Extract from a Report of Committee on Story Telling to the Montessori
Class, University of Virginia Summer School
Since all races in all epochs have used oral stories both as a means
of education and entertainment, and since much of the culture and
civilization that our ancestors have bequeathed to us has come down
to us in the form of story literature, and since the children of all
races and in all times have said, “Tell me a story,” we believe it is
fundamental in the child’s life and education.
We believe that the mother, who instinctively hums lullabys and sings
Mother Goose Rhymes to the child is cultivating the child’s sense
of rhythm, touching its feelings, and speaking to it through vocal
language—voice modulation—which precedes verbal language; that the
mother who sings
“Hush you bybaby in the tree tops,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,” etc.,
and other Mother Goose jingles, has already begun her story telling.
That the story, the most universally used medium for conveying truth
and especially the _told_ story that comes through the sensuous beauty
of speech, should be continued throughout the child’s education.
We believe that when a child attributes life to its doll, makes up
strange and unreal stories, that it does so in obedience to a deep
psychic necessity,—that of developing the imagination, and that as a
child climbs a tree or ladder and in doing so develops his body and
bodily senses, so he must have for the development of his imagination
the clear, bold, mental picture whether it be in fairy and folk stories
or the high daring of some noble hero in epic literature or history.
We believe that the development of the imagination should go hand
in hand with the sense training, modified by local, ethnic, and
individual needs, and that children as well as adults must have heroes
to admire and worship and ideals to inspire; that the idea of God
can be represented only through the imagination and that to deny the
child stories of gods and supernatural beings would be to bring him up
without religious training. That the story that delights the child has
psycho-therapeutic value and whether it be fact or fiction it is true
in a higher sense, ministering to the spiritual needs of the child, and
therefore valuable in education.
We believe that it is the most inalienable right of all children to
hear stories told from the great story books of the world; that wise
selections of stories should be made not only from the literature and
history of Europe and America, but from Japan, China, Russia, and
India, so that we may develop in the young people a feeling of a world
brotherhood.