Educating by Story-Telling / Showing the Value of Story-Telling as an Educational Tool for the Use of All Workers with Children

by Mrs. Katherine Dunlap Cather

Those who have not had training in gathering and adapting story material from the Bible will be aided greatly in their work by Frances Jenkins Olcott’s book, Bible Stories to Read and Tell. Miss Olcott gives the stories as they are given in the King James Version, preserving all the beauty of language of the Hebrew story-tellers, but she has excluded everything that might prove objectionable; and with this book as a guide there is little danger of making a mistake in telling the Hebrew hero tales to children.

Bible stories should be graded as carefully as fairy stories are graded. In choosing for little children, select those whose heroes are children, and give to the boy who craves the heroic the incomparable tales of the Hebrew wanderers, those men whose lives were a varied succession of adventures. For the child of each period there is a wealth of material. The stories of the baby Moses, little Samuel, the boy Joseph, the boy Timothy, the boy David, and the baby Isaac are very appealing to six- and seven-year-olds. They love also to hear of the mother and the baby Samson, of Ishmael and Hagar, and those other mothers and babies of long ago, and especially dear to them is the story of the Babe of Bethlehem. This lovely narrative is a part of the birthright of every child, and is exquisite enough to merit careful preparation on the part of the story-teller. The Bible itself should be the storehouse to which the narrator goes for material, but those not especially gifted in visualizing and imagination will derive much help from the work of modern literary artists who have told again the story of the Christ Child. The eleventh and twelfth chapters of the first book of Ben Hur, the creation of a man whose reverence was as great as his talent, should be re-read by every one who attempts to tell of the song and the star in Judea, and the works of Henry van Dyke, Selma Lagerlöf, and John of Hildesheim will aid greatly in giving color and atmosphere. This means time and labor, but no amount of preparation is too great to put upon the world’s noblest stories. The narrator should approach them, not arrogantly, and satisfied of his ability to tell them because he has known them from childhood, but as the artist approaches the masterpiece he aspires to copy, willing to labor that he may be worthy of the task, willing to read them over and over again and count each reading a return to the fount of inspiration. This should be the attitude toward all great stories, but especially toward the immortal ones of the Bible.

For the child in the heroic period the Old Testament is a gold mine, and it is a pity that its superb adventure tales are so little used by story-tellers, since they are so fascinating to boys and girls. Even when told as separate stories they arouse interest and hold the attention, but they are most valuable when given in a sequence, because then the child regards the Old Testament as a great human drama, the epic of a people.

A good plan is to begin with the call of Abraham, as related in the twelfth chapter of Genesis. Picture the patriarch, with Lot and Sarah, going into exile out of the land of Haran, through Canaan to the plain of Moreh, building there the altar under the soothsayer’s oak, and journeying southward over the desert to Egypt. Tell of the banishment by Pharaoh and the return to Bethel, of the strife between the herdsmen and the survey of the land, of the captivity and rescue of Lot. Paint vividly the highway along which they traveled, now over the desert, now across the fertile plain skirting the sea, often footsore and weary, often suffering from heat and thirst as wanderers in the East suffered, and the story will cause children to turn from the cheap adventure tale of today as music lovers turn from ragtime to a Chopin prelude.

Then there are tales of those other Old Testament wanderers, Isaac, “the Ulysses of the Hebrews,” and Jacob, whose life was so eventful. Take the boys over the routes these men traveled. Let them share their exploits and adventures, resting in fertile places where the wanderers rested, now by the well outside Nahor, the servants praying beside the kneeling camels as Bethuel’s lovely daughter came down the hillside with the pitcher on her shoulder, now moving as the caravan moved, over roads the Hebrew armies traveled on their way to war, along which tradesfolk journeyed in times of peace. There is marvelous color and romance in these Old Testament thoroughfares, and they are highways of fascination even today. Still across their yellow sands turbaned Arabs go up and down, singing praise to Allah just as men sang to God in the remote time of Israel. They bear with them skin bags filled with water from the pools and streams, dates, figs, and dried goat’s flesh, such as formed the noontide repast of Isaac and his men, for in the changeless East life is today as it was in the beginning of things. When the caravans rest, they sit under the palm trees in some oasis, telling stories their fathers told, and using the Old Testament forms of speech. Still in that land of nomads to see is to “lift up the eyes,” and maidens go to draw water when the day’s heat is over just as Rebecca went to the well of Nahor.

The book of Joshua is a glorious adventure story. The siege and destruction of Jericho, the victories of Joshua, the slave boy from Egypt who became the first soldier of the Hebrews, the distribution of Canaan among the tribes of Israel, and Othniel’s valor and reward satisfy every desire of the child who craves hero stories. They satisfy now as they satisfied two thousand years ago, because they grew out of the life of a people and run the entire gamut of human emotion as only racial tales can do.

The book of Judges is a collection of incomparable narratives. The enslavement of Israel by Jabin, the defeat and death of Sisera, and Gideon’s deliverance and victory never fail to hold boys and girls who crave the heroic. Moreover, these stories will arouse interest in perhaps the finest ode known to any literature, the song of Deborah in the fifth chapter of Judges. Give the children some idea of what it has meant to the world. Ruskin said the memorizing of it in his boyhood shaped his taste for literature, and Macaulay declared it inspired him to write “Horatius at the Bridge.” Read the work of the English poet, and bring out the lovely pictures in the great Hebrew ode, for it is not fair to our young people that we allow them to go through life without knowing this gem, without leading them to see the beauty of these exquisite words:

Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment and walk by the way.

They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord.