p. 10 | A LACK OF WORDS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 9, 1900

A LACK OF WORDS.

Another serious fault in the present-day education is discussed under the foregoing heading, by the New York Times (Saturday Review) as follows:—

Some college professors have suddenly discovered that many, if, indeed, not most, of the young men who go up for examinations can not write down the answers to the questions in simple English. These young men, say the professors, appear to be unacquainted with a sufficient number of English words to enable them to write what they desire to say. These professors are inclined to lay the blame on the primary schools, and to accuse them of neglecting to teach English as it ought to be taught. The blame should be laid primarily on the colleges themselves. That young persons, as a rule, have no vocabulary, and no knowledge of the proper methods of forming sentences, is something which can not escape the general observer, and the inference that they are not properly taught at school is natural, and not erroneous.

But the requirements for admission to all the colleges are such that, instead of devoting time to the study of diction and prose composition, the schools are compelled to put their pupils through elementary courses in English literature. There is altogether too much reading of Dryden’s “Palamon and Arcite,” Milton’s “L’Allegro,” and Burke on “Conciliation,” and not half enough instruction in the use and abuse of words. In earlier days pupils had purity, propriety, and precision hammered into them till they were forced to choose their words when they wrote, and formed a habit of doing so when they talked.

In those same days there was a custom of making pupils study spelling and definition. The knowledge of words thus gained can not be replaced. And the exercise of writing compositions, followed by careful criticism of each pupil’s work, is of inestimable value. There are schools ranking in the first class which have entirely dropped this part of the training of pupils. If the colleges would lay more stress in their requirements for entrance examinations in English on knowledge of the language and the use of it, than on acquaintance with its literature, there would be less complaint about the inability of candidates for matriculation to write the answers to the questions.

Let every Seventh-day Adventist school and college see to it that every child and student therein shall be thoroughly taught in the proper use of correct and simple English. And for this purpose nothing can equal the right use of the old-fashioned spelling-book.