The Novel and the Common School | Page 4

the rich as by the poor. The taste for a good book has not kept pace
with the taste for a good dinner, and multitudes who have
commendable judgment about the table would think it a piece of
extravagance to pay as much for a book as for a dinner, and would be
ashamed to smoke a cigar that cost less than a novel. Indeed, we seem
to be as yet far away from the appreciation of the truth that what we put
into the mind is as important to our well-being as what we put into the
stomach.
No doubt there are more people capable of appreciating a good book,
and there are more good books read, in this age, than in any previous,
though the ratio of good judges to the number who read is less; but we
are considering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say
its tastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling,
restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the reading
selected in the newspapers, what is most persistently thrust upon its
attention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable to
deal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish
books of merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies.

Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse of
superficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention,
any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity of
individual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfect
government. But this is not saying that the common school does all that
it can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It must be
partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools that there
are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general taste, judged
by the sort of books now read, is so mediocre. Most of the public
schools teach reading, or have taught it, so poorly that the scholars who
come from them cannot read easily; hence they must have spice, and
blood, and vice to stimulate them, just as a man who has lost taste
peppers his food. We need not agree with those who say that there is no
merit whatever in the mere ability to read; nor, on the other hand, can
we join those who say that the art of reading will pretty surely
encourage a taste for the nobler kind of reading, and that the habit of
reading trash will by-and-by lead the reader to better things. As a
matter of experience, the reader of the namby-pamby does not acquire
an appetite for anything more virile, and the reader of the sensational
requires constantly more highly flavored viands. Nor is it reasonable to
expect good taste to be recovered by an indulgence in bad taste.
What, then, does the common school usually do for literary taste?
Generally there is no thought about it. It is not in the minds of the
majority of teachers, even if they possess it themselves. The business is
to teach the pupils to read; how they shall use the art of reading is little
considered. If we examine the reading-books from the lowest grade to
the highest, we shall find that their object is to teach words, not
literature. The lower-grade books are commonly inane (I will not say
childish, for that is a libel on the open minds of children) beyond
description. There is an impression that advanced readers have
improved much in quality within a few years, and doubtless some of
them do contain specimens of better literature than their predecessors.
But they are on the old plan, which must be radically modified or
entirely cast aside, and doubtless will be when the new method is
comprehended, and teachers are well enough furnished to cut loose
from the machine. We may say that to learn how to read, and not what

to read, is confessedly the object of these books; but even this object is
not attained. There is an endeavor to teach how to call the words of a
reading-book, but not to teach how to read; for reading involves,
certainly for the older scholars, the combination of known words to
form new ideas. This is lacking. The taste for good literature is not
developed; the habit of continuous pursuit of a subject, with
comprehension of its relations, is not acquired; and no conception is
gained of the entirety of literature or its importance to human life.
Consequently, there is no power of judgment or faculty of
discrimination.
Now, this radical defect can be easily remedied if the school authorities
only clearly apprehend one truth, and that is that the minds of children