SYMBOLISTIC STORIES, FABLES, AND OTHER APOLOGUES
It is not possible, in the plan adopted for this little book, to keep
the topics always strictly apart. It is not possible, for example, to
relegate to one section all one has to say about folk- and
fairy-stories, and to another all about fables, because each type has so
many aspects and radiations. Fables are stories; most of them are
animal-stories; they are symbolistic or figurative or allegorical--so
that one must approach them from many points of view, and take them into
consideration in many connections. There need be, therefore, no apology
for taking up in this new section topics partially discussed elsewhere.
It seems quite consonant with our best conclusions about younger
children to say that, on the whole, in the earlier years of their school
life their literature should be of that objective kind where no more is
meant than meets the eye. They may have tales of adventure, of plain
experience, of highly imaginative experience, of animal life, of
fairyland; but as far as possible let them be such as contain no occult
and secondary meanings. There are many things desirable for all
children, and under certain school conditions compulsory or
indispensable for some children, which do have this secondary meaning.
Such, if one uses them, are the stories from the great myths; such are
practically all of Andersen's _Maerchen_; such are the legendary stories
of the Hebrew patriarchs. Of course, the parent or teacher who presents
these things to his children may say that the children never perceive or
even suspect an inner meaning. And it is true that, with great care and
skill, the objective upper surface may be kept before some children.
But, on the whole, it is good morality and good pedagogy to give to the
children nothing that you are not willing, even desirous, that they
should probe to the bottom. It is always a misfortune when one must say
to a child, "I can't explain that to you now;" "You can't understand
that yet;" so much a misfortune that no teacher should ever invite it.
If you have ever looked into the faces of the fifth grade when they were
searching you with questions to get at the meaning of Andersen's
pessimistic story of _The Little White Hen_; if you have seen the sixth
grade grow melancholy, with a vague augury of trouble they could not
fathom, when you have read to them the brilliant but tragic little
apologue of _Mr. Seguin's Goat_; if you have been obliged to explain to
some puzzled and suspicious eight-year-old the _raison d'etre_ of the
clock-ticking alligator in _Peter Pan_, you have resolved hereafter to
give them no symbolism, or to give them symbolism whose presence they
could not possibly suspect (a most difficult thing to do in the case of
that many-minded, hundred-eyed child, the class), or to give such
symbolism as would invite them into paths where you would gladly have
them walk, whose most ultimate implication you are at least _willing_ to
explain to them. Of course, this principle cannot be pushed to its
logical extreme; merely logical extremes are always absurd. One does not
go into the philosophical depths of the special historical epoch he
chooses for his children, nor does he instruct them in the remote
scientific principles behind their window-garden or their aquarium of
polywogs and salamanders. But, if he is wise, he hopes to choose such
work, and present such aspects of it, as contain no insoluble mystery,
and do not tempt the children into paths for which their feet are not
ready.
So, when one is choosing literature it is very easy to fill all the time
the children have for it in the first four or five years of school with
things that are largely objective, and that, so far as their large
framework goes, mean just what they say. Indeed, will not most modern
teachers concede that throughout the period and in all his subjects it
is for the mental good of the child not to be called upon too frequently
to formulate principles, or habitually to look below the surface of his
facts for interpretations and secondary meanings? Of course, he must be
led by the natural stages to see through figures of speech, and to
understand and apply proverbs, and the proverbial manner of speech.
Proverbs, indeed, exemplify and epitomize the essentially literary type
of thinking and speaking. They are concrete and picturesque rather than
abstract, specific rather than general, though we are to understand by
them also the abstract and the general; this is the fact that gives them
their unique value as literary training. The teacher must call upon his
wisdom in choosing proverbs suitable for the children. Many proverbs are
pessimistic, even cynical: "It never rains but it pours;" many embody a
merely commonplace or unmoral code: "Honesty is the best policy;" some
are ambiguous: "There's honor among thieves;" some the modern world has
outgrown; many are too mature, too occult, or too worldly for a child.
But a great store remains--vivid, practical bits of experience and
tested wisdom which will develop a child's mental quickness, will do
something toward equipping him with the common wisdom of his race, and
will accustom him to one of the most characteristic methods of
literature. This is a good place to say that good results never seem to
come of asking the children for an exposition of the proverb. Indeed, it
is extremely difficult to get from children an exposition or definition
of any kind. The better way of making sure that they have appropriated a
proverb is to ask them to invent or re-call an incident or a situation
to which the proverb will apply. Naturally this is not an exercise for
the youngest children.
In the earlier years a great many of the simple old fables may be
taught. One is tempted to say that the traditionary or given moral
should never be told to the children; but that is a little too sweeping.
As a rule, however, it is better to lead them to make their own
interpretation or generalization, in those cases where such a thing is
desired. For, as a matter of fact, many of the fables are so good as
stories that they may often be left to stand merely as pleasant tales.
But as the children grow more penetrating, the fable is the best
possible form of symbolistic literature to set them at first. These,
with the minor exercise in the apprehension and interpretation of
figures of speech, will be their share of the symbolistic kind of
writing for several years. Then we may introduce more specimens, and
more complex specimens, until in the sixth- and seventh-grade periods
they may be able to interpret the universal and symbolic side of much
that they read, and to handle with ease and delight such parables as
_The Great Stone Face_ or _The Bee-Man of Orn_. Their experience in
literature will then harmonize with their experience in other
directions; for they should then, or immediately afterward, be beginning
to look for generalizations, to carry abstract symbols, and to
substitute them at will for concrete matter. At the same time, then,
they will study these fables as apologues, making in all cases their own
moral and application.
Perhaps this is the place to insert a caution against the practice of
extracting a "deeper meaning" out of a child when he does not easily see
it, or of so instructing him that he comes to regard every story that he
reads as a sort of picture puzzle in which he is to find a "concealed
robber" in the shape of a moral or a general lesson. It is a trivial
habit of mind, a pernicious critical obsession, of which many
over-earnest adult readers are victims--that of wringing from every and
any bit of writing an abstract or moralistic meaning. Another practical
caution may be needed as to these interpretations: Do not leave the
discussion until the class has worked out from the fable a moral or
application that practically the whole class accepts and the teacher
indorses. Do not accept numerous guesswork explanations and let them
pass. Even the little children, if they are allowed to interpret at all,
should be pushed on and guided to a sound and essential exegesis--to use
a term more formidable than the thing it names. Do not let them linger
even tentatively in that lamentable state of making their explanation
rest upon some minor detail, some feature on the outskirts of the story.
Help them always to go to the center, and to make the essential
interpretation. Make a point of this whenever they have a story that
calls for interpretation at all. To the end that they may be sincere and
thorough, choose those things whose secondary meanings they may as
children feel and understand. The sixth-grade children could, in most
schools, interpret _The Ugly Ducking_. They may easily be led into the
inner significance of _The Bee-Man of Orn_ or _Old Pipes and the Dryad_.
They may go on in seventh grade to certain of Hawthorne's--perhaps "The
Great Stone Face" and others of the _Twice Told Tales_; though Hawthorne
is so sombre and so moralistic that it is not good for some children to
read his tales, still less to linger over them and interpret them. A
mature and experienced eighth grade could study "The Snow Image"; but it
is too delicate and remote for all eighth-grade classes. "The Minister's
Black Veil" is an example of the peculiar Hawthornesque gloom, which the
children would not understand or by ill luck would understand, and
suffer the consequent dangerous depression. Addison's "The Vision of
Mirza" is an example of a standard little allegory, simple and easy, and
at the same time full of meaning and fruitful of reflection for the
children. The parables of the gospels are quite unique in their beauty
and ethical significance, and afford an opportunity for a most valuable
kind of training in literary exegesis. Certain tales from the _Gesta
Romanorum_ might be read in these older grades, adding the
interpretations of the ecclesiastics for the gaiety of the class, and as
a terrible warning against wresting an allegory out of a story by sheer
violence.
There are several reasons why the extended allegories do not yield good
results with a class. In the first place, it takes too long to get
through them, so that the process keeps the children too long in an
atmosphere of allegorical and symbolistic meanings, which will confuse
and baffle them. In the second place, all the extended literary
allegories have each behind it a complex system of abstract theology or
morals, or some other philosophy, which cannot be conveyed to children,
but which cannot be hidden from the class. Then in any long allegory,
such as _The Pilgrim's Progress_ or _The Fairie Queene_, the multiplied
detail all loaded with secondary significance is extremely misleading to
all but expert readers. As Ruskin says of myth, we may say of all other
allegory: the more it means, the more numerous and the more grotesque do
the details become. And we would not choose in a child's literary
training any large mass of material in which grotesqueness is a
prevailing note. Nearly all children are interested in _The Pilgrim's
Progress_, and will listen with eagerness to the romantic and
adventurous side of Christian's experience, but not, of course, to the
didactic and theological passages. And as a matter of fact, modern
religious teaching and the new race-consciousness of our generation have
taken all sense of reality out of Bunyan's theology and religious
psychology; and of course, it can be read to the modern child only
cursorily, as in the home--never in detail and with the privilege of
questioning as in the class.
One would expect a really good eighth-grade child to be able to detect
and express the lesson in Lowell's _The Vision of Sir Launfal_, or
Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_, or Longfellow's _King Robert of Sicily_. It
need hardly be said that the exercises in the symbolistic kinds of
literature are to be inserted here and there among the other lessons. It
would be a serious mistake to give any class a whole year--or a whole
month, indeed--of this experience in reading.