is effective with children of all ages, and often leads to the reading
of books that otherwise would never be opened. Sometimes the objection
is made that it is wrong to substitute the story of a work for the work
itself, a statement no thinking person will gainsay. But this does
not mean substitution. It means whetting the appetite until the child
hungers for the thing you want him to have. Instead of telling him
what he should read, arouse his curiosity to the point where he wants
to read it, and the desired result will follow. Fifty years ago it was
safe to give a boy or a girl a beautiful piece of literature and tell
him he ought to read it, but it is not safe now, not because there is
anything wrong with the children of our time, but because conditions
are different. Books were rare and costly then, and young people
read whatever came to hand. Today books are cheap and plentiful, and
present-day literature plunges directly into the complications of the
story. People are in a hurry to know what it is all about, because of
the spirit of the age. There is less leisure now than there was half a
century ago, as there is more competition, and results must be realized
more rapidly than our forefathers realized them. Consequently we travel
faster, get rich faster, and move more speedily in every way. Present-day
literature reflects present-day spirit, and the story must begin with
the opening sentence. Boys and girls simply will not go through pages
of introductions and descriptions before striking the plot of the tale,
no matter how beautiful those introductions and descriptions may be.
They want books that get somewhere from the beginning. So the problem
confronts all who are interested in the education of children: “How can
we make them as eager to read Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray as they are
to read Jack London and Phillips Oppenheim? How can they be made to go
as gladly to Bulwer Lytton as they go to the Henty books?” By means
of story-telling. Give them an idea of the plots of the masters of
literature, enough to whet the desire to know more about them.
It is not sufficient just to tell the story, because it was not the plots
of these writers that made them great artists. It was their manner of
handling their plots, their delineation of character, the philosophy
and human wisdom they put into the mouths of their heroes, and the boy
or girl who does not become acquainted with these great creators during
school days is likely never to know them, because he forms a taste for
reading of a more ephemeral nature, and he may go through life a devourer
of books, yet be only half educated.
Why is it that so many young people never look at the English classics
after they leave high school, and would rather spend a morning at hard
labor than in reading _As You Like It_ or _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_?
Because too much attention was given to the dissecting process when they
studied these plays. Instead of being taught to see the beautiful and
finished creation of some master, they were made to see the skeleton and
to pull it to pieces. Some teachers assign a certain number of pages or
paragraphs or stanzas for a lesson, and the pupils look up the words in
the dictionary, point out the figures of speech, and scan the lines.
Sometimes the teacher reads the assignment when it is made. Sometimes
children dramatize it after they have torn it into shreds, or write a
paraphrase. But the heart and soul of the masterpiece, the sheer beauty
of it, are considered least of all, and students end by heartily hating
something that they might have enjoyed and loved. Yet people wonder why
the average American has so little appreciation of good literature,
and think something is wrong with young folk who, after a high-school
course in English, will read nothing but popular novels. There is nothing
whatsoever the matter with the boys and girls. They simply follow the
bent of all human beings and steer from the unpleasant toward the
pleasant. They go to the books of the day that they can understand,
because much of our great literature, presented as it is, means nothing
to them. Less fortunate than youths of fifty years ago, they are not
forced to read good books if they read at all. There are verdant, if less
beautiful, meadows on every side where they may browse, and into them
they go.
It is infinitely better that a child’s school life provide him with a
capacity for the enjoyment of literature than that he have a technical
knowledge of a few pieces of literature, because the latter endows him
with a narrow, academic viewpoint, while the former makes possible a
future growth, without a capacity for which life must be narrow and
one-sided. A boy or girl may know that Shakespeare wrote _Twelfth Night_
or _Macbeth_, that Milton created “The Hymn to the Nativity” or Shelley
“The Skylark,” be able to paraphrase each and analyze the sentences that
comprise them, and not be a bit better fitted for life than he would be
without that knowledge. But he is better equipped for life if he has
acquired a capacity for the enjoyment of literature, so that to read a
great book gives him pleasure or causes him to respond with sympathy, and
the English teacher who does not develop this capacity in children has
failed in his function.
The approach to the great field of literature must be through specific
examples, just as the approach to an understanding of art or architecture
must be through the canvases of Raphael, Cimabue, or Giotto, or the
temples that were the triumphs of Egyptian, Babylonian, or Hellenic
builders. But if they are to be enjoyed, acquaintance with these specific
examples must be made in a pleasurable manner. They first must be beheld
in a perspective that gives glimpses of them as complete and beautiful
wholes, and not through the detailed workmanship of architrave or abacus
or by focusing the attention on the massing of figures according to
square or triangular outline. And just as the understanding and enjoyment
of one great structure or painting give added interest to every other
one, so, in the realm of literature, each masterpiece enjoyed gives
capacity for the enjoyment of every other masterpiece met with in the
future. Therefore the story, because it is a means of flashing the entire
structure on the screen and making it possible for children to see the
completed whole in all its beauty, is the English teacher’s most valuable
tool.
Take _Evangeline_ as an example. Most children leave school knowing that
Longfellow wrote that poem, and that Evangeline lost her lover on the
wedding day and spent the remainder of her life seeking him. But you
cannot coax them to read the poem again because of the memory of the
time when they studied it. And the pity of it is that there is no work
of American literature so appealing to boys and girls in the adolescent
period as _Evangeline_, if it is presented wisely.
Before they are asked to study it, if the story of the Acadian girl is
told sympathetically and feelingly they are touched by its pathos and
fired by the idealism of its characters, and they feel the charm of life
in the quaint old village of Grand Pré. If, before they are told to read
it, they have gone with the heroine through the magic of the narrator’s
picturing, in her wanderings over mountain and lowland, into Indian camp
and sequestered mission, living among strange peoples and sleeping by
strange fires, they will read it with enthusiasm. It will become a joy
instead of a burden, because they will have felt something of what was in
the heart of the poet who wrote it, and not merely what appeared on the
printed page.
Besides the main thread of the story, there are many sub-stories that,
if told in connection with the poem, will add to the child’s enjoyment
and understanding of it. Sometimes a name is rich in story material, yet
often it is passed over with nothing more than a definition found in the
pronouncing gazetteer, and a golden opportunity is lost.
Take, for instance, the line, “Now in the Tents of Grace of the gentle
Moravian missions.” There is a footnote in most editions stating, “This
refers to the Moravian mission of Gnädenhütten.” But what does that
signify to children, since there were many missions in those early days?
But if they are told of how the Moravians came from the distant German
mountains to plant the tree of their faith in the Western wilds, they
grow interested. They are fascinated as the tale goes on, picturing how
these simple folk founded a mission in the woods of Ohio, which they
named “Gnädenhütten” or “Tents of Grace,” and telling how a massacre
occurred there in 1790, not savages killing off whites, but a band of
marauding British troops slaughtering Christianized Indians as they
toiled peacefully in their cornfields. Then, as Evangeline roams over the
Southwest, into the bayou country of Louisiana, if pictures of the early
life there are painted vividly by the story-teller, if she gives some
of the events of old Creole days, the children will look forward to the
_Evangeline_ period.
This same method will add enjoyment to the study of other pieces of
literature. _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, aside from the main plot,
is rich in stories from the Bible. The children should look up these
allusions, but the teacher should put life into them by giving the
story. In fact, there is no piece of literature studied below the high
school, or even during the early part of the high-school course, that
cannot be presented with splendid results through the story-telling
method. The concrete precedes the abstract in the order in which
selections are considered, those through which a story thread runs being
given in advance of the essay or treatise. By making the most of this
story thread, literature study will become pleasurable and bring splendid
response from the children. It requires effort and preparation, but it
pays. It is worth much to the teacher who loves good literature, to look
back over the years and think of the children she has led to appreciate
and enjoy it. It is a tremendous satisfaction to have boys come back
long after leaving her schoolroom and seek her out, because through
her they learned to know something of the comfort that is to be found
in good old books. One teacher, speaking of her experience, said: “It
made all the effort seem richly worth while, when a broad-shouldered,
sun-burned man went three hundred miles out of his way to see me on a
home visit to America, and thank me for having led him to enjoy poetry.”
As a boy he became intensely interested in _The Lady of the Lake_ because
his teacher gave the stories of Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu and of the
clan life of the Highlands, and a pocket edition of Scott was a source
of comfort to him during a surveying expedition in the wilds of West
Australia, and took away the loneliness of nights spent by a camp fire
with no companions save the native woodmen. He had learned to know Scott
during his boyhood, and the capacity for enjoyment acquired through
that association was a priceless possession to the man. If more teachers
realized that story-telling is a direct road to the understanding of
literature, and that it has its place in grammar and high-school grades
as much as in the kindergarten, there would be less drudgery for them and
more satisfying results.
SOME AUTHORS AND SELECTIONS THAT CAN BE PRESENTED THROUGH THE
STORY-TELLING METHOD
BROWNING: Hervé Riel (Give picture of life of sailors on the
Breton coast. Hervé Riel was so accustomed to taking fishing
boats through the passage that the piloting of the ship did
not seem any feat to him); How They Brought the Good News from
Ghent to Aix; An Incident of the French Camp; The Pied Piper of
Hamelin (Tell how the poet came to write this work—to entertain
a child who was visiting him).
BRYANT: The White-footed Deer; The Woodman and the Sandal Tree;
The Donkey and the Mocking Bird, and other poems from the
Spanish.
DICKENS: Little Nell (_Old Curiosity Shop_); Tiny Tim
(_Christmas Carol_); Nicholas Nickleby; David Copperfield, and
other child characters of Dickens.
GEORGE ELIOT: Maggie Tulliver Cutting her Hair, Maggie Running
Away to Live with the Gypsies, Tom and the Ferrets (_The Mill
on the Floss_); Silas Marner and Little Eppie (_Silas Marner_).
IRVING: Legend of Sleepy Hollow (_The Sketch Book_); The
Governor and the Notary (Other stories from _Tales from the
Alhambra_); The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Many
chapters in this contain fascinating stories, which if told to
the children will lead them to read the work); Rip Van Winkle
(_The Sketch Book_) (Tell also the German story of Peter Claus,
from which Irving drew his inspiration to write this tale; also
the Chinese story, “The Feast of Lanterns,” the hero of which
is an oriental Rip Van Winkle).
KINGSLEY: How They Took the Gold Train (_Westward Ho!_); Water
Babies; Hypatia.
LONGFELLOW: Evangeline; Courtship of Miles Standish; Hiawatha;
King Robert of Sicily; St. Francis’ Sermon to the Birds (Tell
story of St. Francis of Assisi); Paul Revere’s Ride; The
Emperor’s Bird’s Nest; Walther von der Vogelweide (In this
connection tell story of Walther and the Minnesingers. Story
can be found in _Pan and His Pipes, and Other Stories_, Victor
Talking Machine Company).
SOUTHEY: Inchcape Rock; Bishop Hatto and the Mouse Tower; The
Well of St. Keyne.
STEVENSON: Treasure Island; Kidnapped; Island Nights’
Entertainment.
TENNYSON: The Holy Grail (This poem is beyond the understanding
of boys and girls of grammar grades, or even early high-school
years, but they may be familiarized with portions of it, and
the Grail story is a wonderful one to give them. It should
include also the tale of “Parsifal” and “Lohengrin,” as related
by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Wagner).
This list is in no way comprehensive, but the wide-awake teacher will
find it suggestive of a much longer one, which is as much as the author
of a single text-book may hope for.
SOURCES OF MATERIAL TO LEAD TO AN APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE
LAMB, CHARLES and MARY: _Tales from Shakespeare_.
LANG, JEANIE: _Stories from Shakespeare Told to the Children_.
SWEETSER, KATE D.: _Boys and Girls from George Eliot_; _Boys
and Girls from Thackeray_; _Ten Boys from Dickens_.
SWINTON, WILLIAM, and CATHCART, GEORGE R.: _Book of Tales from
Fine Authors_.
CHAPTER NINE
STORY-TELLING TO AWAKEN AN APPRECIATION OF MUSIC
The public school aims not only to give boys and girls a training that
shall equip them with ability to gain a livelihood and provide for their
material wants, but to give them resources within themselves from which
to draw pleasure, broaden and deepen the emotional powers, enrich the
soul by endowing it with capacity to respond to the beautiful and fine,
and make them more sympathetic toward the joys and sorrows of their
fellows. That is why the curriculum includes a course in music, drawing,
and subjects that are branches of a great art. We do not expect to make
professional musicians or painters of all the children who receive
instruction, but aim to give the average child, the one who will grow
to be an average, ordinary man, an appreciation of the things that give
color and beauty to life and make him richer in mind and happier.
Taste is formed by what is heard in youth, and the child whose early
years are associated with ragtime grows to be a devotee of ragtime,
while he who hears the music of the masters becomes a man who loves
great music. This is why the average European has a knowledge and love
of melody that amazes Americans. He has heard good music from infancy.
It is sung in the public meeting places of his town and whistled in the
streets. The gamin of Naples, Rome, and Venice knows the arias from the
operas as well as American children know their national anthem, and
Verdi, Donizetti, and Rossini are more than names to him. He has heard
their melodies from infancy, and his father or uncle or some street
story-teller has familiarized him with the plots of their librettos. He
knows something of the artists who sing the rôles, also, because the
tailor and the barber and the baker not infrequently go to hear them, and
they are a topic of conversation in the home. Here in America we have not
had such opportunities. With us the opera and the symphony orchestra are
exotics which only a minority has been trained to enjoy, and consequently
we cannot be regarded as a musical people.
It is natural that this should be so, because, as compared with
Continental lands, we are very young, and youth cannot hope to compete
with maturity. But artistic standards in the United States are being
raised steadily. Most of our great cities now have symphony orchestras
and a season of opera, while the municipal band concert is part of the
life of comparatively small towns, and the programs are of a higher order
than formerly. We are on the upward move, and meanwhile every leader of
children should do his part in the great work of helping to elevate the
national musical standard.
The schools are doing something, but not enough, because much of the
instruction they give is of a technical nature, and although pupils can
read in several keys and beat time correctly, it does not follow that
they are acquiring a capacity for the enjoyment of good music. Until one
has sufficient mental development to understand something of the price
that must be paid for artistic success, much attention to the technical
vitiates interest in music, just as the dissecting method of study kills
interest in literature. Many teachers make more of an effort to have
children learn to read music than they do to have them enjoy it, and
this close attention to the mechanics of the art makes the music period
burdensome instead of enjoyable. Before the child can see any incentive
in learning do—re—mi, he must hear and enjoy music and must understand
that do—re—mi is a key that will unlock gates into larger fields of
enjoyment. Because the hour is replete with drudgery rather than joy,
the discipline of the music class is often a good deal of a problem, and
although it is not an ideal condition, it exists more frequently than
most people realize. A teacher whose class distinguished itself in sight
singing at an institute, was asked how she made its members so proficient.
“Simply by keeping a strap on my desk and using it about every seven
minutes,” she replied; “and those who did not have actual contact with it
kept straight because they knew it was there.”
This is perhaps an extreme case, but the school-rooms in which the music
lesson is a period of nervous strain for both teacher and pupils are
numerous, and it is not strange that sometimes trustees question whether
it might not be well to eliminate music from the list of public-school
subjects.
An adage of the old Italian school of vocalists, whose methods have given
so many glorious songsters to the world, was, “To sing, you must be
happy,” and one of the most celebrated prima donnas of today attributes a
large measure of her success to the fact that during childhood her mother
had the wisdom never to make music burdensome by forcing her to it,
but played for her and sang to her without stint, giving her countless
opportunities of hearing music and leading her to love it. Then when
she began formal study at twelve, her teacher did not harass her with
exercises, but gave simple songs that she liked to sing, songs chosen to
give her voice the exercise it needed and to appeal to the natural love
of melody.
We might well apply this plan to our public-school music, and arrange
courses so that children will hear much good music, even if the amount of
technical work has to be greatly lessened. It is here that the story may
do its far-reaching work in helping to make the music period pleasurable
to the children and causing them to respond with keener pleasure to a
higher standard of music.
Many narrators exclaim, “It is not possible for me to lead children to
appreciate the great music when I do not know the great music myself.”
But it is possible. Of course it is easier for one who is familiar
with the masterpieces of melody to lead children to them than for one
who is not; but even though the mother or teacher was not in her own
childhood familiar with Mozart or Mendelssohn, she can bring children
to appreciate these artists because the talking machine has made it
possible. She need not try to acquaint them with the technical terms,
and mechanics of music, but she can arouse an interest that is the twin
sister of inspiration, and she can do it in such a way that every minute
devoted to the work is filled with delight. She can tell the life story
of some great composer and familiarize the child with selections from
his work that will guide him away from the cheap and tawdry. She can
give him incidents connected with the composition of musical gems, and
a glimpse into the great treasure house of musical literature that will
cause him to want to know more of the achievements of the immortal melody
makers. It is not necessary that one be a musician in order to do this.
Most schools and many homes are now supplied with talking machines, and
the records manufactured by the different companies bring masterpieces
within the reach of all. Even the catalogs are rich in suggestion,
and following the cues supplied by them, a little thought and labor
will bring most gratifying results. Almost all the great composers had
eventful childhoods, and the early days of Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach,
Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, and many others are rich
in incidents that children enjoy hearing. These biographies, sources
for which are listed in the appended bibliography (page 94), if told
in story form and followed by selections from the artist’s works, will
make an impression and arouse an interest as nothing else can do. Do
not, however, make the mistake of beginning with the man and leading
down to his childhood. Begin with his early years and lead up to his
achievements. The child will become interested in the man only through
his childhood, because children are near his own interests, while adults
are not. Many inexperienced story-tellers do not understand this, and
are disappointed in their failure to hold their little hearers. This was
demonstrated not long ago in a university course in story-telling. An
incident in the childhood of Mozart was to be given in story form to
introduce some of that composer’s works to a group of children. Eighty
per cent of the five hundred preparing the paper began thus: “When the
great Mozart was a little boy.” That introduction meant nothing to the
children, because they did not know “the great Mozart,” and were not
interested in strange men. But they were intensely interested in hearing
about a child who long, long ago was sailing down the Danube with his
father and sister Marianne and was very much distressed because the
father would have to pay duty on the harp they carried and therefore,
when they reached Vienna, Marianne could not have a new dress that she
sadly needed. Little eyes sparkled and little hands clapped when the
children heard how, as they reached the customhouse of the Austrian
capital, young Wolfgang asked his father if he might play something on
the harp, and his rendition so delighted and amazed the officials that
the duty was waived and Marianne was shabbily clad no longer.
There are many musical stories besides those of lives of the composers
that should be given to children: tales of the violin makers of Cremona,
the minnesingers, the troubadours, the meistersingers, Pan and his pipes,
Apollo and the lyre, David and the harp, King Alfred and the harp, the
harp at Tara, the Crusaders bringing some stringed instruments into
Europe, the development of the orchestra, the evolution of the harp from
the bended bow of the early tribesmen, and the making of the piano.
Stories of some of the operas, especially those based on the legends of
the Grail and the Rhinegold, are delightful tales to give to children.
A good way to introduce children to a composer is by combining the story
of his life with selections from his work, as in the following story
about Schubert. This method may be applied to the study of any composer.
Libraries are rich in materials, and the talking-machine companies
bring the music within the reach of all; so there is no reason why the
story-teller should not do his part in making our nation a music-loving
land, as well as give pleasure to the children under his guidance.
“Whoever puts a beautiful thought or melody into the world,” writes an
Indian poet, “gives more than a diamond of Golconda.” Whoever helps a
child to understand and enjoy beautiful thoughts and melodies, gives in
almost as great a measure as their creator. He too is a builder, leaving
behind him something fit to stand, and labor of that kind does not go
unrequited.
A BOY OF OLD VIENNA
Little Franz could hardly wait for the sun to rise. He had lain awake all
night thinking of what morning would bring, and it seemed as if the long,
dark hours would never end. But now it was dawn, and he knew that very
soon the sun would gild the hilltops, and then the thing of which he had
dreamed for days would come to pass.
“Are you up, Franz?” his mother called from below.
“Yes,” he answered cheerily, “up and dressing.”