How far is our popular
education, which we have now enjoyed for two full generations,
responsible for this state of mind? If it has not encouraged it, has it
done much to correct it?
The other test of popular education is in the kind of reading sought and
enjoyed by the majority of the American people. As the greater part of
this reading is admitted to be fiction, we have before us the relation of
the novel to the common school. As the common school is our universal
method of education, and the novels most in demand are those least worthy
to be read, we may consider this subject in two aspects: the
encouragement, by neglect or by teaching, of the taste that demands this
kind of fiction, and the tendency of the novel to become what this taste
demands.
Before considering the common school, however, we have to notice a
phenomenon in letters--namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper as a
vehicle for general reading-matter. Not content with giving the news, or
even with creating news and increasing its sensational character, it
grasps at the wider field of supplying reading material for the million,
usurping the place of books and to a large extent of periodicals. The
effect of this new departure in journalism is beginning to attract
attention.
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