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The Classics as a Means of Training in English

Alice Walton

The following suggestions may appear obvious to most teachers of the Classics, and yet the daily speech in our classrooms shows that we too easily neglect our responsibility in this regard under the pressure of more immediate interests. It is our bounden duty to lose no opportunity to make the process of speech consciously correct in these days when traditions of correct English are breaking down before the influx of foreign idiom, resulting in a careless and often ignorant usage.

We need to combat the tendency on the part of our pupils to isolate the facts of experience. They pack away the literature of a people and its history into separate pigeon holes, and too rarely observe the interrelation of the two, and they must be taught to aid memory and appreciation by constant comparison. And we, who aim a value for the study of classical literatures because our own is so deeply rooted in them, allow the two subjects to be mutually exclusive, although it is only correlated knowledge which is the beginning of wisdom.

While the highest aim of training in the Classics is the appreciation of the peculiar genius of the ancients, such understanding is of little value unless related to modern experience, and this is equally true of the more special study of the ancient languages. The relation of classical to modern languages, especially English, must be kept' constantly in mind and similar and divergent teatures be noted, in syntax and idiom. The history of English works of classical ancestrv should be traced in form and content, and special emphasis laid on the hidden figures which give life to our vocabulary. Pupils may be encouraged to discover in their English reading instances of words employed with an unusual significance, and to justify their use by derivation, or discriminate against a vulgar expression by the same method. Flexibility of vocabulary may be fostered by grouping Latin or Greek words of similar content with equivalent English words or phrases and by discussing the appropriateness of each with different contexts. The memorizing of some one secondary meaning of a word is often responsible for weakness in rapid reading no less than for stiff and meaningless renderings, for the thought can never be grasped in the original form unless the mind is impressionable and ready to bend itself to the unexpected turns of the path through which it travels to the end of the sentence. vVe can at least encourage the use of a larger vocabulary and not allow stereotyped expressions to become the sign for this or that foreign word, While correction of translation should not be too exacting, we should insist on grammatical accuracy, precise and forceful phraseology, and we should heartily commend any instances of elegance or smoothness of style. Frequent written translations are essential, the diction of which each pupil may correct for himself after he has laid it aside until the memory of t1~eoriginal has faded.

We have also a responsibility in leading the way to appreciation of literary structure. 1'00 often even in these days we find pupils reading Greek and Latin page by page without interest or alertness, neither recognizing an argument or digression, scarcely a line of beauty much less the meaning or structure of the whole. To make the interest in selected portions more vital. the whole composition should be studied from spirited translations and the principles of its analysis understood. Every effort should be made to show the relation of the composition to the life of the time which produced it, and thus to cultivate the habit of judgment and inference so necessary to the appreciation of any literature. It should also be made easy to read English masterpieces written on similar subjects or in the same style.

Pupils respond eagerly to such suggestions if the work is kept parallel with the subjects taught in the English classes, so that what is learned in one department is strengthened by the illustrations of the other. Thus our own teaching becomes doubly effective if we keep firmly to the principle of correlation with other language work, grinding all the grist which comes to our mill. Surely we ought to stand in the closest relation to the work in English and help it by precept and practice, realizing the dependence of our own language and literature on the Classics, and the fact that no appreciation of either can be vital without the other.