Stories to Tell to Children | Page 8

felt
that they were externals, desirable but not necessary adjuncts,--pretty
tags of an exceptional gift or culture. Many an intelligent school
director to-day will say, "I don't care much about HOW you say a thing;
it is WHAT you say that counts." He cannot see that voice and
enunciation and pronunciation are essentials. But they are. You can no
more help affecting the meaning of your words by the way you say
them than you can prevent the expressions of your face from carrying a

message; the message may be perverted by an uncouth habit, but it will
no less surely insist on recognition.
The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human
soul to another, by way of the ear. And these ideas are very complex.
They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure
intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are
enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols
which have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in
themselves. The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of
thought, the desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with
you,--these seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of
certain vocal signs; they demand such variations and delicate
adjustments of sound as will inevitably affect the listening mind with
the response desired.
There is no "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written
sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing
inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank
of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism, or
simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the
more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what." Just as
true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment, spoken by
Wendell Phillips and by a man from the Bowery or an uneducated
ranchman, is not the same to the listener. In one case the sentiment
comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing
qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words
themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just
and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the
associations of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of speech.
And, further, the immense personal equation shows itself in the beauty
and power of the vocal expressiveness, which carries shades of
meaning, unguessed delicacies of emotion, intimations of beauty, to
every ear. In the other case, the thought is clouded by unavoidable
suggestions of ignorance and ugliness, brought by the pronunciation
and voice, even to an unanalytical ear; the meaning is obscured by
inaccurate inflection and uncertain or corrupt enunciation; but, worst of
all, the personal atmosphere, the aroma, of the idea has been lost in
transmission through a clumsy, ill-fitted medium.

The thing said may look the same on a printed page, but it is not the
same when spoken. And it is the spoken sentence which is the original
and the usual mode of communication.
The widespread poverty of expression in English, which is thus a
matter of "how," and to which we are awakening, must be corrected
chiefly, at least at first, by the common schools. The home is the ideal
place for it, but the average home of the United States is no longer a
possible place for it. The child of foreign parents, the child of parents
little educated and bred in limited circumstances, the child of powerful
provincial influences, must all depend on the school for standards of
English.
And it is the elementary school which must meet the need, if it is to be
met at all. For the conception of English expression which I am talking
of can find no mode of instruction adequate to its meaning, save in
constant appeal to the ear, at an age so early that unconscious habit is
formed. No rules, no analytical instruction in later development, can
accomplish what is needed. Hearing and speaking; imitating,
unwittingly and wittingly, a good model; it is to this method we must
look for redemption from present conditions.
I believe we are on the eve of a real revolution in English
teaching,--only it is a revolution which will not break the peace. The
new way will leave an overwhelming preponderance of oral methods in
use up to the fifth or sixth grade, and will introduce a larger proportion
of oral work than has ever been contemplated in grammar and high
school work. It will recognize the fact that English is primarily
something spoken with the mouth and heard with the ear. And this
recognition will have greatest weight in the systems of elementary
teaching.
It is as an aid in oral teaching of English that