III

PLACE OF GRAMMAR IN THE SCHOOL COURSE

If past history, experience, and the history of education be taken for guides, the study of grammar will not be neglected and the method of its inculcation will become an object of particular inquiry and solicitude.-GOOLD BROWN.

The body of grammatical facts appropriate to the elementary school is rather limited.-CARPENTER, Baker, and SCOTT.

A little technical grammar sympathetically taught is within the normal powers and interests of grammar school students.-LEWIS.

The teacher can introduce the idea if the class is sufficiently advanced to take it without getting confused. It is good teaching to give children hints of what is to come.-BROWN AND DEGARMO.

Without intelligent interest there can be no profitable study. For many pupils the higher study of English grammar is a vain and cruel martyrdom, worse than a waste of time.-JOYNES.

High school pupils need in some way or other to be trained systematically in a knowledge of the important facts relating to inflection, syntax, sentence structure, word order, and word composition in their native language.—CARPENTER, BAKER, AND SCOTT.

Grammar is not the stepping-stone, but the finishing instrument.M. MARCEL.

The work of learning to speak and write correctly, properly precedes technical grammar. The ideal plan is for the child to be reared in circumstances in which he never hears any but correct English, and so finds no other kind natural to him.

But the circumstances of life are not ideal and the child who enters school has usually many faults that need correction. For these and other reasons the language lessons which furnish the occasion for the child to gain freedom in expression must also supply some simple principles of criticism that will enable him to recognize and so to correct his own faulty language.

In other words, the language work of the lower schools must be largely constructive and proceed along the practical lines of aiding the children to express themselves correctly under intelligent supervision. But mingled with this constructive work, even from an early age, there should be some analytical work also, and some attention should be given to the grammatical facts that come within the range of the child's observation.

The teaching of these elementary principles is in a sense grammar. Yet it is not a scientific course in grammar. The facts and principles are not introduced in logical order, but are determined by the present needs of expression, and the faults that are to be corrected.

It is the practice of some teachers in their elementary language lessons to avoid so far as possible the terms of technical grammar. The forming of such arbitrary compounds as action-words, quality-words, etc., illus

trates the devices that have been employed to avoid the language of scientific grammar.

But we think that many mistakes have been made along this line. While there can be no objection to a roundabout mode of expression if the precise scientific word would be misunderstood, or if it interrupts too much the present purpose of the lesson to introduce and explain it, yet the true grammatical terms are all to find their place finally in the pupils' vocabulary.

The first time when it would be convenient to use the word would seem to be the proper time to introduce it. Nor is it needful always to interrupt the lesson by teaching fully the scientific meaning of the terms, but only far enough to prevent any present confusion of thought. Logical definitions (if grammatical definitions can be made really logical), may be postponed until a later period of study. It will not only be a saving of time in the end to use the terms of grammar somewhat freely in the language-lessons, but it is entirely consistent with the way in which most of our words are acquired. It may be said, not of children alone, but of men and women, that among the words which they use freely and correctly in speech and writing, there are many which they would be at a loss to give a logical definition for, and that the dangers in such use are no greater in the vocabulary of grammar than in other lines of thought.

At the end of the language-lessons of the elementary course, then, the child ought not only to know most of the important facts of grammar, but the terms of gram

mar should, to a considerable extent, be familiar to his ear and thought. But the simple principles of language thus gained in a somewhat desultory fashion through the language-lessons of the lower grades, need to be reviewed and placed in a more orderly arrangement in the child's mind, if he would hold them in memory ready for use.

It would seem that the work of the last year of the elementary language-lessons should be a classified review of the terms and principles of grammar that have already come before the children in applied form. Such a year's course will include simple definitions of the grammatical terms that have been used. It will always be in a measure unsatisfactory with a certain proportion of the pupils, whose interest can only be aroused by subjects of a less abstract nature than analytical grammar. Yet many of these pupils are well ready for this study, and if it be entirely relegated to the high school or college course, those who never enter upon high school work will miss entirely the special and important kind of linguistic training which grammar alone can give.

But the work in grammar cannot be finished in the grammar school. Under one name or another it is an important part of the high school course. It extends itself also into the advanced language training of the college and the university, becoming ever more interesting and valuable as the knowledge of foreign tongues brings the student into closer touch with all those lines of comparative and historical grammar that belong to the large realm of philological research.

IV

DEFINITIONS IN GRAMMAR

"It is difficult to make perfectly accurate grammatical definitions, and still more difficult for a pupil to understand them accurately; but difficulties are not surmounted by being evaded."

Definitions are not the only means by which a knowledge of the import of language may be acquired nor by which the acquisition of knowledge may be aided. To point out things and tell their names constitutes a large part of the instruction by which the meaning of words is conveyed to the mind, and sometimes a mere change of terms sufficiently conveys an idea. Yet if we would guard against all possibility of misapprehension and show precisely the meaning of a word, we must define it.-GOOLD BROWN.

Elementary definitions however simple-or even incomplete-must be strictly true so far. Nothing should be taught which in either method or matter shall ever need to be untaught.-JOYNES.

A loose definition of a class necessarily fails to meet the instances that arise; consequently easy cases alone are noticed, difficulties are slurred over, distinctions are confounded; in short, where explanation is most wanted, it is not forthcoming.-BAIN.

Definitions invariably follow the completion of the study of that which is defined.-W. T. HARRIS.

Although grammar is based on logic, there is no