Special Method in Primary Reading and Oral Work with Stories

by Charles A. McMurry

Second Grade Stories

"ROBINSON CRUSOE"

In selecting suitable literature for children of the second grade, we follow in the steps of a number of distinguished writers and teachers and choose an English classic—"Robinson Crusoe." Rousseau gave this book his unqualified approval, and said that it would be the first, and, for a time, the only book that Émile should read. The Herbartians have been using it a number of years, while many American teachers have employed it for oral work in second grade, in a short school edition. In one sense, the book needs no introduction, as it has found its way into every nook and corner of the world. Originally a story for adults, it has reached all, and illustrated Christmas editions, designed even for children from three years and upward, are abundant. To the youth of all lands, it has been, to say the least, a source of delight, but it has been regarded as a book for the family and home. What would happen should the schoolmaster lay his hand on this treasure and desecrate it to school purposes! We desire to test this classic work on the side of its pedagogical value and its adaptation to the uses of regular instruction. If it is really unrivalled as a piece of children's literature, perhaps it has also no equal for school purposes.

In making the transition from the fairy tale to "Robinson Crusoe," an interesting difference or contrast may be noticed. Wilmann says:[5] "'Crusoe' is at once simple, and plain, and fanciful; to be sure, in the latter case, entirely different from the fairy tale. In the fairy story the fancy seldom pushes rudely against the boundaries of the real world. But otherwise in 'Crusoe.' Here it is the practical fancy that is aroused, if this expression appear not contradictory. What is Crusoe to do now? How can he help himself? What means can he invent? Many of the proposals of the children will have to be rejected. The inexorable 'not possible' shoves a bolt before the door. The imagination is compelled to limit itself to the task of combining and adjusting real things. The compulsion of things conditions the progress of the story. 'Thoughts dwell together easily, but things jostle each other roughly in space.'"

There are other striking differences between "Crusoe" and the folk-lore stories, but in this contrast we are now chiefly concerned. After reaching the island, he is checked and limited at every step by the physical laws imposed by nature. Struggle and fret as he may against these limits, he becomes at last a philosopher, and quietly takes up the struggle for existence under those inexorable conditions. The child of seven or eight is vaguely acquainted with many of the simple employments of the household and of the neighborhood. Crusoe also had a vague memory of how people in society in different trades and occupations supply the necessaries and comforts of life. Even the fairy stories give many hints of this kind of knowledge, but Robinson Crusoe is face to face with the sour facts. He is cut off from help and left to his own resources. The interest in the story is in seeing how he will shift for himself and exercise his wits to insure plenty and comfort. With few tools and on a barbarous coast, he undertakes what men in society, by mutual exchange and by division of labor, have much difficulty in performing. Crusoe becomes a carpenter, a baker and cook, a hunter, a potter, a fisher, a farmer, a tailor, a boatman, a stock-raiser, a basket-maker, a shoemaker, a tanner, a fruit-grower, a mason, a physician. And not only so, but he grapples with the difficulties of each trade or occupation in a bungling manner because of inexperience and lack of skill and exact knowledge. He is an experimenter and tester along many lines. The entire absence of helpers centres the whole interest of this varied struggle in one person. It is to be remembered that Crusoe is no genius, but the ordinary boy or man. He has abundant variety of needs such as a child reared under civilized conditions has learned to feel. The whole range of activities, usually distributed to various classes and persons in society, rests now upon his single shoulders. If he were an expert in all directions, the task would be easier, but he has only vague knowledge and scarcely any skill. The child, therefore, who reads this story, by reason of the slow, toilsome, and bungling processes of Crusoe in meeting his needs, becomes aware how difficult and laborious are the efforts by which the simple, common needs of all children are supplied.

A reference to the different trades and callings that Crusoe assumes will show us that he is not dealing with rare and unusual events, but with the common, simple employments that lie at the basis of society in all parts of the world. The carpenter, the baker, the farmer, the shoemaker, etc., are at work in every village in every land. Doubtless this is one reason why the story acquires such a hold in the most diverse countries. The Arab or the Chinese boy, the German or American child, finds the story touching the ordinary facts of his own surroundings. Though the story finds its setting in a far-away, lonely island in tropical seas, Crusoe is daily trying to create the objects and conditions of his old home in England. But these are the same objects that surround every child; and therefore, in reading "Robinson Crusoe," the pupil is making an exhaustive and interesting study of his own home. The presence of a tropical vegetation and of a strange climate does not seriously impair this fact. The skill of a great literary artist appears in his power to create a situation almost devoid of common comforts and blessings and then in setting his hero to work to create them by single-handed effort.

It will hardly be questioned that the study of the home and home neighborhood by children is one of the large and prominent problems in education. Out of their social, economic, and physical environment children get the most important lessons of life. Not only does the home furnish a varied fund of information that enables them to interpret books, and people, and institutions, as they sooner or later go out into the world, but all the facts gathered by experience and reading in distant fields must flow back again to give deeper meaning to the labors and duties which surround each citizen in his own home. But society with its commerce, education, and industries, is an exceedingly complex affair. The child knows not where to begin to unravel this endless machinery of forms and institutions. In a sense he must get away from or disentangle himself from his surroundings in order to understand them. There are no complex conditions surrounding Crusoe, and he takes up the labors of the common trades in a simple and primitive manner. Physical and mental effort are demanded at every step, from Crusoe and from the children. Many of his efforts involve repeated failure, as in making pottery, in building a boat, while some things that he undertakes with painful toil never attain success. The lesson of toil and hardship connected with the simple industries is one of great moment to children. Our whole social fabric is based on these toils, and it is one of the best results of a sound education to realize the place and importance of hard work.

It scarcely needs to be pointed out that Crusoe typifies a long period of man's early history, the age when men were learning the rudiments of civilization by taking up the toils of the blacksmith, the agriculturist, the builder, the domesticator of animals and plants. Men emerged from barbarism as they slowly and painfully gained the mastery over the resources of nature. Crusoe is a sort of universal man, embodying in his single effort that upward movement of men which has steadily carried them to the higher levels of progress. It has been said with some truth that Robinson Crusoe is a philosophy of history. But we scarcely need such a high-sounding name. To the child he is a very concrete, individual man, with very simple and interesting duties.

In a second point the author of "Robinson Crusoe" shows himself a literary master. There is an intense and naive realism in his story. Even if one were so disposed, it would require a strong effort to break loose from the feeling that we are in the presence of real experiences. There is a quiet but irresistible assumption of unvarnished and even disagreeable fact in the narrative. But it is useless to describe the style of a book so familiar. Its power over youthful fancy and feeling has been too often experienced to be doubted. The vivid interest which the book awakens is certain to carry home whatever lessons it may teach with added force. So great is this influence that boys sometimes imitate the efforts of Crusoe by making caves, building ovens, and assuming a style of dress and living that approximates Crusoe's state. This supplies to teachers a hint of some value. The story of Crusoe should lead to excursions into the home neighborhood for the purpose of a closer examination of the trades and occupations there represented. An imitation of his labors may also be encouraged. The effort to mould and bake vessels from potter's clay, the platting of baskets from willow withes, the use of tools in making boxes or tables may be attempted far enough to discover how lacking in practical ability the children are. This will certainly teach them greater respect for manual skill.

From the previous discussion it might appear that we regard the story of Crusoe as technological and industrial rather than moral. But it would be a mistake to suppose that a book is not moral because it is not perpetually dispensing moral platitudes. Most men's lives are mainly industrial. The display of moral qualities is only occasional and incidental. The development of moral character is coincident with the labors and experiences of life and springs out of them, being manifested by the spirit with which one acts toward his fellow-men. But Crusoe was alone on his island, and there might seem to be no opportunity to be moral in relation to others. Society, to be sure, was conspicuous by its absence. But the intense longing with which he thought of the home and companionships lost is perhaps the strongest sentiment in the book. His loneliness brings out most vividly his true relation to home and friends.