III.—Stories of a sentimental kind. Strange to say, this element of sentimentality often appeals more to the young teachers than to the children themselves. It is difficult to define the difference between sentiment and sentimentality, but the healthy normal boy or girl of—let us say ten or eleven years old seems to feel it unconsciously, though the distinction is not so clear a few years later.
Mrs. Elizabeth McKracken contributed an excellent article some years ago to the American Outlook on the subject of literature for the young, in which we find a good illustration of this power of discrimination on the part of a child.
A young teacher was telling her pupils the story of the emotional lady who, to put her lover to the test, bade him pick up the glove which she had thrown down into the arena between the tiger and the lion. The lover does her bidding, in order to vindicate his character as a brave knight. One boy, after hearing the story, at once states his contempt for the knight's acquiescence, which he declares to be unworthy.
“But,” says the teacher, “you see he really did it to show the lady how foolish she was.” The answer of the boy sums up what I have been trying to show: “There was no sense in his being sillier than she was, to show her she was silly.”
If the boy had stopped there, we might have concluded that he was lacking in imagination or romance, but his next remark proves what a balanced and discriminating person he was, for he added: “Now, if she had fallen in, and he had leapt after her to rescue her, that would have been splendid and of some use.” Given the character of the lady, we might, as adults, question the last part of the boy's statement, but this is pure cynicism and fortunately does not enter into the child's calculations.
In my own personal experience (and I have told this story often in the German ballad form to girls of ten and twelve in the High Schools in England) I have never found one girl who sympathised with the lady or who failed to appreciate the poetic justice meted out to her in the end by the dignified renunciation of the knight.
Chesterton defines sentimentality as “a tame, cold, or small and inadequate manner of speaking about certain matters which demand very large and beautiful expression.”
I would strongly urge upon young teachers to revise, by this definition, some of the stories they have included in their repertory, and see whether they would stand the test or not.
IV.—Stories containing strong sensational episodes. The danger is all the greater because many children delight in it, and some crave for it in the abstract, but fear it in the concrete.[19]
An affectionate aunt, on one occasion, anxious to curry favour with a four-year-old nephew, was taxing her imagination to find a story suitable for his tender years. She was greatly startled when he suddenly said, in a most imperative tone: “Tell me the story of a bear eating a small boy.” This was so remote from her own choice of subject that she hesitated at first, but coming to the conclusion that as the child had chosen the situation he would feel no terror in the working up of its details, she began a most thrilling and blood-curdling story, leading up to the final catastrophe. But just as she had reached the great dramatic moment, the child raised his hands in terror and said: “Oh! Auntie, don't let the bear really eat the boy!”