I picked up my little sister from school today and then drove to the library as a book I reserved on mendicant orders had arrived. I finally remembered to look for German textbooks so I can relearn the language and pass out of a couple of semesters. Found German: The Easy Way and German Verbs and Essentials of Grammar. While in the language section I spotted a really old copy of McGuffey’s Sixth Eclectic Reader and decided that I might as well relearn English—this time, the right way.
Got home and sat on the armchair in the livingroom and worked on German for awhile—is really started to come back; guess it’s like riding a bike. I read McGuffey’s for awhile and decided that I am absolutely going to use it to one day teach my children—the quality is astounding. I am going to raise model citizens. Check out this section: the tone is so antiquated, so priceless.
ELOCUTION AND READING.
The business of training youth in elocution, must be commenced in childhood. The first school is the nursery. There, at least, may be formed a distinct articulation, which is the first requisite for good speaking. How rarely is it found in perfection among our orators.
“Words,” says one, referring to articulation, should “be delivered out from the lips, as beautiful coins, newly issued from the mint; deeply and accurately impressed, perfectly finished; neatly struck by the proper organs, distinct, in due succession, and of due weight.” How rarely do we hear a speaker whose tongue, teeth, and lips do their office so perfectly as to answer to this beautiful description! And the common faults in articulation, it should be remembered, take their rise from the very nursery.
Grace in eloquence, in the pulpit, at the bar, can not be separated from grace in ordinary manners, in private life, in the social circle, in the family. It can not well be superinduced upon all the other acquisitions of youth, any more than that nameless, but invaluable, quality called good breeding. Begin, therefore, the work of forming the orator with the child; not merely by teaching him to declaim, but what is of more consequence, by observing and correcting his daily manners, motions, and attitudes. You can say, when he comes into your apartment, or presents you with something, a book or letter, in an awkward and blundering manner, “Return, and enter this room again,” or, “Present me that book in a different manner,” or, “Put yourself in a different attitude.” You can explain to him the difference between thrusting or pushing out his hand and arm, in straight lines and at acute angles, and moving them in flowing circular lines, and easy graceful action. He will readily understand you. Nothing is more true than that the motions of children are originally graceful; it is by suffering them to be perverted, that we lay the foundation of invincible awkwardness in later life.
In schools for children, it ought to be a leading object to teach the art of reading. It ought to occupy threefold more time than it does. The teachers of these schools should labor to improve themselves. They should feel that to them, for a time, are committed the future orators of the land.
It is better that a girl should return from school a first-rate reader, than a first-rate performer on the pianoforte. The accomplishment, in its perfection, would give more pleasure. The voice of song is not sweeter than the voice of eloquence; and there may be eloquent readers, as well as eloquent speakers. We speak of perfection in this art: and it is something, we must say in defense of our preference, which we have never yet seen. Let the same pains be devoted to reading, as are required to form an accomplished performer on an instrument; let us have, as the ancients had, the formers of the voice, the music masters of reading voice; let us see years devoted to this accomplishment, and then we should be prepared to stand the comparison.
Reading is, indeed, a most intellectual accomplishment. So is music, too, in its perfection. We do by no means undervalue this noble and most delightful art, to which Socrates applied himself even in his old age. But one recommendation of the art of reading is, that is required a constant exercise of mind. It involves, in its perfection, the whole art of criticism on language. A man may possess a fine genius without being a perfect reader; but he can not be a perfect reader without genius.
My mum had me take “pianoforte” lessons back when I was a child. I never had the patience for practising, though. She would force me and it would bring me to tears and I’d sit at the piano for an hour, not touching a key until she relented—I just want to play outside with the neighbourhood kids, mum! I took lessons for about four years. I distinctly remember playing “Ode to Joy”, “La Bamba”, “The Marine Hymn”, “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, “Hey Jude”, and the Star Wars theme at recitals. Finally, when I was twelve, mum let it alone and I was free to abandon my lessons. (Which, looking back, of course, I wish I never had.) I took up the alto saxophone for three years before growing extremely weary and withdrawing from the pasttime. I was secondchair in my juniorhigh band and played Mozart adaptations at recitals. I didn’t practise alto sax much, either. I finally sold the saxophone to a used instrument shoppe two years ago, a couple of days before I took off for Southern Illinois—I needed money, and fast. My old saxophone was converted into gasoline and became smog on I-90/94. I have no idea who plays it these days, maybe a junkyard hobo.
Oh, and the piano? It’s currently in the basement, wallowing in over a decade of disuse. Kels was over at the house the other night before we went Downtown to Brit’s pub. She attempted to play a cord, her heart almost stopped and she came inches away from falling over as the piano bellowed and clanged sharply. She’s probably still shaken over the incident. It was obscene and brash. I can hardly blame her.