WITH INTERPRETATIONS AN EIGHTH READER BY WILLIAM ILER CRANE AND WILLIAM HENRY WHEELER CHICAGO W. H. WHEELER & COMPANY INTRODUCTION It is not possible to do anything rationally without first having in our possession a perfectly clear conception of the purpose for which the thing is done; for the purpose is the only thing that can show how the thing is to be done correctly. Therefore, in the preparation of a series of readers the first thing to be determined is The Purpose of Teaching Reading. The Purpose of Teaching Reading is unquestionably to enable the child to get from a printed page the Images, the Thoughts, and the Emotions of the author who wrote the page. No good literature has been really read unless the reader has been able to attain from the printed page these three things, the Images, the Thoughts, and the Emotions of the writer. The teaching of reading consists in using all of those processes which will lead the child most directly and certainly to the ability to interpret correctly the printed page. The following explanation will show this idea clearly. A poet in writing a poem passes through the following steps: THE POET'S PROCESS 1. The poet sees something and feels an emotion. 2. He feels in some vague way that this thing has a relation to his life. 3. His mental processes change this abstract relation into concrete forms. 4. The poet crystallizes these concrete forms into words. The following illustration will make this clear. Take Longfellow's familiar poem, "The Rainy Day.” From inside the old Craigie House the poet looked out and saw a leaden sky; he saw the rain falling, and the dead leaves loosening their hold and dropping; and he heard the sighing of the wind. This created in him an emotion. This is Step 1. Then he thought, "Somehow this is like my life." This is Step 2. Then he said, "This is like my life, because a. The wind is like my sighs; b. The rain is like my tears; c. The vine clinging to the moldering wall is like my thoughts clinging to the past; d. The leaves falling thick in the blast are like my hopes." Thus he works out the concrete forms of the relation of the rainy day to his life. This is Step 3. Then he changes the concrete forms into words arranged metrically, and thus he has what is called a poem. This is Step 4. Thus it will be seen that he has gone through the four steps mentioned, (1) an emotion, (2) a consciousness of an abstract relation to life, (3) a change of the abstract relation to the concrete forms of that relation, and (4) a crystallization of them into the words of the poem. THE READER'S PROCESS Now the person who reads the poem called "The Rainy Day" experiences these four steps, but in exactly the reverse order, as follows: 1. He comes first to the words. 2. He reads through the words and sees the concrete forms of a relation to life, or that the wind is like the poet's sighs, the rain like his tears, the vine clinging to the wall like his thoughts clinging to the past, and the dead leaves falling thick in the blast like his hopes. 3. Then all these things begin to lose their individual identities and to blend or focalize into one impression, an abstract relation to life. at 4. If all of this has been done clearly and properly, the reader arrives the emotion with which the poet started. The following tabulation will make clear what is meant here: The reader has not read the poem until he has taken all of these four steps. We do not mean to say that all poems have a relation to life. But in all cases the reader, if he really reads, must draw from the printed words (1) Images, (2) Thoughts, and (3) Emotions. This is true in both poetry and prose. The poets and the story-tellers live in the imagination, which is a much larger world than that found in the geographies, and into this larger region they often take us. If we wish to follow them we must train our mental eyesight. We must see the scene, and enter into the thought and the feeling of the story or the poem which we read. The imagination is a wonderful worker if only we trust it. It is as susceptible of improvement by exercise as our judgment or our memory. If there is no imagination, there can be no sympathy. The greatest intellectual training afforded by reading is the training of the imagination. Without this power of mental vision which we call imagination, we can never read well, because we can never understand well. We may have wished for the gifts of the old fairy tale, the magic glass through which one sees distant objects and the magic rug on which one is borne to far-off scenes. But both of these gifts are ours in this wonderful power of imagination. The Reading Process. The problem of teaching reading consists in using that set of processes which will enable the child upon taking up a printed page to get easily and correctly the author's Images, Thoughts, and Emotions. No matter how beautifully he can vocalize the printed page, he has not read the page at all unless he has drawn from the printed words these three things. In reading aloud it is not possible to convey truly the author's Images, Thoughts, and Emotions to a hearer unless there be present in the reader's mind as he uses his voice, the Images, Thoughts, and Emotions of the author; for the presence of these three things in the reader's mind is the only possible cause of such vibrations of the vocal organs as will produce the tones and cadences which will make the hearer see, think, and feel. There will be little disagreement about The Purpose of Teaching Reading. The Literary Basis Necessary to Produce This Result. 1. Suitable material. a. The reading material chosen should be such as will afford the best training basis to lead children to organize the power and the habit of getting from a printed page the Images, the Thoughts, and the Emotions which the author put into the selection. b. The literature used should be such as is interesting to children of the age taught. c. There should be proper balance of prose and poetry. d. If possible, the literature should be that which an intelligent person is expected to know. |