I am confronted in this portion of my work with a great difficulty,
because I cannot afford to be as catholic as I could wish (this
rejection or selection of material being primarily intended for those
story-tellers dealing with normal children); but I do wish from the
outset to distinguish between a story told to an individual child in
the home circle or by a personal friend, and a story told to a group
of children as part of the school curriculum. And if I seem to
reiterate this difference, it is because I wish to show very clearly
that the recital of parents and friends may be quite separate in
content and manner from that offered by the teaching world. In the
former case, almost any subject can be treated, because, knowing the
individual temperament of the child, a wise parent or friend knows
also what can be presented or not presented to the child; but in
dealing with a group of normal children in school much has to be
eliminated that could be given fearlessly to the abnormal child; I
mean the child who, by circumstances or temperament, is developed
beyond his years.
I shall now mention some of the elements which experience has shown
me to be unsuitable for class stories.
I. _Stories dealing with analysis of motive and feeling_. This
warning is specially necessary today, because this is, above all, an
age of introspection and analysis. We have only to glance at the
principal novels and plays during the last quarter of a century, more
especially during the last ten years, to see how this spirit has crept
into our literature and life.
Now, this tendency to analyze is obviously more dangerous for children
than for adults, because, from lack of experience and knowledge of
psychology, the child's analysis is incomplete. It cannot see all the
causes of the action, nor can it make that philosophical allowance for
mood which brings the adult to truer conclusions.
Therefore, we should discourage the child who shows a tendency to
analyze too closely the motives of its action, and refrain from
presenting to them in our stories any example which might encourage
them to persist in this course.
I remember, on one occasion, when I went to say good night to a little
girl of my acquaintance, I found her sitting up in bed, very wide-
awake. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed, and when I
asked her what had excited her so much, she said:
"I _know_ I have done something wrong today, but I cannot quite
remember what it was."
I said: "But, Phyllis, if you put your hand, which is really quite
small, in front of your eyes, you could not see the shape of anything
else, however large it might be. Now, what you have done today
appears very large because it is so close, but when it is a little
further off, you will be able to see better and know more about it.
So let us wait till tomorrow morning."
I am happy to say that she took my advice. She was soon fast asleep,
and the next morning she had forgotten the wrong over which she had
been unhealthily brooding the night before.
2. _Stories dealing too much with sarcasm and satire_. These
are weapons which are too sharply polished, and therefore too
dangerous, to place in the hands of children. For here again, as in
the case of analysis, they can only have a very incomplete conception
of the case. They do not know the real cause which produces the
apparently ridiculous appearance, and it is only the abnormally gifted
child or grown-up person who discovers this by instinct. It takes a
lifetime to arrive at the position described in Sterne's words: "I
would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable
presence of misery to be entitled to all the with which Rabelais has
ever scattered."
I will hasten to add that I should not wish children to have their
sympathy too much drawn out, of their emotions kindled too much to
pity, because this would be neither healthy nor helpful to themselves
or others. I only want to protect children from the dangerous
critical attitude induced by the use of satire which sacrifices too
much of the atmosphere of trust and belief in human beings which ought
to be an essential of child life. By indulging in satire, the sense of
kindness in children would become perverted, their sympathy cramped,
and they themselves would be old before their time. We have an
excellent example of this in Hans Christian Andersen's "Snow Queen."
When Kay gets the piece of broken mirror into his eye, he no longer
sees the world from the normal child's point of view; he can no longer
see anything but the foibles of those about him, a condition usually
reached by a course of pessimistic experience.
Andersen sums up the unnatural point of view in these words: "When
Kay tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he could only remember the
multiplication table." Now, without taking these words in any literal
sense, we can admit that they represent the development of the head at
the expense of the heart.
An example of this kind of story to avoid is Andersen's "Story of the
Butterfly." The bitterness of the Anemones, the sentimentality of the
Violets, the schoolgirlishness of the Snowdrops, the domesticity of
the Sweetpeas--all this tickles the palate of the adult, but does
not belong to the place of the normal child. Again, I repeat, that
the unusual child may take all this in and even preserve his kindly
attitude towards the world, but it is dangerous atmosphere for the
ordinary child.
3. _Stories of a sentimental character_. Strange to say, this
element of sentimentality appeals more to the young teachers than to
the children themselves. It is difficult to define the difference
between real sentiment and sentimentality, but the healthy normal
boy or girl of, let us say, ten or eleven years old, seems to feel
it unconsciously, though the distinction is not so clear a few
years later.
Mrs. Elisabeth McCracken contributed an excellent article some years
ago to the _Outlook_ on the subject of literature for the young,
in which we find a good illustration of this power of discrimination
on the part of a child.
A young teacher was telling her pupils the story of the emotional lady
who, to put her lover to the test, bade him pick up the glove which
she had thrown down into the arena between the tiger and the lion.
The lover does her bidding in order to vindicate his character as a
brave knight. One boy after hearing the story at once states his
contempt for the knight's acquiescence, which he declares to be
unworthy.
"But," says the teacher, "you see he really did it to show the lady
how foolish she was." The answer of the boy sums up what I have been
trying to show: "There was no sense in _his_ being sillier than
_she_ was, to show her _she_ was silly."
If the boy had stopped there, we might have concluded that he was
lacking in imagination or romance, but his next remark proves what a
balanced and discriminating person he was, for he added: "Now, if
_she_ had fallen in, and he had leapt after her to rescue her, that
would have been splendid and of some use." Given the character of the
lady, we might, as adults, question the last part of the boy's
statement, but this is pure cynicism and fortunately does not enter
into the child's calculations.
In my own personal experience, and I have told this story often in the
German ballad form to girls of ten and twelve in the high schools in
England, I have never found one girl who sympathized with the lady or
who failed to appreciate the poetic justice meted out to her in the
end by the dignified renunciation of the knight.
Chesterton defines sentimentality as "a tame, cold, or small and
inadequate manner of speaking about certain matters which demand
very large and beautiful expression."
I would strongly urge upon young teachers to revise, by this
definition, some of the stories they have included in their
repertories, and see whether they would stand the test or not.
4. _Stories containing strong sensational episodes_. The danger
of this kind of story is all the greater because many children delight
in it and some crave for it in the abstract, but fear it in the
concrete.[15]
An affectionate aunt, on one occasion, anxious to curry favor with a
four-year-old nephew, was taxing her imagination to find a story
suitable for his tender years. She was greatly startled when he
suddenly said, in a most imperative tone: "Tell me the story of a bear
eating a small boy." This was so remote from her own choice of
subject that she hesitated at first, but coming to the conclusion that
as the child had chosen the situation he would feel no terror in the
working up of its details, she a most thrilling and blood-curdling
story, leading up to the final catastrophe. But just as she reached
the great dramatic moment, the child raised his hands in terror and
said: "Oh! Auntie, don't let the bear really eat the boy!"
"Don't you know," said an impatient boy who had been listening to a
mild adventure story considered suitable to his years, "that I don't
take any interest in the story until the decks are dripping with
gore?" Here we have no opportunity of deciding whether or not the
actual description demanded would be more alarming than the listener
had realized.
Here is a poem of James Stephens, showing a child's taste for
sensational things:
A man was sitting underneath a tree
Outside the village, and he asked me
What name was upon this place, and said he
Was never here before. He told a
Lot of stories to me too. His nose was flat.
I asked him how it happened, and he said,
The first mate of the _Mary Ann_ done that
With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead,
And a jolly job too, but he'd have gone a long way
to have killed him.
A gold ring in one ear, and the other was bit off by
a crocodile, bedad,
That's what he said: He taught me how to chew.
He was a real nice man. He liked me too.
The taste that is fed by the sensational contents of the newspapers
and the dramatic excitement of street life, and some of the lurid
representations of the cinematograph, is so much stimulated that the
interest in normal stories is difficult to rouse. I will not here
dwell on the deleterious effects of over-dramatic stimulation, which
has been known to lead to crime, since I am keener to prevent the
telling of too many sensational stories than to suggest a cure when
the mischief is done.
Kate Douglas Wiggin has said:
"Let us be realistic, by all means, but beware, O story-teller, of
being too realistic. Avoid the shuddering tale of 'the wicked boy who
stoned the birds,' lest some hearer should be inspired to try the
dreadful experiment and see if it really does kill."
I must emphasize the fact, however, that it is only the excess of this
dramatic element which I deplore. A certain amount of excitement is
necessary, but this question belongs to the positive side of the
subject, and I shall deal with it later on.
5. _Stories presenting matters quite outside the plane of a child's
interests, unless they are wrapped in mystery_. Experience with
children ought to teach us to avoid stories which contain too much
_allusion_ to matters of which the hearers are entirely ignorant.
But judging from the written stories of today, supposed to be for
children, it is still a matter of difficulty to realize that this form
of allusion to "foreign" matters, or making a joke, the appreciation
of which depends solely on a special and "inside" knowledge, is always
bewildering and fatal to sustained dramatic interest.
It is a matter of intense regret that so very few people have
sufficiently clear remembrance of their own childhood to help them to
understand the taste and point of view of the _normal_ child.
There is a passage in the "Brownies," by Mrs. Ewing, which illustrates
the confusion created in the child mind by a facetious allusion in a
dramatic moment which needed a more direct treatment. When the
nursery toys have all gone astray, one little child exclaims joyfully:
"Why, the old Rocking-Horse's nose has turned up in the oven!"
"It couldn't," remarks a tiresome, facetious doctor, far more anxious
to be funny than to sympathized with the child, "it was the purest
Grecian, modeled from the Elgin marbles."
Now, for grownup people this is an excellent joke, but for a child has
not yet become acquainted with these Grecian masterpieces, the whole
remark is pointless and hampering.[16]
6. _Stories which appeal to fear or priggishness_. This is a
class of story which scarcely counts today and against which the
teacher does not need a warning, but I wish to make a passing allusion
to these stories, partly to round off my subject and partly to show
that we have made some improvement in choice of subject.
When I study the evolution of the story from the crude recitals
offered to our children within the last hundred years, I feel that,
though our progress may be slow, it is real and sure. One has only to
take some examples from the Chaps Books of the beginning of last
century to realize the difference of appeal. Everything offered then
was either an appeal to fear or to priggishness, and one wonders how
it is that our grandparents and their parents every recovered from the
effects of such stories as were offered to them. But there is the
consoling thought that no lasting impression was made upon them, such
as I believe _may_ be possible by the right kind of story.
I offer a few examples of the old type of story:
Here is an encouraging address offered to children by a certain Mr.
Janeway about the year 1828:
"Dare you do anything which your parents forbid you, and neglect to do
what they command? Dare you to run up and down on the Lord's Day, or
do you keep in to read your book, and learn what your good parents
command?"
Such an address would have almost tempted children to envy the lot of
orphans, except that the guardians and less close relations might have
been equally, if not more, severe.
From "The Curious Girl," published about 1809:
"Oh! papa, I hope you will have no reason to be dissatisfied with me,
for I love my studies very much, and I am never so happy at my play as
when I have been assiduous at my lessons all day."
"Adolphus: How strange it is, papa, you should believe it possible for
me to act so like a child, now that I am twelve years old!"
Here is a specimen taken from a Chap Book about 1835:
Edward refuses hot bread at breakfast. His hostess asks whether he
likes it.
"Yes, I am extremely fond of it."
"Why did you refuse it?"
"Because I know that my papa does not approve of my eating it. Am I
to disobey a Father and Mother I love so well, and forget my duty,
because they are a long way off? I would not touch the cake, were
I sure nobody would see me. I myself should know it, and that would
be sufficient.
"Nobly replied!" exclaimed Mrs. C. "Act always thus, and you must be
happy, for although the whole world should refuse the praise that is
due, you must enjoy the approbation of your conscience, which is
beyond anything else."
Here is a quotation of the same kind from Mrs. Sherwood:
Tender-souled little creatures, desolated by a sense of sin, if they
did but eat a spoonful of cupboard jam without Mamma's express
permission. . . . Would a modern Lucy, jealous of her sister Emily's
doll, break out thus easily into tearful apology for her guilt: 'I
know it is wicked in me to be sorry that Emily is happy, but I feel
that I cannot help it'? And would a modern mother retort with
heartfelt joy: 'My dear child, I am glad you have confessed. Now I
shall tell you why you feel this wicked sorrow'?--proceeding to
an account of the depravity of human nature so unredeemed by comfort
for a childish mind of common intelligence that one can scarcely
imagine the interview ending in anything less tragic than a fit of
juvenile hysteria.
Description of a good boy:
A good boy is dutiful to his Father and Mother, obedient to his master
and loving to his playfellows. He is diligent in learning his book
and takes a pleasure in improving himself in everything that is worthy
of praise. He rises early in the morning, makes himself clean and
decent, and says his prayers. He loves to hear good advice, is
thankful to those who give it and always follows it. He never
swears[17] or calls names or uses ill words to companions. He is
never peevish and fretful, always cheerful and good-tempered.
7. _Stories of exaggerated and coarse fun_. In the chapter on
the positive side of this subject I shall speak more in detail of the
educational value of robust and virile representation of fun and of
sheer nonsense, but as a preparation to these statements, I should
like to strike a note of warning against the element of exaggerated
and coarse fun being encouraged in our school stories, partly, because
of the lack of humor in such presentations (a natural product of
stifling imagination) and partly, because the strain of the abnormal
has the same effect as the too frequent use of the melodramatic.
In an article in _Macmillans's Magazine_, December, 1869, Miss
Yonge writes:
"A taste for buffoonery is much to be discouraged, an exclusive taste
for extravagance most unwholesome and even perverting. It becomes
destructive of reverence and soon degenerates into coarseness. It
permits nothing poetical or imaginative, nothing sweet or pathetic to
exist, and there is a certain self-satisfaction and superiority in
making game of what others regard with enthusiasm and sentiment which
absolutely bars the way against a higher or softer tone."
Although these words were written nearly half a century ago, they
are so specially applicable today that they seem quite "up-to-date."
Indeed, I think they will hold equally good fifty years hence.
In spite of a strong taste on the part of children for what is ugly
and brutal, I am sure that we ought to eliminate this element as far
as possible from the school stories, especially among poor children.
Not because I think children should be protected from all knowledge of
evil, but because so much of this knowledge comes into their life
outside school that we can well afford to ignore it during school
hours. At the same time, however, as I shall show by example when I
come to the positive side, it would be well to show children by story
illustration the difference between brutal ugliness without anything
to redeem it and surface ugliness, which may be only a veil over the
beauty that lies underneath. It might be possible, for instance, to
show children the difference between the real ugliness in the priest's
face of the "Laocoon" group, because of the motive of courage and
endurance behind the suffering. Many stories in everyday life could
be found to illustrate this.
8. _Stories of infant piety and death-bed scenes_. The stories
for children forty years ago contained much of this element, and the
following examples will illustrate this point:
Notes from poems written by a child between six and eight years of
age, by name Philip Freeman, afterwards Archdeacon of Exeter:
Poor Robin, thou canst fly no more,
Thy joys and sorrows all are o'er.
Through Life's tempestuous storms thou'st trod,
But now art sunk beneath the sod.
Here lost and gone poor Robin lies,
He trembles, lingers, falls and dies.
He's gone, he's gone, forever lost,
No more of him they now can boast.
Poor Robin's dangers all are past,
He struggled to the very last.
Perhaps he spent a happy Life,
Without much struggle and much strife.[18]
The prolonged gloom of the main theme is somewhat lightened by the
speculative optimism of the last verse.
Life, transient Life, is but a dream,
Like Sleep which short doth lengthened seem
Till dawn of day, when the bird's lay
Doth charm the soul's first peeping gleam.
Then farewell to the parting year,
Another's come to Nature dear.
In every place, thy brightening face
Does welcome winter's snowy drear.
Alas! our time is much mis-spent.
Then we must haste and now repent.
We have a book in which to look,
For we on Wisdom should be bent.
Should God, the Almighty, King of all,
Before His judgment-seat now call
Us to that place of Joy and Grace
Prepared for us since Adam's fall.
I think there is no doubt that we have made considerable progress in
this matter. Not only do we refrain from telling these highly moral
(_sic_) stories but we have reached the point of parodying them,
in sign of ridicule, as, for instance, in such writing as Belloc's
"Cautionary Tales." These would be a trifle too grim for a timid
child, but excellent fun for adults.
It should be our study today to prove to children that the immediate
importance to them is not to think of dying and going to Heaven, but
of living and--shall we say?--of going to college, which is a far better
preparation for the life to come than the morbid dwelling upon the
possibility of an early death.
In an article signed "Muriel Harris," I think, from a copy of the
_Tribune_, appeared a delightful article on Sunday books, from which
I quote the following:
"All very good little children died young in the storybooks, so that
unusual goodness must have been the source of considerable anxiety to
affectionate parents. I came across a little old book the other day
called 'Examples for Youth.' On the yellow fly-leaf was written, in
childish, carefully-sloping hand: 'Presented to Mary Palmer Junior, by
her sister, to be read on Sundays,' and was dated 1828. The accounts
are taken from a work on "Piety Promoted," and all of them begin with
unusual piety in early youth and end with the death-bed of the little
paragon, and his or her dying words."
9. _Stories containing a mixture of fairy tale and science_. By
this combination one loses what is essential to each, namely, the
fantastic on the one side, and accuracy on the other. The true fairy
tale should be unhampered by any compromise of probability even; the
scientific representation should be sufficiently marvelous along its
own lines to need no supernatural aid. Both appeal to the imagination
in different ways.
As an exception to this kind of mixture, I should quote "The Honey
Bee, and Other Stories," translated from the Danish of Evald by C. G.
Moore Smith. There is a certain robustness in these stories dealing
with the inexorable laws of Nature. Some of them will appear hard to
the child but they will be of interest to all teachers.
Perhaps the worst element in the choice of stories is that which
insists upon the moral detaching itself and explaining the story. In
"Alice in Wonderland" the Duchess says, "'And the moral of _that_
is: Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of
themselves.' "How fond she is of finding morals in things," thought
Alice to herself." (This gives the point of view of the child.)
The following is a case in point, found in a rare old print in the
British Museum:
Jane S. came home with her clothes soiled and hands badly torn.
"Where have you been?" asked her mother.
"I fell down the bank near the mill," said Jane, "and I should have
been drowned, if Mr. M. had not seen me and pulled me out."
"Why did you go so near the edge of the brink?"
"There was a pretty flower there that I wanted, and I only meant to
take one step, but I slipped and fell down."
_Moral_: Young people often take but one step in sinful
indulgence [Poor Jane!], but they fall into soul-destroying sins.
They can do it by a single act of sin. [The heinous act of picking a
flower!] They do it; but the act leads to another, and they fall into
the gulf of Perdition, unless God interposes.
Now, quite apart from the folly of this story we must condemn it on
moral grounds. Could we imagine a lower standard of a Deity than that
presented here to the child?
Today the teacher would commend Jane for a laudable interest in
botany, but might add a word of caution about choosing inclined planes
in the close neighborhood of a body of running water as a hunting
ground for specimens and a popular, lucid explanation of the
inexorable law of gravity.
Here we have an instance of applying a moral when we have finished our
story, but there are many stories where nothing is left to chance in
this matter and where there is no means for the child to use ingenuity
or imagination in making out the meaning for himself.
Henry Morley has condemned the use of this method as applied to fairy
stories. He says: "Moralizing in a fairy story is like the snoring
of _Bottom_ in _Titania's_ lap."
But I think this applies to all stories, and most especially to those
by which we do wish to teach something.
John Burroughs says in his article, "Thou Shalt Not Preach":[19]
"Didactic fiction can never rank high. Thou shalt not preach or
teach; thou shalt portray and create, and have ends as universal
as nature. . . . What Art demands is that the artist's personal
convictions and notions, his likes and dislikes, do not obtrude
themselves at all; that good and evil stand judged in his work by the
logic of events, as they do in nature, and not by any special pleading
on his part. He does non hold a brief for either side; he exemplifies
the working of the creative energy. . . . The great artist works in and
_through_ and _from_ moral ideas; his works are indirectly a criticism
of life. He is moral without having a moral. The moment a moral
obtrudes itself, that moment he begins to fall from grace as an
artist. . . . The great distinction of Art is that it aims to see life
steadily and to see it whole. . . . It affords the one point of view
whence the world appears harmonious and complete."
It would seem, then, from this passage, that it is of _moral_
importance to put things dramatically.
In Froebel's "Mother Play" he demonstrates the educational value of
stories, emphasizing that their highest use consists in their ability
to enable the child, through _suggestion_, to form a pure and
noble idea of what a man may be or do. The sensitiveness of a child's
mind is offended if the moral is forced upon him, but if he absorbs it
unconsciously, he has received its influence for all time.
To me the idea of pointing out the moral of the story has always
seemed as futile as tying a flower on a stalk instead of letting the
flower grow out of the stalk, as Nature has intended. In the first
case, the flower, showy and bright for the moment, soon fades away.
In the second instance, it develops slowly, coming to perfection in
fullness of time because of the life within.
Lastly, the element to avoid is that which rouses emotions which
cannot be translated into action.
Mr. Earl Barnes, to whom all teachers owe a debt of gratitude for the
inspiration of his educational views, insists strongly on this point.
The sole effect of such stories is to produce a form of hysteria,
fortunately short-lived, but a waste of force which might be directed
into a better channel.[20] Such stories are so easy to recognize that
it would be useless to make a formal list, but I make further allusion
to them, in dealing with stories from the lives of the saints.
These, then, are the main elements to avoid in the selection of material
suitable for normal children. Much might be added in the way of detail,
and the special tendency of the day may make it necessary to avoid one
class of story more than another, but this care belongs to another
generation of teachers and parents.