acceptable fluency the chiseled phrases of Matthew Arnold, the cadenced
Latinity of Sir Thomas Browne, the sonorous measures of Bolingbroke or
the distinguished and resonant periods of the King James Bible. Such an
aim as this will always result in failure.

The English language is the great storehouse of the rich thought and the
burning emotion of the English race, and all this, as it has issued out
of character, works towards the development of character, when it is
made operative in new generations. There is no other language but Latin
that has preserved so great a wealth of invaluable things, and English
is taught in order that it all may be more available through that
appreciation that comes from familiarity. There is no nobler record in
the world: from Chaucer down to the moderns is one splendid sequence of
character-revelations through a perfect but varied art, for literature
is also a fine art, and one of the greatest of all. Is it not fair to
say that the chief duty of the teacher of English is to lead the student
to like great literature, to find it and enjoy it for himself, and
through it to come to the liking of great ideas?

In the old days there was an historical, or rather archaeological,
method that was popular; also an analytical and grammarian method. There
was also the philological method which was quite the worst of all and
had almost as devastating results as in the case of Latin. It almost
seems as though English were being taught for the production of a
community of highly specialized teachers. No one would now go back to
any of those quaint and archaic ways digged up out of the dim and remote
past of the XIXth century. We should all agree, I think, that for
general education, specialized technical knowledge is unimportant and
scientific intensive methods unjustifiable. For one student who will
turn out a teacher there are five hundred that will be just simple
voters, wage-earners, readers of the Saturday Evening Post and the New
Republic, members of the Fourth Presbyterian Church or the Ethical
Society, and respectable heads of families. The School of Pedagogy has
its own methods (I am given to understand), but under correction I
submit they are not those of general education. Shall I put the whole
thing in a phrase and say that the object of teaching English is to get
young people to like good things?

You may say this is English Literature, not English. Are the two so very
far apart? English