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Play School Series
Edited by Clark W. Hetherington
EDUCATING BY STORY-TELLING
Showing the
Value of Story-Telling as an Educational
Tool for the Use of All Workers
with Children
by
KATHERINE DUNLAP CATHER
Author of “Boyhood Stories of Famous Men,”
“Pan and His Pipes and Other Stories,”
“The Singing Clock”
[Illustration]
Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York
World Book Company
1918
* * * * * *
WORLD BOOK COMPANY
THE HOUSE OF APPLIED KNOWLEDGE
Established, 1905, by Caspar W. Hodgson
YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK
2126 PRAIRIE AVENUE, CHICAGO
The Play School Series, of which _Educating by Story-Telling_ is a
member, is based on the work of the Demonstration Play School of the
University of California. Breaking away from the traditional idea of
the subjects of study, this school has substituted a curriculum of
activities—the natural activities of child life—out of which subjects
of study naturally evolve. Succeeding volumes now in active preparation
will relate to the other activities which form the educational basis
for the work of the Play School, including Social, Linguistic, Moral,
Big-Muscle, Rhythmic and Musical, Environmental and Nature, and Economic
Activities. Each volume will be written by a recognized authority in the
subject dealt with, as the author of _Educating by Story-Telling_ is in
her special field.
PSS: CES-I
Copyright, 1918, by World Book Company
All rights reserved
* * * * * *
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
This book has grown out of years of experience with children of all ages
and all classes, and with parents, teachers, librarians, and Sunday
School, social center, and settlement workers. The material comprising
it was first used in something like its present form in the University
of California Summer Session, 1914, and since then has been the basis
of courses given in that institution, as well as in private classes and
lecture work. The author does not claim that it is the final word upon
the subject of story-telling, or that it will render obsolete any one of
the several excellent works already upon the market. But the response
of children to the stories given and suggested, and the eagerness with
which the principles herein advocated have been received by parents and
teachers, have convinced her that the book contains certain features that
are unique and valuable to those engaged in directing child thought.
Other works have shown in a general way how vast a field is the realm of
the narrator, but they have not worked out a detailed plan that the busy
mother or teacher can follow in her effort to establish standards, to
lead her small charges to an appreciation of the beautiful in literature
and art, and to endow them with knowledge that shall result in creating a
higher code of thought and action. No claim is made that all the problems
of the school and home are solved in the ensuing pages, and the title,
“Educating by Story-Telling,” makes no assumption that story-telling can
accomplish everything. The author does assume, however, that when used
with wisdom and skill, the story is a powerful tool in the hands of the
educator, and she attempts to indicate how, by this means, some portion
of drudgery may be eliminated from the schoolroom, and a more pleasurable
element be put into it. She undertakes to demonstrate how it is possible
to intensify the child’s interest in most of the subjects composing the
curriculum, not by advancing an untried theory, but by traveling along
a path that has been found to be a certain road to attainment, not only
for the gifted creative teacher, but for the average ordinary one who is
often baffled by the bigness of the problem she has to solve.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use copyrighted
material as follows: to the Whitaker, Ray, Wiggin Company for the story
entitled “The Search for the Seven Cities” (page 149); to Dr. David Starr
Jordan and A. C. McClurg & Co. for “The Story of a Salmon” (page 255) and
“The Story of a Stone” (page 331); to the David C. Cook Company for “The
Pigeons of Venice” (page 263), “The Duty That Wasn’t Paid” (page 278),
“Wilhelmina’s Wooden Shoes” (page 283), “The Luck Boy of Toy Valley”
(page 302), and “The Pet Raven” (page 317); and to Henry Holt & Co. for
“The Emperor’s Vision” (page 306).
KATHERINE DUNLAP CATHER
CONTENTS
PAGE
AUTHOR’S PREFACE iii
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION ix
PART ONE
STORY-TELLING AND THE ARTS OF EXPRESSION—ESTABLISHING
STANDARDS
CHAPTER
I. THE PURPOSE AND AIM OF STORY-TELLING 1
II. THE STORY INTERESTS OF CHILDHOOD—A. RHYTHMIC PERIOD 12
Sources of Story Material for the Rhythmic Period 19
III. THE STORY INTERESTS OF CHILDHOOD—B. IMAGINATIVE PERIOD 20
Bibliography of Fairy Tales 31
IV. THE STORY INTERESTS OF CHILDHOOD—C. HEROIC PERIOD 32
Sources of Story Material for the Heroic Period 41
V. THE STORY INTERESTS OF CHILDHOOD—D. ROMANTIC PERIOD 42
Sources of Story Material for the Romantic Period 51
VI. BUILDING THE STORY 52
VII. TELLING THE STORY 58
Books on Story-Telling 68
VIII. STORY-TELLING TO LEAD TO AN APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE 69
Some Authors and Selections That Can Be Presented through
the Story-Telling Method 81
Sources of Material to Lead to an Appreciation of
Literature 82
IX. STORY-TELLING TO AWAKEN AN APPRECIATION OF MUSIC 83
Illustrative Story, “A Boy of Old Vienna” 89
Sources of Material to Awaken an Appreciation of Music 94
Pictures to Use in Telling Musical Stories 94
X. STORY-TELLING TO AWAKEN AN APPRECIATION OF ART 95
Artists and Paintings That Can Be Presented to Young
Children through the Story-Telling Method 102
Artists and Paintings for Children of the Intermediate
Period 103
Artists and Paintings That Lead to Appreciation of the
Beautiful and to Respect for Labor 104
Artists and Paintings for the Heroic and Epic Periods 105
Bibliography of Art Story Material 105
Sources for Moderate-Priced Reproductions of Masterpieces 106
XI. DRAMATIZATION 107
Pictures Containing Subjects for Dramatization 116
Books and Stories for Use in Dramatic Work with Little
Children 116
Bibliography of Material for Dramatization 117
XII. BIBLE STORIES 118
Sources of Material for Bible Stories 131
XIII. STORY-TELLING AND THE TEACHING OF ETHICS 132
Stories to Develop or Stamp out Certain Traits and
Instincts 137
Sources of Material to Use in the Teaching of Ethics 140
PART TWO
THE USE OF STORY-TELLING TO ILLUMINATE SOME SCHOOLROOM
SUBJECTS—STORIES FOR TELLING
XIV. STORY-TELLING TO INTENSIFY INTEREST IN HISTORY 143
Illustrative Story, “The Search for the Seven Cities” 149
XV. STORY-TELLING TO INTENSIFY INTEREST IN GEOGRAPHY 168
Illustrative Story, “The God of the Thundering Water” 174
Sources of Material to Use in History and Geography 177
XVI. STORY-TELLING TO INTENSIFY INTEREST IN NATURE STUDY 178
Illustrative Story, “The Wonderful Builders” 188
Sources of Material for Science Stories 191
XVII. STORY-TELLING IN DOMESTIC SCIENCE AND MANUAL TRAINING 192
Illustrative Story, “The Dervish of Mocha” 195
Sources of Material to Use in Domestic Science and
Manual Training 197
XVIII. DOES THE WORK OF THE STORY-TELLER PAY? 198
STORIES FOR TELLING
The Story of the Man in the Moon (_Alsatian Folk Tale—Christmas
Story—Ethics, teaching honesty_) 203
The Discontented Pig (_Thuringian Folk Tale—Ethics, teaching
contentment_) 204
The Bat and His Partners (_Old Bavarian Folk Tale—Helpful in
Nature Study_) 208
Brier Rose (_Wonder Tale_) 209
The Coat of All Colors (_Thuringian Wonder Tale_) 212
The Poor Man and the Rich Man (_Folk Tale—Ethics, teaching
kindness_) 218
The Silver Cones (_Ethics—Geography_) 222
The Forget-Me-Not (_Thuringian Folk Tale—Helpful in Nature
Study_) 226
The Little Stepmother (_Thuringian Folk Tale—Nature Study_) 227
The Rabbit and the Easter Eggs (_Bavarian Folk Tale_) 228
The Easter Eggs (_Ethics_) 229
Prince Unexpected (_Slavic Wonder Tale_) 239
The Greedy Cobbler (_Welsh Folk Tale—Ethics, teaching
contentment_) 251
The Story of a Salmon (_Science_) 255
The Pigeons of Venice (_History_) 263
The Coming of the Wonder Tree (_Geography—Nature Study_) 269
The Gift of the Gnomes (_Geography—Ethics_) 274
The Duty That Wasn’t Paid (_Biography—Music—Ethics_) 278
Wilhelmina’s Wooden Shoes (_Biography—Art Teaching_) 283
The Lady of Stavoren (_Geography—Ethics_) 289
The Luck Boat of Lake Geneva (_Geography_) 295
Why the Japanese Love the Stork (_Geography_) 296
Why Grizzly Bear Goes on All Fours (_Indian Folk
Tale—Geography—Ethics_) 299
The Luck Boy of Toy Valley (_Geography—Ethics—Manual Training_) 302
The Emperor’s Vision (_Medieval Legend—Ethics_) 306
The Shepherd Who Turned Back (_Ethics_) 311
The Pet Raven (_Geography—Ethics_) 317
Jussieu and the Heliotrope (_Science—Nature Study_) 325
The Fall of London Bridge (_History_) 326
How They Came to Have Kite Day in China (_Physical Education_) 330
The Story of a Stone (_Science_) 331
LIST OF STORIES BY MONTHS
FIRST GRADE: September to June 341
SECOND GRADE: September to June 345
THIRD GRADE: September to June 348
FOURTH GRADE: September to June 352
FIFTH GRADE: September to June 356
SIXTH GRADE: September to June 360
SEVENTH GRADE: September to June 363
EIGHTH GRADE: September to June 367
COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY 371
INDEX 389
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
The story is a phase of communication—the instinctive tendency to signal
and transmit feelings and ideas and to respond to such expressions—and
communication is associated with the social complex of instincts and
emotions as indicated by these responses. Through the power of social
sympathy in this complex, curiosity and the imagination are brought
under the sway of communication, especially in the story. Indeed, the
psychology of the story reveals how deeply social sympathy influences
the imagination and controls curiosity. The primitive side of this
social sympathy is seen in the responses of social animals to the calls
of their kind, in the rush of dogs and men to the cries of battle. Its
power over the imagination is shown in the swaying of the spectator to
the movements of the athlete, his ejaculations and his cries of distress
or delight. Through sympathy in imagination the spectator enters the
contest. Further, so socially minded are we, and so dependent upon
social guidance, that curiosity is nowhere so keen, nor the imagination
so active, as in the communication of a life situation. Any incident or
accumulation of incidents that we call a plot in the experience of an
individual or group of individuals, grips the mind. This explains the
fascination of the story. Gossip and scandal are the less worthy forms.
The novel is exalted gossip or scandal; the drama the same acted out.
They all feed the tremendous hunger for insight into life. They unroll
the curtain on the content of life, or some phase of life. Hence the
story is the natural form for revealing life.
Communication, like life, may be either serious or frivolous; hence
the story carries both functions. It pictures or expresses life in
both phases. But the form of the story itself is pleasurable; and thus
story-telling may degenerate into mere amusement. This possibly has led
to both its abuse and its neglect.
The fact that the story is so enjoyable to children has led teachers and
parents to use it merely as amusement, irrespective of content, or even
of artistic form. This tendency has been met by publishers. As proof,
note the books exhibited at Christmas time in any bookshop. They show
the enormous amount of trash set up in book form for child consumption.
This is a more serious danger than the trash read by adults, because they
are food for hungry minds at the growing age. The importance is shown
of selecting stories according to recognized criteria. While the child
enjoys the story, he has no judgment of values in the story other than
its pleasure-giving qualities. As judgment is a product of education, so
judging values is an adult function; the adult must study all stories,
but not tell all stories. The story-teller must analyze the story plot,
criticize the values, select and adapt stories to age periods and to
other child needs. This task Mrs. Cather has performed in her book.
The mere fact that the story amuses has caused a neglect of its larger
functions in education. This is due to the traditional attitude toward
the pleasurable in education. Education is life, and synonymous with
the joys and griefs of life; but the traditions of the school when
it was a place simply to master the three R’s, and the traditions of
intellectualism, monkish asceticism, and Puritanism, have conspired to
perpetuate the idea of education as a “hard” process. That it is “hard”
is demonstrated by the vast number of children who dislike school and
drop out of it before finishing the grades, and by the small number
of those who go through its process and think of education and its
discipline with delight. Yet this is what all normal, vigorous children
should feel. There is probably no more profound or serious issue in
education or democracy—and democracy depends on education—than this
conflict between the advocates of a school process that is “hard” and the
advocates of a process that is “pleasurable.” The arguments exhibit the
two extremes in all such controversies: the advocates of “discipline,”
“iron,” “the bitter pill” on the one hand, and the advocates of “freedom”
and “enjoyment,”—really soft pedagogy and license,—on the other. The
truth, as is usually the case, lies between the two schools. Both are
right in part, and both are wrong in part. Both see an essential, and
both fail to see the reverse side of what each advocates. There is no
conflict between real discipline and real pleasure; they cannot be
separated in child life. This being so, the story is bound to take a
large place in the teaching of the future.
The story amuses, but its function is not merely to amuse. Pleasure is
not the aim of life, nor even its sole guide; it is an index of life,
especially in the young.
The point needs to be emphasized that the story is the carrier, always
has been the carrier, and will remain the natural carrier of racial
tradition or information and ideals. The story in education has two
functions: (1) it is the molder of ideals, and (2) it is the illuminator
of facts.
(1) The highest and most difficult achievement in educational effort is
the establishment of standards or ideals that function in judgment and
behavior. The place of the story in moral education has been emphasized
by many writers. Its place in developing an appreciation of artistic
forms in language, in music, and in the graphic arts is splendidly
illustrated in this book.
Appreciation is an emotional response, primarily instinctive, but
developed through experience and according to high or low artistic
standards by social approval or disapproval. In the emotional response
lies interest and in the character of the emotional response lies the
character of the interest. The interest may be crude, vulgar, or vicious,
or it may be ideal, but in either case it is a product of developed
emotional habits. In the life of the child this emotional response
precedes the intellectual judgment of artistic values which comes later
and only through contrast and comparison, and the former is vastly more
important in social significance for the pleasure of the mass than the
latter. This development of the artistic emotional response may be
cleverly guided through the story, as Mrs. Cather shows, and she gives a
wealth of suggestions for the use of the teacher.
But the story itself is a form of artistic expression and thus subject
to the application of standardizing judgments. A good story must be
judged by a double standard. It may be good in the sense that it is well
told—and well told means simply that the incident or plot is related in
sequence, with such emphasis and form of language that it grips the human
instinctive response to the dramatic; or it may be good in the sense
that it carries a good content in meaning or ideal. These two standards
may not, frequently do not, coincide. A story may be so told that it is
most fascinating, and yet the content be mere rubbish or even vicious; or
the content may be correct and the telling so poorly done that it kills
interest.
Many stories are told because of their “beauty” of form, where the
content is not true. Some such stories are valuable because of the
standardizing sentiments they carry, but truth is as important at least
as the æsthetic. The human intellect evolved to interpret meanings and
progressively perfect behavior adjustments. Each age of racial experience
brings on its new interpretations, and broadly, each age makes advances
upon that which preceded. Old theories fall, new truths arise; but
old theories hold sway over the imagination of the masses long after
the leaders have accepted higher truths because the old is well told
while the new lacks the poetic expression of the artist. Literature is
well-told information, yet under the guise of literature goblins and
superstitions and worn-out theories parade in the imagination and thus
mold ideals and behavior.
The problem of the professional story-teller of the future is to tell the
best information of the age in as fascinating a form as the old myths
and fables are now told after years of repetition. Only in this way can
contemporary popular opinion be kept abreast of the scientific truth of
the time, instead of dragging along in the superstitions of the past.
Some stories are told though untrue, because they “develop the
imagination,” but this by itself is a dangerous criterion. The function
of the imagination is to reconstruct the world in mental terms which will
guide behavior. The functioning of the imagination in any kind of images
will develop “power,” but the power may be detrimental individually and
socially if the images cause crooked thinking. Straight thinking depends
on the imagination—on the kind of emotionalized images which habitually
arise in any thought situation or problem. Just so far as stories are
untrue and without great moral value, yet are fascinatingly told, so
far do they encourage untrue imagining and emotional attitudes, and
therefore untrue thinking. And inasmuch as the emotional response to
the single interpretative concept, the single vision of life, is vastly
stronger through tradition than the interest in the discovery of complex
relationships,—and truth comes finally only through the latter,—the
emotionalized habits of imagination in interpretation are profoundly
important for democracy.
Democracy cannot exist with a population of fuzzy thinkers.
Story-telling, like all educational effort, must develop the imagination
in mental terms that will function in life today.
(2) The story is an illuminator of facts. The child gets his information
by activities in relation to the environment, by exploration,
observation, experimentation, with the everlasting play of the
interpretative processes, and by responding to and accepting or
rejecting the communicated interpretations put upon phenomena by his
social group. In this process of interpretation there is the immediate
environment which can be sensed, but is understood only through its
reconstruction in the imagination, largely in linguistic terms;
and the remote environment which cannot be sensed and which can be
understood only as it is built in the imagination as an extension of the
reconstructed sensed environment. In these reconstructive processes the
story is the most powerful correlating and illuminating educational force
we have, as may be indicated by a brief analysis.
The activities of the school curriculum dealing with the environment
have two natural foci of interest for the child. (_a_) The
civic-geographical-historical complex (when rightly organized just one
subject) and (_b_) the physical-biological complex, which is now coming
to be called “general science.” For the child these two groups of the
environmental activities cover the whole of adult science, philosophy,
and religion, and both require a tremendous reconstructive functioning of
the imagination.
(_a_) The first group is a new coming correlation which naturally must
carry with it organized communication or the larger share of language
and literature. The investigation of the local social environment is the
basis of all “civics,” “geography,” and “history.” It expands as civics.
When the child projects his interpretations of any human activity into
another environment so that he is reconstructing in his imagination the
life habits and customs of the people in relation to the physical and
biological characteristics of the country, he is studying geography.
When he goes backward in time in this process, he is studying history.
In this concentric widening of the intellectual horizon concerning human
life and its relationships to the environment, the imagination must
reconstruct a world which it cannot sense. The facts may be gained from
pictures, maps, descriptions, but to become functional in thought in any
other than in a mere commercial sense, the reconstruction must touch the
emotions so that the life and conditions of living of the people will
be felt. When felt the life will be dwelt upon in imagination, and when
dwelt upon in imagination it will function in the life activities of the
child. Giving this vivid, felt insight into the life conditions of other
people is the function of the story. Through the hunger to feel life the
story reveals life.
(_b_) The story also functions for children in the interpretation of the
physical-biological environment or “general science.”
Between six and fourteen years of age is the neglected period for
science, and it is the age when the story may function in the biggest
way as a natural educational tool. Yet so absorbed are school men in
the problem of drilling children in the dissected elements of the
written language that they do not even understand one of the two chief
characteristics of child nature at this age,—the rapidly expanding
curiosity concerning nature. It is the age of the first crude control of
the “scientific instinct,” the tendency to experiment and explore. It
is the age for fixing the questioning habit and building a common-sense
confidence in and familiarity with nature. These results follow from the
logical processes involved in the activities, not from being presented
with the formalized and logical results of adult science. The child
will have none of this latter if he can help it; he wants to do his own
experimenting. In this process again the story gives the larger insight.
The child acquires facts by experimentation, observation, exploration,
but the larger meanings and relationships require imaginative
reconstruction. The child can observe the fish or the fly at different
stages of their development, but the story of the life history of the
fish or fly gives what observation cannot supply. It is as fascinating as
any fairy tale when told with the same consideration for dramatic form,
and the story is true besides. The child cannot understand evolution as
presented by Darwin, or by the teacher of biology in the high schools;
but the child even of eight revels in the stories that carry the facts
of evolution, and thus he gains a right feeling towards the wonderful
meaning of the progress of natural things, which makes later thinking
true and easy. So strong is the response to the story that even the
history of physical things when set in a natural story form, stimulates.
The fairy tales of the future will be well-told stories from our sciences
or human life and nature, the two natural centers of interest in the
environment, and we may expect as results in public opinion a broader
common sense and a lessened gullibility. In this organization of science
and modern thought in story form for its larger use in education the
professional story-teller has still a great unfinished task to perform.
Its beginnings are in this book, and Mrs. Cather is already at work on
a broader compilation of materials for a later volume. In this larger
functioning of the story the old fairy tales and myths will take their
place as historical data to give comparative insight into the beliefs of
people in the past, a sympathetic understanding of their limitations in
knowledge, and an appreciation of our privileges in civilization, due
largely to the struggles of the past.
CLARK W. HETHERINGTON
EDUCATING BY STORY-TELLING
PART ONE
STORY-TELLING AND THE ARTS OF EXPRESSION—ESTABLISHING STANDARDS
CHAPTER ONE
THE PURPOSE AND AIM OF STORY-TELLING
Ever since the beginning of things the story-teller has been a personage
of power, an individual welcomed by young and old alike. Hailed as a joy
bringer and heeded as an oracle, his tales have been the open sesame to
admit him to any throng and his departure has always been attended with
regret. During the Middle Ages he was a privileged character, free to
wander at will into camp or court. The Piso manuscript in the museum at
Budapest tells of the solicitous effort made by Ladislaus of Hungary to
secure safe-conduct through Bohemia and Austria for a favorite narrator,
and many other old chronicles attest to the fact that in France, Germany,
Italy, and the British Isles passports were given to minstrels and
raconteurs when no one else could obtain them. Long before this period,
during the nomadic existence of the race, the mightiest men of the tribe
were the chieftain and the story-teller, the one receiving homage because
of his ability to vanquish his adversaries in battle, the other because
of his skill in entertaining his fellows as they huddled around the fire
at night. Each ability was believed to be evidence of divine gifts, and
the possessor of each was revered as being a little higher than a mortal,
a little lower than a god.
Primitive man, like civilized man, was fond of power, and realizing that
his talents made him mighty, the narrator exercised them in such a
manner as to promote their development. Every emotional response on the
part of his hearers served as a key to unlock doors into the land of his
desire, and as he listened to exclamations of approval, condemnation, or
delight, he saw ways of arousing these emotions to even greater degrees
of intensity and, possessing an elemental love of the spectacular, made
the most of his opportunity. Thus he evolved from a crude declaimer
into something of an artist. As the race emerged from a barbaric into
a pastoral state, he grew to be more than an entertainer; he imparted
knowledge to the young by keeping alive the tribal traditions.
On the Asiatic highlands, before the Aryan migration, it was the
story-teller who preserved the tales of the fathers, the nature
myths that were primitive man’s explanation of the things he did not
understand. The journey of the sun across the heavens, the shifting of
clouds from one fantastic form to another, the chromatic skies of sunrise
and sunset, and the starry firmament of night aroused his curiosity and
awakened his awe. He wondered about them just as children today wonder
about them, and just as the twentieth-century child questions his mother,
so he questioned one whom he deemed wiser than himself. This consulted
oracle gave as an explanation something that out of his own wondering
and puzzling had grown into a vague belief, and consequently the clouds
that presaged showers came to be regarded as heavenly cows from whose
exuberant udders came the rains that refreshed the earth; stormy oceans
and rugged mountains with ravines beset with perils held giants that
avenged and destroyed; while the sun, a beneficent creature that drove
away the monster of darkness, and all the saving forces of nature, were
metamorphosed in the fancy of these early men into protecting heroes and
divinities.
As generation succeeded generation and the young received their allotment
of lore from the old, these stories became fixed so firmly in the minds
of the people that they were carried with them at the scattering of the
tribes, told and retold in the new-found homes, and modified to suit
conditions of life in strange lands the wanderers came to inhabit; and
they still survive as present-day fairy tales. There are various theories
of how these old beliefs came to be disseminated, how it happened that
tales supposed to be indigenous to Finland or Madagascar are found in
slightly different dress among the tribes of Central Africa and in other
sections of the world remote from each other; but no matter how much
folklorists disagree as to the process through which the tales evolved
to their present form, they do not differ as to their significance, and
whether they accept the Aryan theory promulgated by Max Müller or the
totemistic theory of Andrew Lang, they unite in a belief that these
ancient tales represent the religion of primitive man, a religion growing
out of fear of the unknown.
Always it was by the lips of the story-teller that the legends were kept
alive. It was his mission to teach children the tales their fathers
knew, and as the race evolved toward civilization he gave them something
besides nature myths. He recounted and reiterated the achievements of
the heroes of his people until youths who heard were fired with desire
to emulate. Because he was deemed a man of supernal powers, his words
were believed; consequently he created the ideals of the age in which he
lived, and just as his own standards were fine or base, so the ideals
for which he was responsible came to be high or low. Fortunately for the
world, however, these old-time narrators were wiser than their fellows.
They were poets and dreamers who saw life through eyes vision clear.
They glorified virtue and deprecated vice, taught that right triumphs
over wrong and that sinning brings inevitable punishment, and explained
in a crude way the workings of the law of compensation. They fired
men to achievement just as they fired boys with desire to emulate the
heroes of whom they told, and as centuries passed and they grew in skill
and power, their tales came to be the inspiration of some of the most
thrilling chapters in the annals of man. Alexander the Great declared
that the lays of a wandering bard, Homer, made him thirst for conquest.
In Germany, in the twelfth century, the influence of a penniless gleeman,
Walther von der Vogelweide, was greater than that of the Pope. There was
no more puissant man in Ireland when Ireland was in its golden day and
Tara in its glory than the low-born minstrel, Brian of Fermanagh; and the
Crusades, which recreated Europe by the introduction of Eastern culture
and the breaking down of old traditions, might never have been undertaken
but for tales of defilement of holy places from the lips of Peter the
Hermit. Storytellers every one of them, swaying their fellows and making
history, subjects of kings and nobles, yet often mightier than the
masters who held their destinies in their hands.
The power of the narrator did not die with chivalry. As recently as
during the middle of the last century the clergy of Scotland united in
an effort to suppress story-telling in the Highlands because it kept
alive beliefs of pagan origin, beliefs so deep-seated that the combined
eloquence of prelates could not eradicate them, and the strength of
the church was impaired because of the sheltering of these waifs of
the past. To this day there are peasants in Germany who doubt not that
every year at harvest time Charlemagne walks beside the Rhine under the
midnight moon and blesses the vineyard region of Winkel and Ingelheim.
In central Switzerland are hundreds of simple folk who believe that on
the summit where they met to take the oath that fired the land against
Austria, sleep the immortal “Brothers of the Grütli,” and that they will
slumber on until the liberty of Helvetia is imperiled; while in the
southern portion of that mountain land the country folk are certain that
prosperity will be the lot of every husbandman when the swan-drawn luck
boat returns to Lake Geneva. Why? Because their fathers in the far-off
days believed these tales; because they have come down to them by the
lips of the story-teller, and wherever there is no written language,
wherever the people are too unlettered to read what is written, or where
they live in isolated communities and mingle little with the outside
world, they still believe the legends. They love to hear them told and
retold, and nothing brings so much pleasure on a winter night or in a
summer gloaming as the complete family circle and the father or uncle or
stranger from another community sitting in the midst repeating the old,
old tales.
As it is with unlettered peasants today, as it was with tribesmen in
primitive times and with the great in medieval castle halls, it still
is with the child. He lives over the experience of his fathers on the
Asiatic highlands and sits entranced listening to the record of it in
stories. The element of suspense, the wondering what will happen next,
holds him in a viselike grip, and the story hour is to him a period of
joy. The here and now disappears as the narrator lifts his invisible
wand, and the listener journeys by roads of never ceasing wonders into
lands of enchantment. According to the skill of the raconteur, and the
vividness with which he himself sees and feels the pictures he strives to
portray, he makes his listeners see and feel them, rejoicing in the good
fortune and sympathizing in the sorrows of the just and righteous; and
they not only follow along the highroad where he leads them, but roam off
into pleasant bypaths where the fancy has free play.
There is no age or racial limit to this story love. Representing, as it
does, an emotional hunger that is the human heritage, it is universal.
Several years ago at Five Points in New York City, a settlement worker
discovered that a very effective means of gaining the confidence of
immigrant women was to tell fairy tales, and recently some of the most
gratifying results obtained in the Telegraph Hill district of San
Francisco were made possible by a leader there gaining the good will of
a group of Sicilian hoodlums because she knew the plot of _Jerusalem
Delivered_ and told the story magnetically and well. It was like a breeze
from their native island, where they had heard it from the lips of the
village story-teller and seen it pictured on the market carts, and the
fact that she knew something that had fascinated them gained their
sympathy and coöperation. Those who have even a limited knowledge of
child life know that before the babe can read he delights in listening to
a nursery tale, and that even after he journeys into bookland he is more
interested in the story told him than in the one he reads for himself.
Why? Because the voice and personality of the speaker make it alive
and vital. Because, as Seumas MacManus says, “The spoken word is the
remembered word.”
The tales heard during childhood become fixed and lasting possessions.
They stay with the hearer through the years, and because their ideals
become his ideals, do much toward shaping his character. The child who
hears many good stories and unconsciously learns to distinguish between
the tawdry and the real, reads good stories when a boy and becomes a man
for whom sensational best sellers have no charm.
There is much talk about the vicious tastes of the youth of this
generation, and unfavorable comparisons between them and their elders
at a similar age are frequently made. There is some foundation for this
belief, but it is not the fault of the children that it is so. Because of
the abundance and cheapness of books, many of them of questionable merit,
boys and girls are left to browse unguided, and just as the range man is
to blame if his hungry herd strays into a loco patch and eats of noxious
weeds when he fails to drive it to the place of wholesome herbage, so it
is the fault of parents and teachers if their charges acquire a taste for
sensational yarns instead of for good literature. The very hunger that
impels them toward that which contaminates, if satisfied in a wholesome
manner would make them lovers of the best, and the reason why children
become devourers of “yellow” stories is because they have failed to
stumble upon a more fascinating and less dangerous highway, and no one
has led them to it. There is no surer way of keeping a boy from becoming
a devotee of the funny page of the Sunday supplement or a follower of
“Nick Carter” than that of studying his tastes and giving him tales from
good literature that will satisfy them. There is no more powerful means
to use in diverting a child from the undesirable to the desirable than
that of throwing a searchlight upon the attractions of the latter and
presenting them to him through joyful experience. The narrator’s art is
in truth a magic luminary, an unfailing means of bringing hidden beauties
to sight and causing them to be loved because they give pleasure.
For a number of years it has been conceded that story-telling is of
value in the kindergarten and primary school, but little provision
has been made for it in the educational scheme for the older child.
Gradually, however, educators in America have come to realize what their
European colleagues realized long ago, that the narrator’s art can be
a powerful element in the mental, moral, and religious development of
the boy and girl and can mean as much to the adolescent child as to the
tiny tot. Consequently they are now giving it an honored place. The
story period has become a part of the program of every well-regulated
library. Teachers of elementary and grammar grades are recognizing its
value in the classroom, and in some states story-telling is included
in the curriculum. Each year brings new texts and collections from the
publishers, until it seems that the art so much honored in the past is
coming again into its own.
Yet, with all the interest that is manifested throughout the country,
story-telling is not doing its greatest, most vital work, because so
little thought is given to the selection of material, so little study
to the response of children who hear the tales and the effect upon
them. Before even half of its possibilities can be realized, those who
tell stories must know the story interests of childhood and must choose
materials, not only because they are beautiful in theme and language and
embody high ideals, but because they are fitted to the psychological
period of the child who is to hear them. They must realize that the
purpose of story-telling is not merely to entertain, although it does
entertain, but that in addition to delighting young listeners there must
be a higher aim, of which the narrator never loses sight. Every tale
selected must contribute something definite toward the mental, moral, or
spiritual growth of the child, just as each pigment chosen by an artist
must blend into the picture to help make a beautiful and perfect whole.
The golden age of childhood will come and fear that young people’s tastes
are being vitiated will die out when parents and teachers realize that
much of the noblest culture of the past has been given through the
medium of the story, and that it can be given through this medium now and
in the future, because there is almost no type of information the child
should receive that he will not receive joyously through this means,
and with deep, lasting results. Story-telling planned and carried out
to fit conditions will help to solve many of the problems that confront
educators today. Besides developing the emotional nature and giving moral
and religious instruction, it will intensify the interest in history,
geography, nature study, manual training, and domestic science, awaken
an appreciation of literature, art, and music, enrich the child’s powers
of discrimination, and teach him to distinguish between the cheap and
ephemeral and the great and lasting. It will help to eliminate much of
what he considers the drudgery of school life and give him information
that will fit him for broad, sympathetic, useful living.
This does not mean that the teacher is to do all the work, thereby fixing
children in habits of idleness, nor does it mean the addition of an extra
subject to an already overcrowded curriculum. It simply means leading the
child to do things for himself because of the incentive that interest
gives. It means illuminating the formal subjects and sending pupils to
them with greater eagerness.
In order to accomplish these ends, story-telling must be unmarred by
creaking machinery, and it must be sympathetic. The narrator must rise
above the level of a mere lesson giver and approach the plane of the
artist, which he can do only by giving an artist’s preparation to his
work. The old-time raconteur swayed the destiny of nations because he
was an artist, because he himself believed in the message he brought.
He put heart and labor into his work, which gave his words a sincerity
that never failed to convince. So too must the present-day narrator
believe in the power of the story and in the dignity of his work, and he
must choose material with thought and judgment instead of snatching it
up indifferently, thinking that any story will do if only it holds the
interest. The racial tales should be given freely in the psychological
period to which they belong, but not the racial tales only. There is
much modern material close to present-day life and conditions, without
which the child’s education is not complete, and it must be classified
and graded. This entails reference work for which the non-professional
has neither time nor opportunity, and to this fact is due much of the
valueless story-telling of today. Experience with hundreds of parents,
teachers, and workers with children has brought conviction that a belief
in the value of story-telling as an educational tool is sincere and
general, but that sources of classified material are not available to the
average child leader. It is partly to meet this need that the present
work is planned.
CHAPTER TWO
THE STORY INTERESTS OF CHILDHOOD
A. RHYTHMIC PERIOD
If the work of the narrator is to be of real value, he must have a
knowledge of the story interests of childhood, for otherwise the talent
of a Scheherazade, careful preparation, and an extensive repertoire will
fail to produce the desired results, because a narrative that deals with
mythical heroes cannot make a lasting impression upon a child who craves
animal and primitive wonder tales, even though it be written in language
and style suited to his understanding. The heart or framework of the
story must be made up of events that are fraught with interest in his
particular period of mental development, and must introduce personages
with whom he would like to companion, and whose movements he will follow
with approval, pity, condemnation, or rejoicing. Under such conditions
the boys or girls or dogs who contribute to the action of the tale are
not strangers out of a book, but mean as much to him as the people and
animals he knows, and because they do mean much he lives the tale. It
becomes part of him and he of the story. His emotional nature is stirred,
his power of evaluating is strengthened, and some of the foundation
blocks of character are laid.
Naturally the question arises, “How is one to know which tales to choose,
when there is such a wealth of stories and such a diversity of interests?
Is there any rule or guide to keep the conscientious but untrained worker
from the pitfalls and show him the right road from the wrong?” Such a
guide there is—the psychological axiom that the child between birth and
maturity passes through several periods or stages of mental growth which
determines his interests.
The little child, the one from the age of about three to six, is
interested in familiar things. He has not yet reached the period of
fancy during which he wanders into a world of make-believe and revels
with fairies and nixies, but dwells in a realm of realism. His attention
is centered on the things and the personages he knows,—the mother, the
father, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cows, chickens, and children of his
own age,—and consequently he enjoys stories and jingles about these
creatures. He chuckles over the accounts of their merry experiences and
sympathizes with them in their misfortunes, because they lie close to his
interests. This is why Mother Goose has been and is beloved of little
children. The rhymes do not introduce griffins and ogres and monsters
that must be seen through eyes of fancy to be seen at all, but abound in
accounts of creatures he has beheld from his windows and associated with
in his home. Mother Hubbard and her unfortunate dog, the crooked man and
his grotesque cat, the pigs that went to market, and the old woman in the
shoe lie close to his world because he knows dogs and cats and pigs and
kind old women, and therefore the rhymes and jingles that portray them
are dear to his heart.
Especially fascinating in this period of early childhood are stories
that contain much repetition. “The Old Woman and Her Pig,” “Little Red
Hen,” “Chicken Little,” “The Gingerbread Man,” and “The Three Billy
Goats” delight little people, and although they have heard them again and
again they always watch eagerly for the “Fire, fire, burn stick,” “I saw
it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a piece of it fell on my
tail,” and are disappointed if the well-known expressions are omitted.
The repetition strengthens the dramatic element and helps to make the
pictures vivid, and the child loves to experience again the thrill he
felt upon first listening to the tale.
Stories introducing the cries and calls of animals are much loved at this
period. The squealing of the pig, the barking of the dog, the clucking of
the hen, and the quacking of the duck give charm to a narrative because
the child has heard those sounds in his own garden, in his own dooryard,
and along the road, and knowing them, is interested in them. This is the
secret of the success of many kindergarten tales that fall far below the
requirements of a good story. Often almost devoid of plot and lacking in
suspense element, still they hold the attention because of the animal
cries and calls they contain. The little hearer chuckles as the baby pig
squeals, the mother pig grunts, or the dog barks, and listens delightedly
to what, without these cries and calls, would not interest him.
This too is why the racial tales fascinate today just as they fascinated
five hundred years ago. They have a clearly defined plot that of itself
would hold the interest, they introduce familiar characters, contain much
repetition, and abound in animal cries and calls.
Broadly speaking, then, for the period of early childhood, the time
of realism which extends from the age of about three to five or six,
the narrator should choose stories of animal and child life, those
which introduce sounds peculiar to the characters and which abound in
repetition.