Emma Miller Bolenius

Teaching Literature in the Grammar Grades and High School Emma Miller Bolenius

English literature in our schools and colleges. The earlier teaching of English was characterized largely by a type of instruction which tried to inspire pupils through their contact with the classics of our language, and (to awaken in them an enjiurinjve ojjbotlrpjotryndpjnose. The work being in large part interpretation and somewhat .inspirational in nature, calling for much from the teacher and less than in most other subjects from the pupils, teachers in I other subjects more susceptible to drill tended to characterl Jize the instruction as snap work. Stung by this criticism, teachers of English went for a time to the other extreme, substituted a detailed analysis of a few masterpieces for the more extensive reading which had formerly been the practice, and in time reduced the instruction to a monotonous and almost lifeless type of intensive study. Historical and mythological allusions were to be looked up, collateral reading was prescribed, notebooks were to be compiled, and the work was made so heavy, and often so uninteresting, that no charge of snap could be brought against it. As all questions of instruction have recently come to be studied more in the light of a sound pedagogy, certain changes in our ideas as to desirable means and ends in instruction have resulted. One of these changes has been a marked reaction against a grind type of teaching in a subject so full of life and feeling as literature.
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