STORIES AND HOW TO USE THEM
BY RICHARD THOMAS WYCHE
PRESIDENT, NATIONAL STORY TELLERS’ LEAGUE
ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
WHEN our forefathers grappled with theological problems and made dogmatic statements as to their faith, such as we find in some of our catechisms, they had in mind the church and theological controversies, and not the child and his needs. The truth that they had suffered and died for was contained in the catechisms, their articles of faith, therefore he who committed to memory the catechism had the truth. But in that reasoning they made a fatal mistake. To make children memorize these dogmatic statements expecting them to grow religiously or morally thereby, would be like feeding them on bone meal, expecting therefrom an increase in the bony tissue of the body. The lime that the body needs is there, but not in an assimilative form. Nor is there truth for the child in dry-bone statements of religion. If the child asks for bread will you give him a stone? That is what we do when we make him memorize theological statements, the language and thought both of which are beyond him.
The writer recalls two teachers and two methods of religious instruction in his childhood. One who taught him the catechism and one who told him Bible stories. The catechism bored and wearied him, and so far as he can see today was time wasted, while the stories charmed and uplifted, and remain even today a pleasant memory. This is not arguing that the child should not memorize some things. There are many selections from Scripture and other sources that he can memorize both with great pleasure and profit to himself.
“The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want,
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside the still waters,”
is full of beautiful imagery that appeals to the child. But theological definitions of sin, justification and the like, have neither feeling nor imagery and make no appeal to the child. The child is interested in the deeds of man and not in his doctrines. Tell him connectedly the life-story of Moses, Buddha, Jesus, St. Augustine, Luther or Wesley, and you have given him the spirit and life of the great religious leaders and the institutions which grew out of their work. No catechism could do that. Gladly he would hear the life story of a great religious hero and teacher, but his doctrines do not interest him now. Give him the life-story now, and when he has reached later the philosophic period he will himself raise the theological and philosophical questions, and knowing the lives of the great religious leaders he will have the historical background whereon to build his faith. Anyone can take a catechism and have a class memorize and repeat the answers, but it takes a teacher to so read the Bible that he can tell in a creative way the story of its great heroes. That is what we must do if we base our methods on true psychology. And the story should be studied connectedly to the close and not by piecemeal, beginning as some do with one character and before the life-story is done dropping him and skipping to another, in order to conform to a certain doctrinal theme which may interest the adult but not the child. That method may account for the fact that Bible heroes have not always been as popular with children as some others. If the story of Ulysses and Hiawatha were taught in a similar way they would lose much of their charm and interest for the child.
The day school in its literature courses is incidentally giving the child a comparative course in religion, greatly to the advantage of the Sunday School worker. In Hiawatha we have an Indian Messiah who worshipped the Great Spirit, and prayed and fasted for his people. In the Norse we have the worship of Odin, and Balder, the God of Light, Gladsheim and the Life Beyond the Grave. In the Greek we have the gods in their relations to man, the upper and lower world, immortality, rewards and punishments. Saint George was a protector of the faith, while King Arthur had heaped upon him the attributes of a divinity, until his life-story reminds one of the Christ story.
The heroism and prowess in these stories is the main point of interest to the child, but none the less does the religious life of the race come out; and to have religion associated with physical strength as well as moral heroism is an advantage. And none the less are we giving him the great truths that are common to all religions, making him tolerant and charitable, and teaching him that religion is as broad as life itself and that it is natural for every human heart to go in quest of the Eternal. With this broad outlook we can then better help our young people interpret the old truths in terms of modern thought and contribute much toward that larger religious life and thought which must inevitably come.
The work of story-telling covers a much larger field than the school. It does not matter whether we are kindergartners, teachers or preachers, every adult owes to the rising generation of children something of the culture that has been given to him. The “Tell me a story” on the part of the child is his cry for spiritual food, and to hear stories from the great story-books of the world is, as Dr. G. Stanley Hall says, “one of the most inalienable rights of children.” There is no better place in all the world for telling a story than in the home, that institution which is greater and more important than all other institutions combined.
It is in the home that we come into the sweetest and divinest relations with children and with one another. It is here that we find the best conditions for a play of those subtle and delicate psychic influences which enter into the story, making it both a perfect art and an inspiration to a noble and beautiful character. There are many homes that cannot afford libraries and the rich adornments of art, but no home is so humble that parents cannot gather the children around the fireside on a winter’s evening or about the doorsteps in the twilight of a summer’s day and tell them stories. A simple fireside is a greater stimulant to the creative imagination than the wealth of a palace.
To enter thus into the child’s world and into the joyous companionship of children is one of the highest privileges of parent and teacher. He who fails in this does not form the deepest and most lasting ties with the child, and he also robs himself of one of the greatest sources of perennial youth.