Youth and Age
Sir Hubert Parry was delighted to see teachers and pupils pushing each other to do better.
1920
King George V 1910-1936
Sir Hubert Parry was delighted to see teachers and pupils pushing each other to do better.
1920
King George V 1910-1936
In an address to the students of the Royal College of Music in April 1918, Sir Hubert Parry said they were fortunate that when the College was founded in 1882, teachers were beginning to understand that the young respond better to respect and persuasion than to drill-ground severity.
abridged
NOWADAYS when people go to work to teach they try to get into sympathy with the humanity of those who have to be taught. They recognise them as their equals in many respects, and try to get into touch with their motives and the springs of their minds, and to see things from their point of view — and this brings youth and age happily together.
The young have the delightful privilege of pushing the old along and not letting them get into humdrum ways; and the old have an equally delightful privilege of helping the young not to make too many mistakes, or tumble over obstacles which they have not, in their eagerness, foreseen.
Life is a very complicated affair, and it cannot always move ahead as fast as the young think it ought to do; and sometimes it might move faster than the old think safe. So it is as well that both parties should be patient with one another and try to see if there is any sense of the other party’s apparent misconceptions.
abridged
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
In Parry’s opinion, how had teaching changed over the last thirty to forty years?