The Novel and the Common School | Page 7

think, and most pupils are led to
believe, that this most important former of the mind, maker of character,
and guide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out
of a textbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come
up to college almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and
of the ideas that have made our civilization. Some of them have never
read a book, except the text-books on the specialties in which they have
prepared themselves for examination. We have a saying concerning
people whose minds appear to be made up of dry, isolated facts, that
they have no atmosphere. Well, literature is the atmosphere. In it we
live, and move, and have our being, intellectually. The first lesson read
to, or read by, the child should begin to put him in relation with the
world and the thought of the world. This cannot be done except by the
living teacher. No text-book, no one reading-book or series of
reading-books, will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally
delivered, the teacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our
notions of the function of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is
to present evidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it?
Why, in experimental science, if you please, in history, but, in short, in
good literature, using the word in its broadest sense. The object in
selecting reading for children is to make it impossible for them to see
any evidence except the best. That is the teacher's business, and how
few understand their business! How few are educated! In the best
literature we find truth about the world, about human nature; and hence,
if children read that, they read what their experience will verify. I am
told that publishers are largely at fault for the quality of the reading
used in schools--that schools would gladly receive the good literature if
they could get it. But I do not know, in this case, how much the demand
has to do with the supply. I am certain, however, that educated teachers
would use only the best means for forming the minds and enlightening
the understanding of their pupils. It must be kept in mind that reading,
silent reading done by the scholar, is not learning signs and calling

words; it is getting thought. If children are to get thought, they should
be served with the best--that which will not only be true, but appeal so
naturally to their minds that they will prefer it to all meaner stuff. If it is
true that children cannot acquire this taste at home--and it is true for the
vast majority of American children--then it must be given in the public
schools. To give it is not to interrupt the acquisition of other knowledge;
it is literally to open the door to all knowledge.
When this truth is recognized in the common schools, and literature is
given its proper place, not only for the development of the mind, but as
the most easily-opened door to history, art, science, general intelligence,
we shall see the taste of the reading public in the United States undergo
a mighty change: It will not care for the fiction it likes at present, and
which does little more than enfeeble its powers; and then there can be
no doubt that fiction will rise to supply the demand for something
better. When the trash does not sell, the trash will not be produced, and
those who are only capable of supplying the present demand will
perhaps find a more useful occupation. It will be again evident that
literature is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers and patient
training. When people know how to read, authors will need to know
how to write.
In all other pursuits we carefully study the relation of supply to demand.
Why not in literature? Formerly, when readers were comparatively few,
and were of a class that had leisure and the opportunity of cultivating
the taste, books were generally written for this class, and aimed at its
real or supposed capacities. If the age was coarse in speech or specially
affected in manner, the books followed the lead given by the demand;
but, coarse or affected, they had the quality of art demanded by the best
existing cultivation. Naturally, when the art of reading is acquired by
the great mass of the people, whose taste has not been cultivated, the
supply for this increased demand will, more or less, follow the level of
its intelligence. After our civil war there was a patriotic desire to
commemorate the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers in monuments, and
the deeds of our great captains in statues. This noble desire