The Novel and the Common School | Page 9

the inferior, mediocre,
other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of the
magazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could
earn as much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all of
whom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must be
confessed that their audience is small.
This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, and the
common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general reading public,

in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in the common
school is the same--the lack of inspiration and ideality. The common
school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general public lacks
literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either produced by or
addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to the
demand of the times.
It is already evident, both in positive and negative results, both in the
schools and the general public taste, that literature cannot be set aside
in the scheme of education; nay, that it is of the first importance. The
teacher must be able to inspire the pupil; not only to awaken eagerness
to know, but to kindle the imagination. The value of the Hindoo or the
Greek myth, of the Roman story, of the mediaeval legend, of the heroic
epic, of the lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any genuine piece
of literature, ancient or modern, is not in the knowledge of it as we may
know the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the formulas of a science,
but in the enlargement of the mind to a conception of the life and
development of the race, to a study of the motives of human action, to a
comprehension of history; so that the mind is not simply enriched, but
becomes discriminating, and able to estimate the value of events and
opinions. This office for the mind acquaintance with literature can
alone perform. So that, in school, literature is not only, as I have said,
the easiest open door to all else desirable, the best literature is not only
the best means of awakening the young mind, the stimulus most
congenial, but it is the best foundation for broad and generous culture.
Indeed, without its co-ordinating influence the education of the
common school is a thing of shreds and patches. Besides, the mind
aroused to historic consciousness, kindled in itself by the best that has
been said and done in all ages, is more apt in the pursuit, intelligently,
of any specialty; so that the shortest road to the practical education so
much insisted on in these days begins in the awakening of the faculties
in the manner described. There is no doubt of the value of manual
training as an aid in giving definiteness, directness, exactness to the
mind, but mere technical training alone will be barren of those results,
in general discriminating culture, which we hope to see in America.
The common school is a machine of incalculable value. It is not,

however, automatic. If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to lift
the nation than the mere ability to read will lift it. It can easily be made
to inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a powerful influence in
teaching the American people what to read; and upon a broadened,
elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of American art,
of American fiction.
It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that an
elevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of a
genuine literary product. An invention which increases or cheapens the
conveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator. A
book which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to the
highest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people;
which furnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which
dispels the cares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend
when friends fail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is
impossible, for a year, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world
which has a proper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its
author. (1890.)

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