Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Excitement of Teaching
    The Excitement of Teaching
    The Excitement of Teaching
    Ebook64 pages1 hour

    The Excitement of Teaching

    By William Lyon Phelps

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Excitement of Teaching is a revised adaptation of a lecture given by William Lyon Phelps to Yale University, first published in 1931. In this edition, Phelps outlines his passionate views on teaching as an exciting adventure for young minds based on the idea that literature sits at the heart of knowledge.

    William Lyon Phelps was an American author, scholar and critic. He was the first scholar to teach a university course on the modern novel at Yale, which became increasingly popular due to his engaging teaching manner. In the book, Phelps uses literature as the background for the argument and illustrates that teaching is essentially an art, expressing many of his observations throughout the chapters.

    Chapters in this volume include:
      Literature as a Revelation of Life
      Five Pillars of Education
      Teaching Students to Study
      The Exciting Quest for Ideals
      The Most Thrilling of Professions

    Republished by Read & Co. Books, The Excitement of Teaching is a timeless and engaging read for any current teachers looking to expand their techniques or those interested in embarking on a career in teaching.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9781473359741
    The Excitement of Teaching

    Read more from William Lyon Phelps

    Related to The Excitement of Teaching

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Read In Order To Live

      Aug 31, 2022

      IT will develop your critical thinking, expand your knowledge of the world, open your mind to new ideas, bring the past alive, introduce you to other cultures and beliefs, improve your writing, make you wiser, help you to understand others and yourse

      2 min read

    • Article

      Teach What You Love

      Sep 1, 2020

      Teach What You Love
      17 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Crowing Glory

      Mar 12, 2020

      Crowing Glory
      3 min read

    • Article

      In Defense of Autodidacticism

      Oct 6, 2017

      Autodidacticism, I felt, was something miraculous, a mark of irrepressible curiosity, a way of slicing through disciplinary borders. The post In Defense of Autodidacticism appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      In Praise Of Meritocracy

      May 27, 2021

      In Praise Of Meritocracy
      7 min read

    • Article

      Philologist Irene Vallejo: ‘Alexander The Great’s Library Was The First Step Towards The Internet’

      Nov 5, 2022

      Born in 1979, Irene Vallejo is a Spanish writer, historian and philologist, and a regular columnist in the newspaper El País. She had written several books, including novels, essays and children’s books before she published El infinito en un junco (I

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Year

      Dec 22, 2021

      In 1932, eccentric art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan hosted DH Lawrence in her mansion, located at the Taos art colony she had founded to further the spread (and it must be said, exoticize) of Native American art. As DH Lawrence is wont to do, the visit w

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bring Back Plain English

      Feb 23, 2023

      RECENTLY THE Secret Author spent a relaxing night or two not browsing impressionably through John Guillory’s Professing Criticism (Chicago University Press). Professor Guillory teaches at NYU and has written a stratospherically high-end book about th

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bring Back Plain English

      Feb 23, 2023

      RECENTLY THE Secret Author spent a relaxing night or two not browsing impressionably through John Guillory’s Professing Criticism (Chicago University Press). Professor Guillory teaches at NYU and has written a stratospherically high-end book about th

      3 min read

    • Article

      Seeing The Big Picture

      May 26, 2022

      IBN KHALDUN (1332-1406) WAS A PIONEERING Arab scholar and one of the most important historians of the Middle Ages. He is best known for his three-volume masterwork the Muqaddimah, written in 1377, which integrated politics, sociology, economics, demo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Intriguing And Diverse

      Jun 16, 2022

      Genius of the Fern Loved Gully Amy Hale Strange Attractor Press 2020 Pb, 336pp, £20, ISBN 9781907222863 Ithell Colquhoun’s star is in the ascendant. Born in India in 1906, she lived a life amongst the Surrealists in the Thirties and early Forties, ha

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Death Of An Adjunct

      Apr 8, 2019

      The Death Of An Adjunct
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Making Of Sunak

      Sep 28, 2023

      I HAVE FOLLOWED THE PROGRESS OF SUNAK from constituency MP to PM over the past decade with personal as well as professional interest. We were, after all, at school together, albeit in different houses and in different years; he was at Bramston’s, kno

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Excitement of Teaching

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Excitement of Teaching - William Lyon Phelps

      [ I ]

      LITERATURE AS A REVELATION OF LIFE

      IN a novel published in 1930, Green Isle, by Alice Duer Miller, I found the story and the characters interesting, but the following paragraph more interesting than either:

      Strangely enough there is nowhere the average person can go to learn how to live his daily life. Children are taught Latin and astronomy, but no school or college tells them how to clear their mind for a decision, how to tell certain psychological, or even psychopathic types, and how to deal with them; how, for any individual, to draw the line between idleness and serenity, between overwork and fullness of life, between sweet charity and being every man’s dupe. Everybody needs such instruction, something halfway between religious precepts and practical talks to salesmen. Women need it particularly, for they do not get, as early as men do, the experience of the business world.

      It is quite true, that even among the prodigious number of things professionally taught in some universities today, like cream-separating, nursing, scene-painting, advertising, fertilising, short-story writing, and among the increasing number of business colleges, schools of journalism, schools of the drama, there are no graduate schools devoted to the art of living, and no professional teachers employed to specialise in Life. Possibly the nearest approach to it is the professorship of evil held by a wise woman, Corra Harris, in that interesting academic experiment, Rollins College in Florida.

      Yet the paradox is that the less practical, the less efficient the particular subject and the particular method of teaching may be, the more the average person will learn how to live his daily life. In a course on electrical engineering, taught by a first-class teacher to a picked class of superior pupils, there will probably be little knowledge gleaned on how to prepare one’s mind for a decision, and how to distinguish between sweet charity and being every man’s dupe. But in a course in Greek literature, the students may learn little if their proficiency is determined by the ease with which they can read Greek at sight; but they cannot help learning something—and some of them will learn much—about the art of living.

      It is curious that many people believe in the importance of what they call vocational and practical courses, and regard the study of great literature as merely ornamental, a pretty accomplishment all well enough in seminaries for young ladies. As a matter of fact, nothing is more essential in the proper furnishing of a man’s mind than a knowledge of the world’s best literature—poetry, fiction, essays, drama. Literature is the immortal part of history. Literature is the interpretation of human life.

      It is unfortunate that the majority of pupils in high schools and colleges do not study literature with the concentrated attention they give later to vocational and professional studies. They do not see the connexion between liberal studies and success in life, but they ought to.

      I asked a successful engineer in Boston, a man who is at the head of enterprises where he has scores of young engineers working under him, this question: What studies in college would you advise for one who intends to become a civil engineer? He replied without any hesitation, Anything so long as it has no connexion with engineering. He told me that those who came to him from technical schools with no liberal education began at first to surpass those who had studied literature and other general subjects. But in a few years the truly educated young men went ahead, because they had imagination, interesting minds, and a knowledge of human nature.

      I should not urge boys and girls to read good books because it will make them successful lawyers, physicians, engineers, business men; it is better to be a good father, a good husband, a good son, a good brother, a good friend, than to achieve material success; it is better to be an interesting personality than to be an efficient machine. But just as a physician who has an admirable bedside manner is more successful than one who carries an atmosphere of chill, so it is certain that a knowledge of human nature, with the sympathy, tolerance, and understanding that should accompany such knowledge, is an asset for success in any calling where one comes into contact with people.

      One reason why Greek and Roman literature makes an unexcelled foundation for modern problems is, that it forms a closed subject. Nothing can be taken away from it, nothing can be added to it. Modern science is shifting its ground every day; an astronomer will tell you that if you want to keep

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1