Educating by Story-Telling. Mrs. Katherine Dunlap Cather
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.
But he should not make the mistake of following this rule too literally or his efforts will result in failure, because children live under widely different conditions. The boy of the city slums, whose horizon extends only from his own row of tenements to the next row up the street, will not be held by tales of cows and sheep, because he does not know cows and sheep. His knowledge of four-footed creatures is confined to dogs and cats and an occasional horse that goes by hitched to the wagon of a fruit or vegetable vender, and the tales that mean something to him are those of animals of his world, and of children. Many a settlement and social worker has learned the truth of this through sad experience. A most gifted story-teller in a New York settlement house gave to her group “The Ugly Duckling,” and gave it exquisitely too, but it meant nothing to the children because they never had been in the country. A barnyard was as remote from their interest as a treatise on philology is from that of a Finnish peasant. They did not know ducks and geese and chickens, and consequently punched their neighbors and grew pestiferous during the recital of a tale that would have entranced country children.
The same mistake was made by a professional story-teller who gave a coyote tale to a group of Italian children. They never had met this “outcast in gray,” never had shivered as he howled in the night, and the story brought no pictures before their eyes. They were inattentive and disorderly