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Show HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS OF INTERPRETATION 26 I for every they could recite selections in concert, This is not was exactly alike. inflection, every pause, every gesture so coached that educators education; but the strange thing about it is that many so little about the know because such are fooled by they methods, real pedagogy of reading. we might return to Friday Rhetoricals. We would hail the day Here was the Friday afternoon rhetoricals in all our high schools. real opportunity for pupils to give of their best in recitation, speech, furnishes a chance for individual music, or any other activity which received in those development. The training, which some of us, chance for development real the was afternoon rhetoricals, Friday Here we were face to face with fellow in our high school life. be in life. real students in personal endeavor, just as we would It address. had to we personal gain Here was the only opportunity is unnecessary to add that these efforts should not be the result of through general development. special coaching, as So platform readers entertain their Common Sense. long as "There audiences with such elevating, chanting impersonations so long musical accompaniment-just Sawdust"-to is a Pain in My faces their set have to firmly will teachers of the art of reading can What recognition such performances. toward the eradication of but must come exhibitions are find among the cultured and learned when such who will raise reformers and tolerated? What we need are prophets efforts to honest interpret litera the standards of communities by the not for and exploitation of ture, for the sake of the message, effort will earnest Such an themselves. the powers of their pupils or the to the vaudeville, sing-songers banish all the bow-wowers and we where they belong. But so long as a trace remains of the "Pain in My Sawdust" we are liable to be classed with the sawdust rather than with the brains. So it behooves us to hold to our ideals, know where we stand and what we purpose, and to fight for the highest and the truest. Noone guiding rule can be given which will cover all conditions which may arise in everyone's experience, but we cannot are sure of the principle. Of that we must be sure go far wrong if we and thither by every breath of novelty or we will be driven hither or every whim of the public. is Alfred Ayres' rule: appeal The only safe guide and final court of "Gumption-Common Sense." |
