The Novel and the Common School
42 pages
English

The Novel and the Common School

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42 pages
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Project Gutenberg's The Novel and the Common School, by Charles Dudley WarnerThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww.gutenberg.netTitle: The Novel and the Common SchoolAuthor: Charles Dudley WarnerRelease Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #3123]Language: English*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL ***Produced by David WidgerTHE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOLBy Charles Dudley WarnerThere has been a great improvement in the physical condition of the people of the United States within two generations.This is more noticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere; and the foreign traveler who oncedetected a race deterioration, which he attributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety, whichwas evident in all classes, for a rapid change of condition, finds very little now to sustain his theory. Although the restlessenergy continues, the mixed race in America has certainly changed physically for the better. Speaking generally, thecontours of face and form are more rounded. The change is most marked in regions once noted for leanness, angularity,and sallowness of complexion, but throughout the country the types of physical manhood are more numerous; and ifwomen of rare and exceptional beauty are ...

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Publié le 08 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures 27
Langue English

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SPrcohjoeoclt,  Gbyu tCenhbarelregs' sD Tuhdlee yN oWvealr naenrd the CommonThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere atno cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under theterms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.netTitle: The Novel and the Common SchoolAuthor: Charles Dudley WarnerRelease Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #3123]Language: English*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERGEBOOK THE NOVEL AND THE COMMONSCHOOL ***Produced by David Widger
TCHOEM NMOOVNE SL CAHNODO TLHEBy Charles Dudley WarnerThere has been a great improvement in thephysical condition of the people of the UnitedStates within two generations. This is morenoticeable in the West than in the East, but it ismarked everywhere; and the foreign traveler whoonce detected a race deterioration, which heattributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere andto a feverish anxiety, which was evident in allclasses, for a rapid change of condition, finds verylittle now to sustain his theory. Although therestless energy continues, the mixed race inAmerica has certainly changed physically for thebetter. Speaking generally, the contours of faceand form are more rounded. The change is mostmarked in regions once noted for leanness,angularity, and sallowness of complexion, butthroughout the country the types of physicalmanhood are more numerous; and if women ofrare and exceptional beauty are not morenumerous, no doubt the average of comelinessand beauty has been raised. Thus far, the increaseof beauty due to better development has not beenat the expense of delicacy of complexion and ofline, as it has been in some European countries.Physical well-being is almost entirely a matter ofnutrition. Something is due in our case to the
accumulation of money, to the decrease in anincreasing number of our population of the dailyanxiety about food and clothes, to more leisure;but abundant and better-prepared food is the directagency in our physical change. Good food is notonly more abundant and more widely distributedthan it was two generations ago, but it is to be hadin immeasurably greater variety. No other peopleexisting, or that ever did exist, could commandsuch a variety of edible products for dailyconsumption as the mass of the American peoplehabitually use today. In consequence they have theopportunity of being better nourished than anyother people ever were. If they are not betternourished, it is because their food is badlyprepared. Whenever we find, either in NewEngland or in the South, a community ill-favored,dyspeptic, lean, and faded in complexion, we maybe perfectly sure that its cooking is bad, and that itis too ignorant of the laws of health to procure thatvariety of food which is so easily obtainable. Peoplewho still diet on sodden pie and the products of thefrying-pan of the pioneer, and then, in order topromote digestion, attempt to imitate the patientcow by masticating some elastic and fragrant gum,are doing very little to bring in that universalphysical health or beauty which is the naturalheritage of our opportunity.Now, what is the relation of our intellectualdevelopment to this physical improvement? It willbe said that the general intelligence is raised, thatthe habit of reading is much more widespread, andthat the increase of books, periodicals, and
newspapers shows a greater mental activity thanexisted formerly. It will also be said that theopportunity for education was never before sonearly universal. If it is not yet true everywhere thatall children must go to school, it is true that all maygo to school free of cost. Without doubt, also,great advance has been made in Americanscholarship, in specialized learning andinvestigation; that is to say, the proportion ofscholars of the first rank in literature and in scienceis much larger to the population than a generation.ogaBut what is the relation of our general intellectuallife to popular education? Or, in other words, whateffect is popular education having upon the generalintellectual habit and taste? There are two ways oftesting this. One is by observing whether the massof minds is better trained and disciplined thanformerly, less liable to delusions, better able todetect fallacies, more logical, and less likely to beled away by novelties in speculation, or by theoriesthat are unsupported by historic evidence or thatare contradicted by a knowledge of human nature.If we were tempted to pursue this test, we shouldbe forced to note the seeming anomaly of ascientific age peculiarly credulous; the ease withwhich any charlatan finds followers; the commonreadiness to fall in with any theory of progresswhich appeals to the sympathies, and to accept thewildest notions of social reorganization. We shouldbe obliged to note also, among scientific menthemselves, a disposition to come to conclusionson inadequate evidence—a disposition usually due
to one-sided education which lacks metaphysicaltraining and the philosophic habit. Multitudes offairly intelligent people are afloat without any base-line of thought to which they can refer newsuggestions; just as many politicians arefloundering about for want of an apprehension ofthe Constitution of the United States and of thehistoric development of society. An honestacceptance of the law of gravitation would banishmany popular delusions; a comprehension thatsomething cannot be made out of nothing woulddispose of others; and the application of theordinary principles of evidence, such as menrequire to establish a title to property, would endmost of the remaining. How far is our populareducation, which we have now enjoyed for two fullgenerations, responsible for this state of mind? If ithas not encouraged it, has it done much to correct?tiThe other test of popular education is in the kind ofreading sought and enjoyed by the majority of theAmerican people. As the greater part of thisreading is admitted to be fiction, we have before usthe relation of the novel to the common school. Asthe common school is our universal method ofeducation, and the novels most in demand arethose least worthy to be read, we may considerthis subject in two aspects: the encouragement, byneglect or by teaching, of the taste that demandsthis kind of fiction, and the tendency of the novel tobecome what this taste demands.Before considering the common school, however,
we have to notice a phenomenon in letters—namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper asa vehicle for general reading-matter. Not contentwith giving the news, or even with creating newsand increasing its sensational character, it graspsat the wider field of supplying reading material forthe million, usurping the place of books and to alarge extent of periodicals. The effect of this newdeparture in journalism is beginning to attractattention. An increasing number of people readnothing except the newspapers. Consequently,they get little except scraps and bits; no subject isconsidered thoroughly or exhaustively; and theyare furnished with not much more than the smallchange for superficial conversation. The habit ofexcessive newspaper reading, in which a greatvariety of topics is inadequately treated, has acurious effect on the mind. It becomesdemoralized, gradually loses the power ofconcentration or of continuous thought, and evenloses the inclination to read the long articles whichthe newspaper prints. The eye catches a thousandthings, but is detained by no one. Variety, which inlimitations is wholesome in literary as well as inphysical diet, creates dyspepsia when it isexcessive, and when the literary viands are badlycooked and badly served the evil is increased. Themind loses the power of discrimination, the taste islowered, and the appetite becomes diseased. Theeffect of this scrappy, desultory reading is badenough when the hashed compound selected istolerably good. It becomes a very serious matterwhen the reading itself is vapid, frivolous, or bad.The responsibility of selecting the mental food for
millions of people is serious. When, in the lastcentury, in England, the Society for the Diffusion ofUseful Information, which accomplished so muchgood, was organized, this responsibility was felt,and competent hands prepared the popular booksand pamphlets that were cheap in price and widelydiffused. Now, it happens that a hundred thousandpeople, perhaps a million in some cases, surrenderthe right of the all-important selection of the foodfor their minds to some unknown and irresponsibleperson whose business it is to choose themiscellaneous reading-matter for a particularnewspaper. His or her taste may be good, or itmay be immature and vicious; it may be usedsimply to create a sensation; and yet the million ofreaders get nothing except what this one personchooses they shall read. It is an astonishingabdication of individual preference. Day after day,Sunday after Sunday, they read only what thisunknown person selects for them. Instead of goingto the library and cultivating their own tastes, andpursuing some subject that will increase theirmental vigor and add to their permanent stock ofthought, they fritter away their time upon a hash ofliterature chopped up for them by a personpossibly very unfit even to make good hash. Themere statement of this surrender of one'sjudgment of what shall be his intellectual life isalarming.But the modern newspaper is no doubt a naturalevolution in our social life. As everything has acause, it would be worth while to inquire whetherthe encyclopaedic newspaper is in response to a
demand, to a taste created by our commonschools. Or, to put the question in another form,does the system of education in our commonschools give the pupils a taste for good literature ormuch power of discrimination? Do they come outof school with the habit of continuous reading, ofreading books, or only of picking up scraps in thenewspapers, as they might snatch a hasty meal ata lunch-counter? What, in short, do the schoolscontribute to the creation of a taste for goodliterature?Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about themodern novel. It is feared that it will not be realisticenough, that it will be too realistic, that it will beinsincere as to the common aspects of life, that itwill not sufficiently idealize life to keep itself withinthe limits of true art. But while the critics are busysaying what the novel should be, and attacking ordefending the fiction of the previous age, the novelobeys pretty well the laws of its era, and in manyways, especially in the variety of its development,represents the time. Regarded simply as a work ofart, it may be said that the novel should be anexpression of the genius of its writerconscientiously applied to a study of the facts oflife and of human nature, with little reference to theaudience. Perhaps the great works of art that haveendured have been so composed. We may say, forexample, that "Don Quixote" had to create itssympathetic audience. But, on the other hand,works of art worthy the name are sometimesproduced to suit a demand and to please a tastealready created. A great deal of what passes for
literature in these days is in this category of supplyto suit the demand, and perhaps it can be said ofthis generation more fitly than of any other that thenovel seeks to hit the popular taste; havingbecome a means of livelihood, it must sell in orderto be profitable to the producer, and in order to sellit must be what the reading public want. Thedemand and sale are widely taken as the criterionof excellence, or they are at least sufficientencouragement of further work on the line of thesuccess. This criterion is accepted by thepublisher, whose business it is to supply a demand.The conscientious publisher asks two questions: Isthe book good? and Will it sell? The publisherwithout a conscience asks only one question: Willthe book sell? The reflex influence of this uponauthors is immediately felt.The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational,and worthless for any purpose of intellectualstimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thusencouraged in this age as it never was before. Themaking of novels has become a process ofmanufacture. Usually, after the fashion of the silk-weavers of Lyons, they are made for the centralestablishment on individual looms at home; but ifdemand for the sort of goods furnished at presentcontinues, there is no reason why they should notbe produced, even more cheaply than they arenow, in great factories, where there can be divisionof labor and economy of talent. The shoal ofEnglish novels conscientiously reviewed everyseventh day in the London weeklies wouldpreserve their present character and gain in
firmness of texture if they were made bymachinery. One has only to mark what sort ofnovels reach the largest sale and are most calledfor in the circulating libraries, to gauge prettyaccurately the public taste, and to measure theinfluence of this taste upon modern production.With the exception of the novel now and thenwhich touches some religious problem or somesocialistic speculation or uneasiness, or is a specialfreak of sensationalism, the novels which suit thegreatest number of readers are those which movein a plane of absolute mediocrity, and have theslightest claim to be considered works of art. Theyrepresent the chromo stage of development.They must be cheap. The almost universal habit ofreading is a mark of this age—nowhere else soconspicuous as in America; and considering thetraining of this comparatively new reading public, itis natural that it should insist upon cheapness ofmaterial, and that it should require quality less thanquantity. It is a note of our general intellectualdevelopment that cheapness in literature is almostas much insisted on by the rich as by the poor. Thetaste for a good book has not kept pace with thetaste for a good dinner, and multitudes who havecommendable judgment about the table wouldthink it a piece of extravagance to pay as much fora book as for a dinner, and would be ashamed tosmoke a cigar that cost less than a novel. Indeed,we seem to be as yet far away from theappreciation of the truth that what we put into themind is as important to our well-being as what weput into the stomach.
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