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LITERATURE IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Agents
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO
KARL W. HIERSEMANN
LEIPZIG
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
NEW YORK
LITERATURE IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BY
PORTER LANDER MACCLINTOCK, A.M.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT 1907 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All Rights Reserved
Published November 1907
Second Impression October 1908
Third Impression September 1909
Fourth Impression November 1910
Fifth Impression March 1912
Sixth Impression October 1913
Seventh Impression November 1914
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
TO W. D. M.
TO A. C. D.
AND TO MY DEAR FRIENDS AND FELLOW-STUDENTS
LANDER
PAUL
HILDA
ELIZABETH
HERMANN
JOSEPHINE
ISABEL
BETH
ALBERT
IRENE
HENRY
RUTH
THIS LITTLE BOOK, THE OUTCOME OF OUR COMMON STUDIES,
IS MOST LOYALLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED
PREFACE
This book had its origin in several years of experience and experiment
in teaching classes in literature in the Laboratory School of the
University of Chicago, when that fruitful venture in education was being
conducted by Professor John Dewey; in many years of private reading with
children; and in many years of lecturing to teachers of children.
Indeed, all the material bears the unconcealable marks of its origin as
lectures, it being extremely difficult to turn into decorous chapters in
a book, stuff which first took shape as spontaneous and informal
lectures.
The central matter of the book was published as a series of articles in
the _Elementary School Teacher_ of October, November, and December,
1902, and a synopsis of the whole book was printed and widely circulated
in January, 1904. These facts may partially account for a certain
familiarity that many readers will perceive. May I venture to hope that
this sense of familiarity may also be partly accounted for by the fact
that the views expressed are consonant with those arrived at
independently by many recent students of literature and of children?
Were it not a matter of mere justice, this would be scarcely the place
to mention my debt of many kinds to Professor W. D. MacClintock of the
University of Chicago; the incalculable value of Professor Dewey's
influence and sympathy; and the unforgettable stimulation of Mrs.
Dewey's criticism. Neither is it more than justice to express my
gratitude for the patience of my publishers, which has endured both much
and long.
P. L. M.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
June, 1907
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LITERATURE IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 1
II. THE SERVICES WE MAY EXPECT LITERATURE
TO RENDER IN THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 16
III. THE KINDS OF LITERATURE AND THE ELEMENTS OF
LITERATURE SERVICEABLE IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 38
IV. STORY 55
V. THE CHOICE OF STORIES 77
VI. FOLK-TALE AND FAIRY-STORY 92
VII. MYTH AS LITERATURE 113
VIII. HERO-TALES AND ROMANCES 131
IX. REALISTIC STORIES 156
X. NATURE AND ANIMAL STORIES 170
XI. SYMBOLISTIC STORIES, FABLES, AND OTHER APOLOGUES 183
XII. POETRY 193
XIII. DRAMA 212
XIV. THE PRESENTATION OF THE LITERATURE 229
XV. THE RETURN FROM THE CHILDREN 242
XVI. THE CORRELATIONS OF LITERATURE 259
XVII. LITERATURE OUT OF SCHOOL AND READING
OTHER THAN LITERATURE 277
XVIII. A COURSE IN LITERATURE FOR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 292
CHAPTER I
LITERATURE IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
According to the naively formal method of division of the old-fashioned
homiletics, the title itself offers a quite inevitable outline for the
discussion in this chapter--an outline that takes this form: (1)
literature; (2) literature in the school; (3) literature in the
elementary school; and while we may smile at the pat formality of the
little syllabus, we cannot resist its logic. Perhaps we can retain the
logic while we disguise the formality.
When one proposes to enter for any purpose or from any point of view, a
large field, especially a field that has already been much explored, he
feels that he must hasten to define his bounds, to stake out his
particular claim. But he makes a mistake if, in his haste to do this, he
fails to make clear his understanding of the location of the large field
and his conception of its nature. Any new discussion of literature must
justify itself at the beginning by declaring from what point of view it
will proceed and in what direction it will move. This seems a good
place, then, to declare that this whole discussion will concern itself
with literature as a part of the training of children. Yet this
discussion must constantly proceed in the light of certain fundamental
conclusions concerning literature in general, and in its essential
nature, and it will help us to stand upon common ground to state these
conclusions.
Literature, like every other subject that would claim a place as a
discipline in school, is called upon in our day of re-examination and
readjustment of the curriculum to make good its claim by showing that it
has in its nature something distinctive by virtue of which it performs
in the child's education some distinctive service. It is true, that no
subject of human interest is a quite detached island; pursued far
enough, its edges blur and mingle with the edges of neighboring
interests, so that there are regions where the two are
indistinguishable. But every body of material has a characteristic
center where it declares itself unmistakably. However widely it radiates
from this center, however many or however distant areas it touches and
mingles with upon its borders, in this center it is itself and nothing
else. This becomes clear when we consider some of the larger subjects of
educational discipline. There is, for example, a well-defined subject,
geography, though if one pursues it far, he comes in one direction upon
geology; in other directions, upon history or economics or sociology or
politics. Or to take another group of subjects, there is a region in
which you are dealing with anatomy, though on the edges of it you pass
imperceptibly into physiology or general biology.
For several reasons it is especially difficult to fix the bounds of
literature. It touches the margins of every other human interest; it may
reach into any of the areas about it for subject-matter; it shares with
all other subjects its means of expression; it lends to all other
subjects certain of its methods and devices, when these other subjects
must be presented effectively; its very name is applied loosely and half
figuratively to writing upon any subject, and for whatever purpose
produced. But for all this, literature, too, has its distinctive center,
where it can be differentiated from everything else.
We begin to make this differentiation when we say that literature is
art--that it is one of the fine arts. We set it apart from the other
arts by the fact that it uses language as its medium, and we set it
apart from other writing by the fact that it uses language in the way
art must use it--not for technical purposes, not as a medium for
teaching facts or doctrines, not to give information, but to produce
artistic pleasure; not to conserve use, but to exhibit aesthetic beauty.
When one's mind is clear on this point, he will not be confused by the
fact that literature handles matter from other provinces--history for
example--or by the fact that other kinds of writing borrow the devices
of literature to beautify or otherwise make effective their own
material. When Scott takes from history the figure of Richard Coeur de
Lion, it is not for the purpose of teaching historical fact, but for the
sake of putting into his picture a striking person and an effective
motive. When Macaulay employs many figures of speech, when he rounds out
his periods and balances them carefully, when he uses picturesque
concrete and particular persons and objects rather than abstractions and
generalizations, all to make clear and vivid the information he is
giving, he is still writing history and not literature, since he is
aiming first at fact and not first at beauty.
This recognition of literature as art, and the differentiation of it
from the other kinds of writing, so far from being a mere bit of
aesthetic theory remote from the teacher and his child, is the
fundamental and essential step in the teacher's procedure, because it
constitutes at once a clue to lead him in his choice of material, a
guide to direct him in the method of using it, and a standard to
indicate the nature of the result he may reasonably hope for. When the
teacher knows that he is to choose his literature as art he is freed
from the obligation of selecting such things as will contain technical
information, historical facts, desirable moral lessons, or other
utilitarian matter. This is far from saying that in choosing he will be
indifferent to the actual material details or to the moral atmosphere of
his bit of literature. The fitness or unfitness, the beauty or ugliness
of these will often be the ground of his adoption or rejection. It does
mean, however, that technical and professional details of fact and
teaching, matters which are always subsidiary and secondary in
literature as literature, cannot dictate his choice when he is choosing
from the point of view of art.
The habit of regarding literature as art clarifies immediately the
teacher's conception of his method of handling it. To teach literature
as literature is not to teach it as an adjunct to some other discipline;
it is not to teach it as reading-lessons, or spelling-lessons, nor as
grammar--though incidentally the lessons in literature will have great
value in all these directions; it is not to teach it as botany, as
history, as mythology, as politics, as naval or military tactics, or as
ethics--though again, by way of teaching it as literature, interesting
by-products in any of these subjects may accrue.
It is equally true that a clear understanding of the fact that the
results aimed at and legitimately hoped for are to be of the literary,
artistic kind, and not of the utilitarian or scientific kind, will
lighten and irradiate the teacher's problem and through him the
children's task, doing away with the sense of burden and substituting
for a vague and shifting end, a definite and delightful purpose.
To take a specific instance--it is very little to the purpose of
literature to have taught a class that Longfellow was an American poet
who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and that, though the myth and
legend of Hiawatha properly belong to the Iroquois, Longfellow
transferred it to the Objibways. So far as the distinctively literary
result goes, these facts are neither here nor there. But the enjoyment
of the music of the verse, the loving appropriation and appreciation of
some of the beautiful images and pictures, some grasp of the large
meaning, the noble trend, of the whole poem, a general tuning-up of the
class to something like unison with its emotion, a better taste in the
whole class, and in a few members of it some improvement in their own
powers of expression--these are the kind of result at which the teacher
aims when he teaches literature as art.
The question of literature in the school has taken on a new aspect in
this our current day, and especially in American schools, owing to the
decidedly diminished place left for it in the modern curriculum. This
has come about most naturally in the vast enrichment of the course on
the side of scientific and occupational material. And naturally, too, in
the process of turning from a purely book-education, we have tended to
turn also from literature--a field which for many generations has seemed
to be inextricably shut up in books. But it is also true that, in a
large part, this turning-away from literature has been from literature
wrongfully apprehended and mistakenly taught. Whatever be the
explanation of the smaller place given to literature, no thoughtful
student of modern education, no matter how firmly he believes in the
function of literature, can regret that it should take in the curriculum
its due and proportionate place. Such a student knows best the follies
and absurdities achieved by untrained and inartistic teachers, in whose
hands literature is made the center to which they attach any and all
other matters of training; he best knows the fact that literature
leaves many of the child's powers and capacities untouched; he best
knows the danger of over-stimulating those powers and capacities that
literature does develop and strengthen, and that it is a misfortune for
a child or a class to live prevailingly in an atmosphere distinctively
literary; and he knows that a few specimens chosen aright and taught
aright produce the essentially literary result more surely and more
safely than such a programme as could once be seen in school--a
programme that seemed to reflect the teacher's desire to give the
children within the grammar school all the reading that they ought
reasonably to be expected to have up to maturity.
The choosing of literature for use _in school_ creates immediately
several important conditions. The bit chosen is elevated at once into
the dignity and isolation of a discipline, and is set apart from matter
to be read once and casually, for recreation or amusement, at home or in
hours of intellectual play, to the single child or a small group of
homogeneous children. In view of the fact that the specimen is being
chosen for use in class, it must be broad and typical, appealing, as it
were, to the universal child. It must not be merely fanciful, freakish,
satirical, or witty, because, while there is pretty sure to be some
child in every class who would appreciate its flavor, the others would
not, and could not be brought to such appreciation. It should not be too
imaginative, since it must make its appeal to a group whose experience
has been of many kinds and degrees, and it cannot count upon any uniform
body of apperception material that has paved the way into a very
delicate or very pervasive imaginative atmosphere. It must not be too
emotional, because the teacher must be aware of the hysterical children
in every class, and because it is next to impossible to tune up any
social group as large and as mixed as the class to anything like a high
emotional unison or complete artistic like-mindedness. What the class,
that composite child, needs are such things as display the broader,
simpler aspects of life and art, such as call out in them the simpler
and more direct responses.
If one is giving a story or a poem a single reading, and reading it
merely for recreation, he may pass so lightly over the details, and may
so handle its structure, that its weaknesses and faults may not appear,
or may easily be lost sight of in the emphasis laid upon the pleasant
and successful aspects. But a bit of literature selected for the class
must be worth while in every particular; it is to be lingered over,
digested, assimilated; it must be fitted to stand out in the light of
searching criticism--and the assembled class soon comes to be a very
acute and exacting critic; it is to stand the test of individual
question and community judgment. If, therefore, it is to become, as one
must hope, a part of the children's experience, a contribution to their
artistic and moral well-being; if it is to be a bit of real education,
it must be sound in structure, trustworthy in detail, satisfactory in
issue. No matter how simple it is, it should be good art, and chosen
upon the same critical principles that one would apply in choosing good
literature of any degree of complexity.
While it is a great mistake to suppose that literature for children is a
bit of garden ground to be considered apart from the general landscape,
it is true that there are certain characteristics of children within the
elementary period, and certain accepted conclusions concerning the
nature and spirit of their other work, that must be taken as guides in
the matter of their literature. It is not sufficient--though it cannot
be too often said that it is necessary--that the literature be good;
that, no matter how simple it be or how complex, it must satisfy the
demands of good criticism--however important it be that it be good, it
is equally important that it be fit.
One who reads the courses of study and lists of reading prepared for
the elementary grades, and examines the manuals for their teachers,
comes near concluding that the larger number of mistakes, and the
mistakes most disastrous, lie here--in losing sight of the principle of
fitness. For in these formal lists, and suggested in the manuals, one
may find, first and last, heaped up all that various teachers have
themselves happened to like; all that critics have praised; all whose
titles sound as if they ought to be good; all that is concerned more or
less remotely with other things the children are studying; all that a
generation of mistaken educational logic has suggested; all that a
mature reader ought to have read in a life-time; all that a blind
interpretation, both of childhood and of literature, has called
suitable--historical works, American literature, Shakespeare's comedies,
the _Idylls of the King_, sentimental and bloodthirsty juveniles--a
chaotic and accidental jumble. Out of some such haphazard impulse and
some such failure to apply the law of fitness come such mistakes as the
introduction of fifth-grade children into the mazes of a satiric social
comedy like _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, or the placing of first-year
secondary children amid the bitter jests and baffling irony of _The
Vicar of Wakefield_. Such pedagogical misfits arise out of sheer
ignorance of the child's nature and its needs, and of the plainest
principles of literary interpretation. They persist year after year
because of the blind following of supposed authority, nowhere so blind
as in matters of literary opinion.
The preparation that should be made by the teacher who is to choose and
teach this literature is, after all, not so very formidable. We will
leave out of the discussion that mystic thing called the teacher's gift.
Undoubtedly there is such a thing; but it descendeth upon whom it
listeth, enabling him to choose by intuition and to teach by inspiration
the special bits of literature that prove to be best for the children.
But such a person is not safe, unless he supplement his gift with
knowledge; his choice is purely personal and esoteric, his principles
accidental and incommunicable.
What is the nature of the supplement such a teacher must make to his
gift? What is the training with which the teacher without the gift must
fortify himself? It is little more than one would like to have for his
personal culture, and little other than he is obliged to have for his
contact with the children in other directions. By dint of much reading
of literature and some reading in good criticism he must bring himself
to a sane view of the whole subject, realizing what literature is and
what it is not; what it can be expected to accomplish in human culture,
and what we cannot reasonably ask of it. He must know something of its
laws, that he may know how to judge it and when he has judged it aright.
This process will inevitably have refined and deepened his taste and
broadened his artistic experience in every direction. Of course, he will
not talk to his children about literature as an art, about critical
problems, structural principles, and all that; no more will he, when he
is guiding his class in evolving for themselves food and shelter by way
of beginning the study of history, talk to them about primitive culture
and social evolution. But he is an ill-equipped and untrustworthy guide
if he does not have in his own consciousness these large explaining
points of view. It is precisely so with the large fundamental principles
of literature. One gathers certainty and power for the choice and
teaching of the merest folk-tale, if he is able to see in it the working
of the great and simple laws of all art. And more specifically he must
imbue himself with the spirit of the childlike literature. He must know
and love the wonderful old folk and fairy tales, not regarding them as
matter for the nursery and the kindergarten, merely, but learning to
love them as great but simple art. He must read the hero tales and
romances till he knows them as a treasure house out of which he may draw
at his need. Many, many children's stories and poems he must read to be
able to judge them and he must read all those artists, Carroll,
Stevenson, Pater, Hauptman, who in _Alice_, _The Child's Garden_, _The
Child in the House_, _Hannele_, have done so much to interpret for us in
the artist's way the consciousness of the child.
In teaching literature, as in all that he does for the children, he will
have use for all the knowledge he can get of childhood and children; for
all that he can learn of the trend of conclusion in psychology and
educational philosophy; for all knowledge he can acquire as to the
meaning and import of all the other subjects of elementary instruction.
Only then can he choose and teach literature that is fit in both the
necessary senses--adapted to the children and harmonious in spirit with
the other interests they are pursuing. Out of such knowledge of his
material and his children there should grow a reasonably clear and
consistent vision of the result he hopes to reach and the steps he must
take to reach it. Out of all these elements should come the courage to
examine fearlessly the traditional material. Better still, out of this
combination will come that faith, enthusiasm, and respect for his
material, that confidence in its usefulness, that hopefulness as to its
results, which are desirable in a teacher of any subject, but which are
absolutely essential in the equipment of a teacher of literature;
because he must above all things radiate both light and warmth; he must
diffuse about his material and his children the breath of life and the
glow of art.