Some Things We are Doing at the School of Expression

The first ten weeks of the regular term closed at the holidays with the School in excellent working order and fine spirits. Splendid preliminary work has been done in all departments and the outlook for a successful year was never better.

In addition to his usual courses in voice and pantomime, Dr. Curry is giving a course in Advanced Pantomime for third-year students, a course in Browning's monologue, another in Spoken English for public school teachers on Saturdays, and beginning in January a course in Unity of Mind, Body and Voice.

Mrs. Curry's classes in Literature and Expression are unusually comprehensive and include a study of the American novel, with special emphasis on the influence of Puritan culture on American Life and the American Epic, Longfellow's Hiawatha. Mrs. Curry's courses in Dramatic Thinking are most adequately met in Mr. Fallis' courses in Dramatic Rehearsal and her own Platform Art courses. Mrs. Curry's class in the study of the Bible was given over, after the Holidays to Rev. James A. Verburg, M.A. (T.D. '17) who is now taking his degree in philosophy at Boston University. It is interesting to know that the subject of Mr. Verburg's thesis is the direct outgrowth of his work in the School of Expression.

The students are responding with great interest and enthusiasm to Mr. Fallis' work in the drama and stage art, and the weekly recitals are enlivened by the presentation of clever up-to-date one-act plays, which have had their première in Mr. Fallis' classes. Owing largely to the interest aroused by the dramatic work of the School, the little hall in which the recitals are given is filled to overflowing each week. Recitals are also given for criticism on Tuesdays and Fridays at twelve o'clock.

The Students' Recitals are a long established feature of the School work and their educational value becomes more apparent each year. This year a number of special recitals, featuring the work of a single author, will be given. A Margaret Deland Recital and a Mark Twain Recital are in preparation.

Mrs. Harryett M. Kempton (Phil.D. '14), who was unavoidably absent during the early part of the year, has renewed her connection with the School and is teaching classes in vocal expression, pantomime and story telling.

Mr. Edward A. Thompson, M.A. (Artist.D. '14) who has recently returned from a successful reading tour to the Pacific Coast, has also rejoined the faculty, as has Mrs. Wadsworth (T.D. '97) better known to former students as Miss Mary Wilkinson.

Miss Lenora Austin also has a class of Third Year Students in the study of American authors. Mark Twain will be taken up in the early part of the Winter session and special attention given to his later and more serious work.

Attracted by the political and industrial changes now taking place in Asia and Eastern Europe, the class in Current Events are including a survey of the near and far East together with a brief study of the poetry and philosophy of the chief Oriental peoples.

Miss Grindrod, M.A., formerly of Seattle, Washington, has a class in Short Story Construction and others in Written and Spoken English.

Mr. Binney Gunnison, A.B. (Phil.D. '07), Head of the Department of

regularly to Boston for the week ends and has classes at the School in Shakespeare's plays and in the development of imaginative instinct.

Miss Finneran's work in Phonetics on Saturday for students and public school teachers, has proved so popular that it has been found necessary to organize a second class in the same subject.

Miss Mary Hollingsworth, Assistant Dean, teaches many classes in a variety of subjects, but her chief work consists in keeping the various activities of the School revolving in their proper sphere and producing the desired results. This task Miss Hollingsworth accomplishes with a degree of efficiency which commands the admiration of all.

There are many other interesting things that might be mentioned in connection with the School and its work of which former students and friends would, no doubt, like to hear; such as the "Halloween Party," the "Japanese Tea" and the School "Christmas Tree Festival," but they are another story.

Evening Classes

The evening work of the School of Expression is so graded that it not only offers opportunities for general culture and development in personality and leadership, which is demanded by the young business men and women who form our chief clientele; but it prepares students directly for assimilation into the main student body of the School and credits them with the work done in the evening classes. Since the opening of the evening term in September, several of the evening students have signified their intention of becoming regular students, and two of these have already entered the regular day classes.

The evening work includes courses in voice and body training, vocal expression, literary interpretation, conversation and current events, public speaking, lyric poetry, dramatic thinking, and platform art. A coöperative circulating library of the newest novels, poetry, biography, and literary criticism has been started by the students of the evening and day school, through which each student who contributes the price of one book secures the opportunity of reading a book a week without further cost. Through this arrangement, up-to-date material is furnished for class work in conversation, public speaking and platform art.

The evening classes begin in September and close in May, and include 30 weeks of work divided into courses of ten weeks each. For information concerning these courses, send for Special Evening Circular.

Children's Classes

The children's classes constitute a department in themselves and are under the direction of Miss Henrietta Fetzer.

The work for children includes instruction in elementary pantomime, folk dancing, social dancing, and dancing games, voice training which aims to retain and permanently secure the natural use of the voice-, vocal interpretation of children's literature, with Dr. Curry's "Little Classics" as the text, and children's plays.

The children's plays are given from time to time at the settlement houses, before women's clubs, and before children's audiences in various places. On January 18, at Huntington Chambers Hall, "Secrets of the Sundial,"

ment. Thirty-five children participated in the dancing and singing groups and the dramatic features of the production under the direction of Miss Henrietta Fetzer.

For information concerning the children's work, send for special Children's Circular.

Home Study

Beginning February 1, 1921, the Home Study Department of the School of Expression will be much extended and improved. Regular_graded courses in training of Voice and Body, Vocal Expression, and Literary Interpretation, based on the principles outlined in Dr. Curry's books, will be offered. Reading courses in poetry, plays, classic and modern, including the one-act play, short story construction, the novel, with critical reference material relating to each course; also a course in Literary Interpretation of the Bible, based on Dr. Curry's book of the same title, are now available. All of these courses are regularly included in the horarium of the School of Expression.

Prospective students who wish to prepare to enter the School of Expression with advanced standing; former students who wish to secure advanced work in special lines, and others who are unable to attend the regular sessions of the School of Expression will find here work adapted to their needs.

For information send for special Home Study Circular.

Care of Students

"Perhaps one of the most interesting features of this oversight may be found in the system of private homes for students which parents and students appreciate, and they cordially coöperate with the teachers, in full recognition of their wisdom.

"Another very noticeable feature of student life in the School of Expression is in the recognition and provision for the exercise of the social instinct under normal conditions. To realize the beauty and success of the students' social functions one must be privileged to participate in them; mere words are inadequate to express how formality may be handled so as to make ease and freedom not only possible, but inevitable, without loss of dignity to the individual.

"Of course the literary and artistic spirit which pervades all the work of the School of Expression makes practical the high aims of personal culture which characterizes this unique institution.

"A few years ago it was said that the Students of the School of Expression used the Public Library more than the students of any school or college in Boston. This is one of the results of the Laboratory Methods of instruction coördinated with lecture method, and a vital interest in literature and art among the students is an inevitable outcome.

"A few years ago the announcement in the Catalogue that this school was not established for commercial ends was often sneered at, but the school has made good its claim and is a living example of the fact that ideals of life and art not conformable to commercial standards are not only possible in educational institutions, but necessary to moral sanity.

"From within outward'; 'Expression versus exhibition'; 'Simplicity

make possible the life of the institution, which is becoming more and more a vital influence for good throughout the length and breadth of the land."

FROM THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE, Holiday Number, 1920

"Ever since the days of the 'Dame School' and the 'horn book,' Boston has been known the world over as a great educational center. The first free school in America once stood near where the printing plant and offices of the National Magazine now stand in Dorchester. The fame of Harvard scholarship had already spread to Europe before the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The graduates of the Institute of Technology hold honored places as scientists and engineers in every portion of the habitable globe. Around Boston (Old St. Botolph's Town), and its environs lingers the choicest academic tradition of the Western World. The city of Boston itself affords a local habitation to dozens of educational institutions with more than a local fame.

"In Copley Square, Boston, stand three buildings, lofty, imposing inspiring, the influence of which is so far-reaching that it cannot be measured by any human standard-Trinity Church, the Public Library and the School of Expression in the Pierce Building. It may seem declamatory to mention a school, carried on in rented studios, with institutions having magnificent buildings, the architecture of which is a glory to our city, but those who know this unpretentious School of the Arts of the Spoken Word know that it is exercising an influence, the extent of which can be realized only when compared with recognized standards of power.

"I might say that the School of Expression is an Institution founded in the ideas and lives of enthusiastic educators and artists; that its aim is to find self in the students, and its method of self-study is through coördination of the elemental with the symbolic languages.

"The spoken word quickens the creative mind and educates for leadership. The Graduates of the School of Expression are always in demand, in whatever walk of life they select.

"Dr. Curry's Summer Terms have been called 'Little democracies of Education,' and the work done in those terms is credited toward a diploma."

The Intensive Study of Literature

(An appreciation of the teaching methods of the School of Expression, given at a regular School recital hour, by Allene Gregory Allen, Ph.D., teacher of literature in the University of Illinois. Mrs. Allen is now studying at the School Expression.)

It may seem rather presumptuous to attempt an appreciation of a School in which I have been a student for so short a time. But already I have seen here a possible solution of a teaching problem with which I am only too familiar. My chief interest in life is in the teaching of literature in colleges and universities. Now the advanced study of literature is something more than a continuation of the work in secondary schools. To minds trained in literary method there are broad vistas of scholarship and appreciation which should be opened and explored. Literature may be

what men have thought and felt in all ages, of the hidden springs from which all outward action has come. Literature may be studied as philosophy. The great problems of social and personal ethics, the great questionings of life's meaning, which seem abstract and unreal when studied as metaphysics, become vital and intimate when we see them in the heart of poet and dramatist and essayist and novelist.

But such teaching of literature is superficial and worthless when it is attempted with students who do not know how to read. Before the Universities can give what they have to offer, our secondary schools must have taught the student to get from ordinary English prose and verse an intelligent idea of its content, and a sincere and spontaneous reaction of his own to that content. I am aware that this is the aim of most secondary school teachers. I am also aware that we in the Universities are even further from the attainment of this aim than are our colleagues in high schools. This is merely an attempt to point out an unsolved pedagogic problem, not a criticism of the only teaching body who are attempting its solution. The chief result of high school traning in literature seems to be, however, that the college freshman brings to his instructor a stock of critical phrases which he has collected from former instructors and which he produces as evidence of his understanding and appreciation of the reading assignment. He is often indignant when his college instructor finds the evidence unconvincing. Yet indeed there is nothing more destructive of a real love of books than being forced in adolescence to mouth insincere praises of great literature which can appeal only to a mature mind. There is hope for a student who will have the courage and honesty to tell an instructor (as did one of my students whom I still remember with interest) that he thought "Carlyle was a nut; Past and Present wasn't so bad, but Sartor Resartus would snag the angora of an angel.' Indeed there is more hope for the literary taste of such a man than for the majority who repeat glibly, "Carlyle is a great English essayist; Sartor Resartus illustrates admirably his distinctive style.'

If we could get rid of these vain repetitions we might see how the case really stands, between the adolescent mind and the world of great books. In the School of Expression I have seen a way of escape. If all our secondary school English teachers were trained in the methods of the School of Expression, if instead of asking a student to tell what he thinks of the reading assignment (and getting merely what he thinks he thinks he ought to think) they tested his appreciation and understanding by teaching him to read the assignment aloud with his own interpretation, there would come to our universities an entirely new type of students, young men and women who know how to read and are ready for the advanced study of literature. Just this work is being given in the School of Expression. May all high school instructors who are training students for university work in literature be inspired to attend this school and absorb its method!

Mayflower Item

The Tercentenary of the coming of the Mayflower, and its company of Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth Harbor in December, 1620, was duly observed by a class talk given by Mrs. Charles D. Craigie, sister of Mrs. Anna Baright Curry. Among other interesting items Mrs. Craigie brought out the fact that

Mrs. Curry's grandmother, Amy Doty (Daughty) Carpenter Baright