A Survey of Modernist Poetry by Laura Riding

THE plain reader whose introduction to poetry is generally not through personal compulsion or curiosity but through the systematic requirements of his education, naturally associates it with the utilitarian point of view, which must dominate any formal educational process. If the school-system has happened to be old-fashioned and has used poetry merely as a means of teaching grammar, or as so many lines to be learned by heart as a disciplinary task or penalty, the reaction to poetry is negative: the reader either discounts poetry for ever as a dreary pedagogical invention or he can perhaps rediscover it as something so different from the classroom exercise as to be unaffected by the unpleasant associations attached to it as such. A ‘liberal school-system' does not however leave alone poetry as poetry. It attempts to interest the child in the ‘values' of poetry; the child's reaction to this method will therefore be a positive one: he will subscribe to these values and accept poetry through them, or he will not subscribe to these values but reject poetry through them. ‘Beauty' is the term of approval which the schoolmaster applies to the ‘values' of poetry; character-formation is their expressed practical end, or if not character-formation, at least a wholesome relief from its ardours.

The elder system, which on the whole was preferable, has been generally superseded by the new both in England and America: the official report on "The Teaching of English in England" (1919) lays great stress on the folly of the teacher in ‘throwing away' an important ‘weapon', if he refuses to win his pupils over to him by making the literature lesson interesting, particularly through poetry. Particularly through Shakespeare. The report, in reply to an objection that "Shakespeare is over the heads of the children", approves a professor-witness who replied "He is over all our heads"; as though that made it any better. One of the stock essay-subjects in the schools is "The Uses of Poetry"; and when the essays come up to be "corrected" and the humanistic teacher prepares a composite specimen-essay on the subject, the ‘uses' are found to be as follows: