Since all races in all epochs have used oral stories both as a means of education and entertainment, and since much of the culture and civilization that our ancestors have bequeathed to us has come down to us in the form of story literature, and since the children of all races and in all times have said, “Tell me a story,” we believe it is fundamental in the child’s life and education.
We believe that the mother, who instinctively hums lullabys and sings Mother Goose Rhymes to the child is cultivating the child’s sense of rhythm, touching its feelings, and speaking to it through vocal language—voice modulation—which precedes verbal language; that the mother who sings
“Hush you bybaby in the tree tops,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,” etc.,
and other Mother Goose jingles, has already begun her story telling.
That the story, the most universally used medium for conveying truth and especially the told story that comes through the sensuous beauty of speech, should be continued throughout the child’s education.
We believe that when a child attributes life to its doll, makes up strange and unreal stories, that it does so in obedience to a deep psychic necessity,—that of developing the imagination, and that as a child climbs a tree or ladder and in doing so develops his body and bodily senses, so he must have for the development of his imagination the clear, bold, mental picture whether it be in fairy and folk stories or the high daring of some noble hero in epic literature or history.
We believe that the development of the imagination should go hand in hand with the sense training, modified by local, ethnic, and individual needs, and that children as well as adults must have heroes to admire and worship and ideals to inspire; that the idea of God can be represented only through the imagination and that to deny the child stories of gods and supernatural beings would be to bring him up without religious training. That the story that delights the child has psycho-therapeutic value and whether it be fact or fiction it is true in a higher sense, ministering to the spiritual needs of the child, and therefore valuable in education.
We believe that it is the most inalienable right of all children to hear stories told from the great story books of the world; that wise selections of stories should be made not only from the literature and history of Europe and America, but from Japan, China, Russia, and India, so that we may develop in the young people a feeling of a world brotherhood.