HOW ARE WE TO DISCRIMINATE AS TO MATERIAL TO BE SELECTED?
If this position is granted, how then, out of the vast richness of the material, are particular selections to be made? What principles should govern in our choice? As already hinted there are degrees of value, for purposes of instruction, in the immense treasury of folklore, myth and fable. It will be readily conceded that what is known as folklore has qualities rendering it of greatest value, for the first years of school life. It is simple and direct. Its conception of the world is that of pure naturalism. The formal myth and fable belong to later stages of mental development. The fable, too, has the objection of being explicitly didactic in its enforcement of the moral.