SUPPLEMENT

THE INLANDER

A Monthly Magazine by the Students of Michigan University.

THE

CLUB.

HE twenty-second meeting of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club was held at Ann Arbor March 30-31. Both in numbers and

in enthusiasm it was the most successful meeting in the history of the club. Three sessions were held, the first in the University Chapel, the remaining two in the attractive recital hall of the new building of the University School of Music, named Frieze Memorial Hall in honor of Professor Henry Simmons Frieze, first president of the University Musical Society. On Friday evening a reception was given in Frieze Memorial Hall, where the Club had the pleasure of listening to an informal musical recital by the Faculty of the University School of Music.

FIRST SESSION-CONFERENCE ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

The following questions were set for discussion: 1. How many compositions should be required of High School pupils? 2. How

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may the burden of essay correction be lightened? 3. From what source should subjects for compositions be drawn, in the High School? 4. How may examples of bad English be used most profitably? The conference was opened by Prof. F. N. Scott, of the University, who read a paper in which he argued for the necessity of a special teacher of English composition. Commenting upon the views of Mr. Samuel Thurber, of Boston, he contended that it is unsafe, under existing conditions, to let the pupil's training in English expression depend entirely upon the coöperative efforts of teachers who are concerned primarily with other subjects than English. He did not deny the importance of this coöperation, but it was not, in his opinion, sufficient. Teachers of science, of foreign languages, etc., were not always competent to deal wisely with the matter of English expression; they were appointed with little reference to their capacity in this direction. Moreover, they had no time to devote to the systematic teaching of English expression. It was not enough to correct gross errors. The pupil had need of discipline in the principles of expression, and this required, like other subjects, a teacher specially trained for the work. The speaker then proceeded to describe the kind of training needed, in his opinion, for a good teacher of English composition, recommending especially studies in literature, studies in the history and theory of rhetoric, and original investigations in the underlying principles of expression.*

At the close of this paper, Prof. Scott read the following letters:

ON SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITIONS.

FROM DR. SAMUEL THURBER, MASTER OF GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON:

The requisites of a good essay subject are, evidently:

1. That it be fully possessed, seen through, understood, by the writer.

2. That it be a good thing to tell about,-worth writing on, good to listen to an account of.

Essay writing presupposes a public that is genuinely to be informed by listening to the essay. Bouffe, or make-believe, essay

*The abstract of the paper is from the University Record for April. We regret that the papers of Professors Scott. Kelsey, and Hinsdale, owing to lack of room, can be presented here only in abstract. Professor Scott's paper will be printed and sent out later.-EDS. INLANDER.

writing is where nobody wants to write, nobody wants to listen, all is moonshine, and the subject is a matter of pure indifference. It is still bouffe when the teacher inflicts a subject upon youth because the subject interests him, the teacher; or when the essay is used to clinch instruction otherwise likely to get loose before some coming examination. The young writer will, like the old one, write well only when he has in view the prospect of a public to be entertained by his writing.

Thus literary' themes may be good. Such themes will be good if the youth have read far enough and with genuine interest. A theme that leads to scrapings and rakings among sources of information,—as these are conventionally understood,-is altogether not good. A literary theme is good if it is a report of exploration that has taxed the patience or has been rewarded with some sort of substantial find. Whatever is written must be written with earnestness and enthusiasm; and themes must be chosen with this principle in view. Literature is a good field for such explorations as girls love to make and give accounts of. But I have to labor to keep them away from imitation of the current magazine kind of criticism. This is deadly and stupefying. What a young person likes and others may be led to like by good telling of it, is a good subject. I would by no means prescribe a proportion of any one kind of subject. Nor would I have a whole class necessarily observe any rule in this matter. The very best subjects are hardly apt to be the purely literary ones: but rather those which have to do with art or with history and literature. E. g. Keramos is a splendid subject. The literary subject, as too frequently conceived, calling for judgments and verdicts, tempts into echoing a sort of literary' maundering, as dreary and useless as can be imagined. Writing without content, inhaltsloses Fortschreiben, producing what no one can listen to or get an idea from,--is the thing to avoid. And I should not object to any kind of subject that should help resist the blight of such writing.

FROM PROF. A. S. COOK, OF YALE UNIVERSITY :

I should reason upon the subject somewhat in this way. The subjects proposed should be (a) comprehensible, (b) stimulating, and, if possible, (c) suggestive of hints for guidance. All these conditions are better fulfilled by works of art than of nature. The most available art for the purpose is that of literature. Hence the subjects should be predominently drawn from literature, though of course not exclusively.

To amplify my thought a little. Good art is simpler than nature, because it is a selection from nature, organized in illustration of a sentiment or a thought. Being simpler, it is more comprehensible; being illustrative of a sentiment or a thought, it is stimulating; in so far as it is good art, it is suggestive of hints for guidance.

To illustrate. Any art will serve. It is easier to write intelligently about a musical composition than about a series of casual noises; it is easier to write about the Apollo Belvedere than about the first photographic portrait that comes to hand; about Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar than about an acquaintance or even a friend. Half the work has been done for you. The artist has shown you what he means, and at the same time provided you with a model. The principles of structure displayed in the masterpiece are yours to appropriate; the style is at once an incentive and a goal.

I should conclude, then, that compositions upon literary subjects-let me say, more generally, artistic subjects-would constitute a sort of propedeutic, preparing the aspirant for the more difficult task, the treatment of nature at first hand. This is more difficult, because in nature the ideas have first to be discerned, while in art they are already emphasized. By this I do not mean, however, that I should reserve all literary studies from nature for a later stage of the work, but that I should intersperse them among the more numerous studies from forms of art, as the pupil was able to bear them, in other words, as he gained sufficient insight into modes of treatment, and power in the perception of structural lines, to produce relatively good original work.

ON THE USE OF BAD ENGLISH.

FROM PROF. J. F. GENUNG, OF AMHERST:

I think all teachers will agree with the remark I have ventured to make in the preface to one of my books, that 'it is safer to study models of excellence than examples of error.' The kind of English with which a student's mind should be saturated, so far as this can be effected through his reading and his daily intercourse, should be the best English. We should seek as far as we possibly can to create an atmosphere of good English usage, pure, dignified, graceful, yet not stiff and pedantic; and in such atmosphere well-chosen words and correct idiom and grammar should grow unquestioned, as a matter of course. It is from such environment, more than from anything else, that the student insensibly develops a literary

sense.

But in language as in everything else, the things of most evident and unquestioned excellence are not always the most striking. If taken as a matter of course, they often come with too little thought to make the student see why they are so. The naughty things seem the nice things-that is, often they are spicy, racy, have the tang of interest, albeit slangy and vulgar. The student must somehow come to know why the locutions he uses and hears used so spontaneously are bad. We cannot infallibly keep him from using bad English by showing him only the good. We must show hin also the bad, yet I think in such way as too keep the predominant

influence for the good always in sight, and to leave him if possible committed to the good.

For this reason, while examples of bad English must necessarily be worked with and corrected, this should not be done, it seems to me, in such a way as to make the student feel as if he were guessing puzzles or wading through the mud of inperfect expression without a clear sight of the firm land beyond. In other words, mere lists of false syntax and ill-chosen words to be corrected seem to me of very doubtful value. I should want to put the bad English in some setting of coherent speech or story, so that by the correcting of it there should step by step emerge a satisfactory piece of composition which should justify itself as it stands by the side of the old imperfect production. I have tried, perhaps very crudely, to embody something of what I mean in the compositions to be rewritten, in my recent Outlines of Rhetoric. By such exercise of rewriting occasion may be taken to teach not only choice of words and grammar but many more things pertaining to clearness, strength, and grace of expression; while something is all the while being done to conserve and strengthen the student's literary sense. FROM PROF. G. R. CARPENTER, OF COLUMBIA :

For some years I have been a warm advocate of the system which is responsible for the so-called 'Bad English' part of the entrance examination in English, as it is now prescribed at Harvard and at most of the other New England colleges. The reasons why I believed in this method of examination are briefly these. It seemed to me that we have a right to demand of a boy of sixteen or seventeen, properly fitted for college or for a technical school, first, that he should be able to write correctly and with some ease, on subjects which he already knows; and second, that he should know what is right and what is wrong in matters of grammar, syntax and the like. about which there can be no possible doubt. These two requirements are, as I understand them, respectively the bases of the two parts of our present admission examination.

The first requirement, that of ability to write with correctness and with a certain degree of ease. is not, I think, in question. The second requirement, that of correcting specimens of bad English, is certainly simple in theory. Here we test not expression, but knowledge. Rhetoric may fairly be divided into questions of taste and questions of absolute right and wrong. Drill in matters of taste we can afford to leave for the most part until the student is a freshman in college. There he can best attain skill in the exact choice of words, with all their fine shades of meaning; in deftly framing them into well-balanced sentences; in coherent and logical structure, both of paragraphs and of the larger unities of composition; in short, in all that sound and nice thinking out into language which makes a man write clearly, forcibly, and pleasantly.