Educating by Story-Telling. Mrs. Katherine Dunlap Cather
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Mrs. Katherine Dunlap Cather
Educating by Story-Telling
Showing the Value of Story-Telling as an Educational Tool for the Use of All Workers with Children
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066231132
Table of Contents
PART ONE STORY-TELLING AND THE ARTS OF EXPRESSION—ESTABLISHING STANDARDS
CHAPTER ONE The Purpose and Aim of Story-Telling
CHAPTER TWO The Story Interests of Childhood
CHAPTER THREE The Story Interests of Childhood (Continued)
CHAPTER FOUR The Story Interests of Childhood (Continued)
CHAPTER FIVE The Story Interests of Childhood (Continued)
CHAPTER SIX Building the Story
CHAPTER SEVEN Telling the Story
CHAPTER EIGHT Story-Telling to Lead to an Appreciation of Literature
CHAPTER NINE Story-Telling to Awaken an Appreciation of Music
CHAPTER TEN Story-Telling to Awaken an Appreciation of Art
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Story-Telling and the Teaching of Ethics
PART TWO THE USE OF STORY-TELLING TO ILLUMINATE SOME SCHOOLROOM SUBJECTS—STORIES FOR TELLING
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in History
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in Geography
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Story-Telling to Intensify Interest in Nature Study
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Story-Telling in Domestic Science and Manual Training
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Does the Work of the Story-Teller Pay?
LIST OF STORIES BY MONTHS FOR EACH GRADE
LIST OF STORIES BY MONTHS FOR EACH GRADE
COLLECTIONS OF STORIES OF WHICH AUTHORS ARE NOT GIVEN
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