢d we have to guard against attributing our troubles to the imperfections of a system rather than the limitations of* the individuals who work within it. Had Shakepeare or Bunyan been given a standard modern education, it could not at the very worst have done more than warp their genius: in the same way, if we took the wise step of putting Miss Wilhelmina Stitch in Bedford gaol and giving her only the Bible to read, she could never be expected to produce a modern Pilgrim’s Progress." Teachers Can’t Do Everything In attempting to remedy the state of affairs, we need much more than the school teacher’s efforts. It is clear that the community as a whole is affected. Cultural interests generally, are being ignored. Not just one Austfalian investigator bears witness to it, but a great body of testimony through the Englishspeaking world. One may mention such books are the Lynds’ Middletown, Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public I, A. Richards’s Practical Criticism, F R. Leavis and D. Thompson’s Culture and Environment, D. Thompson’s Reading and Discrimination. Scientifically and mechanically the’ standards of our civilisation are high and tending all the time to become higher; culturally and ‘emotionally, our standards, as reflected | in our literature and use of language are low and tending to become lower. To discugs and account for. this is beyond the scope of this article, but the evidence of it is omnipresent: readers of The Listener have only to refer to the articles by Joad and C. Day Lewis in the number of August 25 this year. d What is to be done? Should we perhaps incarcerate not only Miss Stitch but also a representative selection of editors, preachers, politicians, radio announcers, and film producers? Should we arrest and shoot as hostages a group of parents and teachers to encourage the others? It scarcely seems profitable. Certainly we have long to wait for democracy’s slumbering conscience to awaken. "There was perhaps never such an age as this in which so many unreflective people were so complacent." It may be- it is almost probable — that things must become worse before the} begin to be better. But meanwhile, the reflective minority must not be defeatist, but must speak out. To quote Biaggini for a last time: "Our general social environment is increasingly hostile to culture: in the circumstances, nothing else can be done than to make a frontal attack onthe evils that beset us."

To conclude, let me make one or two suggestions where the schools and universities in their teaching of English could, help (for the school and the teacher are not powerless). In the teaching of English, teachers should be bold enough to go outside the classroom and textbook to the community about them. They should take their examples not just from literary classics, but from the newspaper, the periodical, the film and the radio. They should not hesitate to discuss what is vicious and corrupt ‘in modern English. "No man can embrace True Art until he has explored and cast out False Art," said Blake, and the maxim that a pupil should see only good literary models in school while he is surrounded with corrupt suggestions outside, is sheer nonsense,

Secondly, I would make a plea for the introduction of a greater intellectual content into our English teaching. Many of our teachers who realise that teaching English is something more than teaching grammar,

spelling and punctuation, are nevertheless wasting their own and their pupils’ time by pursuing the will o’ the wisp of the imagination. The ability to write poetry or imaginative prose is rare; it is very little susceptible of being taught and, if present, it is not easily suppressed. To judge by the gruesome results achieved, I fear our teachers equate the imaginative with the whimsical. ‘Lamb has much to answer for in our schools. Instead, we must have more writing of a direct and. tealistic nature, based on the life about the pupil, on which he can write with knowledge end sincerity. We cannot have too much analysis of the ‘true meaning and rational content of statements, Let us spread ag love of reading, but at the same time teach a rational discrimination, : i