Riverside Educational Monographs EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE GRADES BY ALICE WOODWORTH COOLEY LATE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press V.S.A III. SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS IN THE USE OF LITERATURE FOR LANGUAGE TRAINING 25 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION THE common schools are becoming interested in literary expression for the first time. On first reading, such a statement seems absurdly untrue to the history of elementary instruction. Yet an analysis of our pedagogical development confirms the claim. It is true that the earliest activities of our older schools were exclusively associated with language and literature; and that for centuries the materials of education remained dominantly linguistic. Nevertheless the traditional school was not interested in literary expression, or anything closely approximating it. The study of language was formal rather than literary; it was devised to teach children to understand in an abstract way the formalities of spelling, grammar, and rhetoric, rather than to lead them into a sincere expression of their own lives through the medium of the art-forms of speech and written language. Two and a half centuries of American schools did not rectify the narrowness and the false emphasis of our traditions in language teaching. To be sure there was, here and there, some tinkering with the course of study and methods of teach |