LISTS of the "Best Hundred Books for Boys and Girls" have of recent years been very much the thing. Newspapers have printed such lists, as drawn up by prominent citizens, and have discussed them on alternate Sundays with biblical criticism. And the lack of profitable results from all this discussion has been due, in the case of the reading-lists as in the case of the higher criticism, to lack of the scientific point of view. The men who have drawn up the lists have disregarded any other standpoint than their own; they have put on their reading-list certain books that had appealed to them as boys, and certain books that no young gentleman's library should be without, and have then, apparently, filled out the hundred almost at random. It is to be feared that too many literature courses in our schools are planned in the same haphazard manner. To choose literature for boys and girls wisely, we should have some fixed purpose-something we wish to accomplish by means of this reading. If in English we had half a dozen classics, which had established a definite tradition of English style for all time, the problem would be simple. But our tongue is constantly changing; our literature constantly growing; even Shakspere and Milton are hardly models of our contemporary style. And while we have thus no true fountain heads of pure English, the mass of our literature well worth reading is vastly more than any man is ever likely to read. In selecting from this mass of readable literature books for our schoolboys and girls to read, what principle can guide us? If our object is not to acquaint our pupils with one recognized standard of English, what is our object? One object we all certainly have, and to me it seems by far the most important; namely, to open to our pupils' interest the vast field of good literature; to get them really to like to read good books. We who are mature read first of all for pleasure; we get inspiration from books simply because we have learned to take pleasure in sharing the ideas of great minds. Our most obvious task as teachers of literature is to win the hearts of our pupils from what is trivial, by showing them the greater interest of books of more permanent value. The principle on which this may be done has been pointed out by the psychologists; it is a simple application of the familiar doctrine of apperception. The pupil can understand nothing, like nothing, unless he has already something in his mind that reaches out, as it were, a hand to the new idea and claims kinship with it. All new interests are built up on earlier ones. A boy cannot be driven from detective stories to philosophical essays; he must be led step by step. We must know what our pupils' original likings are; we must share them, as much as possible; and we must, in introducing better things, point out in them elements enjoyed in former reading, while explaining the more remote new interests. For this knowledge of our pupils' primary interests, mere estimate will not suffice; we must have actual facts. The question has been to a certain extent investigated in the grammar schools. But concerning the tastes of secondary school pupils I have found nothing. I, therefore, have recently been conducting an investigation of what high-school boys and girls really like to read. When I begun my study, two reading-lists were in the field, 'ALLAN ABBOTT, the SCHOOL REVIEW, June, 1901, for summary of such investigations. |