ENGLISH
I have to speak now of a phase of elementary education which lies very close to my warmest interest, which, indeed, could easily become an active hobby if other interests did not beneficently tug at my skirts when I am minded to mount and ride too wildly.It is the hobby of many of you who are teachers, also, and I know you want to hear it discussed.I mean the growing effort to teach English and English literature to children in the natural way: by speaking and hearing,--orally.
We are coming to a realization of the fact that our ability, as a people, to use English is pitifully inadequate and perverted.Those Americans who are not blinded by a limited horizon of cultured acquaintance, and who have given themselves opportunity to hear the natural speech of the younger generation in varying sections of the United States, must admit that it is no exaggeration to say that this country at large has no standard of English speech.There is no general sense of responsibility to our mother tongue (indeed, it is in an overwhelming degree not our mother tongue) and no general appreciation of its beauty or meaning.The average young person in every district save a half-dozen jealously guarded little precincts of good taste, uses inexpressive, ill- bred words, spoken without regard to their just sound-effects, and in a voice which is an injury to the ear of the mind, as well as a torment to the physical ear.
The structure of the language and the choice of words are dark matters to most of our young Americans; this has long been acknowledged and struggled against.But even darker, and quite equally destructive to English expression, is their state of mind regarding pronunciation, enunciation, and voice.It is the essential connection of these elements with English speech that we have been so slow to realize.We have felt that they were externals, desirable but not necessary adjuncts,--pretty tags of an exceptional gift or culture.Many an intelligent school director to-day will say, "I don't care much about HOW you say a thing; it is WHAT you say that counts." He cannot see that voice and enunciation andpronunciation are essentials.But they are.You can no more help affecting the meaning of your words by the way you say them than you can prevent the expressions of your face from carrying a message; the message may be perverted by an uncouth habit, but it will no less surely insist on recognition.
The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human soul to another, by way of the ear.And these ideas are very complex.They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols which have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in themselves.The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,--these seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal signs; they demand such variations and delicate adjustments of sound as will inevitably affect the listening mind with the response desired.
There is no "what" without the "how" in speech.The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect."He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection.This is the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as true is the less obvious fact.The same written sentiment, spoken by Wendell Phillips and by a man from the Bowery or an uneducated ranchman, is not the same to the listener.In one case the sentiment comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy.The words themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the associations of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of speech.And, further, the immense personal equation shows itself in the beauty and power of the vocal expressiveness, which carries shades of meaning, unguessed delicacies of emotion, intimations of beauty, to every ear.In the other case, the thought is clouded by unavoidable suggestions of ignorance and ugliness, brought bythe pronunciation and voice, even to an unanalytical ear; the meaning is obscured by inaccurate inflection and uncertain or corrupt enunciation; but, worst of all, the personal atmosphere, the aroma, of the idea has been lost in transmission through a clumsy, ill-fitted medium.
The thing said may look the same on a printed page, but it is not the same when spoken.And it is the spoken sentence which is the original and the usual mode of communication.
The widespread poverty of expression in English, which is thus a matter of "how," and to which we are awakening, must be corrected chiefly, at least at first, by the common schools.The home is the ideal place for it, but the average home of the United States is no longer a possible place for it.The child of foreign parents, the child of parents little educated and bred in limited circumstances, the child of powerful provincial influences, must all depend on the school for standards of English.
And it is the elementary school which must meet the need, if it is to be met at all.For the conception of English expression which I am talking of can find no mode of instruction adequate to its meaning, save in constant appeal to the ear, at an age so early that unconscious habit is formed.No rules, no analytical instruction in later development, can accomplish what is needed.Hearing and speaking; imitating, unwittingly and wittingly, a good model; it is to this method we must look for redemption from present conditions.
