THE PRESENTATION OF THE LITERATURE
In this day of reaction, not to say revulsion, against "methods" in
teaching, it is with much misgiving that one brings one's self to speak
of the practical details of teaching a subject, lest he be suspected of
having a method or even a system, or lest those suggestions which he
tries to give out as genetic and stimulating merely, be taken as a
formalized plan. However, each body of material that has any degree of
separateness has a handle by which it ought to be taken; disregarding
the poor figure--paths by which one most easily comes to the center of
it; certain points of view from which it looks most attractive and
manageable. Some such handles, or paths, or points of view it will be
the business of this chapter to indicate; and the suggestions to be
offered are, it is to be hoped, so simple and so reasonable as to have
occurred to many observing and growing teachers.
The somewhat small body of literature to be used in the classes should
practically throughout the elementary period be read to the children in
class, not read by them. The relation of the literature to
reading-lessons will be discussed elsewhere. It may well be that in the
last years of the period many of the members of the class will have
reached the stage of reading needful for the interpretative and
apprehensive reading of literature; but the majority of the class will
not. They will master the difficulties of mechanical reading; they may
achieve the plane of intelligent reading. But here the large majority of
them linger. Vast numbers of people never push on to the next
plane--that of appreciative reading. And it is small wonder; for the
combination of mechanical, intellectual, and emotional processes that it
involves constitutes it well-nigh the most difficult of achievements.
Hosts of estimable and intelligent persons, respectable citizens, live
out long years of greater or less usefulness, and never have a glimpse
of this kind of reading. It is by no means true that even every good and
useful citizen who teaches literature, can do this kind of reading; many
times he cannot. But he can read better than the children. They,
involved in the difficulties of their inexpert reading, cannot see the
woods for the trees; they are obliged to go so slowly, and to absorb so
much energy in what one may call the manual work of reading, that they
miss the essentially literary things--the movement, the picture, the
music.
Of course, when we say "read," we use the word in the broad sense of
rendering the matter _viva voce_, whether it be actual reading from the
text or reciting. While the person who is reading a story to children
must be most concerned with spirit and meaning, he must not, if he
suppose himself to be teaching literature, neglect the matter of style.
If the story is a translated one, he must make or choose some beautiful
translation. Everything that he reads to them he must work over
beforehand, so that he can give it with effective certainty. He more
than defeats his purpose who transmits to his children no matter how
good a story in slip-shod sentences, commonplace phrasing, go-easy
enunciation; or, worse than that, in the ostentatiously childlike
language and manner that constitute official kindergartenese, or in the
hilariously cheerful manner which marks traditional Sunday-schoolese;
or, worst of all, in that tone of cheap irony that so many people see
fit to adopt for all their communications with children. It is the tone
of the average adult whenever he enters into conversation with any
acquaintance under twelve--an underbred or quite uncalled-for tone of
badinage, of quizzing, of insincerity. It is an unpardonable
misunderstanding of the dignity and seriousness of children to offer
them babble when they ask only simplicity, or to treat with flippancy
what to them are the serious things of art. It should be quite possible
to be serious without being solemn, and cheerful without being
hilarious. This matter of a good style and form is so important that a
teacher should achieve it at any cost of trouble and study. I like to
use every opportunity to say that he should so thoroughly know his story
or poem, be it the simplest old fairy-tale, or the veriest
nursery-jingle, that he loves and respects it as art; and should so know
and respect his audience and his purpose that a good and suitable
literary form flows from him inevitably; or, if he is reading an actual
text, that every sentence is both appreciative and interpretative. But,
if he cannot achieve this, let him in the first instance write out a
good form of his story, or find one and memorize it. There is no denying
that in the hands of a cold and mechanical person this production will
display some priggishness and false propriety. But the failure as
literary training would be less disastrous in this case than if the same
person gave a haphazard and commonplace impromptu version.
There is such a thing as literary reading as distinguished from the
reading of matter technical in content and merely intellectual in
appeal. Teachers, accustomed as they are to read for facts and intent
upon the logical emphasis, are peculiarly prone to read literature
poorly--missing the music and the emotion, rendering it all in the hard
intellectual manner that is acceptable only as the vehicle of the
colorless matter of a technical treatise. There is also such a thing as
the telling of a literary story, as distinguished from the telling of
any other story. A narrative of events in history, an account of some
occurrence in nature or ordinary affairs, may be expected to proceed
from point to point without arrangement or succession other than the
order of incidents as they occur. The interest is the interest of fact;
the thread is that of cause and effect, or any other plain sequence.
But in the literary story the incidents are sifted and arranged. Certain
details are prophecies--foreshadowings of things to come; certain
incidents are vital turning-points in the action; certain phrases are
the key and counter-sign of the whole story; some paragraphs are plain
narration; some are calm description; some are poetic interpretation;
some roar with action; some glow with emotion; some sparkle with fun;
some lie in shadow, others stand forth in the brilliant light; there are
movements in the story, marked by a change of scene, a change of
situation, a pause in the action--parts which would be marked in the
drama as scenes or acts; there is the gradual approach to the center,
the pivotal occurrence, the readjustment of affairs to ordinary life.
Ideally, all these things will be indicated in the presentation that an
accomplished story-teller makes of a literary story. This seems to set
the standard very high--too high for the discouraged attempt of the
overworked grade teacher. If so, she may reflect that it is triumphantly
true that such is the affinity between the child and the story that he
will get much delight and nourishment out of any telling of it. Who has
not hesitated between a smile and a tear at the spectacle of a child or
a class hanging enthralled and hungry upon a story rendered by a mother
or a teacher whose every pronunciation was a jar, whose every cadence a
dislocation, and whose every emphasis a misinterpretation?
And remember, the art of story-telling is not the art of the theater,
not the art of the actress, but the art of the mother, the nurse; the
art of the "spinsters and the knitters in the sun;" the art of the
wandering minstrel, of the journeyman tailor, of the exiled younger
brother; art designed to reach, not an audience beyond the footlights,
but one gathered on the sunny bench of the market-place, on the
hearth-stone, under the nursery lamp, in the shady garden, and in their
own teacher's schoolroom.
As a practical matter, the teacher, in presenting a story or a narrative
poem, should take advantage of the natural pauses, the end of one
incident or movement and the beginning of the next, in dividing his
material for the actual lessons, so that in a long story or in a drama,
the end of the lesson coincides with the close of a series of incidents
or the close of one of the larger movements. Nothing spoils a bit of
literature more effectually than taking it in accidental or fragmentary
bits. At any cost of time and pains, let there be a sense of
completeness in each lesson, a feeling of repose, if only temporary, at
the end of each instalment. And whether he closes his lesson or not, the
teacher should at the close of every such movement in a class of older
children pause to discuss, to review, or to summarize. When he makes
this recognition of the close of a series of incidents, or of a
movement, he accomplishes two things: he secures a certain amount of
completeness, and he helps on in the children the desirable sense of
organization, of composition, in their story or play.
The nature of the bit of literature chosen must guide the teacher in his
first presentation of it. When it is a thing in which the movement is
rapid, or the interest in the action or the plot intense, it will
doubtless be best to go rapidly through the whole, not pausing for any
details. Then go over it slowly again, pausing for appreciation and
comment. It seems well to repeat here that if the story is long and the
plot involves any intensity of suspense, it may be well to let the
children know the issue early in the story; the wisdom of this step will
depend largely upon the average nerves of the class. There may well be
several readings of a thing worth reading once. Every teacher knows how
well content the younger children, especially, are to go over a thing
many times. The interest of the class of older children may be kept up
through the many readings of a story or poem, by shifting each time the
ground of comment or discussion, opening up a new question or revealing
a new point of interest at each reading. In other pieces, the slower
moving stories and lyrics, the children are willing to linger over the
details at the first reading.
It is all but impossible to indicate what such details are, or what we
mean by lingering over them. I have pointed out in some detail, in the
chapter on poetry, the kind of thing that one would linger over for
comment and question.
If it is a new, rare, or especially picturesque word, we may ask
questions and receive comments, or according to the situation, give
quick and direct information about it: "The golden orange _glows_;" "He
strung the bow _deftly_;" "The butter-cup catches the sun in its
_chalice_." These three words call for attention for different reasons,
in addition to the fact that any or all of them might be new and unknown
words to the class. In the case of a figure or image we would pause and
discuss the various terms and details of it, until most members of the
class have at least intellectually apprehended it. Such a complex little
figure and image as "footsteps of the falling drops down the ladder of
the leaves" calls for leisurely appreciation and assimilation. A
peculiar musical onomatopoeic line will interest them; "Burly dozing
bumble-bee," is such a line. They will be delighted to discover why this
peculiar assemblage of sounds was chosen in connection with this insect.
"The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs," indicating and imitating by
its slow movement and long vowels the passage of the lingering hours, is
an effect they should be led to realize. We should pause to point out,
or to inquire into, the implications of some pregnant or pivotal
sentence, such as: "Now, Cinderella's godmother was fay;" or, "Cyclops,
you asked my noble name, and I will tell it: My name is Noman." The bit
selected for detailed study may be larger, amounting to a complete
incident--for example, Nausicaa with her maids washing her beautiful
clothes by the river; some scene or incident full of character and
symbolical meaning, as the scene with the hen and the cat in _The Ugly
Duckling_; some ethical or moral question that calls for judgment, such
as Robin Hood's treatment of the unjust abbot, or Portia's decision as
to Shylock's bond.
These examples, chosen at random, are intended simply to suggest the
kind of thing to be stopped over. It would be a grave mistake to pause
over every such detail, or to try to make sure that the children
apprehend even intellectually every item as it appears. Leave many of
them for subsequent readings; let many of them lie permanently,
depending rather on the effects of the general tone and spirit of the
production for your results. One of the first lessons to learn about the
teaching of literature is that it will not do to teach the whole art on
the basis of one specimen--that it will not do to teach in any case all
that one could. One must rather try to teach the characteristic, the
inevitable lesson--the lesson demanded by the genius of his piece. Let
the teacher avoid by all means the pitfall of "talky-talk" and lecture.
Keep the literature as near play as possible--the play that cultivates
and disciplines through the avenues of refined pleasure.
It will often be necessary for the teacher to shorten and otherwise edit
the thing he chooses. There will come from time to time dull passages,
descriptive passages, passages whose subject-matter is too mature, or in
some other way undesirable for his class. He will often be able to
economize effort and to secure a better unity of impression, by omitting
what is mere enrichment of the picture or reinforcement of the teaching;
such incidents may be removed without altering the meaning or the
movement. The teacher must be experienced enough to recognize such
unnecessary or superfluous incidents; otherwise he only mutilates his
story in condensing it.
When the children have advanced to some proficiency in reading, they
will, of course, begin to read some of their own literature, reading
aloud in the class and often having the text before them as the teacher
reads. All the children that can read at all should, as a rule, have a
printed copy of anything they are asked to memorize; and as a matter of
social duty, the teacher of literature, or the teacher in the literature
class, will from time to time have a careful exercise in reading for the
younger readers; while he will have much reading aloud from the older
grades; remembering that the inevitable obverse of receiving literature
through the ear is the rendering it with the voice. But, on the whole,
they will fare best if up to and probably through the sixth grade they
receive what is distinctively literature through the ear. And even after
that they should often hear their material rendered by a good reader in
class, even though they may be required to read the same material over
beforehand, or subsequent to the class reading.
Every teacher should have in reserve a store of stories and poems, and
beautiful passages from great masterpieces which he produces from time
to time as a surprise to his class. This is many a time the most
effective lesson possible--adding to the children's pleasure the delight
of surprise, creating in them the impression of the inexhaustible supply
of beautiful things, and testifying to their teacher's own joy in the
things he wants them to love.
Other minor and practical matters, more closely connected with the
return from the children than the presentation to them, will be
discussed in the next chapter.
Finally, the whole matter is conditioned and colored by the fact that in
any case the literature is transmitted to the children through the
personality of the teacher. This is partially true of all a child's
subjects and his whole experience in school; but the fact that
literature is so inwoven with feeling, and so bound up with matters of
personal taste, that it concerns itself so much with matters of ethics
and conduct, makes it peculiarly liable to take on color, to narrow or
to widen with the personality of him who chooses and renders it. A
teacher must accept this fact, and profit by the obvious warnings that
arise out of it; but better than that, build his work upon the many
beneficent aspects of the fact. The teacher before his class is the
sacred bard at the feast; he is an exhaustless spring of joy, a tireless
playfellow, a preacher who never proses, a schoolmaster who never
scolds.