FAIRY TALES
Young children, as we all know, are delighted with stories, and in the first grade they are still in this story-loving period. A good story is the best medium through which to convey ideas and also to approach the difficulties of learning to read. Such a story, Wilmann says, is a pedagogical treasure. By many thinkers and primary teachers the fairy stories have been adopted as best suited to the wants of the little folk just emerging from the home. A series of fairy tales was selected by Ziller, one of the leading Herbartians, as a centre for the school work of the first year. These stories have long held a large place in the home culture of children, especially of the more cultivated class. Now it is claimed that what is good for the few whose parents may be cultured and sympathetic, may be good enough for the children of the common people and of the poor. Moreover, stories that have made the fireside more joyous and blessed may perchance bring vivacity and happiness into schoolrooms. The home and the school are coming closer together. It is even said that well-trained, sympathetic primary teachers may better tell and impress these stories than overworked mothers and busy fathers. If these literary treasures are left for the homes to discover and use, the majority of children will know little or nothing of them. Many schools in this country have been using them in the first grade in recent years with a pleasing effect.
But what virtue lies concealed in these fairy myths for the children of our practical and sensible age? Why should we draw from fountains whose sources are back in the prehistoric and even barbarous past? To many people it appears as a curious anachronism to nourish little children in the first decade of this new century upon food that was prepared in the tents of wandering tribes in early European history. What are the merits of these stories for children just entering upon scholastic pursuits? They are known to be generally attractive to children of this age, but many sober-minded people distrust them. Are they really meat and drink for the little ones? And not only so, but the choicest meat and drink, the best food upon which to nourish their unfolding minds?
Fairy tales are charged with misleading children by falsifying the truth of things. And, indeed, they pay little heed to certain natural laws that practical people of good sense always respect. A child, however, is not so humdrum practical as these serious truth-lovers. A little girl talks to her doll as if it had real ears. She and her little brother make teacups and saucers out of acorns with no apparent compunctions of conscience. They follow Cinderella to the ball in a pumpkin chariot, transformed by magic wand, with even greater interest than we read of a presidential ball. A child may turn the common laws of physical nature inside out and not be a whit the worse for it. Its imagination can people a pea-pod with little heroes aching for a chance in the big world, or it can put tender personality into the trunk and branches of the little pine tree in the forest. There are no space limits that a child's fancy will not spring over in a twinkling. It can ride from star to star on a broomstick, or glide over peaceful waters in a fairy boat drawn by graceful swans. Without suggestion from mother or teacher, children put life and personality into their playthings. Their spontaneous delights are in this playful exercise of the fancy, in masquerading under the guise of a soldier, bear, horse, or bird. The fairy tale is the poetry of children's inner impulse and feeling; their sparkling eyes and absorbed interest show how fitting is the contact between these childlike creations of the poet and their own budding thoughts.
In discussing the qualities requisite in a fairy story to make it a pedagogical treasure, Wilmann says:[1] "When it is laid down as a first and indispensable requirement that a story be genuinely childlike, the demand sounds less rigorous than it really is. It is easier to feel than to describe the qualities which lend to a story the true childlike spirit. It is not simplicity alone. A simple story that can be understood by a child is not on that account childlike. The simplicity must be the ingenuousness of the child. Close to this lies the abyss of silliness into which so many children's stories tumble. A simple story may be manufactured, but the quality of true simplicity will not be breathed into it unless one can draw from the deeper springs of poetic invention. It is not enough that the externals of the story, such as situation and action, have this character, but the sensibilities and motives of the actors must be ingenuous and childlike; they should reflect the child's own feeling, wish, and effort. But it is not necessary on this account that the persons of the story be children. Indeed the king, prince, and princess, if they only speak and act like children, are much nearer the child's comprehension than any of the children paraded in a manufactured story, designed for the 'industrious youth.' For just as real poetry so the real child's story lies beyond reality in the field of fancy. With all its plainness of thought and action, the genuine child's story knows how to take hold of the child's fancy and set its wings in motion. And what a meaning has fancy for the soul of the child as compared with that of the adult. For us the activity of fancy only sketches arabesques, as it were, around the sharply defined pictures of reality. The child thinks and lives in such arabesques, and it is only gradually that increasing experience writes among these arabesques the firmer outlines of things. The child's thoughts float about playfully and unsteadily, but the fairy tale is even lighter winged than they. It overtakes these fleeting summer birds and wafts them together without brushing the dust from their wings.
"But fostering the activity of fancy in children is a means, not an end. It is necessary to enter the field of fancy because the way to the child's heart leads through the fancy. The effect upon the heart of the child is the second mark and proof of the genuine child's story. We are not advocates of the so-called moral stories which are so short-winded as to stop frequently and rest upon some moral commonplace. Platitudes and moral maxims are not designed to develop a moral taste in the minds of young children, for they appeal to the understanding and will of the pupil and presuppose what must be first built up and established. True moral training is rather calculated to awaken in the child judgments of right and wrong, of good and evil (on simple illustrative examples). Not the impression left by a moralizing discourse is the germ of a love of the good and right, but rather the child's judgment springing from its own conviction. 'That was good.' 'What a mean thing!'
"Those narratives have a moral force which introduce persons and acts that are simple and transparent enough to let the moral light shine through, that possess sufficient life to lend warmth and vigor to moral judgments. No attempt to cover up or pass over what is bad, nor to paint it in extravagant colors. For the bad develops the judgment no less than the good. It remains only to have a care that a child's interest inclines toward the good, the just, and the right."
Wilmann summarizes the essentials of a good story, and then discusses the fairy tales as follows:—
"There are then five requirements to be made of a real child's story: Let it be truly childlike, that is, both simple and full of fancy; let it form morals in the sense that it introduces persons and matters which, while simple and lively, call out a moral judgment of approval or disapproval; let it be instructive and lead to thoughtful discussions of society and nature; let it be of permanent value, inviting perpetually to a reperusal; let it be a connected whole, so as to work a deeper influence and become the source of a many-sided interest.
"The child's story which, on the basis of the aforenamed principles, can be made the starting-point for all others, is Grimm's fairy tale of folk lore. We are now called upon to show that the folk-lore fairy tale answers to the foregoing requirements, and in this we shall see many a ray of light cast back upon these requirements themselves.