Page 14 - 1916 February - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 93

references, forgotten references, and wrong references. Perhaps i f
a stern, hurried school inspector chances to make his inquiring visit
on that day, he might judge time spent this way a criminal
waste, though the interest of the class ought to lessen his condemna-
tion. Even the hurried inspector, I think, realizes that the value of
any single recitation can only be determined by its relation to
those coming before and after, and by what it is intended to ac-
complish in the whole scheme.

In L'AUegro this story telling usually extends into the second
recitation which is finished out by the report on words. These in
turn run into the third for which work should be given out in a
review on the fundamentals of versification and work in scansion of
lines, taken from the poem. The selecting of such lines brings the
first actual use of the poem; for the wisest method of pursuing the
story telling is not, I think, to mention the names as they come up
in lines but to take them up out of the child's knowledge that there
is such a system as Greek mythology. Scanning the lines introduces
them to the poem and its music. Out of the third recitation there
must come ten minutes in which to read aloud to the class (which has
not yet, remember, read the poem from assignment) the whole poem
suggesting that they bring to your reading all the new thoughts they
have accumulated during the last two hours. Books should be closed
and all eyes be turned to the teacher. Now comes a consideration in
which I confess, I believe we English teachers are apt to fail—that
is in a quiet and intelligent appreciative reading to our classes.
There is a vast difference between reading in an elocutionary man-
ner,—a thing which I think is above all others, to be avoided—and
putting a bit of personal understanding into the reading. There is
also a happy medium, between reading as an elocutionist, which is
not the duty of the teacher, and reading in an unintelligent, expres-
sionless manner, which some teachers affect as the necessary opposite.
The function of a sensitive, feeling reading is to make the poem
clear to the pupils, and thus to intercept partially its feeling to them.
Again and again I realize the truth of what my friend and teacher
Professor Gray says, "No teacher need fear her ability to teach a
poem i f she will live it and feel it as the poet meant she should."
She becomes so f u l l of it, that teaching is the natural outlet. Indeed
it is, I believe, the perfunctory, formal approach of some teachers
to the poems taught that makes it almost impossible to bring them
home to the pupils as real and vital. I t seems to me there can be
little finer joy for an orator in the applause of a multitude after his
splendid oration than comes to a teacher when after a quiet but
sympathetic reading of L'AUegro with its moods of reflection and