This faculty might be developed, in some degree, by frequent conversations which necessitate the children’s picturing or imagining what they have read. The simplest primer will lend itself to this exercise. The habit of drawing the picture which the sentence suggests is a further stimulus. Reading fairy stories or stories of adventure may help to stimulate the imagination. An effective aid is derived from playing or acting the story told in the lesson. I remember seeing a primary class that played “Hiawatha” with great delight, different children taking the parts of Nokomis, Hiawatha, Wenonah, the Pine Tree, the Fir Tree, the Squirrels, the Rabbits; reciting their parts with eager pleasure, acting them in the most unconscious fashion, and never with any lack of expression. The children recited with ease and naturalness and vigor. They were lost in their play, which was very real to them. Not long ago I visited a school in which the children had begged the privilege of representing the dialogue which they were reading. They assigned the parts themselves, improvised simple costumes, and read their various parts with great animation. The members of the class who served as audience listened with rapt attention, very unlike that which is ordinarily accorded to a rendering of the reading lesson. Through the play, the lesson became vitalized, it was made real. It did not occur to the teacher to suggest inflections or pauses; such suggestions were quite as unnecessary as they would have been in any conversation with the children. These things take care of themselves when the children have once been overmastered by the desire to express the thought. Nor will it ever be necessary to dwell upon them if this desire is created. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” In a parallel sense, if we once inspire in the children the desire to convey the message of the text, the accessories of inflection and tone will become theirs. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that these lesser phases of good reading will be secured if properly subordinated to one great aim—the desire to communicate thought.
It is not difficult to imagine a question at this point. “Would you not have any vocal exercises to help in securing expression?” By all means, but not as a part of the reading exercise. If the exercise shows that the children have certain needs,—if the teeth are closed, if the pronunciation is slovenly or the articulation poor,—special exercises should be planned to remedy such defects, but these should be given as exercises and not as a part of the reading lesson. Sentences which demand clear articulation may be pronounced in rapid succession, or sung to the scale; selections may be read from the farthest corner of the room. Exercises which stretch the muscles used in articulation, exercises which straighten the body or secure ease in posture; breathing exercises and their kindred,—all are helpful, as exercises, but they should not interrupt the reading. They may alternate with reading, and prepare for it, but they should be considered, as they really are, subordinate to the one essential, the creation of a desire to read.
“Would you ever read to children in order to help them to get the right expression?” is a question which is frequently asked. By all means. There is no other way in which children can form an ideal of good reading. Many children hear no reading in their homes. They are accustomed to monotonous speech and to careless articulation. It is necessary to read to them, and to read well, in order to show them what good reading is. A further advantage of reading to the children is to show them how much the teacher gets from a poem or story which has meant little to them. Such reading should not lead to servile imitation on the part of the children; rather the opposite. The teacher’s comments upon the reading in the class will readily fix the seal of her approval upon individual renderings. “Let me hear how that seems to you, John,” she will say. “Mary, let me hear you read. I should like to get your thought.” “Kate, is that the way you understood it? Let me hear you read it.” I have heard a teacher request one pupil after another to read, waiting until the interpretation which was like her own was given before she commended, and impressing upon the entire class her feeling that such reading alone was correct. As a matter of fact, every rendering which was given was as good as the teacher’s—some even were better. The reader must interpret the author’s message as it appears to him. His reading shows his interpretation. If the teacher reads to the class, she shows simply what the writer’s message has been to her. In the reading lesson she gives to the pupils the opportunity of expressing what they themselves have read.
In reading, as in everything else, ease comes with practice. The class should have two varieties of practice. They should read and re-read a few selections which demand variety in expression; and they should read many easy selections which require very little effort in mastering. If the exercise is difficult enough to demand study, it will necessitate hesitation if read at sight. Such attempts at sight reading, with too difficult matter, will result in the habit of stumbling. Children should have an opportunity to overcome by study the difficulties which would otherwise make them hesitate in reading. All sight reading, so called, should be easy enough to be read fluently at sight.
The old-fashioned custom of setting apart Friday afternoons for reading, recitation, and declamation should be revived. The exercise was admirable, giving the children confidence in reading and speaking which resulted in ease and fluency. It was a helpful adjunct to the reading class and deserves to be honored in the observance.
It may be well to suggest, in this connection, that the habit of reading with free and individual expression is seriously hindered by the practice of concert reading. If the teachers who pursue that practice were to attempt occasionally to read aloud in company with others, they would discover the difficulties under which the children labor. The practice works in direct opposition to the exercises which have been advised. It is impossible for the child to give his individual rendering in a concert recitation. He cannot even read at his individual rate; he must wait for his neighbor. His words drag, his voice becomes strained and unnatural, the exercise assumes the school-room tone, and the children adopt the swinging rhythm of the singsong. A few children lead; the others follow, or most of the others—a very few succeed in evading the reading altogether. All this is wrong. It is better for the child to read once alone than to read ten times in concert with others. It is true, however, that there is one place for the concert reading. When a poem or paragraph has been memorized by the entire class under the direction of the teacher, they may learn to recite it well in concert without the disadvantages described; but, as a reading lesson, the exercise has no place—it should be banished from the school-room.
One word more. In our attempts to teach children to read with expression, we may be helped by studying to learn what selections they like best to read, what it is that appeals to them. By following the line of their interest we may come to realize why selections which we have chosen are difficult for them, and through making a wiser choice may become more successful in our teaching. Here, as elsewhere, it is the intelligent study of the class by the teacher which enables her to apply her knowledge of the subject which she teaches.
The highest office of reading is not to open the eyes of the child to the evolution of the material world, nor to teach him to adapt its resources to his own subsistence; he needs no books for that. The greatest hunger of the human soul is not for food. It is that he may better understand soul motives and heart needs; that he may more freely give to the heart-hungry, and more freely receive from the soul-full; that he may live out of and away from his meaner self; that he may grow all-sided; that he may look with analytic rather than with critical eyes upon the erring; that he may relish the homely side of life, and weave beauty into its poverty and ugly hardships; that he may add to his own strength and wisdom the strength and wisdom of the past ages. It is that he may find his own relation to the eternal, that the child, equally with the grown person, turns to the songs which ravish the ear and gladden the heart.