The Project Gutenberg Etext of Novel and School by C. D. Warner
#27 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.
Please do not remove this.
This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
need about what they can legally do with the texts.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below, including for donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
Title: The Novel and the Common School
Author: Charles Dudley Warner
Release Date: March, 2002 [Etext #3123]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[The actual date this file first posted = 01/16/01]
[Last modified date = 11/26/01]
Edition: 11
Language: English
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Novel and School by Charles D. Warner
********This file should be named cwnsc11.txt or cwnsc11.zip********
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, cwnsc12.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, cwnsc11a.txt
This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
the official publication date.
Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.
Most people start at our sites at:
http://gutenberg.net
http://promo.net/pg
Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03
or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
We need your donations more than ever!
As of 10/28/01 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico,
New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont,
Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming
We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states. Please feel
free to ask to check the status of your state.
In answer to various questions we have received on this:
We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork
to legally request donations in all 50 states. If
your state is not listed and you would like to know
if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.
While we cannot solicit donations from people in
states where we are not yet registered, we know
of no prohibition against accepting donations
from donors in these states who approach us with
an offer to donate.
International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.
All donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum
extent permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
additional states.
We need your donations more than ever!
You can get up to date donation information at:
http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
***
If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:
Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
We would prefer to send you information by email.
***
Example command-line FTP session:
ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
**The Legal Small Print**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to
let us know your plans and to work out the details.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.
The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com
[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
software or any other related product without express permission.]
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL
By Charles Dudley Warner
There has been a great improvement in the physical condition of the
people of the United States within two generations. This is more
noticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere;
and the foreign traveler who once detected a race deterioration, which he
attributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety,
which was evident in all classes, for a rapid change of condition, finds
very little now to sustain his theory. Although the restless energy
continues, the mixed race in America has certainly changed physically for
the better. Speaking generally, the contours of face and form are more
rounded. The change is most marked in regions once noted for leanness,
angularity, and sallowness of complexion, but throughout the country the
types of physical manhood are more numerous; and if women of rare and
exceptional beauty are not more numerous, no doubt the average of
comeliness and beauty has been raised. Thus far, the increase of beauty
due to better development has not been at the expense of delicacy of
complexion and of line, as it has been in some European countries.
Physical well-being is almost entirely a matter of nutrition. Something
is due in our case to the accumulation of money, to the decrease in an
increasing number of our population of the daily anxiety about food and
clothes, to more leisure; but abundant and better-prepared food is the
direct agency in our physical change. Good food is not only more
abundant and more widely distributed than it was two generations ago,
but it is to be had in immeasurably greater variety. No other people
existing, or that ever did exist, could command such a variety of edible
products for daily consumption as the mass of the American people
habitually use today. In consequence they have the opportunity of being
better nourished than any other people ever were. If they are not better
nourished, it is because their food is badly prepared. Whenever we find,
either in New England or in the South, a community ill-favored,
dyspeptic, lean, and faded in complexion, we may be perfectly sure that
its cooking is bad, and that it is too ignorant of the laws of health to
procure that variety of food which is so easily obtainable. People who
still diet on sodden pie and the products of the frying-pan of the
pioneer, and then, in order to promote digestion, attempt to imitate the
patient cow by masticating some elastic and fragrant gum, are doing very
little to bring in that universal physical health or beauty which is the
natural heritage of our opportunity.
Now, what is the relation of our intellectual development to this
physical improvement? It will be said that the general intelligence is
raised, that the habit of reading is much more widespread, and that the
increase of books, periodicals, and newspapers shows a greater mental
activity than existed formerly. It will also be said that the
opportunity for education was never before so nearly universal. If it is
not yet true everywhere that all children must go to school, it is true
that all may go to school free of cost. Without doubt, also, great
advance has been made in American scholarship, in specialized learning
and investigation; that is to say, the proportion of scholars of the
first rank in literature and in science is much larger to the population
than a generation ago.
But what is the relation of our general intellectual life to popular
education? Or, in other words, what effect is popular education having
upon the general intellectual habit and taste? There are two ways of
testing this. One is by observing whether the mass of minds is better
trained and disciplined than formerly, less liable to delusions, better
able to detect fallacies, more logical, and less likely to be led away by
novelties in speculation, or by theories that are unsupported by historic
evidence or that are contradicted by a knowledge of human nature. If we
were tempted to pursue this test, we should be forced to note the seeming
anomaly of a scientific age peculiarly credulous; the ease with which any
charlatan finds followers; the common readiness to fall in with any
theory of progress which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept the
wildest notions of social reorganization. We should be obliged to note
also, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to come to
conclusions on inadequate evidence--a disposition usually due to one-
sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the philosophic
habit. Multitudes of fairly intelligent people are afloat without any
base-line of thought to which they can refer new suggestions; just as
many politicians are floundering about for want of an apprehension of the
Constitution of the United States and of the historic development of
society. An honest acceptance of the law of gravitation would banish
many popular delusions; a comprehension that something cannot be made out
of nothing would dispose of others; and the application of the ordinary
principles of evidence, such as men require to establish a title to
property, would end most of the remaining. How far is our popular
education, which we have now enjoyed for two full generations,
responsible for this state of mind? If it has not encouraged it, has it
done much to correct it?
The other test of popular education is in the kind of reading sought and
enjoyed by the majority of the American people. As the greater part of
this reading is admitted to be fiction, we have before us the relation of
the novel to the common school. As the common school is our universal
method of education, and the novels most in demand are those least worthy
to be read, we may consider this subject in two aspects:
the encouragement, by neglect or by teaching, of the taste that demands
this kind of fiction, and the tendency of the novel to become what this
taste demands.
Before considering the common school, however, we have to notice a
phenomenon in letters--namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper as a
vehicle for general reading-matter. Not content with giving the news,
or even with creating news and increasing its sensational character,
it grasps at the wider field of supplying reading material for the
million, usurping the place of books and to a large extent of
periodicals. The effect of this new departure in journalism is beginning
to attract attention. An increasing number of people read nothing except
the newspapers. Consequently, they get little except scraps and bits; no
subject is considered thoroughly or exhaustively; and they are furnished
with not much more than the small change for superficial conversation.
The habit of excessive newspaper reading, in which a great variety of
topics is inadequately treated, has a curious effect on the mind. It
becomes demoralized, gradually loses the power of concentration or of
continuous thought, and even loses the inclination to read the long
articles which the newspaper prints. The eye catches a thousand things,
but is detained by no one. Variety, which in limitations is wholesome in
literary as well as in physical diet, creates dyspepsia when it is
excessive, and when the literary viands are badly cooked and badly served
the evil is increased. The mind loses the power of discrimination, the
taste is lowered, and the appetite becomes diseased. The effect of this
scrappy, desultory reading is bad enough when the hashed compound
selected is tolerably good. It becomes a very serious matter when the
reading itself is vapid, frivolous, or bad. The responsibility of
selecting the mental food for millions of people is serious. When, in
the last century, in England, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Information, which accomplished so much good, was organized, this
responsibility was felt, and competent hands prepared the popular books
and pamphlets that were cheap in price and widely diffused. Now, it
happens that a hundred thousand people, perhaps a million in some cases,
surrender the right of the all-important selection of the food for their
minds to some unknown and irresponsible person whose business it is to
choose the miscellaneous reading-matter for a particular newspaper. His
or her taste may be good, or it may be immature and vicious; it may be
used simply to create a sensation; and yet the million of readers get
nothing except what this one person chooses they shall read. It is an
astonishing abdication of individual preference. Day after day, Sunday
after Sunday, they read only what this unknown person selects for them.
Instead of going to the library and cultivating their own tastes, and
pursuing some subject that will increase their mental vigor and add to
their permanent stock of thought, they fritter away their time upon a
hash of literature chopped up for them by a person possibly very unfit
even to make good hash. The mere statement of this surrender of one's
judgment of what shall be his intellectual life is alarming.
But the modern newspaper is no doubt a natural evolution in our social
life. As everything has a cause, it would be worth while to inquire
whether the encyclopaedic newspaper is in response to a demand, to a
taste created by our common schools. Or, to put the question in another
form, does the system of education in our common schools give the pupils
a taste for good literature or much power of discrimination? Do they
come out of school with the habit of continuous reading, of reading
books, or only of picking up scraps in the newspapers, as they might
snatch a hasty meal at a lunch-counter? What, in short, do the schools
contribute to the creation of a taste for good literature?
Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about the modern novel. It is
feared that it will not be realistic enough, that it will be too
realistic, that it will be insincere as to the common aspects of life,
that it will not sufficiently idealize life to keep itself within the
limits of true art. But while the critics are busy saying what the novel
should be, and attacking or defending the fiction of the previous age,
the novel obeys pretty well the laws of its era, and in many ways,
especially in the variety of its development, represents the time.
Regarded simply as a work of art, it may be said that the novel should be
an expression of the genius of its writer conscientiously applied to a
study of the facts of life and of human nature, with little reference to
the audience. Perhaps the great works of art that have endured have been
so composed. We may say, for example, that "Don Quixote" had to create
its sympathetic audience. But, on the other hand, works of art worthy
the name are sometimes produced to suit a demand and to please a taste
already created. A great deal of what passes for literature in these
days is in this category of supply to suit the demand, and perhaps it can
be said of this generation more fitly than of any other that the novel
seeks to hit the popular taste; having become a means of livelihood, it
must sell in order to be profitable to the producer, and in order to sell
it must be what the reading public want. The demand and sale are widely
taken as the criterion of excellence, or they are at least sufficient
encouragement of further work on the line of the success. This criterion
is accepted by the publisher, whose business it is to supply a demand.
The conscientious publisher asks two questions: Is the book good? and
Will it sell? The publisher without a conscience asks only one question:
Will the book sell? The reflex influence of this upon authors is
immediately felt.
The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational, and worthless for any
purpose of intellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thus
encouraged in this age as it never was before. The making of novels has
become a process of manufacture. Usually, after the fashion of the silk-
weavers of Lyons, they are made for the central establishment on
individual looms at home; but if demand for the sort of goods furnished
at present continues, there is no reason why they should not be produced,
even more cheaply than they are now, in great factories, where there can
be division of labor and economy of talent. The shoal of English novels
conscientiously reviewed every seventh day in the London weeklies would
preserve their present character and gain in firmness of texture if they
were made by machinery. One has only to mark what sort of novels reach
the largest sale and are most called for in the circulating libraries,
to gauge pretty accurately the public taste, and to measure the influence
of this taste upon modern production. With the exception of the novel
now and then which touches some religious problem or some socialistic
speculation or uneasiness, or is a special freak of sensationalism, the
novels which suit the greatest number of readers are those which move in
a plane of absolute mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to be
considered works of art. They represent the chromo stage of development.
They must be cheap. The almost universal habit of reading is a mark of
this age--nowhere else so conspicuous as in America; and considering the
training of this comparatively new reading public, it is natural that it
should insist upon cheapness of material, and that it should require
quality less than quantity. It is a note of our general intellectual
development that cheapness in literature is almost as much insisted on by
the rich as by the poor. The taste for a good book has not kept pace
with the taste for a good dinner, and multitudes who have commendable
judgment about the table would think it a piece of extravagance to pay as
much for a book as for a dinner, and would be ashamed to smoke a cigar
that cost less than a novel. Indeed, we seem to be as yet far away from
the appreciation of the truth that what we put into the mind is as
important to our well-being as what we put into the stomach.
No doubt there are more people capable of appreciating a good book, and
there are more good books read, in this age, than in any previous, though
the ratio of good judges to the number who read is less; but we are
considering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say
its tastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling,
restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the reading
selected in the newspapers, what is most peristently thrust upon its
attention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable to
deal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish
books of merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies.
Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse of
superficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention,
any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity of
individual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfect
government. But this is not saying that the common school does all that
it can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It must
be partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools that
there are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general taste,
judged by the sort of books now read, is so mediocre. Most of the public
schools teach reading, or have taught it, so poorly that the scholars who
come from them cannot read easily; hence they must have spice, and blood,
and vice to stimulate them, just as a man who has lost taste peppers his
food. We need not agree with those who say that there is no merit
whatever in the mere ability to read; nor, on the other hand, can we join
those who say that the art of reading will pretty surely encourage a
taste for the nobler kind of reading, and that the habit of reading trash
will by-and-by lead the reader to better things. As a matter of
experience, the reader of the namby-pamby does not acquire an appetite
for anything more virile, and the reader of the sensational requires
constantly more highly flavored viands. Nor is it reasonable to expect
good taste to be recovered by an indulgence in bad taste.
What, then, does the common school usually do for literary taste?
Generally there is no thought about it. It is not in the minds of the
majority of teachers, even if they possess it themselves. The business
is to teach the pupils to read; how they shall use the art of reading is
little considered. If we examine the reading-books from the lowest grade
to the highest, we shall find that their object is to teach words, not
literature. The lower-grade books are commonly inane (I will not say
childish, for that is a libel on the open minds of children) beyond
description. There is an impression that advanced readers have improved
much in quality within a few years, and doubtless some of them do contain
specimens of better literature than their predecessors. But they are on
the old plan, which must be radically modified or entirely cast aside,
and doubtless will be when the new method is comprehended, and teachers
are well enough furnished to cut loose from the machine. We may say that
to learn how to read, and not what to read, is confessedly the object of
these books; but even this object is not attained. There is an endeavor
to teach how to call the words of a reading-book, but not to teach how to
read; for reading involves, certainly for the older scholars, the
combination of known words to form new ideas. This is lacking. The
taste for good literature is not developed; the habit of continuous
pursuit of a subject, with comprehension of its relations, is not
acquired; and no conception is gained of the entirety of literature or
its importance to human life. Consequently, there is no power of
judgment or faculty of discrimination.
Now, this radical defect can be easily remedied if the school authorities
only clearly apprehend one truth, and that is that the minds of children
of tender age can be as readily interested and permanently interested in
good literature as in the dreary feebleness of the juvenile reader. The
mind of the ordinary child should not be judged by the mind that produces
stuff of this sort: "Little Jimmy had a little white pig." "Did the
little pig know Jimmy?" "Yes, the little pig knew Jimmy, and would come
when he called." "How did little Jimmy know his pig from the other
little pigs?" "By the twist in his tail." ("Children," asks the
teacher, "what is the meaning of 'twist'?") "Jimmy liked to stride the
little pig's back." "Would the little pig let him?" "Yes, when he was
absorbed eating his dinner." ("Children, what is the meaning of
'absorbed'?") And so on.
This intellectual exercise is, perhaps, read to children who have not got
far enough in "word-building" to read themselves about little Jimmy and
his absorbed pig. It may be continued, together with word-learning,
until the children are able to say (is it reading?) the entire volume of
this precious stuff. To what end? The children are only languidly
interested; their minds are not awakened; the imagination is not appealed
to; they have learned nothing, except probably some new words, which are
learned as signs. Often children have only one book even of this sort,
at which they are kept until they learn it through by heart, and they
have been heard to "read" it with the book bottom side up or shut! All
these books cultivate inattention and intellectual vacancy. They are--
the best of them--only reading exercises; and reading is not perceived to
have any sort of value. The child is not taught to think, and not a step
is taken in informing him of his relation to the world about him. His
education is not begun.
Now it happens that children go on with this sort of reading and the
ordinary text-books through the grades of the district school into the
high school, and come to the ages of seventeen and eighteen without the
least conception of literature, or of art, or of the continuity of the
relations of history; are ignorant of the great names which illuminate
the ages; have never heard of Socrates, or of Phidias, or of Titian; do
not know whether Franklin was an Englishman or an American; would be
puzzled to say whether it was Ben Franklin or Ben Jonson who invented
lightning--think it was Ben Somebody; cannot tell whether they lived
before or after Christ, and indeed never have thought that anything
happened before the time of Christ; do not know who was on the throne of
Spain when Columbus discovered America--and so on. These are not
imagined instances. The children referred to are in good circumstances
and have had fairly intelligent associations, but their education has
been intrusted to the schools. They know nothing except their text-
books, and they know these simply for the purpose of examination. Such
pupils come to the age of eighteen with not only no taste for the best
reading, for the reading of books, but without the ability to be
interested even in fiction of the first class, because it is full of
allusions that convey nothing to their minds. The stories they read,
if they read at all--the novels, so called, that they have been brought
up on--are the diluted and feeble fictions that flood the country, and
that scarcely rise above the intellectual level of Jimmy and the absorbed
pig.
It has been demonstrated by experiment that it is as easy to begin with
good literature as with the sort of reading described. It makes little
difference where the beginning is made. Any good book, any real book,
is an open door into the wide field of literature; that is to say,
of history--that is to say, of interest in the entire human race. Read
to children of tender years, the same day, the story of Jimmy and a Greek
myth, or an episode from the "Odyssey," or any genuine bit of human
nature and life; and ask the children next day which they wish to hear
again. Almost all of them will call for the repetition of the real
thing, the verity of which they recognize, and which has appealed to
their imaginations. But this is not all. If the subject is a Greek
myth, they speedily come to comprehend its meaning, and by the aid of the
teacher to trace its development elsewhere, to understand its historic
significance, to have the mind filled with images of beauty, and wonder.
Is it the Homeric story of Nausicaa? What a picture! How speedily Greek
history opens to the mind! How readily the children acquire knowledge of
the great historic names, and see how their deeds and their thoughts are
related to our deeds and our thoughts! It is as easy to know about
Socrates as about Franklin and General Grant. Having the mind open to
other times and to the significance of great men in history, how much
more clearly they comprehend Franklin and Grant and Lincoln! Nor is this
all. The young mind is open to noble thoughts, to high conceptions;
it follows by association easily along the historic and literary line;
and not only do great names and fine pieces of literature become
familiar, but the meaning of the continual life in the world begins to be
apprehended. This is not at all a fancy sketch. The writer has seen the
whole assembly of pupils in a school of six hundred, of all the eight
grades, intelligently interested in a talk which contained classical and
literary allusions that would have been incomprehensible to an ordinary
school brought up on the ordinary readers and text-books.
But the reading need not be confined to the classics nor to the master-
pieces of literature. Natural history--generally the most fascinating of
subjects--can be taught; interest in flowers and trees and birds and the
habits of animals can be awakened by reading the essays of literary men
on these topics as they never can be by the dry text-books. The point I
wish to make is that real literature for the young, literature which is
almost absolutely neglected in the public schools, except in a scrappy
way as a reading exercise, is the best open door to the development of
the mind and to knowledge of all sorts. The unfolding of a Greek myth
leads directly to art, to love of beauty, to knowledge of history, to an
understanding of ourselves. But whatever the beginning is, whether a
classic myth, a Homeric epic, a play of Sophocles, the story of the life
and death of Socrates, a mediaeval legend, or any genuine piece of
literature from the time of Virgil down to our own, it may not so much
matter (except that it is better to begin with the ancients in order to
gain a proper perspective)whatever the beginning is, it should be the
best literature. The best is not too good for the youngest child.
Simplicity, which commonly characterizes greatness, is of course
essential. But never was a greater mistake made than in thinking that a
youthful mind needs watering with the slops ordinarily fed to it. Even
children in the kindergarten are eager for Whittier's "Barefoot Boy" and
Longfellow's "Hiawatha." It requires, I repeat, little more pains to
create a good taste in reading than a bad taste.
It would seem that in the complete organization of the public schools all
education of the pupil is turned over to them as it was not formerly, and
it is possible that in the stress of text-book education there is no time
for reading at home. The competent teachers contend not merely with the
difficulty of the lack of books and the deficiencies of those in use, but
with the more serious difficulty of the erroneous ideas of the function
of text-books. They will cease to be a commercial commodity of so much
value as now when teachers teach. If it is true that there is no time
for reading at home, we can account for the deplorable lack of taste in
the great mass of the reading public educated at the common schools; and
we can see exactly what the remedy should be--namely, the teaching of the
literature at the beginning of school life, and following it up broadly
and intelligently during the whole school period. It will not crowd out
anything else, because it underlies everything. After many years of
perversion and neglect, to take up the study of literature in a
comprehensive text-book, as if it were to be learned--like arithmetic,
is a ludicrous proceeding. This, is not teaching literature nor giving
the scholar a love of good reading. It is merely stuffing the mind with
names and dates, which are not seen to have any relation to present life,
and which speedily fade out of the mind. The love of literature is not
to be attained in this way, nor in any way except by reading the best
literature.
The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, and
learned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the most
farcical in our scheme of education. It is only matched in absurdity by
the other current idea, that literature is something separate and apart
from general knowledge. Here is the whole body of accumulated thought
and experience of all the ages, which indeed forms our present life and
explains it, existing partly in tradition and training, but more largely
in books; and most teachers think, and most pupils are led to believe,
that this most important former of the mind, maker of character, and
guide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out of a
textbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come up to
college almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and of
the ideas that have made our civilization. Some of them have never read
a book, except the text-books on the specialties in which they have
prepared themselves for examination. We have a saying concerning people
whose minds appear to be made up of dry, isolated facts, that they have
no atmosphere. Well, literature is the atmosphere. In it we live, and
move, and have our being, intellectually. The first lesson read to, or
read by, the child should begin to put him in relation with the world and
the thought of the world. This cannot be done except by the living
teacher. No text-book, no one reading-book or series of reading-books,
will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally delivered,
the teacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our notions of the
function of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to present
evidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it? Why, in
experimental science, if you please, in history, but, in short, in good
literature, using the word in its broadest sense. The object in
selecting reading for children is to make it impossible for them to see
any evidence except the best. That is the teacher's business, and how
few understand their business! How few are educated! In the best
literature we find truth about the world, about human nature; and hence,
if children read that, they read what their experience will verify. I am
told that publishers are largely at fault for the quality of the reading
used in schools--that schools would gladly receive the good literature if
they could get it. But I do not know, in this case, how much the demand
has to do with the supply. I am certain, however, that educated teachers
would use only the best means for forming the minds and enlightening the
understanding of their pupils. It must be kept in mind that reading,
silent reading done by the scholar, is not learning signs and calling
words; it is getting thought. If children are to get thought, they
should be served with the best--that which will not only be true, but
appeal so naturally to their minds that they will prefer it to all meaner
stuff. If it is true that children cannot acquire this taste at home--
and it is true for the vast majority of American children--then it must
be given in the public schools. To give it is not to interrupt the
acquisition of other knowledge; it is literally to open the door to all
knowledge.
When this truth is recognized in the common schools, and literature is
given its proper place, not only for the development of the mind, but as
the most easily-opened door to history, art, science, general
intelligence, we shall see the taste of the reading public in the United
States undergo a mighty change: It will not care for the fiction it likes
at present, and which does little more than enfeeble its powers; and then
there can be no doubt that fiction will rise to supply the demand for
something better. When the trash does not sell, the trash will not be
produced, and those who are only capable of supplying the present demand
will perhaps find a more useful occupation. It will be again evident
that literature is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers and
patient training. When people know how to read, authors will need to
know how to write.
In all other pursuits we carefully study the relation of supply to
demand. Why not in literature? Formerly, when readers were
comparatively few, and were of a class that had leisure and the
opportunity of cultivating the taste, books were generally written for
this class, and aimed at its real or supposed capacities. If the age was
coarse in speech or specially affected in manner, the books followed the
lead given by the demand; but, coarse or affected, they had the quality
of art demanded by the best existing cultivation. Naturally, when the
art of reading is acquired by the great mass of the people, whose taste
has not been cultivated, the supply for this increased demand will, more
or less, follow the level of its intelligence. After our civil war there
was a patriotic desire to commemorate the heroic sacrifices of our
soldiers in monuments, and the deeds of our great captains in statues.
This noble desire was not usually accompanied by artistic discrimination,
and the land is filled with monuments and statues which express the
gratitude of the people. The coming age may wish to replace them by
images and structures which will express gratitude and patriotism in a
higher because more artistic form. In the matter of art the development
is distinctly reflex. The exhibition of works of genius will slowly
instruct and elevate the popular taste, and in time the cultivated
popular taste will reject mediocrity and demand better things. Only a
little while ago few people in the United States knew how to draw, and
only a few could tell good drawing from bad. To realize the change that
has taken place, we have only to recall the illustrations in books,
magazines, and comic newspapers of less than a quarter of a century ago.
Foreign travel, foreign study, and the importation of works of art (still
blindly restricted by the American Congress) were the lessons that began
to work a change. Now, in all our large towns, and even in hundreds of
villages, there are well-established art schools; in the greater cities,
unions and associations, under the guidance of skillful artists, where
five or six hundred young men and women are diligently, day and night,
learning the rudiments of art. The result is already apparent.
Excellent drawing is seen in illustrations for books and magazines, in
the satirical and comic publications, even in the advertisements and
theatrical posters. At our present rate of progress, the drawings in all
our amusing weeklies will soon be as good as those in the 'Fliegende
Blatter.' The change is marvelous; and the popular taste has so improved
that it would not be profitable to go back to the ill-drawn illustrations
of twenty years ago. But as to fiction, even if the writers of it were
all trained in it as an art, it is not so easy to lift the public taste
to their artistic level. The best supply in this case will only very
slowly affect the quality of the demand. When the poor novel sells
vastly better than the good novel, the poor will be produced to supply
the demand, the general taste will be still further lowered, and the
power of discrimination fade out more and more. What is true of the
novel is true of all other literature. Taste for it must be cultivated
in childhood. The common schools must do for literature what the art
schools are doing for art. Not every one can become an artist, not every
one can become a writer--though this is contrary to general opinion; but
knowledge to distinguish good drawing from bad can be acquired by most
people, and there are probably few minds that cannot, by right methods
applied early, be led to prefer good literature, and to have an enjoyment
in it in proportion to its sincerity, naturalness, verity, and truth to
life.
It is, perhaps, too much to say that all the American novel needs for its
development is an audience, but it is safe to say that an audience would
greatly assist it. Evidence is on all sides of a fresh, new, wonderful
artistic development in America in drawing, painting, sculpture, in
instrumental music and singing, and in literature. The promise of this
is not only in the climate, the free republican opportunity, the mixed
races blending the traditions and aptitudes of so many civilizations, but
it is in a certain temperament which we already recognize as American.
It is an artistic tendency. This was first most noticeable in American
women, to whom the art of dress seemed to come by nature, and the art of
being agreeable to be easily acquired.
Already writers have arisen who illustrate this artistic tendency in
novels, and especially in short stories. They have not appeared to owe
their origin to any special literary centre; they have come forward in
the South, the West, the East. Their writings have to a great degree
(considering our pupilage to the literature of Great Britain, which is
prolonged by the lack of an international copyright) the stamp of
originality, of naturalness, of sincerity, of an attempt to give the
facts of life with a sense of their artistic value. Their affiliation is
rather with the new literatures of France, of Russia, of Spain, than with
the modern fiction of England. They have to compete in the market with
the uncopyrighted literature of all other lands, good and bad, especially
bad, which is sold for little more than the cost of the paper it is
printed on, and badly printed at that. But besides this fact, and owing
to a public taste not cultivated or not corrected in the public schools,
their books do not sell in anything like the quantity that the inferior,
mediocre, other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of
the magazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could
earn as much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all
of whom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must be
confessed that their audience is small.
This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, and
the common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general reading
public, in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in the
common school is the same--the lack of inspiration and ideality. The
common school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general public
lacks literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either produced
by or addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to the
demand of the times.
It is already evident, both in positive and negative results, both in the
schools and the general public taste, that literature cannot be set aside
in the scheme of education; nay, that it is of the first importance.
The teacher must be able to inspire the pupil; not only to awaken
eagerness to know, but to kindle the imagination. The value of the
Hindoo or the Greek myth, of the Roman story, of the mediaeval legend,
of the heroic epic, of the lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any
genuine piece of literature, ancient or modern, is not in the knowledge
of it as we may know the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the formulas
of a science, but in the enlargement of the mind to a conception of the
life and development of the race, to a study of the motives of human
action, to a comprehension of history; so that the mind is not simply
enriched, but becomes discriminating, and able to estimate the value of
events and opinions. This office for the mind acquaintance with
literature can alone perform. So that, in school, literature is not
only, as I have said, the easiest open door to all else desirable, the
best literature is not only the best means of awakening the young mind,
the stimulus most congenial, but it is the best foundation for broad and
generous culture. Indeed, without its co-ordinating influence the
education of the common school is a thing of shreds and patches.
Besides, the mind aroused to historic consciousness, kindled in itself by
the best that has been said and done in all ages, is more apt in the
pursuit, intelligently, of any specialty; so that the shortest road to
the practical education so much insisted on in these days begins in the
awakening of the faculties in the manner described. There is no doubt of
the value of manual training as an aid in giving definiteness,
directness, exactness to the mind, but mere technical training alone will
be barren of those results, in general discriminating culture, which we
hope to see in America.
The common school is a machine of incalculable value. It is not,
however, automatic. If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to
lift the nation than the mere ability to read will lift it. It can
easily be made to inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a
powerful influence in teaching the American people what to read; and upon
a broadened, elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of
American art, of American fiction.
It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that an
elevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of a
genuine literary product. An invention which increases or cheapens the
conveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator.
A book which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to the
highest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people; which
furnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which dispels the
cares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend when friends
fail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is impossible, for a
year, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world which has a
proper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its author.
(1890.)
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Novel and School
by Charles Dudley Warner