IV.—How to Use Modern Languages as a Means of Mental Discipline

Extract

I come before you this morning to represent the unornamental, prosaic side of our work—the under-current, so to speak. Pedagogical papers have been read and discussed before this Association till it would seem that little could be left to say in this department; yet I feel encouraged to present another, for the very reason that the discussion of these papers has been more active and universal than that of any other class of papers whatever. And I regard this as a most wholesome sign of our professional spirit. For no teacher ought ever to forget, however attractive he finds the search for the principle of the Germanic accentuation, or the meaning of the second part of ‘Faust,’ that he is not by profession in the first place a philologist or a man of letters, but a teacher, whose first duty is toward his pupils, and whose work is to apply whatever he can find in philology or literature to the task of supplying, to the best of his power, these bright young minds which come to him for instruction, with that which will most help them to fill their future place in the world. And so I ask you to listen to another chapter of prose, in confidence that, however much we may be interested,—as I am sure we all are,—in the “Stressed Vowels in Beowulf,” or the “Spanish Pastoral Romances,” every one who is worthy to be a member of this Association is eager for any new idea which will help him to do this important work in a better manner; and if I can present any such ideas, or start a discussion which shall bring them, I shall feel that the under-current has not come to the surface in vain.