This is not so difficult as it may seem, for many of the truths of science have been put into simple language by men who were poet enough to bring to children something of their mystery and beauty, and there is no dearth of books that can be used with gratifying results by workers among children as young as those of six to nine years. Part of the story of evolution is enjoyed in this period. The boy in the age of fancy is fascinated by listening to an account of early man’s struggle with nature, and tales of the tree dwellers, of cave and cliff dwellers, of the discovery of fire and the adventures of the first wanderers, mean as much to him as any fairy tale, because they have the very characteristic that makes the fairy tale delightful—an element of mystery that permits the fancy to roam unchecked.
Older children revel in the truths of science, if they are presented in story form. Take, for instance, David Starr Jordan’s “Story of a Stone.” Where is there a fairy tale more fascinating than this narrative of “a bit of petrified honeycomb,” plowed up by a Wisconsin husbandman as he made ready to sow his winter wheat? The style and language have the charm of Andersen, the plot is as well sustained as that of any Thuringian folk tale collected by Grimm, and it begins as fairy tales have begun since the beginning of time:
Once upon a time, a great many years ago, so many, many years that one grows very tired in trying to think how long ago it was; in those old days when the great Northwest consisted of a few ragged and treeless hills, full of copper and quartz and bordered by a dreary waste of sand flats, over which the Gulf of Mexico rolled its warm and turbid waters as far north as Escanaba and Eau Claire; in the days when Marquette harbor opened out toward Baffin’s Bay, and the northern ocean washed the crest of Mount Washington and wrote its name on the pictured rocks; when the tide of the Pacific, hemmed in by no snow-capped Sierras, came rushing through the Golden Gate between the Ozarks and the northern peninsula of Michigan, swept over Plymouth Rock, and surged up against Bunker Hill; in the days when it would have been fun to study geography, because there were no capitals, nor any products, and all the towns were seaports,—in fact, an immensely long time ago, there lived somewhere in the northeastern part of Wisconsin a little jellyfish.
Dr. Jordan has also woven into story form information concerning the animal life of sea and stream, of a mother and baby seal, in the delightful tale of “Matka and Kotik,” and there is not a boy or a girl in the heroic period who does not listen eagerly to the adventures of a salmon, “a curious little fellow, not half an inch long, with great, staring eyes which made almost half his length, and with a body so transparent that he could not cast a shadow.” The account of the battle of the fish there under the ripples of the Cowlitz, the beginning of the eventful journey down the river, the merry conflict with the herring and the terrible one with the sea lions, swimming always and always, growing larger and more daring, and having in his watery realm as many adventures as bold Robin had in his greenwood, hold the children from the beginning to the end of the story. They sympathize as he struggles up the stream again, “growing poor and ragged and tired,” and through his life and adventures they come to have an interest in the world of fishes that they will not have without the tale. Such stories demonstrate the fact that information concerning the sciences can be put into fascinating story form, and every worker with young folk should endeavor to present some of it through this delightful medium.
The child will find such tales far more appealing than the so-called nature stories in which animals are over-personified and in which they meet man in situations that every intelligent boy or girl knows are impossible. A lad is not brought into harmony with nature by being given yarns that caricature nature, and many of the modern nature stories do this very thing. Children know that a wild bear does not walk into a little girl’s flower garden, and then politely say “I am sorry” and back out because the small mistress of the garden is kind and instead of throwing stones at him explains in elegant English that it is rude to go into another’s property unbidden. They know that animals and children do not converse together in the same language, and that bears do not have courses in ethics. The nature story that fascinates the child must be true to nature’s laws. He may listen to some of the sugary, impossible yarns written to point a moral, but they do not give him keen pleasure, and because they are ridiculous in his eyes, he draws no lesson from them. One of the aims of story-telling is to give ethical instruction, but there is a wealth of tales that reflect nature and life correctly that should be used for this purpose, and the facts of science should not be distorted in an attempt to emphasize a lesson.
Tales pervaded by over-sentimentalism will not stir deep response in children. This is why the nature story that is true to the facts of science is the one that interests the boy or girl. It is like the racial tale, full of conflict, of temporary defeat and final triumph. The young salmon grown old, struggling up Snake River to the foot of the Bitter Root Mountains, was sore of muscle and unsightly of skin, and his tail was frayed and torn, but the desire of his nature was fulfilled at last. He scooped out a nest and covered the eggs of his companion, and then, because the work of his life was done, was free to drift downstream. Such stories give insight into nature and engender a love of nature; and besides quickening the imagination and enriching the emotional life, they help to give stability to the child character, because through them he learns the workings of certain inexorable laws.
There is such a vast amount of material to use in teaching nature study, that the suggestions and bibliography given in this chapter can by no means be comprehensive. In the realm of geology there is the story of limestone, of slate, of quartz and granite, of rock salt and sandstone, and particularly interesting to the child is the story of coal. For him it abounds in color, and beautiful indeed are the pictures that he sees as he listens to this narrative of the carboniferous forests that grew in the beginning of time, of the lush, dank swamps of the Permian or Triassic or Miocene Period, and the strange animal life that peopled them. From astronomy and botany one may glean as much as from geology, while entomology, zoölogy, and ichthyology hold untold delights for the child.
A wonderful science story is that of the coral polyp, building from some submerged cliff or crag until a little island rises above the blue water. In my own childhood it meant as much as ever a fairy tale meant, and I can still feel the pleasure I experienced the first time I heard it. It is full of mystery and wonder, and a story of rare beauty for the child. I have used it often in story-telling, and it never fails to bring enthusiastic response; and very popular with the children is this song of the insect builders, of which I do not know the authorship, but which is one of the fragrant memories of my childhood:
Far down in the depths of the deep blue sea,