Inter-Americanism and Spanish American Poetry

Abstract

T HE teacher best fitted to train for iinternational attitudes is the one who best knows the literature and history of both his own and foreign countries; the more comprehensive and the deeper the knowledge the more valuable the instruction, other requisites being equally met. As evidence that this opinion is being adopted more and more widely in school-systems, we watch the constantly growing pressure to include in every modern foreign language course a side course, one might call it, in international relations. Out of this situation have arisen many problems in practical pedagogy, which are costing every conscientious foreign language teacher countless hours of extra planning. The mass of the material to be learned, as well as the pressure to give consideration to it, are greater in Spanish than in French, German, or Italian. There is no teacher but believes in the primary common sense of arousing pupils' interest in the people whose language they are studying. There is none but sees the immediate necessity of using every possible opportunity to prepare the voter of the future to follow intelligently, perhaps even to become a leader in directing, the political and economic negotiations that will hold and strengthen international, especially Inter-American, amicable relations and general good feeling. However, the allotment of class-hours has the most definite of limitations. The task the teacher faces, then, is so to combine the teaching of area, in English, with linguistic training, in Spanish, that the former will be a help, and not a deterrent, to the latter. At the college level, where students can study history by using the untranslated texts of national historians, and where rapid reading makes possible an acquaintance with the best novels, short stories, essays, and other interpretations of the life of the people, there is little or no necessity to resort to English for classroom discussion. But in the high school, not even the American-made Spanish textbooks in history, travel, and customs can be used to advantage below the third unit of language study, a point to which only a pitiably small minority persevere. The high school that would interest the total enrollment of Spanish pupils in the cultural values of Latin American civilization must place this study in the first and second units, and the teacher, thus being obliged to present