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The teaching of English in the elementary and the secondary school
The teaching of English in the elementary and the secondary school Author:Percival Chubb Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Some First Principles Of Education In Their Literary Application " Now, you know," says Socrates, when discussing the problem of education with... more » Adeimantus in the " Republic," " now you know that in every enterprise the beginning is the main thing, especially in dealing with a young and tender nature. For at that time it is most plastic, and into it the stamp which it is desired to impress sinks deepest." This principle is gaining way among us; but we do not apply it vigorously in attempting to reform our English studies. Under the pressure of the College, reform in this instance is being wrought out slowly from the top downward, which is not the true method. The point of attack in the recent war upon illiteracy has been the High School; but we are beginning to see that it is absurd to place the emphasis there. Much more vital, as making or marring the child's literary tastes and aptitudes, are the sensitive years spent in the Primary and Grammar Grades. In time, perhaps, heeding at last old Iviulcaster's advice, we shall select our most gifted teachers for this early work, The tendency to give' effect alike to Plato's view and Mulcaster's counsel, has received its main impetus from the Kindergarten. But the Kindergarten has not affected the linguistic and literary interests with which we are now concerned so much as those of handicraft and nature study. Rather has it, with its insistence upon " things before words" and its banishment of reading and writing, confronted the old "literary" type of education with a new motor type of learning through doing — through play, the gifts, and the occupations. True, it has made much of story-telling and of songs, but mainly from the ethical point of view, and sometimes with a woful neglect of literary considerations — a ...« less