I have to speak now of a phase of elementary education which lies very
close to my warmest interest, which, indeed, could easily become an
active hobby if other interests did not beneficently tug at my skirts
when I am minded to mount and ride too wildly. It is the hobby of many
of you who are teachers, also, and I know you want to hear it
discussed. I mean the growing effort to teach English and English
literature to children in the natural way: by speaking and
hearing,--orally.
We are coming to a realization of the fact that our ability, as a
people, to use English is pitifully inadequate and perverted. Those
Americans who are not blinded by a limited horizon of cultured
acquaintance, and who have given themselves opportunity to hear the
natural speech of the younger generation in varying sections of the
United States, must admit that it is no exaggeration to say that this
country at large has no standard of English speech. There is no
general sense of responsibility to our mother tongue (indeed, it is in
an overwhelming degree not our mother tongue) and no general
appreciation of its beauty or meaning. The average young person in
every district save a half-dozen jealously guarded little precincts of
good taste, uses inexpressive, ill-bred words, spoken without regard to
their just sound-effects, and in a voice which is an injury to the ear
of the mind, as well as a torment to the physical ear.
The structure of the language and the choice of words are dark matters
to most of our young Americans; this has long been acknowledged and
struggled against. But even darker, and quite equally destructive to
English expression, is their state of mind regarding pronunciation,
enunciation, and voice. It is the essential connection of these
elements with English speech that we have been so slow to realize. We
have felt that they were externals, desirable but not necessary
adjuncts,--pretty tags of an exceptional gift or culture. Many an
intelligent school director to-day will say, "I don't care much about
HOW you say a thing; it is WHAT you say that counts." He cannot see
that voice and enunciation and pronunciation are essentials. But they
are. You can no more help affecting the meaning of your words by the
way you say them than you can prevent the expressions of your face from
carrying a message; the message may be perverted by an uncouth habit,
but it will no less surely insist on recognition.
The fact is that speech is a method of carrying ideas from one human
soul to another, by way of the ear. And these ideas are very complex.
They are not unmixed emanations of pure intellect, transmitted to pure
intellect: they are compounded of emotions, thoughts, fancies, and are
enhanced or impeded in transmission by the use of word-symbols which
have acquired, by association, infinite complexities in themselves.
The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the
desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,--these
seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal
signs; they demand such variations and delicate adjustments of sound as
will inevitably affect the listening mind with the response desired.
There is no "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written
sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing
inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank
of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism,
or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This
is the more unmistakable way in which the "how" affects the "what."
Just as true is the less obvious fact. The same written sentiment,
spoken by Wendell Phillips and by a man from the Bowery or an
uneducated ranchman, is not the same to the listener. In one case the
sentiment comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing
qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words
themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's
just and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from
the associations of fine habit betrayed in the voice and manner of
speech. And, further, the immense personal equation shows itself in
the beauty and power of the vocal expressiveness, which carries shades
of meaning, unguessed delicacies of emotion, intimations of beauty, to
every ear. In the other case, the thought is clouded by unavoidable
suggestions of ignorance and ugliness, brought by the pronunciation and
voice, even to an unanalytical ear; the meaning is obscured by
inaccurate inflection and uncertain or corrupt enunciation; but, worst
of all, the personal atmosphere, the aroma, of the idea has been lost
in transmission through a clumsy, ill-fitted medium.
The thing said may look the same on a printed page, but it is not the
same when spoken. And it is the spoken sentence which is the original
and the usual mode of communication.
The widespread poverty of expression in English, which is thus a matter
of "how," and to which we are awakening, must be corrected chiefly, at
least at first, by the common schools. The home is the ideal place for
it, but the average home of the United States is no longer a possible
place for it. The child of foreign parents, the child of parents
little educated and bred in limited circumstances, the child of
powerful provincial influences, must all depend on the school for
standards of English.
And it is the elementary school which must meet the need, if it is to
be met at all. For the conception of English expression which I am
talking of can find no mode of instruction adequate to its meaning,
save in constant appeal to the ear, at an age so early that unconscious
habit is formed. No rules, no analytical instruction in later
development, can accomplish what is needed. Hearing and speaking;
imitating, unwittingly and wittingly, a good model; it is to this
method we must look for redemption from present conditions.
I believe we are on the eve of a real revolution in English
teaching,--only it is a revolution which will not break the peace. The
new way will leave an overwhelming preponderance of oral methods in use
up to the fifth or sixth grade, and will introduce a larger proportion
of oral work than has ever been contemplated in grammar and high school
work. It will recognize the fact that English is primarily something
spoken with the mouth and heard with the ear. And this recognition will
have greatest weight in the systems of elementary teaching.
It is as an aid in oral teaching of English that story-telling in
school finds its second value; ethics is the first ground of its
usefulness, English the second,--and after these, the others. It is,
too, for the oral uses that the secondary forms of story-telling are so
available. By secondary I mean those devices which I have tried to
indicate, as used by many American teachers, in the chapter on
"Specific Schoolroom Uses," in my earlier book. They are re-telling,
dramatization, and forms of seat-work. All of these are a great power
in the hands of a wise teacher. If combined with much attention to
voice and enunciation in the recital of poetry, and with much good
reading aloud BY THE TEACHER, they will go far toward setting a
standard and developing good habit.
But their provinces must not be confused or overestimated. I trust I
may be pardoned for offering a caution or two to the enthusiastic
advocate of these methods,--cautions the need of which has been forced
upon me, in experience with schools.
A teacher who uses the oral story as an English feature with little
children must never lose sight of the fact that it is an aid in
unconscious development; not a factor in studied, conscious
improvement. This truth cannot be too strongly realized. Other
exercises, in sufficiency, give the opportunity for regulated effort
for definite results, but the story is one of the play-forces. Its use
in English teaching is most valuable when the teacher has a keen
appreciation of the natural order of growth in the art of expression:
that art requires, as the old rhetorics used often to put it, "a
natural facility, succeeded by an acquired difficulty." In other
words, the power of expression depends, first, on something more
fundamental than the art-element; the basis of it is something to say,
ACCOMPANIED BY AN URGENT DESIRE TO SAY IT, and YIELDED TO WITH FREEDOM;
only after this stage is reached can the art-phase be of any use. The
"why" and "how," the analytical and constructive phases, have no
natural place in this first vital epoch.
Precisely here, however, does the dramatizing of stories and the
paper-cutting, etc., become useful. A fine and thoughtful principal of
a great school asked me, recently, with real concern, about the growing
use of such devices. He said, "Paper-cutting is good, but what has it
to do with English?" And then he added: "The children use abominable
language when they play the stories; can that directly aid them to
speak good English?" His observation was close and correct, and his
conservatism more valuable than the enthusiasm of some of his
colleagues who have advocated sweeping use of the supplementary work.
But his point of view ignored the basis of expression, which is to my
mind so important. Paper-cutting is external to English, of course.
Its only connection is in its power to correlate different forms of
expression, and to react on speech-expression through sense-stimulus.
But playing the story is a closer relative to English than this. It
helps, amazingly, in giving the "something to say, the urgent desire to
say it," and the freedom in trying. Never mind the crudities,--at
least, at the time; work only for joyous freedom, inventiveness, and
natural forms of reproduction of the ideas given. Look for very
gradual changes in speech, through the permeating power of imitation,
but do not forget that this is the stage of expression which inevitably
precedes art.
All this will mean that no corrections are made, except in flagrant
cases of slang or grammar, though all bad slips are mentally noted, for
introduction at a more favorable time. It will mean that the teacher
will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as
she would wish an audience to respect her occasional prosy periods if
she were reading a report. She will remember, of course that she is
not training actors for amateur theatricals, however tempting her
show-material may be; she is simply letting the children play with
expression, just as a gymnasium teacher introduces muscular play,--for
power through relaxation.
When the time comes that the actors lose their unconsciousness it is
the end of the story-play. Drilled work, the beginning of the art, is
then the necessity.
I have indicated that the children may be left undisturbed in their
crudities and occasional absurdities. The teacher, on the other hand,
must avoid, with great judgment, certain absurdities which can easily
be initiated by her. The first direful possibility is in the choice of
material. It is very desirable that children should not be allowed to
dramatize stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially
valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to the
pupils through its present crude handling. Mother Goose is a hardy old
lady, and will not suffer from the grasp of the seven-year-old; and the
familiar fables and tales of the "Goldilocks" variety have a firmness
of surface which does not let the glamour rub off; but stories in which
there is a hint of the beauty just beyond the palpable--or of a dignity
suggestive of developed literature--are sorely hurt in their
metamorphosis, and should be protected from it. They are for telling
only.
Another point on which it is necessary to exercise reserve is in the
degree to which any story can be acted. In the justifiable desire to
bring a large number of children into the action one must not lose
sight of the sanity and propriety of the presentation. For example, one
must not make a ridiculous caricature, where a picture, however crude,
is the intention. Personally represent only such things as are
definitely and dramatically personified in the story. If a natural
force, the wind, for example, is represented as talking and acting like
a human being in the story, it can be imaged by a person in the play;
but if it remains a part of the picture in the story, performing only
its natural motions, it is a caricature to enact it as a role. The
most powerful instance of a mistake of this kind which I have ever seen
will doubtless make my meaning clear. In playing a pretty story about
animals and children, some children in a primary school were made by
the teacher to take the part of the sea. In the story, the sea was
said to "beat upon the shore," as a sea would, without doubt. In the
play, the children were allowed to thump the floor lustily, as a
presentation of their watery functions! It was unconscionably funny.
Fancy presenting even the crudest image of the mighty sea, surging up
on the shore, by a row of infants squatted on the floor and pounding
with their fists! Such pitfalls can be avoided by the simple rule of
personifying only characters that actually behave like human beings.
A caution which directly concerns the art of story telling itself, must
be added here. There is a definite distinction between the arts of
narration and dramatization which must never be overlooked. Do not,
yourself, half tell and half act the story; and do not let the children
do it. It is done in very good schools, sometimes, because an
enthusiasm for realistic and lively presentation momentarily obscures
the faculty of discrimination. A much loved and respected teacher whom
I recently listened to, and who will laugh if she recognizes her
blunder here, offers a good "bad example" in this particular. She said
to an attentive audience of students that she had at last, with much
difficulty, brought herself to the point where she could forget herself
in her story: where she could, for instance, hop, like the fox, when
she told the story of the "sour grapes." She said, "It was hard at
first, but now it is a matter of course; AND THE CHILDREN DO IT TOO,
WHEN THEY TELL THE STORY." That was the pity! I saw the illustration
myself a little later. The child who played fox began with a story: he
said, "Once there was an old fox, and he saw some grapes;" then the
child walked to the other side of the room, and looked up at an
imaginary vine, and said, "He wanted some; he thought they would taste
good, so he jumped for them;" at this point the child did jump, like
his role; then he continued with his story, "but he couldn't get them."
And so he proceeded, with a constant alternation of narrative and
dramatization which was enough to make one dizzy.
The trouble in such work is, plainly, a lack of discriminating
analysis. Telling a story necessarily implies non-identification of
the teller with the event; he relates what occurs or occurred, outside
of his circle of consciousness. Acting a play necessarily implies
identification of the actor with the event; he presents to you a
picture of the thing, in himself. It is a difference wide and clear,
and the least failure to recognize it confuses the audience and injures
both arts.
In the preceding instances of secondary uses of story-telling I have
come some distance from the great point, the fundamental point, of the
power of imitation in breeding good habit. This power is less
noticeably active in the dramatizing than in simple re-telling; in the
listening and the re-telling, it is dominant for good. The child
imitates what he hears you say and sees you do, and the way you say and
do it, far more closely in the story-hour than in any lesson-period.
He is in a more absorbent state, as it were, because there is no
preoccupation of effort. Here is the great opportunity of the cultured
teacher; here is the appalling opportunity of the careless or ignorant
teacher. For the implications of the oral theory of teaching English
are evident, concerning the immense importance of the teacher's habit.
This is what it all comes to ultimately; the teacher of young children
must be a person who can speak English as it should be spoken,--purely,
clearly, pleasantly, and with force.
It is a hard ideal to live up to, but it is a valuable ideal to try to
live up to. And one of the best chances to work toward attainment is
in telling stories, for there you have definite material, which you can
work into shape and practice on in private. That practice ought to
include conscious thought as to one's general manner in the schoolroom,
and intelligent effort to understand and improve one's own voice. I
hope I shall not seem to assume the dignity of an authority which no
personal taste can claim, if I beg a hearing for the following elements
of manner and voice, which appeal to me as essential. They will,
probably, appear self-evident to my readers, yet they are often found
wanting in the public school-teacher; it is so much easier to say "what
were good to do" than to do it!
Three elements of manner seem to me an essential adjunct to the
personality of a teacher of little children: courtesy, repose vitality.
Repose and vitality explain themselves; by courtesy I specifically do
NOT mean the habit of mind which contents itself with drilling children
in "Good-mornings" and in hat-liftings. I mean the attitude of mind
which recognizes in the youngest, commonest child, the potential
dignity, majesty, and mystery of the developed human soul. Genuine
reverence for the humanity of the "other fellow" marks a definite
degree of courtesy in the intercourse of adults, does it not? And the
same quality of respect, tempered by the demands of a wise control, is
exactly what is needed among children. Again and again, in dealing
with young minds, the teacher who respects personality as sacred, no
matter how embryonic it be, wins the victories which count for true
education. Yet, all too often, we forget the claims of this reverence,
in the presence of the annoyances and the needed corrections.
As for voice: work in schoolrooms brings two opposing mistakes
constantly before me: one is the repressed voice, and the other, the
forced. The best way to avoid either extreme, is to keep in mind that
the ideal is development of one's own natural voice, along its own
natural lines. A "quiet, gentle voice" is conscientiously aimed at by
many young teachers, with so great zeal that the tone becomes painfully
repressed, "breathy," and timid. This is quite as unpleasant as a loud
voice, which is, in turn, a frequent result of early admonitions to
"speak up." Neither is natural. It is wise to determine the natural
volume and pitch of one's speaking voice by a number of tests, made
when one is thoroughly rested, at ease, and alone. Find out where your
voice lies when it is left to itself, under favorable conditions, by
reading something aloud or by listening to yourself as you talk to an
intimate friend. Then practise keeping it in that general range,
unless it prove to have a distinct fault, such as a nervous sharpness,
or hoarseness. A quiet voice is good; a hushed voice is abnormal. A
clear tone is restful, but a loud one is wearying.
Perhaps the common-sense way of setting a standard for one's own voice
is to remember that the purpose of a speaking voice is to communicate
with others; their ears and minds are the receivers of our tones. For
this purpose, evidently, a voice should be, first of all, easy to hear;
next, pleasant to hear; next, susceptible of sufficient variation to
express a wide range of meaning; and finally, indicative of personality.
Is it too quixotic to urge teachers who tell stories to little children
to bear these thoughts, and better ones of their own, in mind? Not, I
think, if it be fully accepted that the story hour, as a play hour, is
a time peculiarly open to influences affecting the imitative faculty;
that this faculty is especially valuable in forming fine habits of
speech; and that an increasingly high and general standard of English
speech is one of our greatest needs and our most instant opportunities
in the American schools of to-day.
And now we come to the stories!