The importance of story-telling and the initiation of children into the delightful fields of literature through the teacher rather than through the book are found to harmonize with a mode of treatment common to all the studies in early years.
In this connection it is interesting to observe that the early literature of the European nations was developed and communicated to the people by word of mouth. The Homeric songs were chanted or sung at the courts of princes. At Athens, in her palmy days, the great dramatists and poets either recited their productions to the people or had them presented to thousands of citizens in the open-air theatres. Even historians like Thucidides read or recited their great histories before the assembled people. In the early history of England, Scotland, and other countries, the minstrels sang their ballads and epic poems in the baronial halls and thus developed the early forms of music and poetry. Shakespeare wrote his dramas for the theatre, and he seems to have paid no attention at all to their appearance in book form, never revising them or putting them into shape for the press.
This practice of all the early races of putting their great literature before the people by song, dramatic action, and word of mouth is very suggestive to the teacher. The power and effectiveness of this mode of presentation, not only in early times but even in the highly civilized cities of London and Athens, is unmistakable proof of the educative value of such modes of teaching. This is only another indication of the kinship of child life with race life, which has been emphasized by many great thinkers.
The oral method offers a better avenue for all vigorous modes of expression than the reading book. It can be observed that the general tendency of the book is toward a formal, expressionless style in young readers. Go into a class where the teacher is handling a story orally and you will see her falling naturally into all forms of vivid narrative and presentation, gesture, facial expression, versatile intonation, blackboard sketching and picture work, the impersonation of characters in dialogue, dramatic action, and general liveliness of manner. The children naturally take up these same activities and modes of uttering themselves. Even without the suggestion of teachers, little children express themselves in such actions, attitudes, and impersonations. This may be often observed in little boys and girls of kindergarten age, when telling their experiences to older persons, or when playing among themselves. The freedom, activity, and vivacity of children is, indeed, in strong contrast to the apathetic, expressionless, monotonous style of many grown people, including teachers.
But the oral treatment of stories has a tendency to work out into modes of activity even more effective than those just described.
In recent years, since so much oral work has been done in elementary schools, children have been encouraged also to express themselves freely in blackboard drawings and in pencil work at their desks by way of illustrating the stories told. Moreover, in paper cutting, to represent persons and scenes, in clay modelling, to mould objects presented, and in constructive and building efforts, in making forts, tents, houses, tools, dress, and in showing up modes of life, the children have found free scope for their physical and mental activities. These have not only led to greater clearness and vividness in their mental conceptions, but have opened out new fields of self-activity and inventiveness.
So long as work in reading and literature was confined to the book exercises, nearly all these modes of expression were little employed and even tabooed.
Finally, the free use of oral narrative in the literature of early years, in story-telling and its attendant modes of expression, opens up to primary teachers a rare opportunity of becoming genuine educators. There was a time, and it still continues with many primary teachers, when teaching children to read was a matter of pure routine, of formal verbal drills and repetitions, as tiresome to the teacher, if possible, as to the little ones. But now that literature, with its treasures of thought and feeling, of culture and refinement, has become the staple of the primary school, teachers have a wide and rich field of inspiring study. The mastery and use of much of the preferred literature which has dropped down to us out of the past is the peculiar function of the primary teacher. Contact with great minds, like those of Kingsley, Ruskin, Andersen, the Grimm brothers, Stevenson, Dickens, Hawthorne, De Foe, Browning, Æsop, Homer, and the unknown authors of many of the best ballads, epics, and stories, is enough to give the primary teacher a sense of the dignity of her work. On the other hand, the opportunity to give to children the free and versatile development of their active powers is an equal encouragement.
Teachers who have taken up with zeal this great problem of introducing children to their full birthright, the choice literature of the world suited to their years, and of linking this story work with primary reading so as to give it vitality,—such teachers have found school life assuming new and unwonted charms; the great problems of the educator have become theirs; the broadened opportunity for the acquisition of varied skill and professional efficiency has given a strong ambitious tone to their work.