Knowledge, Power, and the Teaching of English

Abstract

OCCASIONALLY A BOOK IS PUBLISHED that ought become widely known among educators and have great influence, yet does not. It may be the work of an unknown and published by a small press. It may speak against the character of the time. It may be the work of an independent mind in a time when be independent is be egocentric. And so, for whatever reason, it goes unnoticed or is ignored, and only a few copies may survive somewhere in remote library stacks. George Brown's On the Teaching of English in Elementary and High Schools is such a book-an independent work that stands in opposition received opinion, one written by an unknown and published by a small midwest house, and one so far given no recent attention. Yet it makes an interesting theoretical statement on the teaching of English and does so in a felicitous and sometimes poetic style. It is not, however, practical in the conventional sense of demonstrating model lessons, nor does it offer any touching stories of personal experience with young people that might give it a popular interest. There is nothing popular about this book. It rejects the practical, utilitarian justification for teaching English: the importance of language skills for communication, for getting on in a commercial society, for getting into college. Rather, it takes self-knowledge and self-discipline as essential aims. What other subject in school will have personal character as its main concern? English offers a means by which the school may open the way for the student to a knowledge of himself and a method of self-discipline that has no direct relation money-getting, nor any other eminence either political or social. Brown refers