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CHAPTER 10
Language and Literature
INTRODUCTION
IT has been stated more than once in this pamphlet that any attempt to separate language from literature, either in the human mind or in the practice of teaching, is fraught with danger, not only to our national culture, but also to standards of linguistic achievement in the schools. There is no need to recapitulate the good effects of literature on the practice of speaking and writing, and as an incentive to the skill of reading. It is desirable now to turn to the study of literature for its own sake, and in virtue of its rich contribution to those aspects of personality and character that are of deeper significance than our mere powers of communication. It is necessary, however, to remain within the limits set by the title of the pamphlet and not to stray into larger issues of sesthetics, as distinct from matters of language and the use of language.
The most important general problem posed for teachers by the study of literature is that of the emotive and figurative use of language and of the related question of literary forms. Three of these forms - prose, poetry and drama - are examined separately in the sections which follow. But first something may be said which applies to them all; they all involve the use of certain literary conventions and to these the imagination furnishes the key. All the uses of language, it is true, involve elements of thought, feeling and imagination, and imagination is not only preponderant in literature but is also the cohesive element in all other forms of utterance, spoken or written. Without imagination the use of even the plainest literal symbols as a coherent means of communication would be impossible. But in literature, which is the extreme case, the imagination is supreme. Not only does it supply much of the material - a secondary function distinguished by Coleridge as 'fancy' - but it welds together the manifold and sometimes contradictory elements of experience and memory and interprets them according to a single coherent and inspired view or vision. The result of this vision is literature. This does not mean that a reader can say conclusively of some particular piece of spoken or written language 'this is literature' or 'this is not literature'. Almost invariably there will be literary and non-literary elements in any passage of words; only in the greatest works - and not continuously in all of them - does the domination of the writer's imagination extend to every detail of the material, be it fiction, drama, poetry, biography, history or philosophy. The
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distinctive characteristic of literature is, thus, not its truth or untruth to observed or historical fact, but the extent to which its material is ordered by a powerful and elevated vision and is expressed through some linguistic form that gives it coherence and artistic unity.
The study of literature is impossible without an intelligent understanding of these forms and conventions, and teachers cannot justifiably ignore them if they are interested in the imaginative use of language - as they should be, whatever the age of their pupils. The language of imagination is not just the special study of the university scholarship candidate in the sixth form. It is also, in its humbler manifestations, the common speech of all children and especially of very young children. Hence the importance of poetry and drama in schools - they are in some measure the natural language of the very young - and hence the fairly lengthy treatment of these two literary forms which follows in the sections after the next. Prose is treated rather more briefly in the next section.
PROSE
Molière's character who was told he had been speaking prose all his life was entitled to feel surprised. In fact, the language of conversation is not prose in any exact sense of the word, or, if it is, some new term should be found to describe what can now only be clumsily termed 'literary prose'. It is the prose of literature and not the language of conversation, or even that of the magazine or the technical journal, that is the subject of the present section: i.e. prose governed, as poetry and drama are governed (though not according to the same technical rules) by the sovereign power of the imagination, and cast in a certain formal mould that is at least partly traditional. Such prose includes fiction, essays, biography and autobiography, history, philosophy, prose plays, the literature of travel and the literature and history of science. It is not exclusively in written form for it includes also oratory and broadcast speech, if these conform to the tests of imaginative power and permanent worth.
The reading and study of established prose literature should find a place in the English of every secondary school pupil and of the older children in primary schools also, for Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty, Tanglewood Tales and The Heroes are all indisputably within the English prose tradition and so are many of the best known animal stories and fairy stories written specially for very young children. Indeed, the place of prose literature in schools is so wide, and the variety of types and methods of treatment so great, that it would be useless to attempt in a general pamphlet any systematic or full-scale treatment of the problems involved. What follows in
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the next two sections is no more than notes on a few selected problems of prose literature in schools: problems chosen because many teachers find them difficult and because they are fraught with important consequences for English as a school subject and as an element in our own and other cultures.
Choice of Prose Literature for Study
It was suggested in Chapter 5 that for various reasons, some of which are historical or accidental, teachers have tended to identify prose literature too closely or exclusively with novels and 'belles-lettres'. The reasons are not worth further analysis here, though they are interesting. (Our national over-emphasis on fiction in schools has been copied in some other countries by those who frame programmes of set books in English literature for their own older pupils.) As a result, the broad stream of English prose outside the novel is nowadays treated as a backwater, instead of the strong central expression - which it really is - of our national life in politics, in social and practical affairs and in philosophy and the arts. The general reader (as distinct from the history or science specialist) continues to find little time for such authors as Johnson, Burke, Cobbett, Mill, Ruskin, Bagehot, Maitland, Acton, Trevelyan, Eddington, Whitehead, by comparison with the time given to novels and essays. Yet it is probable that these authors have more to offer as literary masters than any but one or two of the greatest English novelists and more than any English essayist, except Bacon. Without disputing that fiction has a place in education, there certainly seems to be some need to review the range of prose authors traditionally read as set books in the upper forms of grammar schools.
The same oddity, with different books, occurs in the lower forms of grammar schools and in modern schools, perhaps with greater superficial justification, since it may reasonably be held that a narrative helps to carry the younger or duller reader along. But what is true of the mature and difficult prose authors mentioned in the last paragraph is true also of easier authors who are now virtually unknown to those children who would enjoy them most and would get most out of them. For instance, there is a large number of books of travel and discovery that are well within the comprehension of most children of average ability above the age of ten. There are the easier naturalists: Jefferies, Hudson, Fabre; and some very good simple accounts of physical phenomena in such books as Fournier's Wonders of Physical Science. There are simple but good books on craftsmanship and costume and the history of the arts, and there are at least a few biographies and autobiographies that would not be beyond the understanding of children of thirteen and fourteen.
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There are also the children's classics that are more than stories, though cast in story form: Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, Theras, The Wind in the Willows. These classics are well used in grammar schools and preparatory schools but they are not as familiar in modern schools as they ought to be. It is a pity to neglect them in favour of books of extracts, or the rather third-rate modern children's stories that are written and sold for the 'secondary modern market'.
These suggestions for widening the range of choice in prose books for use in schools are made primarily to open up new treasures not yet much known or used. But there would be other incidental benefits. Many of these books, both the easier and the harder ones, would link up more directly than do novels with the children's own composition. They would also establish a plainer connection between the real world and the world of literature and the imagination, and so help to dissipate the lingering view of literature as a form of escape. Some of them, for school use, await cheap editions and there is here a challenge for publishers willing to take a reasonable risk.
Treatment of Prose Texts: Extensive and Intensive Reading
The emphasis placed, in the preceding section, on prose books other than fiction does not arise from any wish to exclude novels from use in schools. They have a place, and a considerable one, though not all of them deserve the exaggerated prominence they often receive as school texts. Moreover, they are not easy to deal with, except by the time-honoured and time-wasting process of reading round the class. Some experienced teachers of English, however, have found other ways of dealing with novels. Such teachers would probably hesitate to prescribe a method for any particular age or book, for the essence of their work is variety and flexibility to suit the circumstances. Some works of fiction or fantasy, they would probably say, can be left entirely to private reading; some, at the other extreme (The Wind in the Willows is a good example) are so intricately organized in different layers of meaning and are so full of incidental beauties of language and fancy that they suffer scarcely at all by being read through in class from beginning to end. The teacher enjoys such a book at his own level and at the child's simultaneously; he is able through class treatment to elicit many hidden or half-hidden beauties and humours. As a result, the collective experience is more than the sum of any number of individual readings, and if the fast reader wants to go ahead, or to return on his tracks, or to have a second or third look, there is always more to be had from the book than was gained at first acquaintance. Between these extremes are many intermediate kinds of story where only the teacher's experience
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enables him to blend satisfactorily the elements of class reading, private reading, commentary and discussion. Many teachers now order their reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, in sets of six at a time. In any one term, in any one class, there are thus five or six different books being read simultaneously, and the sets are changed round at fixed intervals. There is much to be said for this practice (though not perhaps before the age of twelve or thirteen). The teacher's task in these conditions is a formidable one. He must have all his horses under control, albeit with a light rein, or the exercise is of very limited value.
It is a pity to draw too hard a line, at any age, between extensive and intensive reading, or between silent reading and reading aloud, or between comprehension and appreciation, in so far as these fashionable terms have any exact meaning. Many books, perhaps most books, need to be treated in part at close range and in part, as it were, with distance spectacles. It may be useful to say more about the former; about the latter there is little to add to what has been already stated in the last paragraph and in Chapters 5 and 6 - variety, catholicity of choice, abundance and a watchful and sympathetic teacher are the essentials.
It cannot be said that close study, or 'reading for comprehension', is, on the whole, neglected in schools. A great deal of it goes on, from 'potted exercises' at a very early age to the careful analysis of difficult texts in the sixth form. There is, indeed, more work of this kind than there used to be, and, if its good results are not always manifest, this is not because teachers generally have ignored 'comprehension' or done too little of it. The aim and quality of what is done is not always as satisfactory as the bulk attempted. In the first place, too much of the material is drawn from manuals - and some of the manuals are bad. The purpose of close study is best served if the material is drawn from reading books and so has its own interest, a fuller context, and a certain elegance of expression. The survival value of unrelated exercises is probably very small. In the second place, even where good passages are taken from reading books or from the better anthologies of extracts, the passages are sometimes too short and the questions printed in the anthology are too fidgety and superficial; moreover, too many ready-made questions are often supplied. A third difficulty is subject matter. Quite apart from the quality of thought and language in the passages selected, the range of interest needs to be wide. The material can be too 'literary', or too narrow in range. If, while preserving a reasonable standard of expression, the passages can range over the subject matter of other parts of the curriculum and also, from time to time, over out-of-school interests, they are likely to be more useful than
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if they are taken only from 'belles-lettres'; this does not preclude their being taken from whole books if the school has good text-books and good readers in history, geography, science and other subjects.
Finally comes the question of age. In a certain sense no age is either too early or too late for learning to read what an author has written (as distinct from what the reader guesses he has written) and for understanding as fully as possible the thought behind the language. The teacher must use discrimination and judgment in knowing where to start, and even more where to stop. He must soak himself in the book before the lesson starts, and, at the higher levels, he must wrestle with the argument before he asks others to do the same. At any stage of the educational system, from the primary school to the sixth form or the university extension class, he ought usually to relate a passage for detailed study to its wider context in the book from which it is drawn. The internal logic of a passage is often modified by the context, and, not the logic only but, even more, the tone and feeling, both of which are important elements in the total meaning. Whilst a great deal of close study is needed in literature, it is possible for study that is too close, too narrow and too exclusively logical to defeat its own object.
One other matter may be briefly mentioned. It is not always appreciated that older pupils need guidance in reading different types of books at different speeds. Some books need to be tasted, some slowly digested, some savoured very carefully and others - to vary the metaphor - need to have the heart torn out of them as rapidly as possible. In setting the pace and temper of the reading the teacher has an experience which even the clever student lacks and without which he (or more likely she) may waste time and energy in plodding through books, or parts of books, that were not written for close and patient scrutiny.
POETRY
The Pleasures and Pains of Poetry
In a broadcast early in 1953, Mr. Cecil Day Lewis, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, said:
'The layman tends to value a poem in terms of emotions, of thought, of meaning. There is no reason why he should not, provided he realizes that these can be got at only through the words of the poem, by an act of imaginative effort and surrender, comparable with that of the poet who wrote it. ... What all this comes down to is a problem of language. The basic themes of poetry are few - love, death, good and evil, the transient and the eternal: these have not changed in the past thirty years. What has changed is the language of poetry: and if you want to
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enjoy contemporary verse, you must accustom your ear to an unfamiliar language.' (1)
What Mr. Day Lewis said about the poetry of to-day was also true, as he went on to show, of most other poetry at the time it was first published. Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning were all accounted, in turn, obscure or vulgar innovators. It is true that little of their work was found wholly unintelligible, as some modern poetry is, and that contemporary criticism found a soft target in certain aspects of the poetry of these authors. But, broadly speaking, the work of these poets and of many others was disliked, misunderstood and abused because it interested itself in fresh aspects of experience, reflected on these in new ways and, above all, dared to use language in a way in which it had not been used within living memory, if at all. It is possible to go further and suggest that, not only is new poetry bound to appear strange to eyes and ears accustomed to older poetry, but that, of its nature, all poetry involves a fiery struggle with language from which the shapes that emerge are bound to be unusual and sometimes contorted. Long familiarity has accustomed us, or so we think, to the strange shapes of Shakespeare's language, or Milton's, or Donne's or Hopkins's. Even the most crabbed and elliptical of Browning's obscurer passages have no more than a sort of gargoyle charm for to-day's readers. How much of our acceptance of 'classical' English poetry reflects a real, living understanding, and how much is mere surface familiarity - like the well-known appearance of our furniture, book-shelves and china cupboards - it would usually be very difficult to determine. There is, however, and there must be, always, a tension between the force of new ideas, passionately conceived, and the inert strength of linguistic patterns and conventions slowly formed from the deposits of time and usage. This tension alone would account for the difficulty which many people find in reading and understanding poetry and, a fortiori, for the difficulty of teaching or presenting it in schools. It accounts, also, for the rewarding pleasure which comes to those who are willing to make the act of 'imaginative effort and surrender', comparable with the poet's own; this effort constitutes one of the main claims that poetry makes as an object of study in schools.
The Situation of Poetry in Schools and its Causes
This abiding difficulty in the form of poetry has been complicated, it is fair to say, by one or more subsidiary difficulties which are peculiar to English education; it is these which have produced the paradox that Shakespeare's countrymen, with probably the richest
(1) Published in The Listener.
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and most varied poetic treasury in the history of civilization, have hitherto paid little more than lip-service to poetry either in their schools or in their adult culture. It is no longer true that music and painting have no place in English life, but it is still unhappily true that the place of poetry is negligible, and that few poets can hope to sell more than a few hundred copies of a new book of lyrical or meditative poems. It is not fair to blame the schools wholly for this state of affairs. There are clearly other historical and social reasons partially responsible, but there have been some educational reasons at work, and these are not difficult or far to seek.
The first is the long stranglehold of Latin on the grammar school curriculum in this country. It is not, indeed, a matter of complaint that throughout five-sixths or more of our 600 years of educational history the first attention of schoolmasters was given to Latin. It was bound to be so; and without Latin there would, perhaps, have been no schools of quality for at least the first half of those 600 years. The language of religion and law, of philosophy (at least before the Greek revival), of science and of international politics, was unavoidably the main concern and almost unavoidably, for a long time, the medium of a select education; and England was not alone in making it so. The various effects, for good and ill, of this linguistic monopoly, which was hardly impaired before the middle of the last century, and has still not entirely disappeared, are not relevant to the present pamphlet. But one effect must be noticed. Poetry in schools was, and has remained until recently, Latin poetry, the poetry of a bygone Mediterranean people, written in metres alien to our own and construed or composed by schoolboys as an exercise.
The Present Position
The position is now rather different. It is, indeed, in some schools with a strong classical side that English poetry is now read and discussed with more enjoyment and more understanding than anywhere else. In girls' grammar schools, even before the war, poetry was well established as the subject of fresh and eager study. This still appears to be true, generally, up and down the country, and it is now more commonly true, also, of boys' and 'mixed' grammar schools than it used to be. In other kinds of secondary schools it is not so common to find a genuine devotion to poetry or a fine understanding of it, but the exceptions, where they do occur, are striking. In primary schools it is reasonably common to find simple poetry well presented, and there is some excellent work done with younger children. But, generally speaking, outside the best of the grammar schools and a number of primary schools, there is
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much to be done before English poetry enjoys the esteem it should. Once English poetry has found its place in the schools, no one is readier than lovers of poetry to recognize what Latin and Greek can do for English. The classical languages have done much more than discipline our verse and train our ears. They have brought into English poetry, not only a whole mythology, but a whole civilization. They have flooded our island twilight with the warm sunshine of the Mediterranean, and extended our vision, in space and time, beyond the rather depressing Nordic mythologies and folk-lore in which our literature might have been imprisoned.
Some False Models
In view of the difficulties just mentioned, it is not surprising that there is a general uncertainty of touch about the presentation of poetry to children and that a great deal of what is attempted is, at best, aimless and fruitless. The long supremacy of Latin has left its mark in an anxious pre-occupation with the technicalities of structure, metre and figurative language. Important as these are to mature students of verse, they are not congenial, and are not always intelligible, to schoolboys; and they are certainly not the first introduction that the young should have to the pleasures of poetry. This kind of metrical analysis is useless and unrewarding at an early age, and it is responsible for turning away many from poetry for life. Then there is the historical or biographical approach which is often not without interest and profit, even with younger pupils. It is, however, not usually the way to approach a poem for the first time, nor the way in which to understand and enjoy it, though it will enlarge an understanding which already exists. Again, there is the way of paraphrase, by which some rough prose meaning is wrenched out of the poetry. These are all methods borrowed by mistaken analogy from other 'subjects'. They are ways of escape if used, not judiciously for special purposes, but as a substitute for the real thing. Equally unfortunate are the extreme reactions which have resulted from our recent and well justified distaste for analytical or historical methods. As Mr. Day Lewis said in the passage already quoted, poetry does not consist of raw feeling any more than of prose meaning, and its essence is not to be tasted by easy raptures any more than by technical assault. Nor will it always yield itself to 'appreciation' of the now fashionable kind, some of which certainly furnishes a key to some poetry, though not to all, but much of which is due to an almost total misunderstanding of the valuable pioneer work of Dr. I. A. Richards. (It is, however, in Dr. Richards's work, properly understood, that the best hope of finding the real answers may well be found.)
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What are the real answers? What is to be done with poetry in schools? The only honest answer is probably a different one for every poem, and very nearly a different one for every teacher and every class; certainly a different one for every combination of these three factors. In truth, there is no one way, and there ought to be no one text-book; there ought, perhaps, to be no text-books at all in poetry, but only the poems, and, for the more advanced pupils, the illuminating things that discerning critics have written about them, and about their authors, in responsible books of biography and criticism. What, then, is the teacher to do, and is there anything he can do at all? Is it not best to read the poem as well as possible, to indicate to older pupils where stimulating criticism is to be found, and to leave it at that? In point of fact a great deal of useful work for poetry could certainly be done, and some, indeed, is done, exactly like that. As a general measure such a 'method', if it is a method, would certainly do more good and less harm than many of the ways in which poetry has been traditionally taught in schools till recent times. But there are many teachers who do better than this, and in some important respects there is between them a consensus of opinion and practice which may be usefully set out for the guidance of others.
Some Suggestions
Teachers who love poetry seem to be agreed that, whatever methods or approaches are used with particular poems, these must be supported by a great deal of reading at all times. Bulk is important, because without it there is no easy familiarity, no habituation, no slow unconscious growth of standards. Every pupil at every age needs a good anthology to take out whenever he feels like it, to take home, to take to bed. The library or library corner or the travelling box of books needs poetry also, and the teacher can bring poems that cannot be found at school. It does not matter that most anthologies contain some poems that no child ever seems to want to read, and that every anthology contains some that a particular teacher or a particular pupil has no use for. It is bound to be so. The worst anthology is better than no poetry at all, and there are now so many good ones available that the worst in use need not be worse than moderate. This is the necessary background to the 'teaching' of poetry.
A good first reading, and second reading, are the necessary introduction to any study or discussion or appreciation of a poem. The teacher will usually wish to undertake this himself, unless he has exceptionally good readers among his pupils, or unless he has a good gramophone recording to do it for him. In any case, the first reading
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ought to be continuous and uninterrupted; it should be individual and not choral; sometimes it might be prefaced, and it might often be followed, by a silent reading. Not to give a poem these introductory marks of respect is to insult it and to make virtually certain that its full inward reality will fail to emerge.
What happens next? This is the real crisis of the 'lesson'. The next step may well be to pass on and leave the poem to further meditation. What more can indeed be done with 'Gather ye rosebuds' or 'Loveliest of trees the cherry now' or 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways'? though, indeed, the scholars have been busy with the last of these and the mature or precocious pupil may like to know what his ingenious elders have to say. What more can be done with 'Break, break, break'? A teacher with a light touch may like to date the poem, to link it with contemporary stanzas from 'In Memoriam' and to tell how Tennyson himself read it, with some very personal eccentricities of emphasis, as is known from an old phonograph record. But the poem hardly depends on such attentions and it can well fructify without them. Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' and 'On Westminster Bridge' speak for themselves, but it is interesting and illuminating to set each alongside the comparable passages in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals. 'Cargoes' is a popular poem in schools and lends itself to a great deal of explanatory discussion and illustration that is often well done. Poems of this kind, in which a simple theme, embodied in contrasting stanzas, is adorned with picturesque detail, are not too difficult to deal with. Ballads and narrative poems can sometimes be treated dramatically, and dramatic poetry presents no difficulty. But there remain a large number of poems, mostly lyrical or meditative, that offer no simple clues to the teacher, at least until the age when 'appreciation' proper can be employed, that is, virtually until the sixth form and in grammar schools only. All the teacher can do is to make his act of 'imaginative surrender' until, with that mixture of humility and confidence that comes only after long and loving study, he can show his pupils what the poem means for him and lead them through some of the doors by which he himself has reached the poem's innermost significance. If 'teaching poetry' means this, there need be no fear or distaste for doing it, and poetry is not the only art that needs this delicate and discriminating touch. But without taste, imagination, discrimination and restraint, the poetry is best left to the reader, without any mediation, and certainly without the aid of either knife or trumpet.
Choice of Poems
It would be an ill service to poetry, or to teachers, to direct attention to particular poems or to types of poems. Claims are made
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at various times that ballads or narrative poems or 'poems of action' suit particular ages, or particular kinds of schools, or that they appeal specially to boys. It may be so, but there is no real certainty about such generalizations, and, in any case, the exceptions are as important as the rules. Similarly, claims are made for 'town poems' to suit town children, or sometimes for country poems to suit town children: no doubt someone, at some time, has asked for town poems to suit country children. It is doubtful whether these claims are valid, beyond the probability that some of them ensure a little less resistance; but, if this is the spirit in which poetry is presented, little reliable guidance can be placed on such a doubtful foundation. If it be left to the teacher to choose, out of his knowledge of both poetry and children, and if he is reminded that the glories of English poetry are its infinite variety, and in particular its richness of dramatic and lyrical poems, it is probable that the right subjects and the best poems will appear in a satisfactory sequence. There will be nature poetry and poems of human interest, modern and older. poems, narrative and lyrical poems, nonsense poems, poems about flowers and poems about steam engines and aeroplanes, poems you can act, poems you can chant, poems you can learn by heart, poems you can go away and puzzle over and say to yourself.
An interesting enquiry may be referred to. Several years before the war a large group of teachers from grammar schools were asked to make a list of twenty poems which each of them would like known, not necessarily by heart, by every pupil before leaving school. The twenty poems gaining most support contained few surprises except that 'The Ancient Mariner' easily topped the list and was virtually a unanimous choice. The same question was asked in 1952 of a smaller group of teachers, mostly from secondary modern schools. Once again, 'The Ancient Mariner' topped the list and was a unanimous choice. These were mostly younger teachers, the majority of whom would have been at school themselves when the earlier enquiry was made. Moreover, like the first group, they were selective: all were enthusiasts and all were skilled teachers. Of their remaining choices, most were represented in the earlier enquiry, though Mr. Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi' appeared for the first time (as a nearly unanimous choice) and there was more Bridges than formerly. Of recent poets, as in the first enquiry, there was reference to almost none but the two just mentioned, and to Masefield, de la Mare, Brooke, Flecker, Blunden and Edward Thomas. Most votes went to the familiar poetry of Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning and Arnold, with occasional references to Goldsmith and Gray. Some ballads were mentioned and there was almost universal reference to Biblical
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passages. It was, on the whole, a striking demonstration of the strength of educational tradition among teachers who were reading a great deal of contemporary poetry for their own pleasure.
Appreciation
The valuable pioneer work of Dr. I. A. Richards has been already mentioned. There is no doubt that this work has been extremely influential in English schools during the last twenty-five years. It has been misunderstood at times, and misapplied frequently, but, more than any other single influence, it has helped to change the spirit and method of the study of poetry in grammar schools and therefore indirectly in all schools (through the personal 'conversion' of many teachers of younger children during their own schooldays).
The method at its best is to be seen in Dr. Richards's own book, Practical Criticism, in some of the work done in the sixth forms of grammar schools, in some of the question papers set at advanced level by the various university examining bodies and in a very few of the better text-books. Its necessary safeguards are length and completeness in the poems studied, care in the selection of compared and contrasted poems, discrimination and restraint in the questions asked and, above all, time, patience and composure (requirements not usually present in examination conditions). For lack of these safeguards much of the 'appreciation' done till very recently was little less than a form of literary murder. Matters are now improved, and there is little doubt that 'appreciation' under this or other names has come to stay, in the upper parts of grammar schools, and that it will also continue to affect indirectly the method of reading poetry with younger children, as the 'explication de texte' has done in France. It is, however, a method for the sixth form, and more harm than good may come if its direct use is extended to younger pupils.
Creative or Original Work
It is not so easy to arrange for original work in poetry as in art: any child will have a fling with a brush or a pencil, but not all are willing to 'have a go' at a poem. All that can be said is 'the more the better' at all ages, at all times, on all subjects and in all metres and manners but never as a compulsory task. Those readers of this pamphlet who remember Chapter V will not feel that the need for discipline in certain aspects of English has been neglected: perhaps the reverse. But poetry does not belong to the disciplinary side of the subject, and, in any case, its disciplines, which are real and exacting for the poet, lie for school pupils in the reading, study and discussion of the works of the masters, dead and living. Let the
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children's own poetry be free and spontaneous, at least until the age when they are ready to discipline themselves, and let their memorizing and recital of poetry be a pleasure also, encouraged but not required, guided but not arbitrarily chosen, and if tested at all, tested only by some occasional selective device which reduces the ordeal for any one individual to something very short and very rare. It is unfortunate to use the learning, speaking or copying of poems as a regular test of industry or, as often in the past, as a punishment.
Looking to the Future
Looking to the past is a discouraging exercise for lovers of English poetry in schools and looking to the present in adult life is scarcely less so. The present situation in schools is less discouraging and the future may well bring better things, both for the young and for the grown-up. The roots which English poetry is beginning to strike in schools are, in most places, not more than ten years deep and are hardly more than twenty-five or thirty years deep anywhere. Yet one other development, in no way connected with education, has stirred some life of its own. The plays of Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr. Christopher Fry have certainly brought poetry into the experience of many who have not opened a book of poems for a long time. At the same time, there is a widespread interest shown by schools and clubs in choral verse speaking and a great increase in the number of successful festivals of spoken poetry. The available supply of poetry recorded acceptably for the gramophone is growing each year. There is poetry each week on the radio programmes and even oftener in school broadcasts. There is almost invariably a poetry section in any short course arranged for teachers of English; courses in poetry alone have been arranged during the last year or two and have made a considerable appeal - bigger than expected - to teachers in all kinds of schools. Whether or not these favourable signs will persist remains to be seen. Hopes may reasonably be stronger than fears at the present moment.
DRAMA
For the purpose of this pamphlet it is necessary to treat drama more selectively than poetry, for drama is only to a certain degree an aspect of language in literary form. It has also many constituents of a non-verbal kind - movement, mime, costume, decor, lighting, music and dance. Important as these are, in education as in the theatre, they lie outside the range of the present pamphlet. It will be safest therefore to begin with drama as a literary genre; this may possibly be its least important aspect as educational material
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throughout the years of childhood, but it is its most prominent aspect for present purposes.
Drama as a Literary Form
The importance of drama as a literary study, whether acted or read, aloud or silently, lies in its universality and its antiquity. It is that form of literature employed from time immemorial to convey the problems of conflict - of man with other men or with the gods or of man with society or of man within himself. Linguistically it is the literary form in which the author's material is reduced to the barest structure of speech - skeleton would be too lean a word, for the structure is often rich in evocative language serving many other purposes than that of communication between the characters. For the full fruition of his theme, however, the dramatic author depends on the actors, the producer, the stage-designer and a number of technical workers behind the scenes; if the play is being read only, and especially if it is read silently, the author must supply clues to enable the reader to replace some of these absent collaborators out of the resources of his own imagination, aided by his memory of past performances.
Drama in Schools: The Scripted Play
What ought the school to make out of all this? In an age that is very drama-conscious, especially in education, it is easy to belittle unduly the usefulness, indeed the necessity, of reading plays as literature. The traditional literature of conflict, whether tragic or comic, religious or secular, social or personal, ought to be a familiar study to older pupils, especially as it enshrines some of the world's greatest poetry, of which, indeed, it was the fountain and flood. It is especially true of English literature that its poetry sprang from the drama, flowered most abundantly in dramatic form and has returned to the drama in the last few years. A large part of this dramatic literature is never acted. This unacted dramatic material should not, for this reason, be ignored; nor should it be exchanged for inferior dramatic material that happens to be actable or accessible. Without returning to the excesses of the annotated examination text, there is a great deal that a good teacher can enable his pupils to get out of plays merely by reading them and reflecting on them. There need be little fear that the modern teacher will miss any opportunity of taking his boys and girls to see plays and of enabling them to take part in dramatic readings and to produce their own full-scale stage versions of plays that are worth acting.
In suitable conditions the 'school play' is a valuable educational
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achievement and it has done much to popularize the drama in schools, to encourage it among the adults of the present generation and to give more interest and reality to English literature, and especially to poetry, among people generally. The benefits to those who play a part in a reasonably successful production of a good play are obvious. The lines which are memorized for an important and exciting purpose at school are likely to remain for a long time. By the end of the performance many pupils know most of the play by heart. Further, the lines have acquired overtones from many different associations, emotional and imaginative, during rehearsal and performance. Fresh words have been added to the actors' vocabulary; old words have taken new wings; new rhythms of prose and poetry have been acquired. Language has come alive for many of the cast and stage hands who are not ordinarily interested in 'literature' either as a study or as a private interest.
To these benefits may be added the particular advantages earned by those with substantial speaking parts: the need to speak clearly and in character, and with such imaginative overtones as to convey the necessary emphasis and atmosphere; the need for rhythm and for split-second timing, especially in the delivery of verse. These advantages ought not to be reserved to a few chosen older pupils in an annual production. The school play will be most successful if it is supported by a reasonable amount of informal dramatic work in all parts of the school, most of it not designed for production in front. of an audience of visitors. But let it be repeated: every scripted play read or acted ought to be of literary worth. Where space is limited, and properties and amenities are missing, not a great deal of physical action is always necessary for classroom drama - indeed restricted action may be fidgety and confusing. An intelligent reading, in character, from sitting positions is often to be preferred.
Drama in Schools: The Unscripted Play
Before children are introduced to texts, there is, or should be, an important stage of experience which may begin in the early days with movement and mime to which words are added later, culminating at the end of the primary school or the beginning of the secondary school in what are often called 'improvization' and 'play-making', the latter being a development of the former. (It is interesting that there are often similar stages in the training of actors.) Improvization and play-making are rather more elaborate forms of charades. They mean making up a scene or play as you go along in accordance with a thought-out plot. They are forms of 'composition', and though hardly to be dignified by the term 'creative'
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they may contain germs of real originality, and at best may be sincere and genuinely moving. At first, at any rate, a subject is usually given, and perhaps some suggestions also; later, at the play-making stage, the whole thing may be left to the children, though some guidance and criticism may be necessary and, indeed, salutary. Properties and dressing-up may be helpful, perhaps inspiring, but all the equipment that is really needed is a certain amount of space; the imagination of actors and onlookers, if any, will supply the rest.
These early forms of dramatic work have many virtues: the stimulation of imagination; the employment of the whole person - body, voice, mind, imagination; identification with other people and their lives, real or imaginary, assisted by means of observation and sympathetic imagination. Dramatic work is well suited to the needs of primary school children, who can obtain immense satisfaction through an art form which combines action, make-believe and real life and which lends itself to intensive planning and can be forgotten for something else the moment it is finished. From the point of view of 'English' other benefits may be added. An imaginary dramatic situation is presented to a group of children by the teacher or by the children themselves. This situation in turn presents the participants with various problems of devising a plot or story; of making up characters who must move, behave and speak in appropriate ways, and who must take their part, and no more, in the action; of setting the plot and characters in a simple situation; and of 'putting the situation across' in spoken words. All this requires thought, the facing of problems, the interchange of ideas, the making of decisions, the interplay of wills. Memory, observation, imagination are freely brought into play. Fitting words will be used spontaneously, and, in the heat of action, they will often be heightened in intensity. Indeed, the language used by young children in their dramatic enterprises is often highly economical. 'Come.' 'Go, seek him.' 'Quick - my sword.' 'You shall die.' If the play is based on a good story which the children know so well that it has become part of themselves, the language in which they have heard or read the story will appear in their acting of it: they will have made this language their own.
Original Dramatic Writing
Towards the end of children's school lives the pupils may profitably engage in the highly difficult art of writing plays. By this time they should have had some experience in acting, in helping to produce, make and design, and in 'back-stage' work, and they will have read and played parts in a number of good plays. They are now more
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likely to write something which may be actable and worth acting; for the real test must be production. There is no reason why they should not try their hands earlier, but the result is likely to be an acted story rather than a play. However, this may be perfectly satisfying to all concerned. At any rate, at whatever age it may prove most successful, the writing of plays is a form of composition which has generally been neglected, and is well worth while - provided that it is put to the test of production.
CONCLUSIONS
Literature has been discussed in this chapter partly for its own sake, as enriching the mind and the imagination, and partly for its contribution to the understanding and use of the mother tongue - the two are not really distinct, though they can be separated for convenience. In so far as this convenient distinction has in fact been made, it is salutary to realize the limits within which the second process takes place.
Literature contributes relatively little directly to the practice of written composition. It assists the vocabulary and to a greater or less degree (opinions are divided) it assists spelling. If it is read aloud with understanding it assists a sense of form and consequently helps punctuation. After a long time, and by slow and imperceptible suffusion, the reading of good books improves the reader's own written style; but the results are not spectacular. On habits of speech the effect of literature may be more perceptible within a limited time, but quick returns ought not to be expected here either. To a greater extent the study of literature improves the pupil's standard of reading, both silent and aloud, if there is practice in both. To a greater extent still the effect of literature is to enlarge and refine the store of knowledge and experience that can be drawn on in spoken and written language. But the most important contribution of literature to the teaching of English is to display the variety, the subtlety and the imaginative force of the language and to encourage the scrupulous use of words, Even that is far from being the whole purpose of the study of literature in schools but it is enough to justify a generous expenditure of time on it. Adequate time, and with it, a certain composure in the teacher, is one of two desirable and perhaps essential conditions for good work in literature. The other is a respectful fidelity to the chosen texts. Without these, even enthusiasm, valuable as it is, can be relatively ineffective.
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CHAPTER 11
Language and Broadcasting
The Educational Aim of Broadcasting
THE British Broadcasting Corporation, since its inception, has stressed the educational responsibilities of a national broadcasting service, and these responsibilities are in fact written into the charter of the B.B.C. That these responsibilities have been not only acknowledged, but consistently observed, was not due solely to the powerful idealism of the first Director-General. More recently Sir William Haley, while he was Director-General, wrote: 'Broadcasting, despite all its diversity, must be regarded primarily as an educational medium, with a cumulative effect and a progressive aim'. (1) These are strong words, and it is fair to say that there are few, if any, countries in the world where the chief executive of a national broadcasting service would have dared to speak in such terms, or would have wished to.
Some General Effects on Language
The 'spoken word' is a feature of all broadcasting, but it plays a bigger part, relative to music, plays and light entertainment, in British broadcasting than elsewhere and we are therefore especially well placed, in this country, to estimate its social effects and its effects on the use of language. These are examined in more detail in the next section. One effect of broadcasting has been to arrest the decline of speech as a medium of communication. Some would go further: they believe it has reversed the relative importance of speech and writing, and they foresee a future in which writing loses to speech, on the one hand, and to the visual image, on the other, a great deal of the importance with which Caxton endowed it and which the course of history has continuously increased up to the present time. This is, to say the least, a dubious forecast and its probability is examined critically later in this chapter. But there is no gainsaying that broadcasting has revived the human voice and given it a range, an immediacy and a power greater than it ever exercised through oratory and the other oral arts. In doing so, it has changed the methods and perhaps the standards of political controversy and of international intercourse; it has affected social conventions and standards of taste and it has changed beyond recognition the mental outlook, and indeed the lives, of millions. It has also changed, or is changing, the structure and use of English
(1) Haley: The Central Problem of Broadcasting. B.B.C.
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in ways which it is too soon to assess but which certainly afford interesting speculation.
Some Special Effects in Various Modes of Speech
The most noticeable of these effects is on political oratory. The political broadcast, perfected by President Roosevelt in the form of 'fireside chats', is a new phenomenon, altogether different from the platform speech. It is delivered in a normal speaking voice, and the speaker is, therefore, not compelled to design his argument and phrase his language in a style that a loud voice can carry to every member of a large audience, quite possibly in the open air. It is delivered without benefit of presence or gesture. Most important of all, it cannot draw on the electric tension of the public meeting, where speaker and audience react to one another in a kind of psychological magnetic field. It is tempting to guess how differently the great orators of the last century would have fared at the microphone.
The successful radio style is not necessarily plain or dry. Its structure may be subtler than that of the platform speech and its texture may be richer and warmer, though less nervously exciting and certainly less strident. It appears to depend, much more than oratory, on a mastery of the facts, on conviction and on sincerity of presentation. Hitler, it is true, with a hysterical mob as background, ranted into the microphone with deadly effect, but the circumstances were artificial in the extreme. So long as listeners listen freely and in the security of their own homes, so long as different points of view are fairly presented, and so long as most listeners are willing, if only very occasionally (for instance, at election times and at times of important public events), to give their full attention to serious talks, it seems that broadcasting has a good influence on political rhetoric. Indeed, it may well save the art of rhetoric from platform bombast and hysteria on the one hand and from the vulgarity of jargon and journalese on the other.
The effect of broadcasting on lectures is not necessarily so beneficial. The public lecture was already declining in this country when radio was invented, and radio has probably done little, except on the Third Programme, to arrest the decline. Except on the Third Programme, the time span of a 'talk' (the word is significant) very seldom exceeds twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, at the most, it is difficult to develop a substantial theme, nor does the radio usually offer suitable opportunities in the popular programmes of developing a theme in successive broadcasts, though the Reith lectures are an exception. A broadcast talk is therefore usually restricted to one or two aspects of a subject (and the subject must usually be one that
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is already in the public mind) or to the presentation of an episode, or to illustrating, by reading or dramatic interludes, the facets of a theme that can be sustained from week to week. The radio talk, in short, compares more closely with the printed essay or magazine article than with the full book. Even the Third Programme lecture is usually dressed in a form that distinguishes it from the university or university extension lecture, on the one hand, or the conference lecture (or address) on the other. So far as broadcasting encourages succinct and agreeable presentation, it must be accounted a good influence in 'talks'; so far as it multiplies their occasions, selects the most accomplished speakers and assists them (but not too much) with the services of experienced 'producers', broadcasting is helping to keep the spoken word alive. But, in the form of lectures at all events, it does not seem that broadcasting is likely to revive the art of oral instruction in any of its old strength or popularity.
Discussion is another matter. In any normal week this forms the bulk of the 'spoken word' on radio programmes, and radio has much encouraged public discussion on a popular basis. Radio discussion masquerades under many different forms and titles: 'open forum', 'town forum', 'brains trust', 'quiz', 'any questions', 'magazines' (e.g. country, music, women's), 'the critics', 'taking stock', and so on. Taken together, these programmes reveal and satisfy an enormous thirst for information in all sections of the population. Most of the information wanted is serious, and few points of view, however eccentric, seem to be missing or to be regarded as barred. It is difficult for people in cities to realize how much these programmes mean to those in lonely country places. It is not so difficult to realize that, for the large majority of people of all kinds and all standards of education, the best of these discussion programmes have demonstrated, perhaps for the first time, the range and temper of polite intellectual exchanges, as practised in private by a very small minority from the days of Socrates onwards. (The word 'polite' need not be taken as placing bounds on the range of the discussion or on plainness of speech, Its special connotation here is the civilized recognition that there is more than one point of view.) In presenting high standards of discussion, prepared, semi-prepared and unprepared, the B.B.C. has done the country a considerable service.
In the late Dean Iremonger's Life of William Temple there is a letter to the Archbishop's mother from George Wyndham which recalls the delight of listening to Robert Browning's rendering of his own poems. 'He always read,' wrote Wyndham, 'dramatically but quietly; with an exact observation of punctuation and grammar; no sing-song; and always with a restrained, but lambent,
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humour.' (1) Mr. S. K, Ratcliffe, commenting on this passage in the B.B.C. Quarterly, asks: 'Is not this the root of the matter in one sentence? The phrase seems to me exactly right, and very nearly inclusive: that is, applicable to broadcasting of almost every kind-to narrative and argument, to radio oratory no less than to reading of verse.' (2)
This 'restrained but lambent' quality is often apparent in broadcast reporting, an important feature of the B.B.C.'s work. The high quality of this reporting is frequently evident in the sports report. There is a refreshing absence of sensationalism, personalities and the vulgar misuse of Christian names. The other forms of radio reporting are usually of very high quality indeed, especially on occasions of national pageantry and at times of crisis, In much of this work the descriptive use of spoken language reaches a height that it would be difficult to surpass.
Literature and Drama
To go too deeply into radio's services to literature, except through school broadcasting, which is considered separately, would be to exceed the purpose of the present chapter. Broadly speaking, they are three: encouraging plays and stories specially written for broadcasting; bringing established plays and other works of literature, especially novels and poetry, to large numbers of listeners; and disseminating an interest in criticism. The third is an occasional service only, except on the Third Programme. The second is performed frequently at what are called 'peak-listening hours' and the programmes, especially the readings from fiction, are said to attract large audiences. To that extent they are fulfilling a need and reviving, in some sense, the public readings given by some nineteenth-century novelists, especially Dickens. It is salutary, however, to remember certain reservations recently expressed about these programmes by Mr. Sean O'Faolain:
'I believe that the citadels of literature can be taken only by a long, intensive, slow and painful siege, I take a gloomy view of education as a form of pleasure. As far as I am concerned, education is a prolonged course in gymnastics that, like compound interest, begins to pay real dividends only after many years of sweat, perhaps only in the last twenty years of a man's life - the really important part of his life (if he has managed to remain alive mentally) - when he is at last made ready to receive what is necessary for the consummation of his personality, and can thenceforward rejoice in the constant discovery of his unique world. This is something that is not going to be achieved by casual
(1) Iremonger: William Temple: His Life and Letters. London, 1948. Oxford University Press.
(2) B.B.C. Quarterly.
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listening to dramatized Dickens or sugared snippets from the old masters.' (1)
The broadcasting of poetry is rather different. The element of incantation in poetry often demands a voice, and a poem is seldom too long to be finished in a single reading. The main difficulty must be to find readers who do not unduly obtrude their personal interpretation of a poem, and these do not always include even the most distinguished actors and actresses. 'Time for Verse' has had a long and successful run on one of the popular wave-lengths, and this must mean there are considerable numbers of listeners who like to hear poetry on the air and who are willing to pay sufficient attention - and doubtless to do enough preliminary reading - to make the experience worth while.
One of the duties of broadcasting to literature is that of encouraging new plays, stories and poetry specially written for radio. Sir William Haley has said that broadcasting is not an art but a means of communication, but he would no doubt acknowledge that it had produced, in the radio play, a new art form - a minor one, perhaps, but a genuine discovery. The communication of literature must in the end depend on books, and this is almost certainly true even of poetry. But a medium of communication that has not only transmitted to new audiences most of the great plays of the past and of our own time, but also created an altogether new genre of drama, has made a substantial contribution to spoken language on this score alone.
Broadcasting and English Usage
Speaking at a conference on School Broadcasting in London in 1949, Mr. A. P. Rossiter said:
'We must have, sooner or later, a revolution in prose, comparable to the revolution which Eliot has effected in verse; and in criticism. What that revolution will result in, I cannot predict. But I think it will be a "speech-rhythm" style, in marked contrast with all those formal and "correct" types which are generically distinguished by the writers' assuming a manner above, and aloof from, the spoken word. It may appear, at first, very "incorrect" indeed.'
Mr. Rossiter then went on to quote a passage from the Gifford Lectures of 1937-38 by Sir Charles Sherrington.
'That turns us back for a moment. The motor act as conative would seem to have been the earliest nurse of infant mind, Not the germ of mind, nor the parent of it. As to its parent, who shall say? Had energy a parent? Then why must mind have one? Rather let us seek where we can first trace mind, or where we last lose it. Does it not begin with urge to live? Zest to live, which is part and parcel of life? Is it not that
(1) B.B.C. Quarterly, Spring, 1952.
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all through? Becoming gradually more sophisticated? The zest of the living thing to go on living, and renew itself as a new life. The zest which implements the whole conduct of life; the zest which the whole conduct of life implements. At once an urge, a motive and a drive. No species of life without it.'
Of this passage Mr. Rossiter said: 'In print it looks odd, but let it speak "in the mind's ear", and is it not eloquent? is it not "the true voice of feeling"? ... Sir Charles wrote his lectures (published as Man on his Nature) as he spoke them. The style is eloquent, forceful, moving: presents a great mind moving with a great subject. But would one teacher in a hundred fail to "correct" these non-sentences if given this paragraph as a "composition"?' (1)
Mr. Rossiter was clearly justified in finding qualities of eloquence and force in Sir Charles Sherrington's prose. Sir Charles has found, as Mr. Rossiter said, 'a prose idiom which is "alive and speaking to us"'. But it is, perhaps, one way only. Here is another passage of prose in a different and older idiom. Like the other passage, it is written as it was spoken and, to at least the same degree, it is 'eloquent, forceful, moving'. It was certainly 'alive and speaking to us' when it was first uttered, and it is so now, in print, after more than a decade.
'We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering, You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized: no survival for the British Empire; no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "Come, then, let us go forward together with our united strength".' (2)
The oral rhythms of Sir Winston Churchill's speech lose nothing by translation into print, for they harmonize with the unheard music to which 'the mind's ear' responds in printed language, and the effect is the greater for its availability in two media. If it is true that broadcasting has revived and is repopularizing the spoken word, it is bound thereby to multiply the written and printed
(1) Quoted in the B.B.C. Quarterly, July, 1949 and in Our Living Language. London, 1954. Longmans Green.
(2) The Prime Minister's speech in the House of Commons May 13, 1940. The passage printed above was quoted verbatim in the B.B.C. news bulletin.
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word also, and it will be odd and difficult if the two forms diverge too far. But this is very unlikely. It is not, however, improbable that just as the prose of Swift and Addison developed by usage from that of Donne, Burton and Browne, so an English prose, which suits both the air and the page, will emerge from the confused welter of styles left over from previous generations or thrown up by modern colloquial and technical needs. This style may combine the directness of speech with the structural permanence and the flexibility of the written word. If that is to be the spoken and written English of the future it is not likely that the two forms of language, oral and written, will become total strangers to one another. But no one can be sure.
Broadcasts to Schools
In School Broadcasts (Pamphlet No. 20) the Ministry of Education summarized the effects of school broadcasts in some sixty schools that kept records and submitted opinions after two or three terms of serious consecutive listening. Much of this material is not relevant to the present pamphlet, but one important question raised in the pamphlet arises here also. What is the effect on reading and writing of an activity which depends wholly on listening for its immediate effect and on memory and recall for its long-range effect? In School Broadcasts there is evidence that, for the most part, this activity affects speech markedly for the better. Is there a corresponding loss to reading and writing? The rather fortuitous subjective evidence of School Broadcasts cannot be conclusive, but there are some grounds for believing that school broadcasts, properly treated, encourage reading and composition (rather than acting, as some believe, as a deterrent or a substitute.) By their imaginative stimulus school broadcasts often start quests and projects and encourage written composition by providing both material and interest. They are said by those best qualified to know to have enlarged vocabularies and to have encouraged a decent and polite habit of criticism. They have put first class models of speech, recitation and dramatic presentation in front of the children and brought meaning into many passages of prose and verse that were hitherto little more than ritual texts. For further discussion of these questions readers are referred to two surveys carried out by the School Broadcasting Council and published in 1951 as pamphlets with the title English and Broadcasting.
Television
Whether we like it or not, television has come to stay and its potentialities are almost unlimited. About its future Mr. Graham
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Hutton has written: 'The challenge (i.e. to quality) is, however, immeasurably more serious for television (than for sound radio), because its potentialities for instruction, enlightenment, information, interpretation, and education are immeasurably greater than those of the cinema or sound radio. The potentialities of television for the instruction and enlightenment of its audience, of all ages, have the inestimable - and hitherto unique - advantage of being able to combine vision with movement in all dimensions, to combine the film with the stage and with sound-radio, and to combine impersonal diagrammatic or pictorial representation with the light, urbane, and intimate interpretation of a personal commentator - and all of this in people's homes. ... But television is something new. It does not have to go on, as the Byzantine amphitheatre went on under Christianity, copying the worst excesses of an earlier age. Or does it? That is the challenge.' (1)
It is easier to write in general terms about the educational opportunities of television than to foreshadow with any precision what their scope is likely to be. In these early days, that is natural enough. But Mr. Hutton, himself an experienced television broadcaster, has not hesitated to make a brave forecast:
'What are they? The comprehension of "the nature of the physical world"; regular and distant travel; following the procedure or "ceremonies of bravery" of great assemblies and learned societies and specialist groups; understanding how social, economic and international institutions work; gaining, under the tutorship of gifted teachers, an insight into the realms of science and the humanities, the arts and the crafts; bridging the gap of comprehension between the specialist's sense of our modern problems and the plain man's, which we admit to be the Achilles' heel of our democracy and culture.' (2)
If this is anything like a reasonable sketch of future television programmes, if only for a fraction of the transmissions each day, it is probable that language will be as important to television as it is to sound broadcasting. The cinema incorporated speech as soon as this was technically possible, and this alone appears to show that, though sound can do without images and though images managed for a short time to do without sound and speech, pictures alone are not an adequate medium of communication between civilized or 'modern' minds; whenever it is technically possible the two will act together, and the success of each will depend on the harmony with which they are blended.
It is therefore likely that the English language, which, it was suggested, is changing under the influence of broadcasting, will change again when it has to be adapted to the sort of programmes fore-
(1) B.B.C. Quarterly, Winter, 1950-51.
(2) Ibid.
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shadowed by Mr. Hutton in the passage quoted. This will probably be the most fiery ordeal for language since it was used by the Elizabethan dramatists. Drama itself will be re-shaped. Talks, politics, reporting, instruction, discussion, will all be thrown once more into the melting pot. There may be new uses for language. For example, with the aid of television, broadcast language may reach some who, by reason of low intelligence or mental resistance, are at present almost impervious to words. At the other extreme, it may be that, with the aid of images skilfully magnified and manipulated, language may be enabled to enter that region of symbols and formulæ that has hitherto been a closed world of the scientists, economists and statisticians, But the struggle will be hard.
In the Sunday Times of June 7th, 1953, Mr. Maurice Wiggin wrote in an article entitled 'Television's Finest Hour' (following the Queen's Coronation):
'The influence of the new reporting on the older journalism is likely to be wholly good. I am not aware of any conclusive evidence that television supplants the printed word: on the contrary, it seems to stimulate a demand for it. Never have so many books and newspapers been printed. What television may well do is to stimulate a demand, not a moment too soon, for better prose. We want to read about what we have seen; it is always fascinating to compare notes; but when we have seen an event for ourselves, be it crowning or cricket, ballet or boxing match, we are not going to be fobbed off with inadequate descriptive writing or second-rate critical commentary. Here is a challenge and an opportunity which the better journalism will gladly accept.
I have an idea that the future of creative imaginative broadcasting, like the future of music, lies with sound radio. But whatever may happen within the studios, there is no doubt that when television steps out into the world in its role of reporter, it will have first claim on the attention of the people. After last Tuesday, there can be no looking back.' (1)
(1) Sunday Times, June 7th, 1953.
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EPILOGUE
Language and the Schools:
A Synoptic View
THE various chapters of this pamphlet have been written mainly for teachers, but the subject of language has not been treated from a purely pedagogic point of view. The intention has been to formulate a number of linguistic questions and to explore these in the context of our own language and literature, but against a background of history, philosophy and world affairs. This treatment has necessarily been selective and it remains to summarize a few principles that can usefully be offered to teachers as a practical contribution to their everyday work.
The first is the practical importance of unpractical speculations such as those attempted in Part I. In those chapters the nature and purpose of language was examined in outline and a distinction was drawn between the communicative and the creative functions of language and between the idealist and the behaviourist views of language. In the wake of such distinctions follows a string of practical questions, on the answers to which will depend a great deal of the spirit, methods and objectives of a teacher's work. For instance, which came first, mind or speech? Is it possible to think without words, or does language create the categories of thought? How far is the ability to speak an inherited characteristic? How do young children think? How do primitive peoples think? How necessary is it to be able to read and write? What distinguishes literature from mere records of communication? What is the authority for literary values? These are all, in part, psychological or philosophical questions, but there is no teacher who would not be the better for trying to answer them. The pamphlet does not try to answer them all. Its different chapters are, however, based on the assumption that language is more than a convenient social device, that it corresponds with and derives from powers of the mind, the feelings and the imagination, and that it defines, shapes, strengthens and releases such powers as it transmits them.
The first consequence of such an assumption is to regard literature as the highest and most indestructible form of language, and, therefore, as the most reliable guide to mastering the use of words. On this view there is no hope of raising standards of communication
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by exercises of a purely practical, remedial or 'clinical' kind. It may be true that the teaching of English has suffered from an excessively narrow and academic concentration on unsuitable texts; but it is the scope and choice alone that have been mistaken. There is nothing wrong with the practice of teaching reading and writing through a loving acquaintance with the best books. If this method were abandoned in favour of short cuts, as a counsel of haste or despair, nothing is more certain than that the results would be worse than they are now. A great deal of time has been wasted in the schools, and in public discussion, in trying to change the aims of English teaching. All that is needed is a refinement and improvement of method, a more judicious distribution of emphasis and a conviction, inside and outside the schools, that the teaching of English matters.
A second consequence of such a view bears directly on the teaching of English to boys and girls under fourteen, and especially on teaching reading and writing to the very young. For very young children English is not a subject, or even a branch, of the curriculum. It is, in large measure, the curriculum itself, and much else besides. For these children the mastery of words is closely linked with their play, their practical occupations, their drawing and painting, stories and poems - and this goes on throughout childhood and there are some senses in which it is true even of adolescence. Accordingly, the teacher of English or the class teacher of young children should not think of his work in reading and writing as a subject only or a group of subjects or as a form of acquired skill - though it is all these - but also as a contribution to the growth and harmony of imaginative powers, and so of character.
A third consequence is complementary to the second. If language is a distinguishing gift of man, and written language of civilized man, then standards of reading and writing matter supremely in the modern world, and any general decline in the power to deal with print is retrograde. This point has been made repeatedly throughout the pamphlet, and it is not invalidated by the popularity of films, radio, television and illustrated papers. In dealing, therefore, with an accomplishment of such importance, i.e. reading and writing at all levels, progress cannot be guaranteed by methods that rely wholly on an intuitive or impressionistic or 'free activity' basis. The application of methods that are economical and expert is as important in English as in mathematics or science. Practice and hard work are also important and there is a place for technique as well as for persuasiveness and enthusiasm.
Finally, standards of achievement in reading and writing are not so difficult to frame, at various levels, as is sometimes supposed,
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assuming that they are not used, as they should not be, for exact statistical comparisons over large areas. The assumption that interest and standards are not compatible (or a concentration on incentives and interest that leaves standards out of account), is not likely to yield any sort of harvest worth reaping. The past two decades have witnessed some remarkable educational growths that are now firmly established and are of great potential value. But most of the work has not yet been done that will determine whether this crop will be eventually garnered or whether it will be left to sprout. In Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 suggestions are made for reconciling the valuable elements in modern educational theory and practice with those standards of achievement on which a modern society depends for its health and strength, in reading and writing no less than in technology. This is not a compromise between two absolute goods but a necessary harmony of two partial views, each of which, by itself, is bound to be sterile and may be moribund.
A healthy balance between the oral, the grammatical and the literary aspects of the teaching and learning of languages seems to be the key to successful practice. Generally speaking, the temptation is, naturally enough, to lean to the easy way, and the easy way varies with different countries, different generations, different individuals and different languages. We ourselves in teaching English tend to neglect technique, but in teaching French or German we often do the opposite. Some other nations, on their own admission, over-formalize the teaching of their own languages and literature, but they have perfected an admirable oral method for the teaching of English and other foreign languages. The ideal equilibrium is difficult to reach and to maintain. But it remains the most important objective of the schools on the humane side of the curriculum. That this ideal stands at the end of a receding vista, and that no good teacher is ever satisfied with his own progress along the road does not make the search any the less important or valuable.
In this pamphlet a good deal is asked of teachers and much is asked, accordingly, of those engaged in preparing young people for the teaching profession. It is probably fair to say that a decisive contribution is made to a future teacher's career before he or she leaves school. To that extent, the issues raised in this pamphlet are doubly important - first to teachers now teaching, from the viewpoint of their own practice; second, to future teachers who are still at school, from the viewpoint of their own education and especially of their attitude to language and literature. Whatever the value of the suggestions made in these chapters, and whether or not they are found generally acceptable, it is important that not only the teachers but also the staffs of training colleges and departments
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should be considering the issues raised and should be reaching their own conclusions.
No specialized professional advice is offered here to training college staffs. Their problems vary from college to college and, to some extent in present conditions, as between men and women. For the most part, moreover, the colleges and departments have the universities and institutes of education to turn to for advice. No more is, therefore, said here than the following: whatever the organization and methods of the colleges, the teaching profession can reasonably expect its entrants to pass muster in certain fundamentals. For instance, they ought to have read and enjoyed a number of important books of prose and poetry and to have studied some of them closely. They should know how to read, and how to help and encourage others to read and to go on reading, with increasing understanding, as the years pass. They should have caught some glimpse of a mature and assured style in an English author of established reputation - not an author arbitrarily chosen for them, and not a style which is eccentric, self-conscious or employed as a veneer; but a genuine inward appreciation of the use of language by some experienced writer whom they have come, under guidance, to understand and admire - different authors for different students. Last, but not least, resisting the many current temptations to carelessness or vulgarity of expression, they should respect words and use them, in and out of school, with a scrupulous care for meaning and decency (in the old sense of that word). Opinions will differ as to whether this is asking much or little. It will, however, be agreed that nothing less will do even the barest justice either to the schools or to the language.
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APPENDIX A
Some Notes on Reading
The following three notes may be of interest to readers, especially in relation to Chapter 5. The third is taken from the Ministry of Education's Pamphlet No. 18: Reading Ability. The first and second are personal expressions of opinion, based on his own long and wide experience, by Mr. John Duncan, O.B.E.
(i) The Use of Phonics in the United States and in England
It is never a simple matter to give a clear picture of practices and methods in schools in another country, because some schools may accept a fresh view quickly, but a period of twenty years may elapse before a majority of schools are influenced. It would, however, probably be true to say that, in general, in the United States of America during the past twenty-five years the use of phonic work in teaching reading has disappeared. No widely circulated readers published in that country in recent years has any phonic basis nor contains any phonic work. During the past two years there have been signs of reaction. Some American educational journals have been noting protests from employers of labour who complain that many workers in factories are unable to read notices which contain technical and semi-technical words, even when these words are in common use in their speech. The printed words are new patterns, not previously seen, and these people (possibly of below middle-ability) are unable to analyse and synthetize them. (Many bright children, after a 'whole sentence' approach, evolve, unaided, a syllabic method of recognizing new longer words.)
In England in recent years phonic work has been generally out of favour. The reasons for this may be:
1. Some children learn to read well without any phonic teaching.
2. In the past a phonic approach to reading was made by young children. It lacked meaning for them and was believed to be psychologically unsound because we tend to see first in 'wholes' (a young child may recognize the word 'elephant' before he knows the sounds of letters - because it is a distinctive word-pattern).
3. The lists of phonic words were long and contained, in many cases, words not in the child's speaking vocabulary.
4. The words in the lists were not related to the text. Practically no phonic reader has lists related to the text beyond the initial stages.
5. The words in the list were not immediately - in many cases never - applied and used.
6. 'Drilling' with long lists led sometimes to boredom without achievement, or to the acquisition of an immediate pseudo-skill which faded quickly.
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7. Training in word-building sometimes hindered reading for pleasure. Instead of attempting recognition (a) from context-meaning, (b) from the whole word-pattern, some would laboriously build - sometimes unnecessarily - word after word.
Many less able children are undoubtedly helped if they receive some training in phonics - after they have acquired some reading vocabulary by a different approach.
The selection of suitable reading books is a problem. In some graded readers for young children no phonic work at all is introduced. In those in which phonics are introduced, the phonic work appears either in the first book or immediately following one introductory book - i.e. at too early a stage. Less able children would be helped by a series in which phonic work is deferred until a fourth or fifth graded book.
Many older backward readers feel frustrated if they have to ask help often in order to recognize words. Some phonic work brings groups of words into their reading vocabulary. The sound of the initial letter of a word is often a clue for them. It appears, however, important to ensure that pupils should attempt to recognize a new word first by context-meaning, then if that fails, by viewing as a whole pattern, before using phonics.
(ii) Possible Reaction about Reading-readiness
For some years the trend in this country and in the United States of America has been for children to begin reading at a later age than formerly - at an age of about six and a half years. There has been a tendency sometimes to forget that some children (a few) have a mental age of six to six and a half years when they are four to five years old and are mature, not only intellectually, but in other ways. A considerable proportion of children have reached maturity in all these ways by the age of five to six years. While there may be a greater danger of introducing some children to reading prematurely than of delaying introduction for some who are ready, there is no purpose in delaying introduction for those who are ready. Witty makes this point. In a recent article (1) the following appears: 'It is conceivable that in years to come, children, although handicapped with T-V eyes, may nevertheless learn to read before attending school. Some do now. What then? Among other things a new concept of readiness will be forced upon us.'
(iii) Preparation for Reading
It is not for a moment suggested that a premature formal teaching should be replaced by a complete vacuum. Just as very young
(1) Paul Witty: Reading in Modern Education. London: Harrap, 1949.
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children learn to speak by being, as it were, immersed in the spoken language, so slightly older children can grow up at school in an atmosphere in which the written word is accepted as one of the natural and necessary accompaniments of living. Such children can be making acquaintance with words in visual form long before they realize why they do so. The skilful teacher will contrive many occasions on which everyday happenings may be associated with the printed word, so that the child comes to accept this as a necessary and proper part of his daily life.
It has already been implied that the first step to literacy is through speech, and that children need to build up a stock of ideas and a vocabulary sufficiently large to enable a beginning in reading to be made. To this end, more active ways of learning, in which a child takes a positive part in his own education instead of being passively taught, are becoming more common in schools; but 'activity' in itself is not enough. It needs to be carefully planned, and to be accompanied by a deliberate intention on the part of the teacher to use every appropriate opportunity for enriching the children's experience of the mother tongue and for practising them in its use. While all this is going forward, children can be discovering the pleasure to be found in books by listening to the teacher reading stories and by handling attractive picture books; or poetry may be used to give sheer pleasure in words and their sounds.
The forms which the preparatory period may take will vary with the circumstances of each particular school. To some extent this more or less extended preparation is an act of faith, for no measuring device can accurately assess the amount of learning which has taken place. But perhaps the grounds for faith are as simple as this: before organized skill can come, there must first be something to organize.
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APPENDIX B
Time Allotted Weekly to the Study of French
in Certain French Schools
[click on the image for a larger version]
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NOTES
1 Schools for boys and girls of the compulsory school age (six to fourteen), corresponding to former elementary schools in England and Wales, NOT to present primary schools.
2 The figures include two and a half hours for recreation.
3 Cours Préparatoire, for pupils aged six years.
4 Cours Élementaire, for pupils aged about seven and eight years.
5 Cours Moyen et Supérieur, for pupils aged from about nine to about twelve years.
6 Classe de Fin d'Études, for pupils aged about thirteen years.
7 The time-allocations for the different subjects in the Classe de Fin d'Études are no more than suggestions, meant to be applied flexibly.
8 As a rule, the teaching periods in lycées and collèges are nominally of an hour's duration. In practice, they usually last for from fifty to fifty-five minutes. Half-hours in the weekly allocations mean generally that the subject in question receives an additional hour either once a fortnight for the whole year or once a week for half the year.
9 The forms are listed in ascending order of seniority, VIe being for the youngest pupils (aged about eleven years),
10 Not all the hours that pupils in lycées and collèges spend at school are specifically allocated in the horaires. Hours not assigned to definite subjects on the time-tables are devoted to étude, during which the pupils work on their own, under supervision and generally at tasks that have been set by the subject-teachers. This explains the variations in the total time allotted to subjects in the different forms.
11 At all levels the pupils of the different sections (divisions or classes) have the same curriculum, except in foreign languages and - at the very top - in French, VIe Classique studies Latin as well as a modern language.
12 VIe Moderne and all the higher sections modernes and sections M study a modern language, but not Latin.
13 The curriculum includes both Latin and Greek.
14 The curriculum includes Latin and a second modern language.
15 The figures in brackets indicate the number of hours that may be devoted weekly to optional subjects (e.g. music and handicraft from IIe on, art from Ie on).
16 Section A1 has the same curriculum as section A, but it devotes each week one hour less to Greek, two and a half hours more to mathematics, and one hour more to science.
17 Section C has the same curriculum as section B, except that the second modern language is optional (and studied for less time each week). More time is allotted to mathematics and science.
18 Section C1 has the same curriculum as section C, except that pupils do not have the option of continuing their second modern language, and their science includes biology as well as chemistry and physics.
19 M1 has the same curriculum as M (the continuation of the sections modernes of lower forms), except that the second modern language is optional (and studied for less time each week), and the science includes biology as well as chemistry and physics,
20 Optional.
