The story-teller cannot, by the way, afford to ignore the evil in life. You may have read the story of Kipling’s “kid”; how the parents in fond but foolish love for their only son shut away from him all knowledge that evil has come into the world, and how the son, grown to manhood, enters army life, where he meets his first temptation and falls. The moral of the tale is obvious. Though it is wise to keep in the wake of their experience with evil, the story should help to provide the children with knowledge and modes of conduct for the situations of real life. The cunning story-teller, presenting this or that bit of life, from which he has not made the mistake of taking out the evil already within the child’s experience or presently to be met, touches the child into recoil from evil and into admiration and imitation of the triumphant way of virtue.
The story should, however, oftener engage children’s attention with good, rather than evil, as the central, active force in life. And the story told to the growing boy or girl, and to the youth, should prompt him to fine and finer endeavor. It is a fatal error to assume that teachers and parents cannot help to raise the community’s standards, that the best the rising generation may carry out from home and school is negative prudence, readiness to accept questionable social practices and ideals, that they themselves may achieve worldly success. If each generation does not leave the world a little better for its part in it, it has lived in vain, and its “guides, philosophers, and friends,” the parents and teachers of it, have denied their office. The story helping toward this kind of constructivity should lead. It is to the habit formed in its children that society must look for higher standards of living.
The story will widen the child’s outlook on life. On the wings of the word the listener may fly away to the uttermost bounds of the earth. In the story world he, if poor, may be rich; if sad, merry; if inarticulate, he may find expression.
Though it is not exhaustive, this is an imposing array of reasons for admitting the story to unquestioned educational dignity. If the school feel the need of broad, scholarly precedent, it may find it in the work or in the recorded opinions of such seers as the Lambs, Longfellow, Carroll, Hawthorne, Scott, Stevenson, Browning, Ruskin, Froebel, Emerson. As yet story-telling is largely left optional with the teacher. Should it not be made a delightful school requirement? It addresses itself, it is true, mainly to the æsthetic taste and the feelings, it does not guarantee consequent action. But give it place early enough, and, if it must bring it, the other good effect will be added unto it.
The best reason for admitting the story to scholastic dignity still remains the best, its lasting charm for the children.
Kinds of Stories to Tell
We appear to be coming to the agreement that we should tell the children many of the old, old stories and some of the new, many stories from the world of the imagination, some from the real world; stories that will aid them in interpreting their world, themselves, other children, some grown-ups, nature; stories that will direct aright the imagination, the sympathies, and the taste; playful stories and more serious, sensible and nonsensical; short stories and longer; stories to be told over and over again, stories to be told in passing. To meet the child’s and later the girl’s and boy’s changing tastes and interests, and the needs of their developing imagination and sympathies, our choice should embrace, besides a great many others that as yet have eluded classification, fairy tales, fables, myths, legends, romances, tales of adventure, stories of animal life, child life, growing boy and girl life, stories of great men and women.
Some teachers find it hard to see any educational value in play-stories like “The Three Bears,” nonsense stories like “Chicken-Licken,” and drolls, or farce “funny” stories like “Lazy Jack.” They do not get the child’s point of view. They are disturbed by the apparently idle pleasure or extravagance of them. “Chicken-Licken” appears to be nothing but driveling nonsense. The writer has no desire to attempt to turn it into sense nor to press unduly the claim of this particular type of story. But why not let it in as a nonsense tale, an opportunity for giving the mind a frolic? This is advanced by some students of the tale as its possible origin. It may be thought of as a reflection in literature of the naïveté of childhood; it catches capitally its guilelessness in motive, social intercourse, and deed. Its form also is childlike. The child ekes out invention in the manner of the tale, by the open artifice of cumulation and repetition. Or the story may be dignified into literary introduction to that type of classic which records the very common human situation, “much ado about nothing.”
The same teachers are disturbed also by the ethical code of many of the folk tales; they find it crude and fleshly. It deals in large and sense-delighting rewards. But may it not be possible that the child must be allowed time to grow to a more discriminating standard of conduct and a finer kind of satisfaction?
It is to be hoped, however, that even then the child will retain his capacity for laughing at merry play and hearty comedy. Laughter is good for the world. It is a tonic to the emotions, and regeneration to the spirit, spurring it to fresh and better effort; it is a sign, too, of broadening imagination and sympathy. The man that has no laughter in him is like Shakespeare’s man that has no music in him, “fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Let no such man be trusted.” Most stories will give the children a more reserved pleasure, happy mental and æsthetic satisfaction; some a fine gladness and exaltation. But let us not be too narrow to admit the wholesomely “funny” story.