The Child’s Part in Story-Telling
Let us tabulate some of the things the child naturally does as his part in story-telling. The table will be incomplete, but it may be suggestive. What is the child’s part in story-telling?
(1) It is listening.
(2) It is remaining silent.
(3) It is commenting.
(4) It is joining in.
(5) It is re-telling.
(6) It is partial re-telling.
(7) It is telling other stories.
(8) It is inventing stories.
(9) It is expressing sometimes story images in other media.
(10) It is sometimes playing the stories.
(11) It is growing by the power and grace of the story.
(1) It is listening. Let us not underrate the child’s quiet part as listener harkening to the story again and again to catch wider and deeper vision of it.
(2) It is remaining silent. When it is the silence of delight, be content; this is result enough. When it is the spiritual silence out of whose brooding may be born reverent awe or insight into justice or cheerful good will or virile endeavor, bring all your wisdom to bear to decide whether you will help or hinder by leaving the child to himself, and in case of doubt give the story the benefit of it, trusting it to deliver its own message in due season.
(3) It is commenting. On the other hand, do not be unmindful of another opportunity. A child, like an adult, is inclined to talk some stories over; meet him halfway. Indeed, in some cases, lead the way; stimulate an inert class to talk over some of the more objective type of stories. It is your opportunity to get and clarify the child’s point of view.
(4) It is joining in. We learn, from the snatches of story-telling history that have come down to us, that it was the custom of the audience to join in at the rhythmic repetitions, as people do at the chorus of a comic song. The children show the same tendency; encourage it. It not only pleases them, but it is an easy and natural beginning in reproduction. The child’s dramatic sense prompts him to come in also when the story-teller reaches dialogue; encourage this also.
(5) It is re-telling. Rightly conducted, reproduction of stories is profitable for shaping the pupil’s thought and language mode. But is the exercise rightly conducted? The children listen in breathless delight as the teacher tells the story; she demands it “back,” the children struggle, interest flags, teacher and children toil on, and joy dies out in story and listener. This is too bad. Story-telling is a legitimate opportunity for unalloyed pleasure; the school is not too lavish of such times. What is the root of the trouble? It lies in one or more sources: the practice of requiring premature reproduction of some types of story not grasped by the children to the definite point of re-telling; the teacher’s unreasonable or wrong standards of achievement; the pupil’s lack of familiarity with the story, due to the teacher’s tendency to turn reproduction into a test or task.
The tendency of the school to require immediate verbal reproduction of all stories is unwise utilitarianism. It is limiting the teacher’s choice of stories undesirably. Feeling compelled to demand reproduction of every story, the teacher confines her choice to stories the children will take hold of easily. We can all testify that we have heard and been moved or delighted by recitals we could not reproduce; their purpose was to accomplish exactly what they did accomplish. The child is capable of responding in æsthetic pleasure or spiritual uplift to stories as yet beyond his re-telling. It is highly desirable that he be given the chance of contact with such material and that its seed be given time to root and flower. To urge him to immediate reproduction is to develop shallow glibness at the sacrifice of something finer. Under the compulsion of reproduction the teacher excludes, also, not only beautiful and spiritualizing stories, but long stories. Long stories are not desirable on the mere ground of length, but even this ground has its claim. The longer stories give sustained exercise to the imagination, and they give the story-teller ampler field to set forth character or action and to let the story yield fuller measure of delight. Short and long and longer and shorter are all in place. And not all need nor should be reproduced.
How much should the teacher expect when she asks pupils to tell back any stories they have heard only once, or at most twice? Exactly what the pupil gives, what he grasped. Many teachers are disturbed, however, by the meager “language training” afforded by this very brief re-telling. Why not let the stories, by reiteration of them on the teacher’s part, impose their thought process and language mode on the forming habit of the child? This does not mean that reproduction must be verbatim repetition, nor that the children’s individuality is to be suppressed. But what a mockery, especially in some quarters, is this prevalent idea in the schools that the child must not be familiarized with the language of the story, but that he should be compelled to “tell it in his own words.” Alas, “his own words”! Would not familiarity with the story’s language bring riches to the thought-starved and language-starved children of some unschooled parents, anxious that their children shall enjoy advantages denied to themselves? Would it not help in foreign sections?
(6) It is partial re-telling. Let the children come into possession of the story naturally and gradually. At each re-telling of it by yourself look for firmer and fuller reproduction. Help to keep the children’s interest centered in the story, not so much by commenting patronizingly, “How well John told the story!” but rather by openly enjoying the story John is telling. Let language come, as it should, with the effort to express the thought. And do not interfere with composition by unnecessary questioning. Your first method of helping the pupils’ reproduction might be by supplying omitted parts rather than by questioning analytically for them, as is so commonly done at present. (Questioning has of course its place: it serves to lift into consciousness the relations existing among the parts of the story.) Try co-operative telling: tell part yourself, then let a child or several in succession tell the next, helping if necessary but not anticipating, and perhaps finish the story yourself. The children will soon be able to manage more. Simple, artistic illustrative picture or blackboard sketches, showing in succession the main divisions of the story, will help to give it uninterrupted sequence. (When divisions are made either orally or pictorially, they should be true portions of the whole.) Presently the children will find themselves telling the whole of some stories without undue feeling of strain, and with great pleasure to themselves and their classmates.
Is it natural, by the way, to reproduce in the same company a story just heard? This is the common school practice. In an adult audience this would of course never be done except on the frank basis of practice in so doing or for some other accepted purpose. The children enjoy dwelling on the story. And they may practice, with the motive of telling the story at home. The teacher need not, therefore, strain at devices to make reproduction more natural, yet she might often take advantage of or contrive more natural occasion for it. The natural occasion is social intercourse and entertainment. There is space only to indicate one or two ways of securing this attractive natural motive. Sometimes let at least a day elapse before asking for the reproduction; you may then let the exercise be an opportunity to enjoy the story again. Tell the same story over and over (if it be a good one) yourself on appropriate occasions, and encourage the children to do the same thing. Let individuals, or groups, or classes, visit and exchange stories.
(7) The child’s part, telling similar stories and (8) inventing stories, should go without saying. Do not neglect the opportunity offered by (8). If you reduce the class to workable groups at a time for this exercise, it should be practicable. Do not press prematurely the creative imagination, but do not neglect it. Give play to the natural working of a little child’s fancy, the boy’s or girl’s, the youth’s imagination. It is wise to follow the lead of the child here, then be at hand, not to deprive the child of the efficiency of independence and of the pleasure of making, but to help when necessary that his attempt may be encouragingly successful.
(9) It is sometimes expressing story images in other media. Here, again, the adult will do well to follow the lead of the child; of course of the most freely expressive child. The inert must be stimulated. Left to himself the child would not commit some of the excesses in sensible representation that adults impose upon children, though objective representation is natural to man at the childlike stage. It is not necessary that the child represent materially every set of language ideas. The teacher should not, on the other hand, stop natural attempt to represent even the more elusive kinds of ideas; there may be a budding Watts or Chase in her class, capable of picturing the highly fanciful and spiritual.
Keep the exercise growing. Its aim is to give constructive outlet to the child. The child’s conception of the story, with expression of it and each re-hearing, is growing. The practice of keeping a child’s first attempts at expression in drawing or modeling or cutting or his attempts at any one stage too long about the classroom, before his eyes, is dwarfing. There is, of course, the other side to the question. To accept nothing as accomplishment is deadening to effort. It is possible, however, is it not, to meet the child on childlike standard of achievement, to acknowledge the day’s accomplishment, yet without disheartening him, or even talking to him about the better things he will do, to keep our own faces turned toward the morrow?
(10) It is playing the stories. This, if not done with every story without discrimination, or without reference to the children’s instinctive selective sense, if kept at least fairly spontaneous and progressive, is a form of constructivity heartily enjoyed by the children. It is wise here again to follow the child’s lead. Let us understand, however, by this the lead of the majority of our most normal children and of the most gifted individuals. Many children meager in imagination, feeble in initiative, inadequate in execution, will need the strong lead of other children or of the teacher, qualified child seer from her experience with more favored children. Let her give to these from her abundance, becoming best playfellow and guide. But let her keep herself in the attitude of playing with the children.
Let us see how playing the story might develop. As soon as the story takes possession of the child he shows a tendency to enter into its persons and its action; to mimic the voices, to ape the manners, to do the doings. Give outlet to this; let the child take on and play out the life of the story, or yourself propose playing the story.
Do not, by the way, clutter up the child’s direct outlet with staging and properties and stage terms. It destroys spontaneity and reality. Let the schoolroom be the place, and, as a rule, the school furnishings any necessary things, and the school children, in their ordinary clothes, the people. The delight of “dressing up” may sometimes be allowed; but a mere suggestion in costume, if it be something distinctive of the character impersonated, is all that is necessary; a gold paper crown, for example, will at once make a queen of any child. Why not with the little children talk simply and naturally: “Let us play” (not act nor dramatize) so and so. Who’ll be so and so? I’ll be so and so. Where will you have your home? And so on. Do not at the beginning press even this simple kind of planning; let the play develop with the playing of it. Help the children, however, gradually to gain in planning.
Playing has a tendency to make the form static; it is a mistake to let this happen too soon. Do not, as is the practice, stop telling the story yourself after the children have once played it. You will find that their intimate experience in playing it will bring a more pointed attention to the next hearing of it, and that their next playing will be richer in detail, or stronger in structure, or truer in characterization, or more appropriate in dialogue. Do not, of course, keep the children on one story either for playing or other form of reproduction until they weary of it.
Far from deploring, by the way, the child’s crudities in dialogue, appreciate the opportunity to let him express himself and to develop his language sense. Keep the language way open to him. He will catch the force of your comment on how some character spoke, himself suggest to another pupil what the person the pupil is impersonating should say, note how you talk when you impersonate, or how you respond in dialogue with him.
Playing the stories is open to educational abuse by being turned into insincere show work. This results, too, in exclusion of pupils who do not excel. Keep playing the stories, at least for the little children, the spontaneous universal thing they make it—play. Their own selective sense guides them in assigning or assuming rôles. It is abused, also, by adult patronage. The teacher laughs at the children rather than with them, or laughs when the true child seer would be serious. The child thoroughly enjoys playing the stories, but this does not mean that he laughs constantly or at his own performance. Encourage him to catch the fun or humor of a situation or of a remark; enjoy the playing openly when it is merry, laugh and laugh heartily, but do not turn his genuine playing into a sham. Do not, on the other hand, take him too seriously; he does not always take himself so. In short, get the child’s point of view here as elsewhere.
The “last’s the best of all the game;” it is (11) growing by the power and grace of the story.
May the child nurtured on the wit and wisdom of the simple story simply told live happy ever after!
Thus we arrived at this place together, where the people were in the habit of spinning up the tow. It was an enforced custom with them that each in turn should relate some little tale, or history, and to tell the truth, not only the noble women, but also myself and my friend, found our entire pleasure in such stories, and we often used to stop old beggars and give them a trifle more for telling us them.
—Jucundus Jucundissimus, 1680.