MAY 4 1904

LIBRARY.

New York Teachers' Monographs

PLANS AND DETAILS OF GRADE WORK

MARCH 1904

Composition.

LA SELLE H. WHITE, Principal P. S. 3, Brooklyn.

O simply clear and comprehensive is the course in composition that it needs neither interpretation nor a statement of its underlying philosophy. Let us then consider the results now secured in composition and some ways of securing better ones. But before attacking this problem, let us establish some standard of judgment as to present attainments.

Each principal is in a position to measure the results in his own school, but he is not competent to pass on the results of the entire system. A congress of principals might correctly estimate the work in composition in all schools, but no such deliberative body exists. How then shall we obtain a common ground for

judgment?

Next in rank above us are schools which receive our finished product and are afforded, by virtue of position, an opportunity to make comparisons and generalizations regarding the success or failure of the efforts of the elementary schools. Realizing this superiority of opportunity I have sought the opinion prevailing in our high schools regarding the work in composition of our grammar school graduates. Their estimate of our pupils' power to think and to express, which on the formal side includes penmanship, punctuation, grammar and spelling, has been obtained.

This I have tried to verify by observation in my own school and elsewhere; and knowing that the criticisms were given with kindness and conservatism, and sometimes by teachers who had been promoted up through the grammar schools, I conclude that the views expressed are just, reasonable, and, I hope, suggestive.

Of the five high schools interviewed, all but one readily and emphatically placed the great fundamental defects of our work in composition in the thought processes, and the one representative who asserted that our pupils were weaker on the side of expression, as the interview extended, was inclined to agree with the majority. All the high schools urge that our boys and girls be given more power to think clearly, and to recognize a thought as a unit.

The involved, incomplete, and clumsy sentence, and the incorrect and illogical arrangement of sentences and modifiers are

due primarily to faulty thinking, to loose, disconnected mental action. Teach a child constantly to exercise his logical faculty, and the appreciation of a complete thought will follow, and the period will generally come in its right place. Teach children to keep in view the chief or central thought and its related explan. atory thoughts, and the paragraph will appear in its correct form.

Says Chubb," Good composition is fundamentally good form.” He had more accurately said, good composition is fundamentally good thought. This he admits later when he says: "Everything the child tries to say should be well said, that is, well composed. If it is not well said, it is not well known." Therefore, the physical embodiment of thought, generally known as composition, is not primary but subsidiary. The knowing process is basic or fundamental.

In seeking a cause for this weakness in the rational processes of our work in composition, we are led back to the careless, desultory, and incomplete thought work in the daily recitations. In all the oral and written work of the lesson we hold our pupils too little to completeness and careful logical sequence. In haste the teacher too frequently accepts answers unfinished, irrelevant, and only suggestive of the truth sought. It is easier for the teacher to complete the thought himself or leave it a fragment.

Another cause contributing to this condition lies in the illdigested matter from which we draw our topics for composition. There is no expression possible where the fundamental processes are thus confused. "Well-possessed knowledge differs from illpossessed by its being a generator of power that seeks an outlet." It is impossible to separate this entire subject of composition from any of the other work of the school.

In our new course, paragraphing is either stated or implied for every grade, beginning with 3 A, with special emphasis in 8 A.

The high schools agree that our graduates possess very little knowledge of this subject, or of the reverse process, making the outline. In one of our high schools they assume that the firstterm students know nothing of paragraphing, and request them to write the page without indention!

The cause here is the same as in the previous defect: too little familiarity with the thought. We tell our pupils to put a period at the end of a sentence, but we fail to tell them where the thought ends. Their ignorance is equally profound when we tell them to begin a new paragraph where the topic changes.

In one school the teacher has found a remedy by telling the pupils to begin a new paragraph every third sentence. The comedy

would be complete if she would now tell pupils to begin a new sentence every thirteenth word.

Knowledge of the nature of the paragraph is fundamental, not only in the child's written expression of thought, but also in all his relations with the printed page. We think in paragraphs. If the child would read or write intelligently he must recognize in the paragraph the chief thought and the supporting, auxiliary, or explanatory thoughts. The operation requires power to recognize thought values and thought relations, and view it as we may, it is a form of logic, or logical sequence.

We may say that the requirement is too difficult for child mind, and that we had better delay it for the high schools. But if the subject-matter be properly graded the elementary process is not so difficult as are many of our problems in arithmetic, which are successfully solved. It is only a normal mental action at every stage, and the more emphasis in our teaching we put upon the thought, where it belongs, the greater will be the child's power to arrange his paragraphs.

Paragraphing is also a form of classifying knowledge, and to eliminate it from our drill is to leave the mental equipment of the Ichild in disorder.

In the verbal expression of thought the child should be made to develop a keen literary sense of the relation of the word to the sentence, of the sentence to the paragraph, and of the paragraph to the topic. This cannot be done till the pupil is given the power to recognize a thought as a unit, to express it as such, and know when he has done it and stop.

All literature is not correctly paragraphed. Some publishers arrange the matter on the printed page in sections to please the eye merely; so also in good literature, as in Carlyle's Essay on Burns, where every law of paragraphing is broken.

The inability of our pupils correctly to articulate thoughts into sentences and paragraphs was expressed by one of our high schools in the following: "The grammar school graduates have only three connectives in their vocabulary, and,' 'but,' and 'or'." Much time is spent in this high school in giving the first-term students power in thought relations sufficient to use such words as otherwise, nevertheless, moreover, however, therefore, and others. connective not only unites but it indicates the relation between the parts united; hence the writer joining propositions into compound and complex sentences is engaged in a process similar to paragraphing.

A

Our high schools also complain because of the small number of words at our pupils' command. Increase in knowledge and power

of thinking, in the progress from grade to grade, implies what we sometimes overlook, enlarged vocabulary. The more important sources of increase are the spelling lesson, literature, and etymology.

It has been said that etymology is the key which unlocks the storehouse of connotation. A great wealth of Latin and Greek words in our composite language is placed at our disposal as soon as we are in possession of even a limited number of prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Before, we knew in a vague way the meaning of a word, now the concept becomes full. We take complete possession of it, and it becomes a part of our equipment. In this growth of words the working vocabulary of the teacher is another important source of increment.

In punctuation also the high schools agree that our graduates are deficient.

The ultimate and only consideration in the application of rules for punctuation is thought structure. The comma sentence, the suspended subject, the sentence without a period, and all the other errors in punctuation are so many appeals for better thinking.

I know many will say that the great trouble with our pupils in punctuation, as elsewhere, is not the want of knowledge, or power, but carelessness. The best remedy for this is more interest. Pupils are likely to do well what they find pleasure in doing, and this interest can be aroused by drilling, not on form, but on content.

Little is said in the course of study regarding the use of capitals and punctuation. It is the opinion that each law should be given when needed; opportunity should not be made for it.

The high schools pronounce the work of the elementary schools in spelling satisfactory. I believe it is Mark Twain who said he could prove total depravity, if permitted to make his choice of the individual. In the same way the newspapers for centuries have been proving spelling in the public schools a failure. In like manner they could prove that every boy in the public schools has a Roman nose. But, as in other things, there is always room for improvement.

There is need of more care in the assignment of the spelling lesson, especially in the lower grades. First, with open books, words in view of pupils, all words assigned should be correctly pronounced, The child's inability, or carelessness, in the pronunciation of words, e. g., chocolate, government, and many others, is a cause of his inability to spell correctly.

The high schools do complain of our pupils' lack of proficiency in syllabication. Exercise in pronunciation affords an opportunity to correct this fault.

At this point, in the assignment of the lesson, the teacher

should pronounce the words for the children to spell so as to discover what words each child needs to study. Otherwise the child will spend most of his time on words he already knows and fail to learn the words he does not know.

The pupils' methods of study vary. Some will learn best through motor activity, writing or saying, others must hear, but by far the greatest number must see the word and visualize. No one method should be used to the exclusion of the others. Each child should be permitted to use his talent. Writing words again and again should long ago have been consigned to Limbo, with other more humane forms of corporal punishment.

The secondary schools do not complain of our graduates' knowledge of grammar. Some of the elementary schools send their students better prepared than others, in part because of the attitude of the principal toward the subject.

Every truth in grammar is founded upon the relation of ideas in sentences, and thus, if we would study it intelligently, we are forced into rational processes. This explains why the study of grammatical analysis sometimes illuminates the appreciative study of literature. The student is compelled to get meaning before he can get grammatical relations.

One of the high school teachers complained of the inability of some pupils to apply their knowledge of grammar because of the confusion in nomenclature and statement, due to the use of more than one text book. Two or more texts in history and geography in the same class may be beneficial, but not more than one author in grammar.

The penmanship of the grammar school graduates is not satisfactory. They do not write well, and those who use the vertical letter write so slowly that it is impossible for them to do their written work in the allotted time. In some of the high schools this forces about two thirds of the

at entrance, to adopt the slant.

students, who write the vertical

So it is in our grammar schools. In the primary department form is good. But little muscular power is developed with it, only the slow, labored process of drawing letters. This want of manual training, when the demand for more rapid writing comes in the advanced grades, destroys the form learned in the primary and leaves neither a good letter nor motor power. Let us have first manual training, then form, and both will remain. The great need of our pupils is more power in muscular movement, and the new course of study is a great advance over the old, if the movement exercises are used as indicated. The excellent results in penmanship in our special schools are achieved chiefly by drill in move