SPECIAL METHOD
IN PRIMARY READING

SPECIAL METHOD
IN
PRIMARY READING AND ORAL
WORK WITH STORIES

BY

CHARLES A. McMURRY, Ph.D.

DIRECTOR OF PRACTICE DEPARTMENT, NORTHERN ILLINOIS
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, DE KALB, ILLINOIS
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1905
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1903.
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped July, 1903; reprinted
April, 1905.

PREFACE

This book attempts the discussion of two very important problems in primary education. First, the oral work in the handling of stories, and second, the introduction to the art of reading in the earliest school work. The very close relation between the oral work in stories and the exercises in reading in the first three years in school is quite fully explained. The oral work in story-telling has gained a great importance in recent years, but has not received much discussion from writers of books on method.

Following this "Special Method in Primary Reading," a second volume, called the "Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics in the Grades of the Common School," completes the discussion of reading and literature in the intermediate and grammar grades.

Both of the books of Special Method are an application of the ideas discussed in "The Principles of General Method" and "The Method of the Recitation."

Still other volumes of Special Method in Geography, History, and Natural Science furnish the outlines of the courses of study in these subjects, and also a full discussion of the value of the material selected and of the method of treatment.

At the close of each chapter and at the end of the book a somewhat complete graded list of books, for the use of both pupils and teachers, is given. The same plan is followed in all the books of this series, so that teachers may be able to supply themselves with the best helps with as little trouble as possible.

CHARLES A. McMURRY.

CONTENTS

SPECIAL METHOD IN PRIMARY
READING

CHAPTER I

The Reason for Oral Work in Stories

The telling and reading of stories to children in early years, before they have mastered the art of reading, is of such importance as to awaken the serious thought of parents and teachers. To older people it is a source of constant surprise—the attentive interest which children bestow upon stories. Almost any kind of a story will command their wide-awake thought. But the tale which they can fully understand and enjoy has a unique power to concentrate their mental energy. There is an undivided, unalloyed absorption of mind in good stories which augurs well for all phases of later effort. To get children into this habit of undivided mental energy, of singleness of purpose in study, is most promising. In primary grades, the fluttering, scatter-brained truancy of thought is the chronic obstacle to success in study.

The telling or reading of stories to children naturally begins at home, before the little ones are old enough for school. The mother and father, the aunts and uncles, and any older person who delights in children, find true comfort and entertainment in rehearsing the famous stories to children. The Mother Goose, the fables, the fairy tales, the "Arabian Nights," Eugene Field's and Stevenson's poems of child life, the Bible stories, the myths, and some of the old ballads have untold treasures for children. If one has a voice for singing the old melodies, the charm of music intensifies the effect. Little ones quickly memorize what delights them, and not seldom, after two or three readings, children of three and four years will be heard repeating whole poems or large parts of them. The repetition of the songs and stories till they become thoroughly familiar gives them their full educative effect. They become a part of the permanent furniture of the mind. If the things which the children learn in early years have been well selected from the real treasures of the past (of which there is a goodly store), the seeds of true culture have been deeply sown in their affections.

The opportunities of the home for good story-telling are almost boundless. Parents who perceive its worth and are willing to take time for it, find in this early period greater opportunity to mould the lives of children and put them into sympathetic touch with things of beauty and value than at any other time. At this age children are well-nigh wholly at the mercy of their elders. They will take what we give them and take it at its full worth or worthlessness. They absorb these things as the tender plant absorbs rain and sunshine.

The kindergarten has naturally found in the story one of its chief means of effectiveness. Stories, songs, and occupations are its staples. Dealing with this same period of early childhood, before the more taxing work of the school begins, it finds that the children's minds move with that same freedom and spontaneity in these stories with which their bodies and physical energies disport themselves in games and occupations.

It is fortunate for childhood that we have such wholesome and healthful material, which is fitted to give a child's mental action a well-rounded completeness. His will, his sensibility, and his knowing faculty, all in one harmonious whole, are brought into full action. In short, not a fragment but the whole child is focussed and concentrated upon one absorbing object of thought.

The value of the oral treatment of stories is found in the greater clearness and interest with which they can be presented orally. There is a keener realism, a closer approximation to experimental facts, to the situations, the hardships, to the sorrows and triumphs of persons. The feelings and impulses of the actors in the story are felt more sharply. The reality of the surrounding conditions and difficulties is presented so that a child transports himself by the power of sympathy and imagination into the scenes described.

There is no way by which this result can be accomplished in early years except by the oral presentation of stories. Until the children have learned to read and have acquired sufficient mastery of the art of reading so that it is easy and fluent, there is no way by which they can get at good stories for themselves. Average children require about three years to acquire this mastery of the reading art. Not many children read stories from books, with enjoyment and appreciation, till they are nine or ten years old; but from the age of four to ten they are capable of receiving an infinite amount of instruction and mental stimulus from hearing good stories. In fact, many of the best stories ever produced in the history of the world can be thoroughly enjoyed by children before they have learned to read. This is true of Grimm's and Andersen's stories, of the myths of Hiawatha and Norseland, and of the early Greeks, of the Bible stories, the "Arabian Nights," "Robin Hood," besides many other stories, poems, ballads, and biographies which are among the best things in our literature.

In these early years the minds of children may be enriched with a furnishment of ideas of much value for all their future use, a sort of capital well invested, which will bring rich returns. Minds early fertilized with this variety of thought material become more flexible, productive, and acquisitive.

For many years, and even centuries, it was supposed that early education could furnish children with little except the forms and instruments of knowledge, the tools of acquisition, such as ability to read, spell, and write, and to use simple numbers. But the susceptibility of younger children to the powerful culture influence of story, poem, and nature study, was overlooked.

We now have good reason to believe that there is no period when the educative and refining influences of good literature in the form of poems and story can be made so effective as in this early period from four to ten years. That period which has been long almost wholly devoted to the dry formalities and mechanics of knowledge, to the dull and oftentimes benumbing drills of alphabets, spelling, and arithmetical tables, is found to be capable of a fruitful study of stories, fables, and myths, and an indefinite extension of ideas and experiences in nature observation.

But the approach to these sunny fields of varied and vivid experience is not through books, except as the teacher's mind has assimilated their materials and prepared them for lively presentation.

The oral speech through which the stories are given to children is completely familiar to them, so that they, unencumbered by the forms of language, can give their undivided thought to the story. Oral speech is, therefore, the natural channel through which stories should come in early years. The book is at first wholly foreign to them, and it takes them three years or more of greater or less painful effort to get such easy mastery of printed forms as to gain ready access to thought in books. A book, when first put into the hands of a child, is a complete obstruction to thought. The oral story, on the contrary, is a perfectly transparent medium of thought. A child can see the meaning of a story through oral speech as one sees a landscape through a clear window-pane. If a child, therefore, up to the age of ten, is to get many and delightsome views into the fruitful fields of story-land, this miniature world of all realities, this repository of race ideas, it must be through oral speech which he has already acquired in the years of babyhood.

It is an interesting blunder of teachers, and one that shows their unreflecting acceptance of traditional customs, to assume that the all-absorbing problem of primary instruction is the acquisition of a new book language (the learning to read), and to ignore that rich mother tongue, already abundantly familiar, as an avenue of acquisition and culture. But we are now well convinced that the ability to read is an instrument of culture, not culture itself, and primarily the great object of education is to inoculate the children with the ideas of our civilization. The forms of expression are also of great value, but they are secondary and incidental as compared with the world of ideas.

There is an intimate connection between learning to read and the oral treatment of stories in primary schools which is very interesting and suggestive to the teacher. Routine teachers may think it a waste of time to stop for the oral presentation of stories. But the more thoughtful and sympathetic teacher will think it better to stimulate the child's mind than to cram his memory. The young mind fertilized by ideas is quicker to learn the printed forms than a mind barren of thought. Yet this proposition needs to be seen and illustrated in many forms.

Children should doubtless make much progress in learning to read in the first year of school. But coincident with these exercises in primary reading, and, as a general thing, preliminary to them, is a lively and interested acquaintance with the best stories. It is a fine piece of educative work to cultivate in children, at the beginning of school life, a real appreciation and enjoyment of a few good stories. These stories, thus rendered familiar, and others of similar tone and quality, may serve well as a part of the reading lessons. It is hardly possible to cultivate this literary taste in the reading books alone, unrelieved by oral work. The primers and first readers, when examined, will give ample proof of this statement. In spite of the utmost effort of skilled primary teachers to make attractive books for primary children, our primers and first readers show unmistakable signs of their formal and mechanical character. They are essentially drill books.

It seems well, therefore, to have in primary schools two kinds of work in connection with story and reading, the oral work in story-telling, reproduction, expression, etc., and the drill exercises in learning to read. The former will keep up a wide-awake interest in the best thought materials suitable for children, the latter will gradually acquaint them with the necessary forms of written and printed language. Moreover, the interest aroused in the stories is constantly transferring itself to the reading lessons and giving greater spirit and vitality even to the primary efforts at learning to read. In discussing the method of primary reading we shall have occasion to mention the varied devices of games, activities, drawings, dramatic action, blackboard exercises, and picture work, by which an alert primary teacher puts life and motive into early reading work, but fully as important as all these things put together is the growing insight and appreciation for good stories. When a child makes the discovery, as Hugh Miller said, "that learning to read is learning to get stories out of books" he has struck the chord that should vibrate through all his future life. The real motive for reading is to get something worth the effort of reading. Even if it takes longer to accomplish the result in this way, the result when accomplished is in all respects more valuable. But it is probable that children will learn to read fully as soon who spend a good share of their time in oral story work.

In discussing the literary materials used in the first four grades, we suggest the following grading of certain large groups of literary matter, and the relation of oral work to the reading in each subsequent grade is clearly marked.

This close dependence of reading proper, in earlier years, upon the oral treatment of stories as a preliminary, is based fundamentally upon the idea that suitable and interesting thought matter is the true basis of progress in reading, and that the strengthening of the taste for good books is a much greater thing than the mere acquisition of the art of reading. The motive with which children read or try to learn to read is, after all, of the greatest consequence.

The old notion that children must first learn to read and then find, through the mastery of this art, the entrance to literature is exactly reversed. First awaken a desire for things worth reading, and then incorporate these and similar stories into the regular reading exercises as far as possible.

In accordance with this plan, children, by the time they are nine or ten years old, will become heartily acquainted with three or four of the great classes of literature, the fables, fairy tales, myths, and such world stories as Crusoe, Aladdin, Hiawatha, and Ulysses. Moreover, the oral treatment will bring these persons and actions closer to their thought and experience than the later reading alone could do. In fact, if children have reached their tenth year without enjoying those great forms of literature that are appropriate to childhood, there is small prospect that they will ever acquire a taste for them. They have passed beyond the age where a liking for such literature is most easily and naturally cultivated. They move on to other things. They have passed through one great stage of education and have emerged with a meagre and barren outfit.

The importance of oral work as a lively means of entrance to studies is seen also in other branches besides literature.

In geography and history the first year or two of introductory study is planned for the best schools in the form of oral narrative and discussion. Home geography in the third or fourth year, and history stories in the fourth and fifth years of school, are best presented without a text book by the teacher. Although the children have already overcome, to some extent, the difficulty of reading, so great is the power of oral presentation and discussion to vivify and realize geographical and historical scenes that the book is discarded at first for the oral treatment.

In natural science also, from the first year on the teacher must employ an oral method of treatment. The use of books is not only impossible, but even after the children have learned to read, it would defeat the main purpose of instruction to make books the chief means of study. The ability to observe and discern things, to use their own senses in discriminating and comparing objects, in experiments and investigations, is the fundamental purpose.

In language lessons, again, it is much better to use a book only as a guide and to handle the lessons orally, collecting examples and stories from other studies as the basis for language discussions.

It is apparent from this brief survey that an oral method is appropriate to the early treatment of all the common school studies, that it gives greater vivacity, intensity, simplicity, and clearness to all such introductory studies.

The importance of story-telling and the initiation of children into the delightful fields of literature through the teacher rather than through the book are found to harmonize with a mode of treatment common to all the studies in early years.

In this connection it is interesting to observe that the early literature of the European nations was developed and communicated to the people by word of mouth. The Homeric songs were chanted or sung at the courts of princes. At Athens, in her palmy days, the great dramatists and poets either recited their productions to the people or had them presented to thousands of citizens in the open-air theatres. Even historians like Thucidides read or recited their great histories before the assembled people. In the early history of England, Scotland, and other countries, the minstrels sang their ballads and epic poems in the baronial halls and thus developed the early forms of music and poetry. Shakespeare wrote his dramas for the theatre, and he seems to have paid no attention at all to their appearance in book form, never revising them or putting them into shape for the press.

This practice of all the early races of putting their great literature before the people by song, dramatic action, and word of mouth is very suggestive to the teacher. The power and effectiveness of this mode of presentation, not only in early times but even in the highly civilized cities of London and Athens, is unmistakable proof of the educative value of such modes of teaching. This is only another indication of the kinship of child life with race life, which has been emphasized by many great thinkers.

The oral method offers a better avenue for all vigorous modes of expression than the reading book. It can be observed that the general tendency of the book is toward a formal, expressionless style in young readers. Go into a class where the teacher is handling a story orally and you will see her falling naturally into all forms of vivid narrative and presentation, gesture, facial expression, versatile intonation, blackboard sketching and picture work, the impersonation of characters in dialogue, dramatic action, and general liveliness of manner. The children naturally take up these same activities and modes of uttering themselves. Even without the suggestion of teachers, little children express themselves in such actions, attitudes, and impersonations. This may be often observed in little boys and girls of kindergarten age, when telling their experiences to older persons, or when playing among themselves. The freedom, activity, and vivacity of children is, indeed, in strong contrast to the apathetic, expressionless, monotonous style of many grown people, including teachers.

But the oral treatment of stories has a tendency to work out into modes of activity even more effective than those just described.

In recent years, since so much oral work has been done in elementary schools, children have been encouraged also to express themselves freely in blackboard drawings and in pencil work at their desks by way of illustrating the stories told. Moreover, in paper cutting, to represent persons and scenes, in clay modelling, to mould objects presented, and in constructive and building efforts, in making forts, tents, houses, tools, dress, and in showing up modes of life, the children have found free scope for their physical and mental activities. These have not only led to greater clearness and vividness in their mental conceptions, but have opened out new fields of self-activity and inventiveness.

So long as work in reading and literature was confined to the book exercises, nearly all these modes of expression were little employed and even tabooed.

Finally, the free use of oral narrative in the literature of early years, in story-telling and its attendant modes of expression, opens up to primary teachers a rare opportunity of becoming genuine educators. There was a time, and it still continues with many primary teachers, when teaching children to read was a matter of pure routine, of formal verbal drills and repetitions, as tiresome to the teacher, if possible, as to the little ones. But now that literature, with its treasures of thought and feeling, of culture and refinement, has become the staple of the primary school, teachers have a wide and rich field of inspiring study. The mastery and use of much of the preferred literature which has dropped down to us out of the past is the peculiar function of the primary teacher. Contact with great minds, like those of Kingsley, Ruskin, Andersen, the Grimm brothers, Stevenson, Dickens, Hawthorne, De Foe, Browning, Æsop, Homer, and the unknown authors of many of the best ballads, epics, and stories, is enough to give the primary teacher a sense of the dignity of her work. On the other hand, the opportunity to give to children the free and versatile development of their active powers is an equal encouragement.

Teachers who have taken up with zeal this great problem of introducing children to their full birthright, the choice literature of the world suited to their years, and of linking this story work with primary reading so as to give it vitality,—such teachers have found school life assuming new and unwonted charms; the great problems of the educator have become theirs; the broadened opportunity for the acquisition of varied skill and professional efficiency has given a strong ambitious tone to their work.

CHAPTER II

The Basis of Skill in Oral Work

Accepting the statement that skill in oral presentation of a story is a prime demand in early education, the important question for teachers is how to cultivate their resources in this phase of teaching, how to become good story-tellers.

It may be remarked that, for the great majority of people, story-telling is not a gift but an acquisition. There are, of course, occasional geniuses, but they may be left out of consideration. They are not often found in the schoolroom any more than in other walks of life. What we need is a practical, sensible development of a power which we all possess in varying degrees. Nor is it the fluent, volatile, verbose talker who makes a good oral teacher, but rather one who can see and think clearly: one who knows how to combine his ideas and experiences into clear and connected series of thought.

We may proceed, therefore, to a discussion of the needs and resources of a good story-teller.

1. Without much precaution it may be stated that he should have a rich experience in all the essential realities of human life. This covers a large field of common things and refers rather to contact with life than to mere book knowledge. Yet it is the depth, heartiness, and variety of knowledge rather than the source from which it springs that concerns us. Books often give us just this deep penetrating experience, as soon as we learn how to select and use them. We need to know human life directly and in all sorts of acts, habits, feelings, motives, and conditions,—something as Shakespeare knew it, only within the compass of our narrower possibilities. Likewise the physical world with its visible and invisible forces and objects besetting us on every side. These things must impress themselves upon us vividly in detail as well as in the bulk. The hand that has been calloused by skill-producing labor, the back that aches with burdens bravely borne, the brain that has sweat with strong effort, are expressions of this kind of knowledge of the world. Clear-grained perceptions are acquired from many sources: from travel, labor, books, reflection, sickness, observation. I go to-day into a small shop where heavy oak beer-kegs are made, and watch the man working this refractory material into water-tight kegs that will stand hard usage at the hands of hard drinkers for twenty years. If my mind has been at work as I watch this man for an hour, with his heavy rough staves made by hand, his tools and machines, his skill and strong muscular action, the amount and profit of his labor, that man's work has gone deep into my whole being. I can almost live his life in an hour's time, and feel its contact with the acute problems of our modern industrial life. That is a kind of knowledge and experience worth fully as much as a sermon in Trinity Church or a University lecture.

The teacher needs a great store of these concrete facts and illustrations. Without them he is a carpenter without tools or boards. He needs to know industries, occupations, good novels, typical life scenes, sunsets, sorrows, joys, inventions, poets, farmers—all such common, tangible things. Even from fools and blackguards he can get experiences that will last him a lifetime if they only strike in and do not flare off into nothingness.

Social experience in all sorts of human natures, disposition, and environing circumstance is immediately valuable to the teacher.

Close acquaintance with children, with their early feelings and experiences, with their timidity or boldness, with their whims or conceits, their dislikes and preferences, their enthusiasms and interests, with their peculiar home and neighborhood experiences and surroundings, with their games and entertainments, with the books and papers they read, with their dolls and playthings, their vacations and outings, with their pets and playhouses, with their tools and mechanical contrivances—all these and other like realities of child life put the teacher on a footing of possible appreciation and sympathy with children. These are the materials and facts which a good teacher knows how to work up in oral recitations.

Of course the kindly, sympathetic social mood which is not fretted by others' frailties and perversities, but, like Irving or Addison, exhibits a liberal charity or humorous affection for all things human, is a fortunate possession or acquisition for the teacher.

2. It may be said also, without fear of violent contradiction, that a teacher needs to be a master of the story he is about to tell. It may be well to spread out to view the important things necessary to such a mastery. The reading over of the story till its facts and episodes have become familiar and can be reproduced in easy narrative is at least a minimum requirement. Even this moderate demand is much more serious than the old text-book routine in history or reading, where the teacher, with one eye on the book, the other on the class, and his finger at the place, managed to get the questions before the class in a fixed order.

Let us look a little beneath the surface of the story. What is its central idea, the author's aim or motive in producing it? Not a little effort and reflection may be necessary to get at the bottom of this question. Some of the most famous stories, like "Aladdin," "Gulliver's Travels," and the "City Musicians," may be so wild and wayward as to elude or blunt the point of this question. The story may have a hard shell, but the sharp teeth of reflection will get at the sweet kernel within, else the story is not worth while. In some of the stories, like "Baucis and Philemon," "The Great Stone Face," "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "The Discontented Pine Tree," and "Hiawatha's Fasting," the main truth is easily reflected from the story and caught up even by the children.

This need for getting at the heart of the story is clearly seen in all the subsequent work. It is the exercise of such a critical judgment which qualifies the teacher to discriminate between good and poor stories. In the treatment of the story the essential topics are laid out upon the basis of this controlling idea or motive. The leading aims and carefully worded questions point toward this central truth. The side lights and attendant episodes are arranged with reference to it like the scenes in a drama. The effort to get at the central truth and the related ideas is a sifting-out process, a mode of assimilating and mastering the story more thorough-going than the mere memorizing of the facts and words for the purpose of narration. The thought-getting self-activity and common-sense logic which are involved in this mode of assimilating a story are good for both pupils and teacher.

The mastery of a story needed by an oral teacher implies abundance of resource in illustrative device and explanation. When children fail to grasp an idea, it is necessary to fall back upon some familiar object or experience not mentioned in the book. Emergencies arise which tax the teacher's ingenuity to the utmost. Even the children will raise queries that baffle his wit. In preparing a story for the classroom it is necessary to see it from many sides, to foresee these problems and difficulties. Oftentimes the collateral knowledge derived from history or geography or from similar episodes in other stories will suggest the solution.

It is a favorite maxim of college teachers and of those who deal mostly with adults or older pupils, that if a person knows a thing he can teach it. Leaving out of account the numerous cases of those who are well posted in their subjects, but cannot teach, it is well to note the scope, variety, and thoroughness of knowledge necessary to a good teacher to handle it skilfully with younger children. Besides the thorough knowledge of the subject which scholars have demanded, it requires an equally clear knowledge of the mental resources of children, the language which they can understand, the things which attract their interest and attention, and the ways of holding the attention of a group of children of different capacities, temper, and disposition. Any dogmatic professor who thinks he can teach the story of "Cinderella" or Andersen's "Five Peas in the Pod," because he has a full knowledge of the facts of the story, should make trial of his skill upon a class of twenty children in the first grade. We suggest, however, that he do it quietly, without inviting in his friends to witness his triumph.

No, the mastery of the subject needed for an effective handling of it in oral work is different and is greater than they have yet dreamed of who think that mere objective knowledge is all that is needed by a teacher. The application of knowledge to life is generally difficult, more taxing by far than the mere acquisition of facts and principles. But the use of one's knowledge in the work of instructing young children, in getting them to acquire and assimilate it, is perhaps the most difficult of all forms of the application of knowledge. It is difficult because it is so complex. To think clearly and accurately on some topic for one's single self is not easy, but to get twenty children of varying capacities and weaknesses, with their stumbling, acquisitive, flaring minds, to keep step along one clear line of thought is a piece of daring enterprise.

The mastery of the story, therefore, for successful oral work, must be detailed, comprehensive, many-sided, and adapted to the fluttering thoughts of childhood.

3. The chief instrument through which the teacher communicates the story is oral speech, and this he needs to wield with discriminating skill and power. Preachers and lecturers, when called upon to talk to children, nearly always talk over their heads, using language not appropriate and comprehensible to children. Those accustomed to deal with little folks are quickly sensitive to this amateur awkwardness. Young teachers just out of the higher schools make the same blunder. They are also inclined to think that fluency and verbosity are a sign of power. But such false tinsel makes no impression upon children except confusion of thought. Children require simple, direct words, clearly defined in thought and grounded upon common experience and conviction. Facts and realities should stand behind the words of a teacher. What he seeks to marshal before children is people and things. Words should serve as photographs of objects; instantaneous views of experiences. In some social and diplomatic circles words are said to conceal thought, but this kind of verbal diplomacy has no place in schools.

It is an interesting question how far the language and style of the authors should be preserved by the narrator. It would be an error to forbid the exact use of the author's words and an equal error to require it. It seems reasonable to say that the teacher should become absorbed in the author's style and mode of presenting the story. This will lead to a close approximation to the author's words, without any slavish imitation. In the midst of oral presentation and discussion it would be impossible to hold strictly to the original. The teacher's own language and conception of the story will press in to simplify and clarify the meaning. No one holds strictly to a literary style in telling a story. Conversational ideas and original momentary impulses of thought demand their own forms of utterance. And yet it is well to appropriate the style and expression of the writer so as to accustom the children to the best forms. A few very apt and forcible sentences will be found in any good author which the teacher will naturally employ.

But the teacher must have freedom. When he has once thoroughly appropriated the story he must give vent to his own spontaneity and power. Later, when the children come to read these stories, they will enjoy them in their full literary form.

4. The power of clear and interesting presentation of a story is one of the chief professional acquisitions of a good primary teacher. It involves many things besides language, including liveliness of manner, gesture, facial expression, action, dramatic impersonation, skill in blackboard illustration, good humor and tact in working with children, a strong imagination, and a real appreciation for the literature adapted to children.

Perhaps the fundamental need is simplicity and clearness of thought and language combined with a pleasing and attractive manner. Vague and incomprehensible thoughts and ideas are all out of place. The teacher should be strict with himself in this matter, and while reading and mastering the story, should use compulsion upon himself to arrive at an unmistakable clearness of thought. The objects, buildings, palaces, woods, caves, animals, persons, and places should be sharply imaged by the imagination; the feelings and passions of the actors should be keenly realized. Often a vague and uncertain conception needs to be scanned, the passage reread, and the notion framed into clearness. In describing the palace of the sleeping beauty, begirt with woods, the sentinels standing statuelike at the portal, the lords and ladies at their employments, the teacher should think out the entrance way, hall, rooms, and persons of the palace so clearly that his thought and language will not stumble over uncertainties. Transparent clearness and directness of thought are the result of effort and circumspection. They are well worth the pains required to gain them. A teacher who thinks clearly will generate clear habits of thought in children.

The power of interesting narrative and description is not easily explained. It is a thing not readily analyzed into its elements. Perhaps the best way to find out what it is may be discovered by reading the great story-tellers, such as Macaulay, Irving, Kingsley, De Foe, Hawthorne, Homer, Plutarch, Scott, and Dickens. Novelists like George Eliot, Victor Hugo, Cooper, Scott, and Dickens, possess this secret also, and even some of the historians, as Herodotus, Fiske, Green, Parkman, Motley, and others. It is not so important that a teacher should give a cold analysis of their qualities as that he should fall insensibly into the vivid and realistic style of the best story-tellers. One who has read Pyle's Robin Hood stories until they are familiar will, to a considerable extent, appropriate his fertile and happy Old-English style, the sturdy English spirit of bold Robin, his playful humor, and his apt utterance of homely truths.

There are certain qualities that stand out prominently in the good story-tellers. They are simple and concrete in their descriptions, they deal very little in general, vague statements or abstractions, they hold closely to the persons of the story in the midst of interesting surroundings, they are profuse in the use of distinct figures of speech, appealing to the fancy or imagination. They often have a humorous vein which gives infinite enjoyment and spreads a happy charity throughout the world.

The art of graphic illustration on the blackboard is in almost constant demand in oral work. Even rude and untechnical sketches by teachers who have no acquired skill in artistic drawing are of the greatest value in giving a quick and accurate perception of places, buildings, persons, and surrounding conditions of a story or action. The map of Crusoe's island, the drawings to represent his tent, cave, boat, country residence, fortifications, dress, utensils, and battles are natural and simple modes of realizing clearly his labors and adventures. They save much verbal description and circumlocution. The teacher needs to acquire absolute boldness and freedom in using such illustrative devices. The children will, of course, catch this spirit, as they are by nature inclined to use drawing as a mode of expression.

A similar freedom in the teacher is necessary in the use of bodily action, gesture, and facial expression in story-telling. The teacher needs to become natural, childlike, and mobile in these things; for children are naturally much given to such demonstrations in the expression of their thought. Little girls of three and four years in the home, when free from self-consciousness, are marvellously and delightfully expressive by means of eyes, gestures, hands, and arms and whole bodily attitudes. Why should not this naive expressiveness be gently fostered in the school? Indeed it is, and in many schools the little ones are as happy and whole-souled and spontaneous in their modes of expression as we have suggested.

Dramatization, if cultivated, extends a teacher's gamut of expressiveness. Our inability or slowness to respond to this suggestion is a sign of a certain narrowness or cramp in our culture and training. In Normal schools where young teachers are trained in the art of reading, the dramatic instinct should be strongly developed. The power to other one's self in dramatic action, to assume and impersonate a variety of characters, is a real expression and enlargement of the personality. It demands sympathy and feeling as well as intellectual insight. The study and reading of the great dramatists, the seeing of good plays, amateur efforts in this direction, the frequent oral reading of Shakespeare, Dickens, and other dramatists and novelists will cultivate and enlarge the teacher's power in this worthy and wholesome art.

The use of good pictures is also an important means of adding to the beauty and clearness of stories. The pictures of Indian life in "Hiawatha," the illustrated editions of "Robinson Crusoe," the copies of ancient works of art in some editions of the Greek myths, Howard Pyle's illustrated "Robin Hood," and other books of this character add greatly to the vividness of ideas. Such pictures should be handled with care, not distributed promiscuously among the children while the lesson is going on. The teacher needs to study a picture, and discuss it intelligently with the children, asking questions which bring out its representative qualities.

It is evident the skilful oral presentation of a story calls out no small degree of clear knowledge, force of language, illustrative device, dramatic instinct, and a freedom and versatility of action both mental and physical.

5. A clear outline of leading points in a story is a source of strength to the teacher and the basis later of good reproductive work by the children. The short stories in the first grade hardly need a formal outline, and even in second grade the sequence of ideas in a story is often so simple and easy that outlines of leading topics may not be needed. But in third and fourth grade it is well in the preliminary study and mastery of a story to divide it up into clearly marked segments, with a distinctive title for each division. It is difficult to get teachers to do this kind of close logical work, and still more difficult to have them remember it in the midst of oral presentation and discussion. If the main points of the story as thus outlined are placed upon the blackboard as the narrative advances, it keeps in mind a clear survey of the whole and serves as the best basis for the children's reproduction of the story. It compels both teacher and pupils to keep to a close logical connection of ideas and a sifting out of the story to get at the main points. Without these well-constructed outlines the memory of the story is apt to fall into uncertainty and confusion, and the children's reproduction becomes fragmentary and disorderly. Experience shows that teachers are prone to be loose and careless in bringing their stories into such a well-ordered series of distinct topics. It is really a sign of a thoughtful, logical, and judicious mastery of a subject to have thrown it thus into its prominent points of narration. Oral work often fails of effectiveness and thoroughness, because of these careless habits of teachers. Such an outline, when put into the children's regular note-books, serves as the best basis for later surveys and reviews.

6. The oral narration and presentation of stories has a curious way of being turned into development lessons, in which the teacher deals in questions and problematic situations and the children work out many of the facts and incidents of the story by a series of guesses and inferences. These are well known as development lessons, and they are capable of exhibiting the highest forms of excellence in teaching or the most drivelling waste of time. The subject is a hard one to handle, but it needs a clear and simple elucidation as much as any problem in the teaching profession. Generally speaking it is better for young teachers not to launch out recklessly upon the full tide of development instruction. It is better to learn the handling of the craft on quieter waters. Development work needs to be well charted. The varying winds and currents, storms and calms, need to be studied and experienced before one may become a good ship's master. Let young teachers first acquire power in clear, simple, direct narration and description, using apt and forcible language and holding to a clear-cut line of thought. This is no slight task, and when once mastered and fixed in habit becomes the foundation of a wider freedom and skill in development exercises. The works of the great story-tellers furnish excellent models of this sort of skill, and teachers may follow closely in the lines struck out by Scott or Hawthorne in narrating a story.

A book story cannot do otherwise than simply narrate; it cannot develop, set problems and questions and have children to find solutions and answers. It must tell the facts and answer the questions. But in oral narration there is room not only for all the skill of the story-writer, but also the added force of voice, personality, lively manner, gesture, action, and close adaptation to the immediate needs of children and subject. This is enough to command the undivided effort of the young teacher at first, without entering the stormy waters and shifting currents of pure development work.

Yet the spirited teacher will not go far in narrating a story without a tendency to ask questions to intensify the children's thought, or to quicken the discussion of interesting points. Even if the teachers or parents are but reading a good story from a book, it is most natural, at times, to ask questions about the meaning of certain new words, or geographical locations, or probabilities in the working out of the story. These are the simple beginnings of development work, and produce greater thoughtfulness, keener perceptions of the facts, and a better absorption of the story into a child's previous knowledge.

A sharp limitation of development work is also found in the circumstance that a large share of the facts in a story cannot by any sort of ingenuity be developed. They form the necessary basis for later development questions. Even many of the facts which might be developed by a skilful teacher are better told directly, because of the difficulty and time-devouring nature of the process. There may be a few central problems in every story, which, after the necessary facts and conditions have been plainly told, can be thoroughly sifted out by questions, answers, and discussions. But to work out all the little details of a story by question and surmise, to get the crude, unbaked opinions of all the members of a class upon every episode and fact in a story, is a pitiful caricature of good instruction.

The purpose of good development work is to get children to go deeper into the meaning of a story, to realize its situations more keenly, and to acquire habits of thoughtfulness, self-reliant judgment, and inventiveness in solving difficulties. These results, and they are among the chiefest set for the educator, cannot be accomplished by mere narration and description. Their superior excellence and worth are the prize of that superior skill which first-class development work demands.

With these preliminary remarks, criticisms, and limitations in mind, we may inquire what are the essentials of good development work in oral lessons.

(1) Determine what parts of a story are capable of development; what facts must be clearly present to the mind before questions can be put and inferences derived. In a problem in arithmetic we first state the known facts, the conditions upon which a solution can be based, and then put a question whose answer is to be gained by a proper conjunction and inference from these facts. The same thing is true in reasoning upon the facts in a story.

(2) In placing a topic before children it is always advisable to touch up the knowledge already possessed by the children, or any parts of their previous experience which have strong interpretative ideas for the new lesson. At this point apt questions which probe quickly into their previous knowledge and experience are at a premium. The teacher needs to have considered beforehand in what particulars the children's home surroundings and peculiar circumstances may furnish the desired knowledge. The form of the questions may also receive close attention. For these words must provoke definite thought. They should have hooks on them which quickly drag experience into light.

(3) In order to give direction to the children's thoughts on the story's line of progress, interesting aims should be set up. These aims, without anticipating precise results, must guide the children towards the desired ends and turning-points in the story. The mind should be kept in suspense as to the outcome, and the thoughts should centre and play about these clearly projected aims. Such aims, floating constantly in the van, are the objective points, towards which the energy of thought is directed. Every good story-teller keeps such aims expressly or tacitly in view. Novelists and dramatists hinge the interest of readers or spectators upon this curiosity which is kept acutely sensitive about results. Such an aim should be simple and concrete, not vague or abstract, or general. It may be put in the form of a question or statement or suggestion. It will be a good share of the teacher's work in the preparation of the lesson to pick out and word these aims which centre upon the leading topics of the lesson. For it is not enough to have an aim at the beginning of a story, every chapter or separate part of the story should have its aim. For aims are what stimulate effort and keep up an attentive interest.

(4) Self-activity and thoughtfulness in working out problems find their best opportunity in development work. The book, in narrating a story, cannot set problems, or, if it does, it forthwith assumes the task of solving them. But in the oral development of a story the essential facts and conditions may be clearly presented and the solution of the difficulties, as in arithmetic, left largely to the ingenuity and reasoning power of the children. In the story of Hiawatha's boat-building the problem may be set to the children as to what materials he will use in the construction of the canoe, how the parts were put together, and how he might decorate it. Not that the children will give the whole solution, but they can contribute much to it. In "Robinson Crusoe" many such problems arise. How shall he conceal his cave and house from possible enemies? Where can he store his powder to keep it from the lightning and from dampness? In fact, nearly every step in Crusoe's interesting career is such a problem or difficulty to battle with. In Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" and other renderings of the Greek myths, the heroes are young men who have shrewdness, courage, and strength to overcome difficulties. To put these difficulties before children in such a way that they by their own thinking may anticipate, in part at least, the proper solutions, is one of the chief merits of development work. The story of Ulysses is a series of shrewd contrivances to master difficulties or to avoid misfortunes, so that his name has become a synonym for shrewdness. The story itself, therefore, furnishes prime opportunities to develop resourcefulness. How shall he escape from the enraged Polyphemos in the cave? His invention of the wooden horse before Troy; his escape from the sirens; his battle with the suitors and others. The story of Aladdin has such interesting inventions, and even the fairy tales and fables have many turns of shrewdness and device where the children's wits may be stimulated. The turning-points and centres of interest in all such stories are the true wrestling-grounds of thought. To put them point-blank before children in continuous narrative, without question or discussion, is not the way to produce thoughtfulness and inventive power. Merely reading or telling stories to children without comment is entertaining, but not educative in the better sense. Children will have plenty of chances at home and in the school library to read and hear stories, but it is the business of the school to teach them how to think as they read, to produce a habit of foreseeing, reviewing, comparing, and judging. The serious defect of much of young people's reading, from ten years on, is its superficial, transitory character. It lacks depth, strength, and permanency. It is not many stories that can be orally treated in this thorough-going way, but enough to give the right idea, and to cultivate habit and taste for more thoughtful study.

For skilled teachers, therefore, development lessons, within certain limits, constitute a most important phase of oral instruction. It has been sometimes assumed that a child acquires greater self-reliance and a stronger exercise in self-activity by learning his lesson by himself from a book. This is probably true in much of the arithmetic, where he works out the solution of problems unaided; but in history and literature the book work is chiefly memory work, and oftentimes becomes of such parrot-like character as to be almost destitute of higher educative qualities. It is advisable, therefore, to strengthen the educative value of story work by giving it, through oral instruction, this problem-solving character, this thought-stimulating, self-reliant attitude of mind.

7. When the teacher has shown his best skill in presenting and discussing a section of a story, it then devolves upon the children to show their knowledge and grasp of the subject by reproducing it. The task of getting this well done requires, perhaps, as much skill and force of character as all previous work of oral instruction. Obstacles are met with at once. It is dull work to go back over the same thing again, and the children soon get tired of it. They want something new and more exciting, and press for the rest of the story. Many children are at first deficient in power of attention and in language, so that their efforts at reproduction are clumsy and poor. The interest is weak, the attention of the children scattering, and the class is apt to go to pieces under the strain of such dull work. This is an emergency where a teacher needs both skill and force of character. (What a comfort it is to a writer to have such a platitude as this to fall back upon, when he gets a teacher into a place where nothing but his own devices can save him.)

There are, however, some hopeful considerations which may encourage a teacher whose feet are not already too deep in the bog of discouragement.

Children enjoy the retelling of good stories with which they are familiar. They will do it at home, even if they are not very proficient at it in school. In every class there are some talkative children who are always willing to make an effort. Again, it is not always difficult to interest boys and girls in doing a thing that requires skill and power, such as memory, attentiveness, and mastery of correct language. The force of the teacher's influence and authority is worth something in setting up high standards of proficiency. Indeed, children respect a teacher who makes rigorous demands upon them. The retelling of stories is, after all, no harder nor duller than the reciting of a lesson learned out of a book.

On the other hand, the whole effectiveness of oral work depends upon the success of these oral reproductions. If children know that the teacher is in earnest they will be more attentive, so as to be able to fulfil the requirement. Such a reproduction reveals at once a child's correct or incorrect grasp of the subject, and in either case the teacher knows what to do next. Errors and misconceptions can be corrected and such explanations or additional facts given as will clarify the subject.

In such reproductions it is praiseworthy to help the children as little as possible, to throw them back upon their own power as much as possible. If the teacher constantly relieves them with suggestive questions, they lean more and more upon her direction and lose all self-reliant power of continuous narrative. No, let the teacher keep a prudent silence, let her seal her lips, if necessary, in order to teach boys and girls to stand on their own power of thought.

Under this sort of discipline, kindly but rigorous, children will gradually acquire confidence in manner, variety and choice of language, in short, the ability to grasp clearly, hold firmly, and express accurately the ideas which are presented to them.

The whole purpose of this sort of instruction is not so much to see how skilfully a teacher can present a lesson (though that is a fine art) as to determine how well a boy or girl can master or express knowledge, can learn to think and speak for himself.

8. Some teachers despair of treating stories orally in large classes of primary children. The task of holding together such wriggling varieties of mental force and mental inertia is great. Some children are quick and excitable, others are unresponsive and dull. Some are timid and sensitive, others bold and demonstrative. Some are talkative and irrepressible, others silent or listless.

It is interesting to consider the function and value of a good child's story to fit in to such varying needs and personalities. If the purpose of the primary school is simply to keep children busy at some kind of orderly work, there are other tamer employments than stories. But if the idea is to put children's minds and bodies into healthy, vigorous action, it would be difficult to find a more suitable instrument than a fitting story.

But a good primary teacher knows better than to establish brusque and fixed standards of uniform success for all children. It will take much time and patience to get anything like good oral responses from some children. Like budding flowers some unfold their leaves and petals much quicker at the touch of sunshine than others. But the sun does not stop shining because all do not come out at once. The crudest efforts of little children must be received with kindness and encouragement. The power of reproducing thought and language is very slowly acquired by many children. They are timidly self-conscious, distrustful of their own powers, and have not learned to throw themselves with confidence upon the good-will of their teachers. It may take months with some children to overcome these obstacles, and to bring them to a confident use of their powers, but it is the highest delight of a teacher to reach this result.

Some children, on the other hand, are so talkative and impulsive that they will monopolize the time of the class to no good purpose. Their enthusiasm requires tempering and their soberer thought strengthening.

Another difficulty lies in the necessary effort to get correct English, to gradually mould the language of children into correct forms. The perverse habits of children, the influence of home and playground, the inveterate preference for slang and crude, crass expressions, and their sensitive pride against unusual refinements of speech, make the cultivation of good English an uphill task. But roads must be laid out through this wilderness of hills and valleys, stumps and brush. And these roads must be gradually worked down into smooth highways of travel. It is pioneer toil, requiring the steady use of axe and mattock and spade.

There is no kind of school training where good English can be cultivated to better advantage, where the power of correct, independent, well-articulated speech can be so well strengthened as in oral story. It is in the close contact of this work that the teacher is dealing directly with the original stock of experiences, ideas, and words of every child, and with these as instruments of acquisition, helping him to get a spirited introduction to the world of ideas in books and literature.

It is here that we can get a glimpse of that vast work which the elementary schools of the country are doing in the way of Americanizing the children of various nationalities and in giving them not only a common language, but a common body of ideas rooted in the earliest experiences of childhood and already laying hold of many of the richest treasures of American history and of the world's literature.

9. As children advance from the first year into the second and third years the character of the oral story-telling gradually changes. Children should acquire more power of attention, greater command of language and ability to grasp and hold at one telling a larger section of a story. The stories themselves become more complex, the questions and problems set by the teacher more difficult. The necessity for sharp, logical outlines of leading topics increases as one advances in the grades. Older children can be held more rigidly to common standards of excellence in thought and language. In this, however, the teacher should always remember that children differ greatly in their natural powers of expression, and that a forcing process will not be so successful as a stimulating and encouraging attitude in the teacher.

10. The good oral treatment of most stories leads the children to much activity in material constructions. Where the minds of children are brought to a healthy activity their bodies and physical energies are pretty sure to be called into play to work out the suggested lines of thought. "Robinson Crusoe" invariably leads the children to a multitude of building and making enterprises, such as moulding vessels in clay, constructing the barricade around his tent and cave, the making of chairs and tables, etc.

We have already noticed the readiness of children to make blackboard or other drawings of interesting objects in a story, or to cut them out with scissors from paper. This effort to experience the realities of life more directly by making objects of common utility and necessity is a characteristic and powerful tendency of childhood. It is commonly seen in children about the house, when, for example, they must have wagons, wheelbarrows, tools, or a set of garden implements with which to imitate the employments of their elders. Parkman and others often speak of the constant practice of little Indian boys with bow and arrows.

Our purpose here is not to discuss this matter at length, but simply to notice its prominent place in connection with the oral lesson in story. The intense interest awakened in stories leads quickly to these efforts at construction. What shall the teacher do with this powerful tendency of children to carry over these ideas into the field of practical constructive labor? To the thinker this tendency is perhaps the surest proof of the value of the story. It does not stop with words nor ideas. It pushes far into the region of voluntary, physical, and mental labor and application of knowledge.

The teacher who will make good use of this enterprising constructive desire of children must know definitely about tools, boards, shops, various industries, and technical trades, the special materials, inventions, and devices of artisans in the common occupations, such as farming, gardening, blacksmithing, the carpenter shop, the baker, the quarry, the brick kiln, etc.

It will not be strange if many teachers recoil, at first glance, from this leap into industrial life. It suggests that the schoolhouse must become a big machine shop, agricultural station, etc. The trouble is, of course, that teachers do not feel themselves qualified in these things. They know almost as little as the children about such matters, and have much less inclination to know more.

But our modern education is taking a decided turn in this direction, and with good reason. The close acquaintance of our teachers with the common occupations of life, with their materials, tools, machines, constructions, and skill would supply them with a rich collection of practical, concrete, illustrative knowledge of the greatest use in instructing children. It is impossible to mention anything which would be of more service to them in the details of instruction. The advantages to the children of such teaching, re-enforced by this concrete detail of common life, are so numerous and important as to deserve a special effort. The benefit to teachers would quickly more than recompense them for the labor involved. By occasional visits of observation in shops, fields, stores, and factories, by assisting children in their constructive efforts, the teacher will acquire knowledge, strength, and confidence for such work. The unfamiliarity of teachers with these everyday industrial matters, and their feeling of helplessness as regards things not in the usual routine of school, are the real hindrances to be overcome.

There are other subjects in the school course, like home geography and the early lessons in nature study, which deal more directly than stories with these practical forms of industrial life and constructive activity. They will also demand and cultivate an increasing knowledge of this practical phase of life and education. The lessons in oral story-telling stand thus closely linked with progressive experimental knowledge in other studies.

A brief retrospect and summary of the requirements necessary as a basis of good oral treatment of stories will impress us with the skill and resourcefulness needed by the teacher.

1. First-hand experience with the realities of life.

2. Intimate knowledge and sympathy with child life.

3. The many-sided mastery of the story for teaching purposes.

4. Skill in the use of simple, apt, and forcible language.

5. Power of narrative and description, together with various forms of graphic illustration, dramatic action, etc.

6. Clear and simple outline of leading topics.

7. Acquired power in the use of development methods, including question, problem, discussion, aims, and the training of children to self-activity and thoughtfulness.

8. The successful oral reproduction of stories by the children.

9. Tact in the handling of large classes, with children of differing temperament and capacity, and the encouragement of timid children.

10. Changing character of oral work in advancing grades.

11. The need of insight and ability to supervise constructive activities.

These things include a wide range of clear knowledge and confident skill and resource. Teachers need first of all to cultivate resourcefulness in the use of their own knowledge and experience, and to add to both of these as rapidly as circumstances permit.

The mere reading of stories to children by the teacher, at odd times, on Friday afternoons or on special occasions, is also of much value as a means of interesting children in a wide range of good books. It is a source of entertainment and culture, which, when judiciously and skilfully employed, adds much to the educative power of the school.

CHAPTER III

First Grade Stories

FAIRY TALES

Young children, as we all know, are delighted with stories, and in the first grade they are still in this story-loving period. A good story is the best medium through which to convey ideas and also to approach the difficulties of learning to read. Such a story, Wilmann says, is a pedagogical treasure. By many thinkers and primary teachers the fairy stories have been adopted as best suited to the wants of the little folk just emerging from the home. A series of fairy tales was selected by Ziller, one of the leading Herbartians, as a centre for the school work of the first year. These stories have long held a large place in the home culture of children, especially of the more cultivated class. Now it is claimed that what is good for the few whose parents may be cultured and sympathetic, may be good enough for the children of the common people and of the poor. Moreover, stories that have made the fireside more joyous and blessed may perchance bring vivacity and happiness into schoolrooms. The home and the school are coming closer together. It is even said that well-trained, sympathetic primary teachers may better tell and impress these stories than overworked mothers and busy fathers. If these literary treasures are left for the homes to discover and use, the majority of children will know little or nothing of them. Many schools in this country have been using them in the first grade in recent years with a pleasing effect.

But what virtue lies concealed in these fairy myths for the children of our practical and sensible age? Why should we draw from fountains whose sources are back in the prehistoric and even barbarous past? To many people it appears as a curious anachronism to nourish little children in the first decade of this new century upon food that was prepared in the tents of wandering tribes in early European history. What are the merits of these stories for children just entering upon scholastic pursuits? They are known to be generally attractive to children of this age, but many sober-minded people distrust them. Are they really meat and drink for the little ones? And not only so, but the choicest meat and drink, the best food upon which to nourish their unfolding minds?

Fairy tales are charged with misleading children by falsifying the truth of things. And, indeed, they pay little heed to certain natural laws that practical people of good sense always respect. A child, however, is not so humdrum practical as these serious truth-lovers. A little girl talks to her doll as if it had real ears. She and her little brother make teacups and saucers out of acorns with no apparent compunctions of conscience. They follow Cinderella to the ball in a pumpkin chariot, transformed by magic wand, with even greater interest than we read of a presidential ball. A child may turn the common laws of physical nature inside out and not be a whit the worse for it. Its imagination can people a pea-pod with little heroes aching for a chance in the big world, or it can put tender personality into the trunk and branches of the little pine tree in the forest. There are no space limits that a child's fancy will not spring over in a twinkling. It can ride from star to star on a broomstick, or glide over peaceful waters in a fairy boat drawn by graceful swans. Without suggestion from mother or teacher, children put life and personality into their playthings. Their spontaneous delights are in this playful exercise of the fancy, in masquerading under the guise of a soldier, bear, horse, or bird. The fairy tale is the poetry of children's inner impulse and feeling; their sparkling eyes and absorbed interest show how fitting is the contact between these childlike creations of the poet and their own budding thoughts.

In discussing the qualities requisite in a fairy story to make it a pedagogical treasure, Wilmann says:[1] "When it is laid down as a first and indispensable requirement that a story be genuinely childlike, the demand sounds less rigorous than it really is. It is easier to feel than to describe the qualities which lend to a story the true childlike spirit. It is not simplicity alone. A simple story that can be understood by a child is not on that account childlike. The simplicity must be the ingenuousness of the child. Close to this lies the abyss of silliness into which so many children's stories tumble. A simple story may be manufactured, but the quality of true simplicity will not be breathed into it unless one can draw from the deeper springs of poetic invention. It is not enough that the externals of the story, such as situation and action, have this character, but the sensibilities and motives of the actors must be ingenuous and childlike; they should reflect the child's own feeling, wish, and effort. But it is not necessary on this account that the persons of the story be children. Indeed the king, prince, and princess, if they only speak and act like children, are much nearer the child's comprehension than any of the children paraded in a manufactured story, designed for the 'industrious youth.' For just as real poetry so the real child's story lies beyond reality in the field of fancy. With all its plainness of thought and action, the genuine child's story knows how to take hold of the child's fancy and set its wings in motion. And what a meaning has fancy for the soul of the child as compared with that of the adult. For us the activity of fancy only sketches arabesques, as it were, around the sharply defined pictures of reality. The child thinks and lives in such arabesques, and it is only gradually that increasing experience writes among these arabesques the firmer outlines of things. The child's thoughts float about playfully and unsteadily, but the fairy tale is even lighter winged than they. It overtakes these fleeting summer birds and wafts them together without brushing the dust from their wings.

"But fostering the activity of fancy in children is a means, not an end. It is necessary to enter the field of fancy because the way to the child's heart leads through the fancy. The effect upon the heart of the child is the second mark and proof of the genuine child's story. We are not advocates of the so-called moral stories which are so short-winded as to stop frequently and rest upon some moral commonplace. Platitudes and moral maxims are not designed to develop a moral taste in the minds of young children, for they appeal to the understanding and will of the pupil and presuppose what must be first built up and established. True moral training is rather calculated to awaken in the child judgments of right and wrong, of good and evil (on simple illustrative examples). Not the impression left by a moralizing discourse is the germ of a love of the good and right, but rather the child's judgment springing from its own conviction. 'That was good.' 'What a mean thing!'

"Those narratives have a moral force which introduce persons and acts that are simple and transparent enough to let the moral light shine through, that possess sufficient life to lend warmth and vigor to moral judgments. No attempt to cover up or pass over what is bad, nor to paint it in extravagant colors. For the bad develops the judgment no less than the good. It remains only to have a care that a child's interest inclines toward the good, the just, and the right."

Wilmann summarizes the essentials of a good story, and then discusses the fairy tales as follows:—

"There are then five requirements to be made of a real child's story: Let it be truly childlike, that is, both simple and full of fancy; let it form morals in the sense that it introduces persons and matters which, while simple and lively, call out a moral judgment of approval or disapproval; let it be instructive and lead to thoughtful discussions of society and nature; let it be of permanent value, inviting perpetually to a reperusal; let it be a connected whole, so as to work a deeper influence and become the source of a many-sided interest.

"The child's story which, on the basis of the aforenamed principles, can be made the starting-point for all others, is Grimm's fairy tale of folk lore. We are now called upon to show that the folk-lore fairy tale answers to the foregoing requirements, and in this we shall see many a ray of light cast back upon these requirements themselves.

"Is the German fairy tale childlike? full of simplicity as well as of fancy? A deeply poetic saying of Jacob Grimm may teach us the answer. 'There runs through these poetic fairy tales the same deep vein of purity by reason of which children seem to us so wonderful and blessed. They have, as it were, the same pale-blue, clear, and lustrous eyes which can grow no more although the other members are still delicate and weak and unserviceable to the uses of earth.' Klaiber quotes this passage in his 'Das Märchen und die Kindliche Phantasie,' and says with truth and beauty, 'Yes; when we look into the trusting eyes of a child, in which none of the world's deceit is to be read as yet, when we see how these eyes brighten and gleam at a beautiful fairy tale, as if they were looking out into a great, wide, beautiful wonder-world, then we feel something of the deep connection of the fairy story with the childish soul.' We will bring forward one more passage from a little treatise, showing depth and warmth of feeling, which stealthily takes away from the doubters their scruples about the justification of the fairy tale. 'It is strange how well the fairy tale and the child's soul mutually understand each other. It is as if they had been together from the very beginning and had grown up together. As a rule the child only deals with that part of real life which concerns itself and children of its age. Whatever lies beyond this is distant, strange, unintelligible. Under the leading of the fairy tale, however, it permits itself to be borne over hill and valley, over land and sea, through sun and moon and stars, even to the end of the world, and everything is so near, so familiar, so close to its reach, as if they had been everywhere before, just as if obscure pictures within had all at once become wonderfully distinct. And the fairies all, and the king's sons, and the other distinguished personages, whom it learns to know through the fairy tale,—they are as natural and intelligible as if the child had moved its life long in the highest circles, and had had princes and princesses for its daily playmates. In a word, the world of the fairy tale is the child's world, for it is the world of fancy.'

"For this reason children live and move in fairyland, whether the story be told by the mother or by the teacher in the primary school. What attention as the story proceeds! What anxiousness when any danger threatens the hero, be he king's son or a wheat-straw! What grief, even to tears, when a wrong is practised upon some innocent creature! And far from it that the joy in the fairy tale decrease when it is told or discussed over again. Then comes the pleasure of representation—bringing the story upon the stage. Though a child has but to represent a flower in the meadow, the little face is transfigured with the highest joy.

"But the childish joy of fairy tales passes away; not so the inner experiences which it has brought with it. I am not affirming too much when I say that he who, as a child, has never listened with joy to the murmuring and rustling of the fresh fountain of fairyland, will have no ear and no understanding for many a deep stream of German poetry. It is, after all, the modest fountain of fairy song which, flowing and uniting with the now noisy, now soft and gently flowing, current of folk song, and with the deep and earnest stream of tradition, which has poured such a refreshing current over German poetry, out of which our most excellent Uhland has drawn so many a heart-strengthening draught.

"The spirit of the people finds expression in fairy tale as in tradition and song, and if we were only working to lift and strengthen the national impulse, a moral-educative instruction would have to turn again and again to these creations of the people. What was asserted as a general truth in regard to classical products, that they are a bond between large and small, old and young, is true of national stories and songs more than of anything else. They are at once a bond between the different classes, a national treasure, which belongs alike to rich and poor, high and low. The common school then has the least right of all to put the fairy tale aside, now that few women versed in fairy lore, such as those to whom Grimm listened, are left.

"But does the fairy tale come of noble blood? Does it possess what we called in the case of classics an old title of nobility? If we keep to this figure of speech, we shall find that the fairy tale is not only noble, but a very royal child among stories. It has ruled from olden times, far and wide, over many a land. Hundreds of years gone, Grimm's fairy stories lived in the people's heart, and not in Germany alone. If our little ones listen intently to Aschenputtel, French children delighted in Cindrillon, the Italian in Cenerentola, the Polish in Kopcinszic. The fact that mediæval story-books contain Grimm's tales is not remarkable, when we reflect that traits and characteristics of the fairy tale reach back beyond the Christian period; that Frau Holle is Hulda, or Frigg, the heathen goddess; that 'Wishing-cap,' 'Little Lame-leg,' and 'Table Cover Thyself,' etc., are made up out of the attributes of German gods. Finally, such things as 'The Sleeping Beauty,' which is the earth in winter sleep, that the prince of summer wakes with kisses in springtime, point back to the period of primitive Indo-German myth.

"But in addition to the requirement of classical nobility, has the fairy story also the moral tone which we required of the genuine child's story? Does the fairy story make for morals? To be sure it introduces to an ideal realm of simple moral relations. The good and bad are sharply separated. The wrong holds for a time its supremacy, but the final victory is with the good. And with what vigor the judgment of good and evil, of right and wrong, is produced. We meet touching pictures, especially of good-will, of faithfulness, characteristic and full of life. Think only of the typical interchange of words between Lenchen and Fundevogel. Said Lenchen, 'Leave me not and I will never leave thee.' Said Fundevogel, 'Now and nevermore.' We are reminded of the Bible words of the faithful Ruth, 'Whither thou goest I will go; where thou lodgest I will lodge; where thou diest I will die and there will I be buried.'

"Important for the life of children is the rigor with which the fairy tale punishes disobedience and falsehood. Think of the suggestive legendary story of the child which was visited again and again with misfortune because of its obstinacy, till its final confession of guilt brings full pardon. It is everywhere a Christian thread which runs through so many fairy stories. It is love for the rejected, oppressed, and abandoned. Whatever is loaded with burdens and troubles receives the palm, and the first becomes the last.

"The fairy story fulfils the first three requirements for a true child's story. It is childlike, of lasting value, and fosters moral ideas. As to unity it will suffice for children of six years (for this is, in our opinion, the age at which it exerts its moral force) that the stories be told in the same spirit, although they do not form one connected narrative. If a good selection of fairy tales according to their inner connection is made, so that frequent references and connections can be found, the requirement of unity will be satisfied.

"The fairy tale seems to satisfy least of all the demand that the true child's story must be instructive, and serve as a starting-point for interesting practical discussion. The fairy story seems too airy and dreamy for this, and it might appear pedantry to load it with instruction. But one will not be guilty of this mistake if one simply follows up the ideas which the story suggests. When the story of a chicken, a fox, or a swan is told it is fully in harmony with the childish thought to inquire into the habits of these animals. When the king is mentioned it is natural to say that we have a king, to ask where he lives, etc. Just because the fairy tale sinks deep and holds a firm and undivided attention, it is possible to direct the suggested thoughts hither or thither without losing the pleasure they create. If one keeps this aim in mind, instructive material is abundant. The fairy tale introduces various employments and callings, from the king to the farmer, tailor, and shoemaker. Many passages in life, such as betrothal, marriage, and burial, are presented. Labors in the house, yard, and field, and numerous animals, plants, and inanimate things are touched upon. For the observation of animals and for the relation between them and children, it is fortunate that the fairy tale presents them as talking and feeling. Thereby the interest in real animals is increased and heartlessness banished. How could a child put to the torture an animal which is an old friend in fairy story?

"I need only suggest in this place how the fairy story furnishes material for exercises in oral language, for the division of words into syllables and letters, and how the beginnings of writing, drawing, number, and manual exercises may be drawn from the same source.

"From the suggestions just made the following conclusions at least may be reasonably drawn. A sufficient counterpoise to the fantastical nature of the fairy tale can be given in a manner simple and childlike, if the objects and relations involved in the narratives are brought clearly before the senses and discussed so that instruction about common objects and home surroundings is begun."

In speaking of Shakespeare's early training in literature, Charles Kingsley says:—

"I said there was a literary art before Shakespeare—an art more simple, more childlike, more girlish, as it were, and therefore all the more adapted for young minds, but also an art most vigorous and pure in point of style: thoroughly fitted to give its readers the first elements of taste, which must lie at the root of even the most complex æsthetics.

"The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and mysteries and tragicomic attempts—these were the roots of his poetic tree—they must be the roots of any literary education which can teach us to appreciate him. These fed Shakespeare's youth; why should they not feed our children's? Why indeed? That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous and fantastic—has that a merely evil root? No surely! It is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of 'the heaven which lies about us in our infancy'; angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life."

Felix Adler says:[2] "But how shall we handle these Märchen and what method shall we employ in putting them to account for our special purpose? I have a few thoughts on this subject, which I shall venture to submit in the form of counsels.

"My first counsel is: Tell the story; do not give it to the child to read. There is an obvious practical reason for this. Children are able to benefit by hearing fairy tales before they can read. But that is not the only reason. It is the childhood of the race, as we have seen, that speaks in the fairy story of the child of to-day. It is the voice of an ancient far-off past that echoes from the lips of the storyteller. The words 'once upon a time' open up a vague retrospect into the past, and the child gets its first indistinct notions of history in this way. The stories embody the tradition of the childhood of mankind. They have on this account an authority all their own, not, indeed, that of literal truth, but one derived from their being types of certain feelings and longings which belong to childhood as such. The child, as it listens to the Märchen, looks up with wide-opened eyes to the face of the person who tells the story, and thrills responsive as the touch of the earlier life of the race thus falls upon its own. Such an effect, of course, cannot be produced by cold type. Tradition is a living thing and should use the living voice for its vehicle.

"My second counsel is also of a practical nature, and I make bold to say quite essential to the successful use of the stories. Do not take the moral plum out of the fairy-tale pudding, but let the child enjoy it as a whole. Do not make the story taper toward a single point, the moral point. You will squeeze all the juice out of it if you try. Do not subordinate the purely fanciful and naturalistic elements of the story, such as the love of mystery, the passion for roving, the sense of fellowship with the animal world, in order to fix attention solely on the moral element. On the contrary, you will gain the best moral effect by proceeding in exactly the opposite way. Treat the moral element as an incident, emphasize it indeed, but incidentally. Pluck it as a wayside flower. How often does it happen that, having set out on a journey with a distinct object in mind, something occurs on the way which we had not foreseen, but which in the end leaves the deepest impression on the mind....

"The value of the fairy tales is that they stimulate the imagination; that they reflect the unbroken communion of human life with the life universal, as in beasts, fishes, trees, flowers, and stars; and that incidentally, but all the more powerfully on that account, they quicken the moral sentiments.

"Let us avail ourselves freely of the treasures which are thus placed at our disposal. Let us welcome das Märchen into our primary course of moral training, that with its gentle bands, woven of 'morning mist and morning glory,' it may help to lead our children into bright realms of the ideal."

A selection of fairy stories suited to our first grade will differ from a similar selection for foreign schools. There has been a disposition among American teachers for several years to appropriate the best of these stories for use in the primary schools. In different parts of the country skilful primary teachers have been experimenting successfully with these materials. There are many schools in which both teachers and pupils have taken great delight in them. The effort has been made more particularly with first grade children, the aim of teachers being to lead captive the spontaneous interest of children from their first entrance upon school tasks. Some of the stories used at the first may seem light and farcical, but experiments with children are a better test than the preconceived notions of adults who may have forgotten their early childhood. The story of the "Four Musicians," for example, is a favorite with the children.

At the risk of repetition, and to emphasize some points of special importance, we will review briefly the method of oral treatment and the use of the stories in early primary reading.

The children have no knowledge of reading or perhaps of letters. The story is told with spirit by the teacher, no book being used in the class. Question and interchange of thought between pupil and teacher will become more frequent and suggestive as the teacher becomes more skilled and sympathetic in her treatment of the story. In the early months of school life the aim is to gain the attention and coöperation of children by furnishing abundant food for thought. Children are required or at least encouraged to narrate the story or a part of it in the class. They tell it at school and probably at home, till they become more and more absorbed in it. Even the backward or timid child gradually acquires courage and enjoys narrating the adventures of the peas in the pod or those of the animals in the "Four Musicians."

The teacher should acquire a vivid and picturesque style of narrating, persistently weaving into the story, by query and suggestion, the previous home experiences of the children. They are only too ready to bring out these treasures at the call of the teacher. Often it is necessary to check their enthusiasm. There is a need not simply for narrative power, but for quick insight and judgment, so as to bring their thoughts into close relation to the incidents. Nowhere in all the schools is there such a call for close and motherly sympathy. The gentle compulsion of kindness is required to inspire the timid ones with confidence. For some of them are slow to open their delicate thought and sensibility, even to the sunny atmosphere of a pleasant school.

A certain amount of drill in reproduction is necessary, but fortunately the stories have something that bears repetition with a growing interest. Added to this is the desire for perfect mastery, and thus the stories become more dear with familiarity.

Incidentally, there should be emphasis of the instructive information gathered concerning animals and plants that are actors in the scenes. The commonest things of the house, field, and garden acquire a new and lasting interest. Sometimes the teacher makes provision in advance of the story for a deeper interest in the plants and animals that are to appear. In natural science lessons she may take occasion to examine the pea blossom, or the animals of the barnyard, or the squirrel or birds in their cages. When, a few days later, the story touches one of these animals, there is a quick response from the children. This relation between history and natural science strengthens both.

Many an opportunity should be given for the pupils to express a warm sympathy for gentle acts of kindness or unselfishness. The happiness that even a simple flower may bring to a home is a contagious example. Kindly treatment of the old and feeble, and sympathy for the innocent and helpless, spring into the child's own thought. The fancy, sympathy, and interest awakened by a good fairy tale make it a vehicle by which, consciously and unconsciously, many advantages are borne home to pupils.

Among other things, it opens the door to the reading lesson; that is, to the beginning efforts in mastering and using the symbols of written language. The same story which all have learned to tell, they are now about to learn to read from the board. One or two sentences are taken directly from the lips of the pupils as they recall the story, and the work of mastering symbols is begun at once with zest. First is the clear statement of some vivid thought by a child, then a quick association of this thought with its written symbols on the board. There is no readier way of bringing thought and form into firm connection, that is, of learning to read. Keep the child's fresh mental judgment and the written form clearly before his mind till the two are wedded. Let the thought run back and forth between them till they are one.

After fixing two or three sentences on the board, attention is directed more closely to the single words, and a rapid drill upon those in the sentence is followed by a discovery and naming of them in miscellaneous order. Afterward new sentences are formed by the teacher out of the same words, written on the board, and read by the children. They express different, and perhaps opposite forms of thought, and should exercise the child's sense and judgment as well as his memory of words. An energetic, lively, and successful drill of this kind upon sentences drawn from stories has been so often witnessed, that its excellence is no longer a matter of question. These exercises are a form of mental activity in which children delight if the teacher's manner is vigorous and pleasant.

When the mastery of new word-forms as wholes is fairly complete, the analysis may go a step farther. Some new word in the lesson may be taken and separated into its phonic elements, as the word hill, and new words formed by dropping a letter and prefixing letters or syllables, as ill, till, until, mill, rill, etc. The power to construct new words out of old materials should be cultivated all along the process of learning to read.

Still other school activities of children stand in close relation to the fairy tales. They are encouraged to draw the objects and incidents in which the story abounds. Though rude and uncouth, the drawings still often surprise us with their truth and suggestiveness. The sketches reveal the content of a child's mind as almost nothing else—his misconceptions, his vague or clearly defined notions. They also furnish his mental and physical activities an employment exactly suited to his needs and wishes.

The power to use good English and to express himself clearly and fittingly is cultivated from the very first. While this merit is purely incidental, it is none the less valuable. The persistence with which bad and uncouth words and phrases are employed by children in our common school, both in oral work and in composition, admonishes us to begin early to eradicate these faults. It seems often as if intermediate and grammar grades were more faulty and wretched in their use of English than primary grades. But there can be no doubt that early and persistent practice in the best forms of expression, especially in connection with interesting and appropriate thought matter, will greatly aid correctness, fluency, and confidence in speech. There is also a convincing pedagogical reason why children in the first primary should be held to the best models of spoken language. They enter the school better furnished with oral speech than with a knowledge of any school study. Their home experiences have wrought into close association and unity, word and thing. So intimate and living is the relation between word and thought or object, that a child really does not distinguish between them. This is the treasure with which he enters school, and it should not be wrapped up in a napkin. It should be unrolled at once and put to service. Oral speech is the capital with which a child enters the business of education; let him employ it.

A retrospect upon the various forms of school activity which spring, in practical work, from the use of a good fairy story, reveals how many-sided and inspiriting are its influences. Starting out with a rich content of thought peculiarly germane to childish interests, it calls for a full employment of the language resources already possessed by the children. In the effort to picture out, with pencil or chalk, his conceptions of the story, a child exercises his fanciful and creative wit, as well as the muscles of arms and eyes. A good story always finds its setting in the midst of nature or society, and touches up with a simple, homely, but poetic charm the commonest verities of human experience. The appeal to the sensibility and moral judgment of pupils is direct and spontaneous, because of the interests and sympathies that are inherent in persons, and touch directly the childish fancy. And, lastly, the irrepressible traditional demand that children shall learn to read, is fairly and honestly met and satisfied.

It is not claimed that fairy tales involve the sum total of primary instruction, but they are an illustration of how rich will be the fruitage of our educational effort if we consider first the highest needs and interests of children, and allow the formal arts to drop into their proper subordination. "The best is good enough for children," and when we select the best, the wide-reaching connections which are established between studies carry us a long step toward the now much-bruited correlation and concentration of studies.

BOOKS OF MATERIALS FOR TEACHERS

Classic Stories for the Little Ones. Public School Publishing Co., Bloomington, Ill.
Grimm's Fairy Tales (Wiltse). Ginn & Co.
German Fairy Tales (Grimm). Maynard, Merrill, & Co.
Grimm's German Household Tales. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
Stories from Hans Andersen. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
Andersen's Fairy Tales, two volumes. Part I and Part II. Ginn & Co.
Fairy Stories and Fables. American Book Co.
Fables and Folk Stories (Scudder). Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
Rhymes and Jingles (Dodge). Scribner's Sons.
Fairy Stories for Children (Baldwin). American Book Co.
Songs and Stories. University Publishing Co.
Fairy Life. University Publishing Co.
Six Nursery Classics (O'Shea). D. C. Heath & Co.
Grimm's Fairy Tales. Educational Publishing Co.
A Book of Nursery Rhymes (Welch). D. C. Heath & Co.
Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
Heart of Oak, No. I. D. C. Heath & Co.
Heart of Oak, No. II. D. C. Heath & Co.
The Eugene Field Book. Scribner's Sons.
Moral Education of Children (Adler). D. Appleton & Co. Chapter VI. on Fairy Tales.
Literature in Schools (Scudder). Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. Chapter on Nursery Classics.

THE FABLES

No group of stories has a more assured place in the literature for children than the Æsop's "Fables." Some of the commonest have been expanded into little stories which are presented orally to children in the first school year, as "The Lion and the Mouse," "The Ants and the Grasshoppers," "The Dog and his Shadow," and others. They are so simple and direct that they are used alongside the fairy tales for the earliest instruction of children.

As soon as children have acquired the rudiments of reading the Æsop's "Fables" are commonly used in the second and third school year as a reading book, and all the early reading books are partly made up from this material.

If we inquire into the qualities of these stories which have given them such a universal acceptance, we shall find that they contain in a simple, transparent form a good share of the world's wisdom. More recent researches indicate that they originated in India, and reached Europe through Persia and Arabia, being ascribed to Æsop. This indicates that like most early literature of lasting worth, they are products of the folk-mind rather than of a single writer, and it is the opinion of Adler that they express the ripened wisdom of the people under the forms of Oriental despotism. The sad and hopeless submission to a stronger power expressed by some of the fables, it is claimed, unfits them for use in our freer life to-day.

There are certain points in which their attractiveness to children is clearly manifest. The actors in the stories are usually animals, and the ready interest and sympathy of children for talking animals are at once appealed to. In all the early myths and fairy tales, human life seems to merge into that of the animals, as in "Hiawatha," and the fables likewise are a marked expression of this childlike tendency.

Adler says: "The question may be asked why fables are so popular with boys. I should say because schoolboy society reproduces in miniature, to a certain extent, the social conditions which are reflected in the fables. Among unregenerate schoolboys there often exists a kind of despotism, not the less degrading because petty. The strong are pitted against the weak—witness the fagging system in English schools—and their mutual antagonism produces in both the characteristic vices which we have noted above." A literature which clearly pictures these relations so that they can be seen objectively by the children may be of the greatest social service in education.

Adler says further: "The psychological study of schoolboy society has been only begun, but even what lies on the surface will, I think, bear out this remark. Now it has become one of the commonplaces of educational literature that the individual of to-day must pass through the same stages of evolution as the human race as a whole. But it should not be forgotten that the advance of civilization depends on two conditions: first, that the course of evolution be accelerated, that the time allowed to the successive stages be shortened; and, secondly, that the unworthy and degrading elements which entered into the process of evolution in the past, and at the time were inseparable from it, be now eliminated. Thus the fairy tales which correspond to the myth-making epoch in human history must be purged of the dross of superstition which still adheres to them, and the fables which correspond to the age of primitive despotisms must be cleansed of the immoral elements they still embody."[3]

The peculiar form of moral teaching in the "Fables" suits them especially to children. A single trait of conduct, like greediness or selfishness, is sharply outlined in the story and its results made plain. "We have seen nothing finer in teaching than the building up of these little stories in conversational lessons—first to illustrate some mental or moral trait; then to detach the idea from its story picture, and find illustrations for it in some other act or incident. And nothing can be more gratifying as a result, than, through the transparency of childish hearts, to watch the growth of right conduct from the impulses derived from the teaching; and so laying the foundations of future rightness of character."[4]

The moral ideas inculcated by the fables are usually of a practical, worldly-wisdom sort, not high ideals of moral quality, not virtue for its own sake, but varied examples of the results of rashness and folly. This is, perhaps, one reason why they are so well suited to the immature moral judgments of children.

Adler says: "Often when a child has committed some fault, it is useful to refer by name to the fable that fits it. As, when a boy has made room in his seat for another, and the other crowds him out, the mere mention of the fable of the porcupine is a telling rebuke; or the fable of the hawk and the pigeons may be called to mind when a boy has been guilty of mean excuses. On the same principle that angry children are sometimes taken before a mirror to show them how ugly they look, the fable is a kind of mirror for the vices of the young." Again: "The peculiar value of the fables is that they are instantaneous photographs which reproduce, as it were, in a single flash of light, some one aspect of human nature, and which, excluding everything else, permit the attention to be entirely fixed on that one."

But the value of the fable reaches far beyond childhood. The frequency with which it is cited in nearly all the forms of literature, and its aptness to express the real meaning of many episodes in real life, in politics and social events, in peace and war, show the universality of the truth it embodies. A story which engraves a truth, as it were with a diamond point, upon a child's mind, a truth which will swiftly interpret many events in his later life, deserves to take a high place among educative influences.

FABLES AND NATURE MYTHS

Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
Æsop's Fables (Stickney). Ginn & Co.
Book of Legends (Scudder). Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
Stories for Children (Lane). The American Book Co.
A Child's Garden of Verses (Stevenson). Scribner's Sons.
Æsop's Fables. Educational Publishing Co.
The Book of Nature Myths (Holbrook). Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
The Moral Instruction of Children (Adler), Chapters VII and VIII. D. Appleton & Co.

CHAPTER IV

Second Grade Stories

"ROBINSON CRUSOE"

In selecting suitable literature for children of the second grade, we follow in the steps of a number of distinguished writers and teachers and choose an English classic—"Robinson Crusoe." Rousseau gave this book his unqualified approval, and said that it would be the first, and, for a time, the only book that Émile should read. The Herbartians have been using it a number of years, while many American teachers have employed it for oral work in second grade, in a short school edition. In one sense, the book needs no introduction, as it has found its way into every nook and corner of the world. Originally a story for adults, it has reached all, and illustrated Christmas editions, designed even for children from three years and upward, are abundant. To the youth of all lands, it has been, to say the least, a source of delight, but it has been regarded as a book for the family and home. What would happen should the schoolmaster lay his hand on this treasure and desecrate it to school purposes! We desire to test this classic work on the side of its pedagogical value and its adaptation to the uses of regular instruction. If it is really unrivalled as a piece of children's literature, perhaps it has also no equal for school purposes.

In making the transition from the fairy tale to "Robinson Crusoe," an interesting difference or contrast may be noticed. Wilmann says:[5] "'Crusoe' is at once simple, and plain, and fanciful; to be sure, in the latter case, entirely different from the fairy tale. In the fairy story the fancy seldom pushes rudely against the boundaries of the real world. But otherwise in 'Crusoe.' Here it is the practical fancy that is aroused, if this expression appear not contradictory. What is Crusoe to do now? How can he help himself? What means can he invent? Many of the proposals of the children will have to be rejected. The inexorable 'not possible' shoves a bolt before the door. The imagination is compelled to limit itself to the task of combining and adjusting real things. The compulsion of things conditions the progress of the story. 'Thoughts dwell together easily, but things jostle each other roughly in space.'"

There are other striking differences between "Crusoe" and the folk-lore stories, but in this contrast we are now chiefly concerned. After reaching the island, he is checked and limited at every step by the physical laws imposed by nature. Struggle and fret as he may against these limits, he becomes at last a philosopher, and quietly takes up the struggle for existence under those inexorable conditions. The child of seven or eight is vaguely acquainted with many of the simple employments of the household and of the neighborhood. Crusoe also had a vague memory of how people in society in different trades and occupations supply the necessaries and comforts of life. Even the fairy stories give many hints of this kind of knowledge, but Robinson Crusoe is face to face with the sour facts. He is cut off from help and left to his own resources. The interest in the story is in seeing how he will shift for himself and exercise his wits to insure plenty and comfort. With few tools and on a barbarous coast, he undertakes what men in society, by mutual exchange and by division of labor, have much difficulty in performing. Crusoe becomes a carpenter, a baker and cook, a hunter, a potter, a fisher, a farmer, a tailor, a boatman, a stock-raiser, a basket-maker, a shoemaker, a tanner, a fruit-grower, a mason, a physician. And not only so, but he grapples with the difficulties of each trade or occupation in a bungling manner because of inexperience and lack of skill and exact knowledge. He is an experimenter and tester along many lines. The entire absence of helpers centres the whole interest of this varied struggle in one person. It is to be remembered that Crusoe is no genius, but the ordinary boy or man. He has abundant variety of needs such as a child reared under civilized conditions has learned to feel. The whole range of activities, usually distributed to various classes and persons in society, rests now upon his single shoulders. If he were an expert in all directions, the task would be easier, but he has only vague knowledge and scarcely any skill. The child, therefore, who reads this story, by reason of the slow, toilsome, and bungling processes of Crusoe in meeting his needs, becomes aware how difficult and laborious are the efforts by which the simple, common needs of all children are supplied.

A reference to the different trades and callings that Crusoe assumes will show us that he is not dealing with rare and unusual events, but with the common, simple employments that lie at the basis of society in all parts of the world. The carpenter, the baker, the farmer, the shoemaker, etc., are at work in every village in every land. Doubtless this is one reason why the story acquires such a hold in the most diverse countries. The Arab or the Chinese boy, the German or American child, finds the story touching the ordinary facts of his own surroundings. Though the story finds its setting in a far-away, lonely island in tropical seas, Crusoe is daily trying to create the objects and conditions of his old home in England. But these are the same objects that surround every child; and therefore, in reading "Robinson Crusoe," the pupil is making an exhaustive and interesting study of his own home. The presence of a tropical vegetation and of a strange climate does not seriously impair this fact. The skill of a great literary artist appears in his power to create a situation almost devoid of common comforts and blessings and then in setting his hero to work to create them by single-handed effort.

It will hardly be questioned that the study of the home and home neighborhood by children is one of the large and prominent problems in education. Out of their social, economic, and physical environment children get the most important lessons of life. Not only does the home furnish a varied fund of information that enables them to interpret books, and people, and institutions, as they sooner or later go out into the world, but all the facts gathered by experience and reading in distant fields must flow back again to give deeper meaning to the labors and duties which surround each citizen in his own home. But society with its commerce, education, and industries, is an exceedingly complex affair. The child knows not where to begin to unravel this endless machinery of forms and institutions. In a sense he must get away from or disentangle himself from his surroundings in order to understand them. There are no complex conditions surrounding Crusoe, and he takes up the labors of the common trades in a simple and primitive manner. Physical and mental effort are demanded at every step, from Crusoe and from the children. Many of his efforts involve repeated failure, as in making pottery, in building a boat, while some things that he undertakes with painful toil never attain success. The lesson of toil and hardship connected with the simple industries is one of great moment to children. Our whole social fabric is based on these toils, and it is one of the best results of a sound education to realize the place and importance of hard work.

It scarcely needs to be pointed out that Crusoe typifies a long period of man's early history, the age when men were learning the rudiments of civilization by taking up the toils of the blacksmith, the agriculturist, the builder, the domesticator of animals and plants. Men emerged from barbarism as they slowly and painfully gained the mastery over the resources of nature. Crusoe is a sort of universal man, embodying in his single effort that upward movement of men which has steadily carried them to the higher levels of progress. It has been said with some truth that Robinson Crusoe is a philosophy of history. But we scarcely need such a high-sounding name. To the child he is a very concrete, individual man, with very simple and interesting duties.

In a second point the author of "Robinson Crusoe" shows himself a literary master. There is an intense and naive realism in his story. Even if one were so disposed, it would require a strong effort to break loose from the feeling that we are in the presence of real experiences. There is a quiet but irresistible assumption of unvarnished and even disagreeable fact in the narrative. But it is useless to describe the style of a book so familiar. Its power over youthful fancy and feeling has been too often experienced to be doubted. The vivid interest which the book awakens is certain to carry home whatever lessons it may teach with added force. So great is this influence that boys sometimes imitate the efforts of Crusoe by making caves, building ovens, and assuming a style of dress and living that approximates Crusoe's state. This supplies to teachers a hint of some value. The story of Crusoe should lead to excursions into the home neighborhood for the purpose of a closer examination of the trades and occupations there represented. An imitation of his labors may also be encouraged. The effort to mould and bake vessels from potter's clay, the platting of baskets from willow withes, the use of tools in making boxes or tables may be attempted far enough to discover how lacking in practical ability the children are. This will certainly teach them greater respect for manual skill.

From the previous discussion it might appear that we regard the story of Crusoe as technological and industrial rather than moral. But it would be a mistake to suppose that a book is not moral because it is not perpetually dispensing moral platitudes. Most men's lives are mainly industrial. The display of moral qualities is only occasional and incidental. The development of moral character is coincident with the labors and experiences of life and springs out of them, being manifested by the spirit with which one acts toward his fellow-men. But Crusoe was alone on his island, and there might seem to be no opportunity to be moral in relation to others. Society, to be sure, was conspicuous by its absence. But the intense longing with which he thought of the home and companionships lost is perhaps the strongest sentiment in the book. His loneliness brings out most vividly his true relation to home and friends.

His early life, till the shipwreck, was that of a wayward and reckless youth, disobedient to parents and seemingly without moral scruples. Even during the first months upon the island there appears little moral change or betterment. But slowly the bitter experiences of his lonely life sober him. He finds a Bible, and a fit of sickness reveals the distresses that may lie before him. When once the change has set in, it is rapid and thorough. He becomes devout, he longs to return to his parents and atone for his faults. A complete reformation of his moral disposition is effected. If one will take the pains to read the original "Robinson Crusoe" he will find it surprisingly serious and moral in its tone. He devotes much time to soliloquizing on the distresses of his condition and upon the causes which have brought him to misery. He diagnoses his case with an amount of detail that must be tedious to children. The fact that these parts of the book often leave little direct impression upon children is proof that they are chiefly engaged with the adventure and physical embarrassments of Crusoe. For the present it is sufficient to observe that the story is deeply and intensely moral both in its spirit and in the changes described in "Crusoe."

We are next led to inquire whether the industrial and moral lessons contained in this story are likely to be extracted from it by a boy or girl who reads it alone, without the aid of a teacher. Most young readers of "Crusoe" are carried along by the interesting adventure. It is a very surprising and entertaining story. But children even less than adults are inclined to go deeper than the surface and draw up hidden treasures. De Foe's work is a piece of classic literature. But few people are inclined to get at the deeper meaning and spirit of a classical masterpiece unless they go through it in companionship with a teacher who is gifted to disclose its better meaning. This is true of any classical product we might mention. It should be the peculiar function of the school to cultivate a taste, and an appreciative taste, for the best literature; not by leaving it to the haphazard home reading of pupils, but by selecting the best things adapted to the minds of children and then employing true teaching skill to bring these treasures close to the hearts and sympathies of children. Many young people do not read "Robinson Crusoe" at all; many others do not appreciate its better phases. The school will much improve its work by taking for its own this best of children's stories, and by extending and deepening the children's appreciation of a classic.

The story of Robinson Crusoe is made by the Herbartians the nucleus for the concentration of studies in the second year. This importance is given to it on account of its strong moral tone and because of its universal typical character in man's development. Without attempting a solution of the problem of concentration at this juncture, we should at least observe the relations of this story to the other studies. Wilmann says: "The everywhere and nowhere of the fairy tale gives place to the first geographical limitations. The continents, the chief countries of Europe, come up, besides a series of geographical concepts such as island, coast, bay, river, hill, mountain, sea, etc. The difference in climate is surprising. Crusoe fears the winter and prepares for it, but his fear is needless, for no winter reaches his island." We have already observed its instructive treatment of the common occupations which prepare for later geographical study, as well as for natural science.

Many plants and animals are brought to notice which would furnish a good beginning for natural science lessons. It is advisable, however, to study rather those home animals and plants which correspond best to the tropical products or animals in the lessons. Tropical fruits, the parrot, and the goat we often meet at home, but in addition, the sheep, the ox, the mocking-bird, the woodpecker, our native fruits and grains, and the fish, turtles, and minerals of the home, may well be suggested and studied in science lessons parallel with the life of Crusoe.

Following upon the oral treatment and discussion of "Robinson Crusoe" the children are easily led to like efforts at construction, as, for instance, the making of a raft, the building of the cave and stockade, the making of chairs and tables, the moulding of jars and kettles out of clay, the weaving of baskets, the preparation and cooking of foods, the planting of grains, the construction of an oven or house, boat building, and other labors of Crusoe in providing for his wants.

It is quite customary now in second grade to set the children to work in these efforts to solve Crusoe's problems, so that they, by working with actual materials, may realize more fully the difficulties and trials to which he was subjected. In close connection with these constructive efforts are the drawings of the scenes of the story, such as the shipwreck, the stockade, the boat, the map of the island, and some of the later events of the story. A still further means of giving reality to the events is to dramatize some of the scenes between Friday and Crusoe, and to dress and equip these and other persons in the story in fitting manner. The children gladly enter into such dramatic action. These various forms of drawing, action, and constructive work are in close connection with the home studies of industries and occupations,—farming, gardening, carpenter and blacksmith shops, weaving, cooking, bakeries, and excursions to shops—which follow the Crusoe story in the study of home geography in the third grade.

Although the story should be given and discussed orally, the children should also read it later as a part of the regular reading exercise of the course. Instead of suffering from this repetition, their interest will only be increased. Classical products usually gain by repetition. The facts are brought out more clearly and the deeper meaning is perceived. To have the oral treatment of a story precede its reading by some weeks or months produces an excellent effect upon the style of the reading. The thought being familiar, and the interest strong, the expression will be vigorous and natural. Children take a pride in reading a story which they at first must receive orally for lack of reading power.

The same advantageous drill in the use of good English accrues to the Crusoe story that was observed in the fairy tales. There is abundant opportunity for oral narrative and description.

The use of the pencil and chalk in graphic representation should be encouraged both in teacher and in pupils. Thus the eye becomes more accurate in observation and the hand more free and facile in tracing the outlines of the interesting forms studied. The use of tools and materials in construction gives ideas an anchorage, not only in the brain, but even in the nerves and muscles.

In thus glancing over the field we discover the same many-sided and intimate relation with other school studies, as in the previous grade. In fact, "Crusoe" is the first extended classical masterpiece which is presented to the children as a whole. Such parts of the story as are of most pedagogical value should be simplified and woven together into a continuous narrative. That part of the story which precedes the shipwreck may be reduced to a few paragraphs which bring out clearly his early home surroundings, his disobedience and the desertion of his parents, and the voyage which led to his lonely life upon the island. The period embraced in his companionless labors and experiences constitutes the important part for school uses. A few of the more important episodes following the capture of Friday and his return home may be briefly told. We deem it a long step forward to get some of our great classical masterpieces firmly embedded in the early years of our school course. It will contribute almost as much to the culture and stimulation of teachers as of pupils.

The method of handling this narrative before the class will be similar to that of the fairy tales. A simple and vivid recital of the facts, with frequent questions and discussions, so as to draw the story closer to the child's own thought and experience, should be made by the teacher. Much skill in illustrative device, in graphic description, in diagram or drawing, in the appeal to the sense experiences of the pupils, is in demand. The excursion to places of interest in the neighborhood suggested by the story begins to be an important factor of the school exercises. As children grow older they acquire skill and confidence in oral narrative, and should be held to greater independence in oral reproductions.

One of the best school editions of "Robinson Crusoe" is published by Ginn & Co.

A simple edition for second grade is published by the Public School Publishing Co.

The teacher should be supplied with one of the larger, fuller editions of "Robinson Crusoe," like that of Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., in the Riverside Literature Series. It furnishes a much fuller detail of knowledge for the teacher's use. It will also be of great advantage for classroom use to possess an illustrated edition like that of George Routledge & Sons.

The full treatment of this story, first in simple, oral narrative, later by its use as a reading book, and later still by the child reading the complete edition for himself in private, illustrates the intensive concentration of thought and constructive activity upon a great piece of literature as opposed to a loose and superficial treatment. Such a piece of work should remain for life a source of deeper thought, feeling, and experience.

OTHER EDITIONS

Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. American Book Co.
Robinson Crusoe. Lee and Shepard.
Robinson Crusoe for Youngest Readers. Educational Pub. Co.
Robinson Crusoe. University Publishing Co.
De Foe's Robinson Crusoe (Hale). Ginn & Co.
De Foe's Robinson Crusoe. Maynard, Merrill, & Co.

"HIAWATHA"

The story of Hiawatha has been much used for oral treatment in primary grades, and as a basis for exercises in learning to read. Later the complete poem has been much read in third, fourth, or fifth grade as a piece of choice literature.

A story which is growing so rapidly in favor with primary teachers may explain our effort to determine its educational value.

That the story begins with the early childhood of Hiawatha and describes his home and early training at the feet of Nokomis, is at least one point in its favor.

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
There the wrinkled, old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews.

The traditions and stories he learned from the lips of Nokomis will remind children of their own home life, while his companionship with birds and animals will touch them in a sympathetic place.

Then the little Hiawatha
Learned of every bird its language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How they built their nests in Summer,
Where they hid themselves in Winter,
Talked with them whene'er he met them,
Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."

The games and exercises of his youth will remind them of their own sports and introduce them to Indian life. This home of Hiawatha, and the description of his childhood, are a happy introduction to the simple surroundings of Indian life on the shores of the northern sea.

Primitive Indian modes of life, traditions and myths, appeal naturally to children, and the whole story has this setting of early simplicity which adapts it in many ways to child study. The Indian nature myths, which in themselves are attractive, are here woven into a connected series by their relation to Hiawatha in the training of his childhood and in the exploits of his manhood.

The number of pure fairy tales scattered through the story adapts it especially for young children, while the descriptions of home customs, feasts, weddings, merrymaking, and games, show the happier side of their life.

Ye who love a nation's legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
That like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish
Whether they are sung or spoken;—
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To this song of Hiawatha!
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe, that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened;—
Listen to this simple story,
To this Song of Hiawatha!

The description of husking time is such a pleasing scene, while the picture writing of the Indians, their totems and rude drawings, are in harmony with their traditions and religion.

On the border of the forest,
Underneath the fragrant pine-trees,
Sat the old men and the warriors
Smoking in the pleasant shadow.
In uninterrupted silence
Looked they at the gamesome labor
Of the young men and the women;
Listened to their noisy talking,
To their laughter and their singing,
Heard them chattering like the magpies,
Heard them laughing like the blue jays,
Heard them singing like the robins.
And whene'er some lucky maiden
Found a red ear in the husking,
Found a maize-ear red as blood is,
"Nushka!" cried they all together,
"Nushka! you shall have a sweetheart,
You shall have a handsome husband!"
"Ugh!" the old men all responded
From their seats beneath the pine-trees.

And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
The Wabenos, the Magicians,
And the Medicine-men, the Medas,
Painted upon bark and deer-skin
Figures for the songs they chanted,
For each song a separate symbol,
Figures mystical and awful,
Figures strange and brightly colored;
And each figure had its meaning,
Each some magic song suggested.

One of the most striking features of this story is its setting in nature. More than any other piece of literature now used in the school, it is redolent of fields and forest.

Should you ask me, whence these stories,
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest,
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations,
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fenlands,
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes."

Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs, so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
"In the birds'-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoof-prints of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!
All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fenlands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"

This description of primitive man is as complete an absorption into his natural surroundings as is possible. His food and clothing, his tents and boats, his weapons and war gear, are drawn directly from nature's first supplies, and man, in this case, seems almost a part of nature, so completely are his thoughts and activities determined and colored by his environment. Like the animals, in their protective coloring, he becomes an undistinguishable part of his surroundings. His nature myths and superstitions are but phases and expressions of the contact of his crude mind with forces and objects in nature. In this respect there are many interesting suggestions of similar interpretations among the Norse and Greek mythologies.

The close and friendly contact of Hiawatha with trees and animals, his companionship with the squirrel, the woodpecker, and the beaver, his talking acquaintance with trees of the forest, with the fishes in the Big-Sea-Water, and with the masters of the winds, the storm, and the thunder, make him an interesting guide for the children among the realms of nature.

Ye who love the haunts of nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries;—
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha!

A happy, sympathetic love for the sights and sounds in nature is a fortunate beginning of nature lore. The imaginative interpretations are common to all the early races and in full harmony with the temper of childhood. Even from the standpoint of nature study, this early poetic joy in nature descriptions is profitable. The matter-of-fact, analytic study of natural science in succeeding years need not begrudge the children this happiness, this interpretative play of the imagination, this music of field and forest. In early childhood, nature and poetry are one, and as Lowell says, "Let us not go about to make life duller than it is."

The simplicity and beauty of the language and figure of speech make many parts of this poem especially appropriate for children.

Young and beautiful was Wabun;
He it was who brought the morning,
He it was whose silver arrows
Chased the dark o'er hill and valley;
He it was whose cheeks were painted
With the brightest streaks of crimson,
And whose voice awoke the village,
Called the deer, and called the hunter.

He meanwhile sat weary waiting
For the coming of Mondamin,
Till the shadows, pointing eastward,
Lengthened over field and forest,
Till the sun dropped from the heaven,
Floating on the waters westward,
As a red leaf in the Autumn
Falls and floats upon the water,
Falls and sinks into its bosom.

And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer.
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter.

The simple music and rhythm of the poetic form is so delightful to children that they absorb whole passages into their memory without conscious effort. The mere re-reading of parts of the poem to little children under six years will often produce this happy result. A little girl of three years picked up, among others, this passage:—

Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

The repetitions of the same or similar passages, so common throughout the poem, is a successful appeal to children's favor. It gives the story a sort of Mother Goose flavor which is delightful.

While the story centres in Hiawatha, it has a variety of interesting personalities, giving expression to the striking features of this primitive society. Hiawatha's loved ones, Minnehaha and old Nokomis, stand first, and his chosen friends are next.

Two good friends had Hiawatha,
Singled out from all the others,
Bound to him in closest union,
And to whom he gave the right hand
Of his heart in joy and sorrow;
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.

And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
Long they lived in peace together,
Spake with naked hearts together,
Pondering much and much contriving
How the tribes of men might prosper.

In connection with these persons is a most pleasing series of adventures, bringing to notice those heroic qualities which children love to witness. The very strong man, Kwasind, is a fitting companion in their thoughts to Samson and Hercules; and Chibiabos,

He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers,

has had many a prototype since the days of Orpheus.

Pau-Puk-Keewis, with his dancing and tricks, will also prove a curious character, something like Proteus of old.

You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.

The character of Hiawatha, as of the benefactor, of one devoted, with high purpose, to the welfare of his people, may be regarded as the deeper motive of the author. It is the thought of ideal good in Hiawatha which gives tone and meaning to the whole poem.

You shall hear how Hiawatha
Prayed and fasted in the forest,
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
Not for triumphs in the battle,
And renown among the warriors,
But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.

The views of geography and history at the beginning and close of the poem not only give a broad scope to the story, but have an interesting bearing upon the study of geography and history in those years of school which immediately follow. The narrative reaches from the Vale of Tawasentha in New York, across the great lakes and shining Big-Sea-Water to Minnehaha and the Upper Mississippi, and even to the prairies and the distant Rocky Mountains beyond. In the summoning of the tribes at the Great Pipe Stone Quarry there is a broad survey of the Indian tribes of the United States.

From the vale of Tawasentha,
From the Valley of Wyoming,
From the groves of Tuscaloosa,
From the far-off Rocky Mountains,
From the Northern lakes and rivers
All the tribes beheld the signal,
Saw the distant smoke ascending,
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe.

Down the rivers, o'er the prairies,
Came the warriors of the nations.

A map of North America is necessary for showing the meaning of this description to the children.

In the last part the coming of the white man and the prophecy of his spreading over the land, and the dwindling of the native tribes to the westward, are given.

Iagoo's description of the white men, their ships and appearance, to his people on the return from his travels, will greatly please the children.

He had seen, he said, a water
Bigger than the Big-Sea-Water,
Broader than the Gitche Gumee,
Bitter so that none could drink it!
At each other looked the warriors,
Looked the women at each other,
Smiled, and said, "It cannot be so!
Kaw!" they said, "It cannot be so;"

"O'er it," said he, "o'er this water
Came a great canoe with pinions,
A canoe with wings came flying,
Bigger than a grove of pine-trees,
Taller than the tallest tree-tops!"
And the old men and the women
Looked and tittered at each other;
"Kaw!" they said, "we don't believe it!"

The story of Hiawatha has been used sufficiently in primary grades to show how many are its suggestions for drawing and constructive work. Little children take delight in drawing the Indian tents, bows and arrows, pine forests, Indian warriors and dress, the canoe, the tomahawk, the birds and animals. The cutting of these forms in paper they have fully enjoyed.

Pictures of Indian life, collections of arrow-heads, the peace-pipes, articles of dress, cooking utensils, wampum, stone hatchets, red pipe-stone ornaments, or a visit to any collection of Indian relics are desirable as a part of this instruction. The museums in cities and expositions are rich in these materials, and in many private collections are just the desired objects of study.

It is well known that children love to construct tents, dress in Indian style, and imitate the mode of life, the hunting, dancing, and sports of Indians. Teachers have taken advantage of this instinct to allow them to construct an Indian village on a small scale, and assume the dress and action of Hiawatha and his friends, and even to dramatize parts of the story.

It is only certain selected parts of the "Hiawatha" that lend themselves best to the oral treatment with children, and that, at first, not in the poetic form. In fact, the oral treatment of a story in beautiful poetic form demands a peculiar method.

For example, in treating the childhood of Hiawatha as he dwelt with old Nokomis in the tent beside the sea, the main facts of this episode, or a part of it, may be talked over by means of description, partly also by development, question, and answer, and when these things are clear, let this passage of the poem be read to the children. The preliminary treatment and discussion will put the children in possession of the ideas and pictures by which they can better appreciate and assimilate the poem. This mode of introducing children to a poem or literary masterpiece is not uncommon with children in later years, at least in the middle grades.

It has been customary to use nearly the whole poem in fourth or fifth school year for regular reading, and it is well suited to this purpose. Its use in primary grades for such oral treatment as we have described will not interfere with its employment as reading matter later on, but rather increase its value for that purpose.

The method of handling such a poem as reading has been discussed in the Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics.

A number of books have been written by practical teachers on the use of "Hiawatha" in primary grades:—

"The Hiawatha Primer." Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.
"Hints on the Study of Hiawatha" (Alice M. Krackowizer). A. Flanagan, publisher.

The best edition of the "Hiawatha" is "Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha," which is well illustrated. Published by Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.

Other editions are "The Song of Hiawatha." The Educational Publishing Co.

"Longfellow's Hiawatha." The Macmillan Co.
"Song of Hiawatha." University Publishing Co.

CHAPTER V

Third Grade Stories

THE MYTHICAL STORIES

In the third grade we wish to bring a number of the mythical stories vividly before the children. The classical myths which belong to the literature of Europe are the fund from which to select the best. Not all, but only a few of the simple and appropriate stories can be chosen. Only two recitation periods a week are usually set apart for the oral treatment of these old myths. But later in the progress of the reading lessons other similar stories should be treated. The few recitation periods used for oral work are rather designed to introduce children to the spirit of this literature, to get them into the appreciative mind.

This body of ancient myths comes down to us, sifted out of the early literature of the active-minded Greeks. They have found their way as a simple and charming poetry into the national literature of all the European countries. Is this the material suited to nine- and ten-year-old children? It will not be questioned that these myths belong to the best literary products of Europe, but are they suited to children?

It is evident that some of our best literary judges have deemed them appropriate. Hawthorne has put them into a form designed especially for the young folk. Charles Kingsley wrote of the Greek myths for his children: "Now I love these old Hellens heartily, and they seem to me like brothers, though they have all been dead and gone many a hundred years. They are come to tell you some of their old fairy tales, which they loved when they were young like you. For nations begin at first by being children like you, though they are made up of grown men. They are children at first like you—men and women with children's hearts; frank, and affectionate, and full of trust, and teachable, loving to see and learn all the wonders around them; and greedy also, too often, and passionate and silly, as children are."

Not a few other authors of less note have tried to turn the classical myths of the old Greek poets into simple English for the entertainment and instruction of children. Scarcely any of these stories that have not appeared in various children's books in recent years. Taken as a whole, they are a storehouse of children's literature. The philosopher, Herbart, looked upon poems of Homer as giving ideal expression to the boyhood of the race, and the story of Ulysses was regarded by him as the boy's book,—the Greek Robinson Crusoe. For the child of nine years he thought it the most suitable story.

Kingsley says in his Introduction: "Now you must not think of the Greeks in this book as learned men, living in great cities, such as they were afterwards, when they wrought all their beautiful works, but as country people, living on farms and in walled villages, in a simple, hard-working way; so that the greatest kings and heroes cooked their own meals and thought it no shame, and made their own ships and weapons, and fed and harnessed their own horses. So that a man was honored among them, not because he happened to be rich, but according to his skill and his strength and courage and the number of things he could do. For they were but grown-up children, though they were right noble children too, and it was with them as it is now at school, the strongest and cleverest boy, though he be poor, leads all the rest."

In the introduction to the "Wonder Book" we find the following: "Hawthorne took a vital interest in child life. He was accustomed to observe his own children very closely. There are private manuscripts extant which present exact records of what his young son and elder daughter said or did from hour to hour, the father seating himself in their playroom and patiently noting all that passed. To this habit of watchful and sympathetic scrutiny we may attribute in part the remarkable felicity, the fortunate ease of adaptation to the immature understanding, and the skilful appeal to the fresh imaginations which characterize his stories for the young." Hawthorne himself says: "The author has long been of the opinion that many of the classical myths were capable of being rendered into very capital reading for children.... No epoch of time can claim a copyright on these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made, and so long as man exists they can never perish; but by their indestructibility itself they are legitimate subjects, for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality.... The author has not always thought it necessary to write downward in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the theme to soar, whenever such was its tendency. Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high in imagination or feeling so long as it is simple likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that bewilder them."

A brief analysis of the qualities which render these myths so attractive will help us to see their value in the education of children.

The astonishing brightness of fanciful episode and of pure and clear-cut imagery has an indestructible charm for children. They can soar into and above the clouds on the shining wings of Pegasus. With Eolus they shut up the contrary winds in an ox-hide, and later let them out to plague the much-suffering Ulysses. They watch with astonishment as Jason yokes the fire-breathing oxen and strews the field with uprooted stumps and stones as he prepares the soil for the seed of dragon's teeth. Each child becomes a poet as he recreates the sparkling brightness of these simple pictures. And when a child has once suffered his fancy to soar to these mountain heights and ocean depths, it will no longer be possible to make his life entirely dull and prosaic. He has caught glimpses of a bright world that will linger unfading in the uplands of his memory. And while they are so deep and lofty they are still, as Hawthorne says, very simple. Some of the most classic of the old stories are indeed too long for third grade children; too many persons and too much complexity, as in the "Tales of Troy." But on the other hand, many of the most beautiful of the old myths are as plain and simple to a child as a floating summer cloud. High in the sky they may be or deep in the reflection of some lake or spring, but clear and plain to the thought of a little child. These stories in their naive simplicity reflect the wonder and surprise with which a person first beholds grand and touching scenery, whether it be the oppressive grandeur of some beetling mountain crag, or the placid quiet of a moonlit stream. The stories selected for this grade should be the simplest and best: "The Golden Touch," "Perseus," "The Chimæra," of Hawthorne, the episodes of the "Golden Fleece," with others similar.

In one form or another they introduce us to the company of heroes, or, at least, of great and simple characters. Deeds of enterprise and manliness or of unselfishness and generosity are the climax of the story. To meet danger and hardship or ridicule for the sake of a high purpose is their underlying thought. Perseus and Jason and Ulysses are all ambitious to prove their title to superior shrewdness and courage and self-control. When we get fairly into the mythical age, we find ourselves among the heroes, among those striving for mastery and leadership in great undertakings. Physical prowess and manly spirit are its chief virtues. And can there be any question that there is a time in the lives of children when these ideas fill the horizon of their thought? Samson and David and Hercules, Bellerophon and Jason, are a child's natural thoughts or, at least, they fit the frame of his mind so exactly that one may say the picture and the frame were made for each other. The history of most countries contains such an age of heroes. Tell in Switzerland, Siegfried in Germany, Bruce in Scotland, Romulus and Horatius at Rome, Alfred in England, are all national heroes of the mythical age, whose deeds are heroic and of public good. The Greek stories are only a more classic edition of this historical epoch, and should lead up to a study of these later products of European literature.

Several forms of moral excellence are objectively realized or personified in these stories.

As the wise Centaur, after teaching Jason to be skilful and brave, sent him out into the world, he said: "Well, go, my son; the throne belongs to thy father and the gods love justice. But remember, wherever thou dost wander, to observe these three things: