Life, 1914-01-08 · page 9 of 44
Life — January 8, 1914 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon: "The New Dragon-Tango in Siegfried"** This appears to be a satirical take on Wagner's opera *Siegfried*, reimagined as a modern dance scene. Winged figures and mythological characters perform an exaggerated tango, mocking both classical opera and contemporary dance crazes. **Bottom Cartoon & Article: "Down With the Classics!"** The article mocks the National Council of Teachers of English for banning classical literature in favor of modern authors (Jack London, Richard Harding Davis, Booth Tarkington, Kipling). The accompanying cartoon shows a centaur labeled "Centaur Dandy" rejecting classical education ("Confound these fads of fashion!"). The satire criticizes this educational policy shift as misguided modernism that discards valuable literary tradition for trendy contemporary writing.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The new Dragon-Tango 1 + | i ‘ ! — Siegfried — | E Centaur Dandy: CONFOUND THESE FADS OF FASHION! Down With the Classics! 'HE National Council of Teachers of English, which re- cently met in Chicago (Illinois), has barred the Classics, and in their place has introduced a curriculum of modern authors, consisting of Jack London, Richard Hard- ing Davis and Booth Tarkington, with a slight concession to de Maupassant and a rather steady diet of Kipling. The National Council of Teachers of English expresses the conviction that the Classics are not of much value for educational purposes, We have. long suspected this to be true. The Classics have peculiarities which cannot be tolerated in any modern system of education. In the first place, they are simple. Anyone of ordinary intelligence can grasp them. Second, they contain everything that it is worth while knowing, presented in such a way that there is no repetition. If people should get into the habit of reading them, our modern authors would not be able to go about in limousines and have town and country houses. We cannot, therefore, but admire the spirit which actu- ates the National Council of Teachers of English of Chi- cago when it agrees to stand by the living in preference to the dead. This is true patriotism expressed in terms of dollars and cents, comicbooks.com