A DEFENSE OF THE ONE YEAR SURVEY COURSE IN LITERATURE

Abstract

A S a word of introduction, may I say that while this paper was written with the thought of French literature especially in mind, I do not see why its suggestions might not be equally applicable to the teaching of Spanish, and, with some modifications, English literature. German, because of the greater difficulty inherent in reading the language, lends itself much less readily to the principle of a Survey Course, and as for Greek and Latin, I fear the only possible application would be found in a purely cultural and humanistic general course, in English translation, on the masterpieces of antiquity. First of all, may I say that the necessity or practicability of the one year Survey Course is by no means accepted a priori by all teachers of literature in American colleges. In his excellent paper L'etude de l'histoire de la litterature fran?aise en Amerique, hier, aujourd'hui, demain, read before the Modern Language Association of America, December 28, 1923, and printed in the MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL of April, 1924, no less distinguished an authority than Professor Schinz of Smith College found occasion to say: It is futile to give a general Survey Course with three hours a week; not enough of it remains to justify the time devoted to it; to be sure the fault, in most cases, does not lie with the professors; it lies above all in the conformation of the human mind which does not retain that which only grazes it. And again he uses the following picturesque metaphor, in referring to the Survey Course of one year: We do not believe in a system in which one writes on water, or at least on moving sand. Further proof, if such were necessary, of Professor Schinz's feelings on the impracticability of the one year Survey Course, can be found in the fact that he returns to the attack in the October number of the MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL for 1925. St. Augustine, when he was about to write his Civitas Dei tells of a dream he had; he saw a child on the sea shore, who had dug a little hole in the sand and was carrying water to that hole with