Expression in Speech and Writing

This small volume has a chapter on Oral Composition, one on Written Composition, and one on Verse Making, on Original Music, on the Rendering of Poetry. It closes with an appendix on the Expression of Arithmetical reasoning. The chapter on Oral Composition opens by calling attention to the difference in the present day attitude towards children. When the writer and many others of us who can remember, were young, the favorite maxim was that little children should be seen and not heard. The story is told of one school inspector, who used to test the discipline of the school by dropping a pin on the desk. If he heard the pin drop, the discipline of the school was good. Now, we are coming to hold with the poet, who says: "God's mercy is upon the young, God's wisdom in the baby tongue, That fears not anything." Our readiest means of self-expression and self-development is in our speech. Education, therefore, which means development, is greatly concerned with speech as one of our highest functions. Only recently has the importance of speech in children been recognized. It has long been understood that children must learn to write, because among a nation of shopkeepers, writing made them useful to their employers. It was not recognized that even from a money making point of view ill-educated labor-slave labor, was wasteful and uneconomic. This fact is now known by the employers of labor, and the present educational activity in Great Britain and elsewhere is the result. We are coming to understand what was not known formerly, that speech training is the readiest means to expression in writing. It contributes most of all the development of personality, which is real education. While it may be assumed that the individual exists for the state, it may also be recognized that the state exists for the individual and in order that each may have an opportunity to fulfill himself in it. Too often in teaching children to compose, especially in teaching them written composition, we have illustrated the saying of Bacon, who maintained "It is the first distemper of learning when men study words and not things.." In a school where children are led to talk freely and to express themselves, it will not be true of their language that "children come to school ignorant but curious; they leave it later, still ignorant but no longer curious." The author devotes much space to this chapter on Oral Composition, be: cause he believes in the importance and value of the power to make yourself clearly intelligible to your fellowmen. He believes that the importance of this power should be brought home even to very young children. Many useful suggestions are made as to methods by which children may be led to talk freely and thus to get the art of oral composition. The chapters on Written Composition, Verse-making, Original Music and on the Rendering of Poetry, are worked out with equal fairness with many touches of originality both in view, and in illustrative methods described. -The American School, Volume 8 [1922]