To enter thus into the child’s world and into the joyous companionship of children is one of the highest privileges of parent and teacher. He who fails in this does not form the deepest and most lasting ties with the child, and he also robs himself of one of the greatest sources of perennial youth.
JUNIOR STORY TELLERS’ LEAGUES
ORIGIN AND GROWTH
ONE of the most interesting developments of the League idea was the organization of Junior Leagues. The originators of the League thought only of an organization for adults. But where the children have, under the guidance of a wise teacher, had a League, the work they have done and the interest shown reveals one of its greatest educational possibilities. As the child likes to build with clay, sand or wood, and in doing so educates himself, so he likes to build with words, voice and gesture an ideal world, peopling it with life as he sees it.
While we are training children for all sorts of skilled trades, it is a matter of no small satisfaction to record an experiment that has for its object the revival of the ancient art of telling stories—for it is an art.
The children of Corinth, Miss., under the supervision of Susie E. Blitch, were the first to organize a Junior League. The League began with the children of the fifth grade. They had the usual officers, and a program of stories, songs and games, meeting out of doors when possible.
Those who have had charge of Junior Leagues report the following principles for the guidance of those who wish to organize Leagues among the young people:
(1) Help the children to make the organization thoroughly democratic.
(2) The supervisor has no right to stop or correct a member in telling a story. The speaker has the floor; the atmosphere and the spirit he brings with his story is the essential thing, and not grammar or pronunciation.