CHAPTER EIGHT
Story-Telling to Lead to an Appreciation of Literature
One of the specific aims of education is to endow children with an appreciation of literature, and to this end much of a teacher’s energy is directed. From the elementary school through the university the curriculum includes a course in English, and even in kindergarten and primary grades a point is made of introducing children to those authors whose work is conceded to have a strong appeal for them. The first, second, or third grade boy is required to read and memorize selections from Stevenson, Riley, and Eugene Field; not infrequently he is detained after school because of failure to have his lesson prepared at recitation time, and responds to the requirement in a mood that brings discouragement to his teacher.
On the other hand, there are schools in which the literature or reading hour is a period of joy, where the learning of songs of the singers of childhood is accomplished without coercion. These schools are the ones in which the teachers have learned that the acquisition of knowledge, to be of real value, must be attended with enjoyment.
It is a mistake to believe that although the function of the school is to equip the man, the aim of education is only to give enjoyment in the future. It is also the aim of education to give enjoyment now, because in this way capacity for enjoyment in the future is made possible. The boy or girl whose early association with poetry or beautiful prose is attended with displeasure and discomfort is no more likely to be drawn to the finer types of literature later than the man or woman is apt to be fond of a person, the first meeting with whom was a disagreeable experience. If we would have the man love good literature, we must first lead the child to love good literature, and we can do this only through having him enjoy good literature.
Because story-telling brings pleasure to the child, it is a most effective means of leading him to an appreciation of literature. Through the medium of the story we not only can heighten his capacity for enjoyment and elevate the standard of his taste, but we can equip him with knowledge he will never acquire if the literature period is associated with force and punishment. If a tale brings pleasing pictures before his eyes and is beautiful in theme and language, he unconsciously forms a taste for beautiful language, for he is not only getting the succession of events that make the plot, but is also absorbing words and expressions. Certain sentences stick in his memory, and teachers who have children reproduce stories know that frequently they use the exact phrases and sentences that have been used by the teller. They do not remember these for a day or an hour and then forget them; they remember them as years go by, and associate certain words with certain narratives.
William McKinley once said that the mention of willows by a river made him think of the story of Moses in the bulrushes, and brought to mind this sentence: “And she hid the basket among the rushes in a spot where willows hung over the river.” The story had been told him in childhood and brought him enjoyment, and some of the narrator’s expressions left a lasting imprint on his mind. “I believe that story, more than anything else,” he once said, “gave me a fondness for elegant English.”
James A. Garfield voiced almost the same thought, declaring that his taste for literature was shaped by stories from great authors told him by his mother during his early years, and many other men of achievement have attested to the same truth. They have proved conclusively out of their own experience that even with little children it is possible to lay a foundation upon which a noble and enduring structure can be built. We can give them an appreciation of stories and poems that are among the gems of literature.
We can also interest children in the life of an author so that they will want to know something of his work. This statement often brings the question, “How, since little children want stories that are full of action, and not biographies of men and women they never have seen?” Is it not true that the childhood of all great men contained interesting experiences, that if told as stories will lead little people to want to know about what these boys and girls did when they grew up?
Robert Louis Stevenson is a good example. Every child will listen sympathetically to the tale of the poor little rich boy who was often so ill that he could not run and play, but who made the best of things and amused himself with toys on his bed. He built cities out of blocks. He watched the lamplighter go on his evening rounds along the street, and sometimes in the summer, the dewy, Scotch summer that can be pictured so attractively to children, when he went with his nurse to the country or the shore, he put leaves and chips in the river and pretended that they were boats. He dug holes in the sand with his wooden spade and laughed to see the vagrant waves come up and fill them. The child who hears about his various experiences will become intensely interested in little Robert, and will grow to love “The Land of Counterpane,” “The River,” “At the Seashore,” and other selections from A Child’s Garden of Verses. Every time he reads or hears them he will see a picture of the wee Scotch lad whose story touched his heart.
This is no untried theory. Through story-telling, the author of Treasure Island has become a living personage and A Child’s Garden of Verses a source of delight in more than one first grade. A teacher who had charge of forty little Italians devoted fifteen minutes each morning to stories of writers and their works, and by the end of the term the children had a knowledge of Stevenson and Field that amazed the superintendent. More valuable than the knowledge acquired was the capacity for real enjoyment of some of the works of these men, enjoyment so intense that during the half hour of song and games that was a feature of every Friday, it was not unusual for a small Tony or Gulielmo to flutter a brown hand and ask to be permitted to recite: