Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

1

WORKS BY S. S. CURRY, PH.D.

LESSONS IN VOCAL EXPRESSION.

The methods embodied in this work are the result of over twenty years of careful study of the principles underlying all forms of expression. This series of progressive lessons, adapted to class and other modes of study, have been practically used by the author in teaching over five thousand students.

Teachers will find here an application of the principles of the New Education to Vocal Expression. Expression has been placed upon a new basis. They will find, however, that it contains the best elements of the old, as every true advance is made upon the basis of what has gone before. (Ready July 1.)

$2.00 postpaid. Until October 1 this will include also a year's subscription to "Expression."

CLASSES FOR VOCAL EXPRESSION.

"Universally considered the best hand-book of selections ever arranged for teaching."

I am more than pleased with the book, and find it perfectly adapted to the work. - SHAILER MATHEWS, A.M., Professor in the University of Chicago. Price for examination or introduction, $1.10.

THE PROVINCE OF EXPRESSION.

The work of a highly intellectual man, who thinks and feels deeply, who is in earnest, and whose words are entitled to the most thoughtful consideration.

William Winter.

A book of rare significance and value, not only to teachers of the vocal arts, but also to students of fundamental pedagogical principle. In its field I know of no work presenting, in an equally happy combination, philosophic insight, scientific breadth, moral loftiness of tone, and literary facility of exposition. - President William F. Warren, LL.D.

It is a treatise on the whole subject of expression, and the broadest and most complete survey of the whole subject. DR. JULIUS H. WARD, in Boston Herald.

66

$2.50 postpaid. Until October 1, this will include also a year's subscription to Expression."

Address, School of Expression, 458 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass.

EXPRESSION.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARTISTIC NATURE.

D

URING the past thirty years there has been a tendency in England and America to broaden education so as to include the development of the imagination and the artistic nature.

It was a great advance when science was included as an agency of education. The methods which had come down from the Middle Ages consisted in quibbling upon words which, though they developed logical acumen, did not train the mind harmoniously. But while science is a great advance, it has been found to be more or less inadequate. It develops powers of observation and brings the human soul into contact with nature; it develops reasoning, but it represses feeling; it makes men analytic, but fetters imagination and the artistic nature, which are synthetic.

Men have been gradually learning to seek for something to develop imagination and feeling. Man needs more than mere knowledge: he must be trained, not only to observe facts, but also to appreciate sympathetically, and to execute artistically. Imagination and feeling must receive attention simultaneously with observation and with the development of reason.

Now, the question arises, How can the artistic nature of man be best developed? If we go back to the one people that developed the artistic appreciation and love of beauty to the highest degree, we find that their modes of education were totally different from our own. The chief difference between Greek and modern education is found in their emphasis and our neglect of the spoken word. In modern times almost the sole instrument of education is the written word. In most of our higher institutions all examinations, all reviews of former lectures, are conducted in writing.

Professor Butcher has ably discussed the Greek conception of the written and the spoken word in his book on "Some Aspects of the Greek Genius." There may have been many imperfections in Greek education, but it was strong where our own is weak. The true method of education, when it is finally evolved, will consist in the harmonious blending of the two methods. It will be found that our failure to develop the artistic nature centres in the contemptuous neglect of speech. The lack of attention to right speaking in all our education, the failure to appreciate simple and genuine rendering of our best literature, is the primary cause of the coldness, the artificiality, the abstract one-sided and unsympathetic character of our culture.

The aims of education, and also the best means for attaining these ends, were never better stated than by Bacon: "Reading maketh the full man, conference the ready man, and writing the exact man." Of these three, two are modes of expression, and conference, or conversation, represents the spoken word. According to Bacon, its special function in education is to develop readiness. The importance of the spoken word in education can be shown by many considerations. In the first place, men speak before they write or draw. The first struggle of the unfolding faculties of the child is associated with speech. Again, the voice lies closest to feeling and the creative faculties of the man; it mirrors their action most immediately. This is why it develops readiness. Again, the spoken word is an art which belongs to all. To those who believe that some form of art must be practised in order to develop right appreciation of art, the spoken word furnishes a universal medium. Practice in this can begin in the earliest childhood; it can extend through all stages of education, and be made a means of manifesting the soul's assimilation of the sublimest conception and the most exalted emotion.

In a most important address to the Harvard Teachers' Association Prof. Charles Eliot Norton has spoken some words 1 which deserve careful consideration. He says :

Published in the "Educational Review" for April.

« IndietroContinua »