High Schools and Classics
SOME gentlemen connected with one of Mr. Carnegie’s firm foundations have been finding a good deal of fault with American schools. They have been saying the same things that Herbert Spencer and Thomas H. Huxley said sixty years ago, when school conditions were very different from what they are now. I am the father of children who will soon enter a high school, and so am interested in the question what they are to study there. Their time will be all too short. If some unpleasant ailment should take me prematurely from my enjoyable life, my children might be cheated of their chance to go to college. So they must make the most of the high school. But I am not a teacher, and Dr. Flexner says that I am not competent to judge what studies are best for my children; that all I may do is to ask why, why, why? Well, Dr. Flexner has said that my children must not study certain things. Let us see about it.
I live near a very large high school. It is an inspiring place. Often I look in upon it on my way to the office where I work. There is enthusiasm in the air of the breezy corridors, and sunshine in the pupils’ faces. The building is an architectural joy. The assembly-hall will seat two thousand. A great gymnasium, a swimming-pool big enough to float a ship, lunch-rooms, a ten-minute dancing-class every noon, a biological laboratory, a chemical laboratory, an electrical department, a school of free-hand drawing, another of mechanical drawing, wood-working and metal-working shops, a factory where halting stenographers and typists are produced, schools of domestic science, book-keeping, banking, commerce — these are some of the high-school activities of our town.
But there is a dark side to every picture. While a thousand just persons study pragmatics, another thousand misguided pueri et puellæ are so dead in trespasses and sins that they have studied forbidden things. As a famous monologist has told us, with the multiplied tongues of the gutta-percha record, the first six months in the high school these boys and girls studied, for forty minutes each day, ‘I’m a beau, I’m a bass, I’m a bat.’ Then they began to read a blood-and-thunder story by a man named Cæsar, about a country divided into three parts, of whom the bravest were the Belgians. That book has been said to be out of date. Perhaps. The next year they read some partisan speeches by an old lawyer called Cicero. Following that, they sang of arms and the man who had adventures on what is now spoken of as the Mediterranean littoral; finishing with the perishing odes of one who boasted that he had built himself a monument more durable than brass, and higher than the pyramids, which would not wet through or sag in its foundations; that not all of him would die, but that the most of him would live amid increasing praises as long as Senators ascended the steps of the Capitol accompanied by chatty girl-stenographers. Since printing was invented, there have been more than seven hundred editions of his little book — a record that nearly equals some of our best-sellers, and is surely reason enough why it should now be suppressed.
But let us not overlook one thing. The instruction in our high school is carried on in a language of sinister lineage. Its genealogical tree grew straight enough in the forests of Central Europe; but about nine hundred years ago, as Norman Bob was riding home from hunting, he saw a young laundress with her skirts tucked up around her knees, and the water rippling about her white ankles. So the English language is as mixed as the family records of William the Conqueror. And strangely enough, when one thinks about intellectual and spiritual things, the words he must use are nearly all from Arletta’s side of the family. Religion and politics, sociology and education, morality and government, science and progress, are all talked about in words that come via the left-hand branch. The battle of Hastings, and Domesday, certainly did things to the English language.
Dr. Eliot and Dr. Flexner and the Chairman of the Pineville School Board all agree that our sons and daughters must not study languages that have been dead more’n a thousand years. But even the Latin-haters admit that it is a good thing to be able to speak and write English. There are people who ridicule what they call ‘specious glibness,’ and ‘meeting the verbalist in his own field,’ but most men of any calibre agree that it is worth while to understand good books, to talk well, to have a large vocabulary. When the great Johns Hopkins University was dedicated, forty-one years ago, the star feature of the occasion was an address by Thomas H. Huxley, — surely no partisan of the classics, — in which he said: — ‘Now, I have a very clear conviction as to what elementary education ought to be; what it really may be when properly organized; and what I think it will be, before many years have passed over our heads, in England and America. Such education should enable an average boy of fifteen or sixteen to read and write his own language with ease and accuracy, and with a sense of literary excellence derived from the study of our classic writers; to have a general acquaintance with the history of his own country and with the great laws of social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences.’
Surely no one can quarrel with this, so far as it goes. Even those who revamp the arguments of half a century ago admit that it is a good thing to be able to read and write English in an intelligible way.
The average high-school graduate, who has studied no other language than English, cannot even understand literary English, much less use it. He does not know the meaning of the words, though they define themselves upon their faces to those who have a very little knowledge of the foundation tongues. I do not mean the nomenclature of botany and faunal naturalism and anatomy, of psychology and physical science, though these are easy to one who knows a little Greek. I mean ordinary words one floor above the street.
I induced the teachers in our home high school to try their fourth-year pupils on some non-technical words. Those who had studied the Classics defined the words very well. The students of English pure and undefiled, who excelled even Shakespeare in that they knew no Latin and no Greek at all, presented papers so extraordinary as to be beyond belief without the documentary proof. The first one presented, written by an American-born boy who had studied English eleven years in school, contained the following amazing definitions; —
Pomp — a dancing slipper.
Genealogical — gentle, kind.
Chronic — a record.
Phosphorescent — gaseous, bubbling.
Stamina — an excuse.
Cynical — circular.
Hypocrite — one who talks religion con tinually.
Diaphanous — strong-headed.
Hieroglyphic — a hereditary gift.
Eugenics — a study of etiquette.
Sycophant — one-eyed.
Symposium — sympathy in verse.
Phenomena — reasons for not doing what should have been done.
Hierarchy — hereditary rule.
Parable — capable of being peeled.
Polynesia — an island in the Indian - Ocean near Java.
As to six other words in a list of thirty-four in all, he had no views whatever. Thirteen he defined correctly.
This paper was not much worse than the others in English classes about to graduate from the high school. I wished to know if the pupils in other parts of the country knew as little about words they see every day. So the lists were multigraphed and sent to schools in widely separated parts of the United States. There is an amazing uniformity in the answers. Ten per cent of all American high-school pupils seventeen years old or over, when they see the word ‘phenomena,’ think of it as ‘a disease of the lungs’; sixty per cent believe that the word means an unusual or miraculous happening; not one in a hundred recognizes it as in the plural number; and out of more than a thousand answers, not one defined it correctly — always excepting pupils who had studied Latin or Greek. The latter usually expressed themselves well, and understood the words.
Here are some of the definitions given in one small class by those pupils who had no knowledge of Latin; and I have more than twenty-five thousand just like them.
Arctic —
High.
Anything which deals with coldness. That part of the world which is covered with snow.
The arc around the North Pole.
The coldest region in the world.
An imaginary region on maps of the world, around both poles, for the aiding of navigation.
A large overshoe, worn over the regular shoe to keep out the cold.
A coast in Alaska.
The oldest part of the world.
Pertaining to a circle.
Of an arc form, that is, rounding in proportion.
Pertaining to a zone.
Chronic —
A malignant illness.
A disease.
Cranky.
Sudden or sporadic.
Growlsome or quarrelsome.
A skeptic.
Severe, acute.
A chronic person is a grouchy person. Some kind of a disease.
Inherited.
Quick.
Long-lived.
Pertaining to the year.
Relating to the throat.
Pertaining to lungs.
Pertaining to the muscles, or muscular development.
Cryptographic —
A newly invented machine similar to a typewriter, but only has numbers, used for printing checks and bills.
Of a plain type, having no fancy curvatures or blandishments.
Pertaining to crypt.
A part of mathematics.
Relating to a phonograph.
Photographic.
Tomb-like.
Cynical —
Pertaining to the centre.
One who does not believe.
Pertaining to a moneyed man.
Conical.
Associated.
Round in form.
Relating to a cone.
Long and round.
Sometimes applied to geometry.
Smiling.
Diabolical —
Something offensive to one’s five senses. Pertaining to or like a certain thing. Two-sided.
Pertaining to the Bible.
Foolish.
Standing for something.
Extraordinary.
Practically the same.
Having two aims.
Chief.
Insane.
Doxology —
A doctrine.
A science.
‘Nearer My God to Thee.’
Part of the Methodist hymnal.
Creed.
The end.
Diaphanous —
Having to do with the diaphragm. Voluminous.
Two-sided.
Shimmering.
Immaterial.
A new disease.
Slim, slender, snaky.
Dynamo —
A high explosive.
A shape.
An explosive powder.
Substance used for artificial electricity.
A number of electrons.
Anything full of life and action. Mechanical instrument.
A great calamity or uprising, favorable or not.
A powder used in blasting.
Something powerful.
Dynasty —
Province ruled by a king.
Applied to kingdoms where hard rule is used, or sometimes in business where the rules are very sharp.
Destiny.
A ruler and his assistants.
A small kingdom.
God.
A large empire — usually alluded to when reading of olden times.
A principality.
An office in something.
Division of time.
Certain divisions in a country.
Referring to a person’s character and ability.
Ten years.
A political organization.
Confusion in government.
Episcopalian —
A form of church half-way between Catholic and Protestant.
A branch of the Holy Catholic Church.
A member of the Episcopal Church.
(Not one paper in a thousand gives an intelligent definition of this word.)
Eugenics —
The cleanliness of anything.
A study taught in schools.
The study of mathematical works. Genius.
One who is skilled.
A term used in psychology.
A study of food composition.
By a certain code.
Having to do with everyday work and life.
Eulogize —
To theorize.
To speak on a certain subject.
To preach.
To scorn a person.
To analyze a word as to its origin.
To express thoughts.
Criticize.
To make use of anything.
To tell the duration of anything.
To speak at length, usually of one’s self.
To forgive.
To turn.
To make philosophical comments. Genealogical —
The science or study of minerals.
Dealing with the formation of the earth. Study of the body.
A person who is always speaking of what would happen under certain circumstances.
Familiarity or friendly.
Having to do with the surface of the earth.
In a general manner.
Pertaining to everything in general. Pertaining to the beginning of time. Relating to geography.
Almost impossible without the help of some extraordinary power.
To be genial or pleasant.
Genesis —
A person who knows in peculiar every point in one certain study, then he is a genesis in that study.
A wonder in art, music, etc.
Sort of turning point.
Brilliant, extraordinary person.
A chapter in the Bible.
Wondering.
Exception and an extraordinary character.
A person very skilled in some profession. Hierarchy —
Hear-say.
A government ruled strictly by four persons.
A body of angels.
A double government; two kings who rule over a country.
Stars or moon, etc.
Government run by the heirs of one family.
The division of a dead person’s property among his heirs.
A government controlled by one man. Inherited kingdom.
An arch used for the hair.
Government by a few.
Hypocrite —
One who is hyped on any subject.
A person who always finds fault.
One who does not believe in the Bible.
A person who believes in God but does not care what he does.
A crazy person.
A selfish person.
A form of socialist.
One who is extreme in his religious views. A many-sided man.
Idiom —
A chemical.
A false saying.
An example.
A point of view.
A fact to prove the truth.
Anything that may be substituted for something else.
Iridescent —
Not clear.
The power to be seen through.
Not respectful.
Dry.
Reborn.
Excitable, bad-tempered.
Not decent.
Not erasible.
A crescent turned away.
Kind of electric light.
You say an iridescent manner.
Not very respectable.
Narcotic —
An intoxicant such as alcohol.
Pertaining to narcots.
A chemical solution.
A disinfectant.
Nourishable.
A stimulant used when a person is hurt. Paregoric —
An act or story which teaches a moral. Equally balanced.
Antiseptic.
Sick.
A poisonous acid.
Equal.
Phenomena —
A sickness which attacks the organs of breathing, stopping up the lung.
A heavenly body, star or moon. Something seldom seen.
A sudden happening.
A delusion.
An illness like a bad cold, but more fatal. Appearances contrary to nature. Something inexplicable.
A genius.
Miracles.
A symptom.
Thing to take the place of something.
A sickness.
Unusual occurrence having uncanny appearance.
Extraordinary person.
An illness caused by a cold on the lungs. A belief.
A disease which destroys the lungs.
A likeness of a face.
A biological term.
A warning of something which is to take place.
Something inanimate.
A vision.
Something beyond human comprehension. Polynesia —
A disease.
A language used by the black race in olden times.
A country in Asia.
An island off the coast of Asia Minor.
A character in the movies.
Grecian peninsula.
Many-sided instrument.
A territory.
Pomp —
A way of wearing the hair.
A slipper used in dancing.
Cheerfulness.
New style of hair-dressing.
Affectiveness.
Directness.
A dignified person.
Pseudonym —
Something imaginary.
One word that can be used for another without change of meaning.
A biological term.
A kind of acid.
Unpolished literary expression. Sarcophagus —
Part of the human body; also some animals has it.
An Egyptian bug.
A beetle.
An Egyptian seal.
A sarcastic person.
The throat.
Semaphore —
Meaning something before.
Something like a megaphone.
A horn for throwing the voice.
A musical figure.
An illustration, like something else. Stamina —
A person who is critical.
Still, not moving; lazy, not industrial.
A part of a flower.
A blot on one’s name.
An inducement.
A formed habit.
The central part of a flower.
Manner of speaking.
A disease of the eye.
Muddy water.
Energy.
The reproductive part of a plant. Sycophant —
One who is always dancing.
A melody.
A fool or cynic.
Sympathy —
The imparture of self-feeling.
The power to feel your own sorrows or that of other people.
The expression, whether conveyed vocally or mentally, of the synchronous workings of the souls, minds and hearts of people.
A feeling of regret.
Technical —
Pertaining to technicalities, or the minute components of an article.
The art of well-fingering a composition in music.
A foul in basket-ball for running with the ball, or a double dribble.
Deep thort of anything.
A study of mathematics at a very high degree.
Technic in music means touch; technical the thought of others.
To go into particulars.
Pertaining to hand labor.
Dealing with everyday life.
Simple.
True meaning.
A mechanical point of view.
A small but important part.
Any teacher in any high school who wishes to try the experiment can get similar results. A little Latin and Greek gives a correct understanding of English. That is why the recent great increase in the number of Latin pupils in the high and grade schools of the United States is encouraging for the future of the English language.
If the classiphobiacs want to know ‘why, why, why’ some of us believe the few hours spent in the study of foundations may be useful in the development of linguistic architecture, let them try any exclusively English class in any school, on a list of words derived from Latin or Greek, and compare the answers with those given by students of Cicero and Horace and Homer. They may mourn the fact that, as Freeman says, ‘the tongue in which men sang the deeds of Beowulf while Englishmen still dwelled in their old home—the tongue of Cædmon and Ælfred — has forever become the spoil of the enemy.’ Some people do not bewail that fact, but think we are trebly fortunate in having the richest, the most flexible, the indivisible mixture of the best and most durable words ever coined by the human imagination. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but words shall not pass away; and the only easy way to learn their meaning is to study the roots from which they have sprung.