Literature in the Elementary School

by Porter Lander MacClintock

CHAPTER XVIII A COURSE IN LITERATURE FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The list of titles in literature given below must be taken as free suggestion, not at all as dogmatic requirement; least of all should it be regarded as an exhaustive and definitive programme. Throughout this little book there has been a deliberate effort to mention no more examples and specimens than would serve to support and illustrate the principles stated or the theories advanced, so as to keep out of it the wearing atmosphere of interminable lists, and to leave those who might accept the doctrines quite free to apply them in the selection of their own specimens. So now in the plan appended the titles have been carefully sifted and resolutely limited. It should not be necessary to say that it is not intended that all the specimens mentioned in any one year should be given within that year in every school—perhaps in any school; or that they should necessarily be given in the year to which they are here assigned. They are rather designed to indicate the kind of thing one would choose for the average classes in the average school, and to suggest things that go well together. I have even ventured to hope that those who read the book will also take the pains to read all the specimens mentioned in the programme, so as to catch their spirit and atmosphere, and after that choose quite freely for themselves these or other titles. The field of choice is especially wide among the folk-tales; all those mentioned are good, and suitable for the places in which they are put. But there are others good and suitable, which may, indeed, better satisfy the needs of some special teacher or class. In some schools, no doubt, it will be well to give a third year of folk-tales and simple lyrics before beginning the hero-tales. In that case the whole course would be pushed along a year, making for the last or eighth year a combination of bits taken from the seventh and eighth years suggested here. The course is planned for a school whose children go on into high school; though one can see little reason for a different course in literature for those children who stop with a grammar-school education. What we covet for such children is not knowledge of much literature, nor knowledge of any literature in particular, but a taste for wholesome books and some trustworthy habits of reading. These results are best secured when a few suitable and beautiful things have been lovingly taught and joyfully apprehended. Children thus provided will keep on reading; if they have been really fed on Julius Caesar or The Tempest they will hunger for more Shakespeare; if they have taken delight in Treasure Island they will pursue Stevenson and find Scott and Cooper. The chances for implanting in them some living and abiding love of books are much better if we teach them in school the things they may easily master and completely contain, than if we try to supply them with what only an adult reader can expect to appropriate, which therefore takes on the character of a task, or remains in their minds a mere chaotic mass.

The plan of the course is simple and obvious enough. Indeed, the main idea is first of all merely that of putting into each year such things as will delight and train a child of that age in literary ways. With this is joined the equally simple and reasonable purpose of giving in each year an acceptable variety looking toward the development of a generous taste—a story, a heroic poem, a musical lyric or two, a bit of fun, a group of fables. Throughout the programme there has been a conscious attempt to use things every teacher knows or may very easily find, and of associating things that harmonize in spirit.

For the first two years the folk-tales form the core of the course. To the folk-tales is joined a group of simple lyrics, many of them the more formal and expressive of the traditionary rhymes. As a matter of course, in a school where these first- and second-year children have not already had in kindergarten or in the home nursery the simpler rhymes and jingles—"Little Boy Blue," "Jack Horner," "There Was a Man in Our Town"—they should be taught.

In the third year Robinson Crusoe constitutes the large core. As suggested in another chapter it is well to treat this story as if it were a cycle, taking it in episodes, and interweaving with it other bits of literature which harmonize with it, either reinforcing it or counteracting it. It may easily happen that a teacher would select a quite different group of poems for study along with Robinson Crusoe, according as he emphasized some other aspect of the story and according to the maturity of his children. This programme assumes a pretty mature third-year group. It may be in many schools well to transfer, as I have suggested, this whole arrangement to the fourth year.

The fifth- and sixth-year work is arranged upon a similar plan—that of constituting a story or a story-cycle the center of the work, and associating with it shorter and supplementary bits. While the poems in both cases are such as harmonize in subject or idea with aspects of the two stories that will inevitably appear in the teaching, they have not been chosen solely from that point of view; they are also in every case beautiful as detached poems, and ideally, at least, suitable for the children. Every experienced teacher will have other verses and stories in mind which may be added to those given or substituted for them. Some of them will be useful, not as class studies necessarily, but as a part of that "reserve stock" that every teacher has, from which he draws from time to time something to read to his class which they are not expecting.

In the programme for the sixth year an alternative is suggested. Many teachers will find enough in the Arthur stories to form the core of the literature for the year. Others will find material for the whole year's stories in the Norwegian and Icelandic sagas. Many will not like the suggestion of giving the antidote of the chivalric romances—Don Quixote. Many will prefer to drop hero-tales and romances in favor of more modern stories. Such a group of stories is suggested introducing the stories that call for interpretation, and the apprehending of a secondary meaning. This paves the way for the stories of the seventh year which call for some genuine literary interpretation. In the seventh year programme the two dramatic bits of Yeats's are suggested, not only because they are charming in themselves, and are in charming artistic contrast, but because they can easily be staged and acted, and are full of suggestion of the kind of thing the children can do themselves. The Pot of Broth is the dramatization of a well-known folk-droll, and The Hour-Glass is a morality calling for no complexity of dialogue, of staging, or of dramatic motive—the kind of play the children can most easily produce both as literature and as acting.

As suggested in a previous chapter, during this and the following year each child should be encouraged or required to learn a poem or a story of his own choosing, which he presents to the class. This will greatly enrich the class programme. Only one fable is suggested—one of Fontaine's, the interpretation or moral of which should now be given by the class; many other fables may be used in the same way, if this exercise seems to be profitable.

As every observer of schools knows, it is the eighth-year children who need most accommodation and understanding. The programme offered is designed for the normal class in the average school—when the children are really passing into the secondary stage and should be preparing to go into high school without crossing a chasm. But it may need much modification for those eighth-year classes in which there are belated children and unevenly developed children. It is quite possible that Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and Sohrab and Rustum may prove impracticable for such a class, and that something easier would have to be substituted. In no case can we hope to teach the two plays exhaustively, either as regards their form or their content. But both these plays are of that kind of great art that has many levels to which one may climb in turn, with his growing maturity. And the beauty of both these plays is that in case the class is precocious and does inquire deeply into them, there is nothing in the political philosophy of Julius Caesar or in the spiritual and social philosophy of The Tempest that may not be safely explained to them. This programme makes no mention, as may be seen, of the many minor lyrics and bits of drama and story that will be added from many sources and in many connections: from their home reading; from the teacher's reserve stock; from their reading lessons; from their work in other languages; from their preparation for festivals and celebrations; from suggestions of weather and season; from occasional current periodicals, and possibly from other sources.