CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| [CHAPTER I] | |
| The Reason for Oral Work in Stories | 1 |
| [CHAPTER II] | |
| The Basis of Skill in Oral Work | 16 |
| [CHAPTER III] | |
| First Grade Stories | 47 |
| [CHAPTER IV] | |
| Second Grade Stories | 75 |
| [CHAPTER V] | |
| Third Grade Stories | 103 |
| [CHAPTER VI] | |
| Primary Reading through Incidental Exercises and Games | 137 |
| [CHAPTER VII] | |
| Method in Primary Reading | 173 |
| [CHAPTER VIII] | |
| List of Books for Primary Grades | 190 |
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.
| Oral Work. | Reading. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st Grade. | Games, Mother Goose. | Lessons based on Games, etc. |
| Fables, Fairy Tales. | Board Exercises. | |
| Nature Myths, Child Poems. | Primers, First Readers. | |
| Simple Myths, Stories, etc. | ||
| 2d Grade. | Robinson Crusoe. | Fables, Fairy Tales. |
| Hiawatha. | Myths and Poems. | |
| Seven Little Sisters. | Second Readers. | |
| Hiawatha Primer. | ||
| 3d Grade. | Greek and Norse Myths. | Robinson Crusoe. |
| Ballads and Legendary Stories. | Andersen's & Grimm's Tales. | |
| Ulysses, Jason, Siegfried. | Child's Garden of Verses. | |
| Old Testament Stories. | Third Readers. | |
| 4th Grade. | American Pioneer History Stories. | Greek and Norse Myths. |
| Early Biographical Stories of Europe, as Alfred, Solon, Arminius, etc. | Historical Ballads. | |
| Ulysses, Arabian Nights. | ||
| Hiawatha, Wonder Book. | ||
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.