CHAPTER I

THE REASON FOR ORAL WORK IN STORIES

The telling and reading of stories to children in early years, before they have mastered the art of reading, is of such importance as to awaken the serious thought of parents and teachers. To older people it is a source of constant surprise--the attentive interest which children bestow upon stories. Almost any kind of a story will command their wide-awake thought. But the tale which they can fully understand and enjoy has a unique power to concentrate their mental energy. There is an undivided, unalloyed absorption of mind in good stories which augurs well for all phases of later effort. To get children into this habit of undivided mental energy, of singleness of purpose in study, is most promising. In primary grades, the fluttering, scatter-brained truancy of thought is the chronic obstacle to success in study.

The telling or reading of stories to children naturally begins at home, before the little ones are old enough for school. The mother and father, the aunts and uncles, and any older person who delights in children, find true comfort and entertainment in rehearsing the famous stories to children. The Mother Goose, the fables, the fairy tales, the "Arabian Nights," Eugene Field's and Stevenson's poems of child life, the Bible stories, the myths, and some of the old ballads have untold treasures for children. If one has a voice for singing the old melodies, the charm of music intensifies the effect. Little ones quickly memorize what delights them, and not seldom, after two or three readings, children of three and four years will be heard repeating whole poems or large parts of them. The repetition of the songs and stories till they become thoroughly familiar gives them their full educative effect. They become a part of the permanent furniture of the mind. If the things which the children learn in early years have been well selected from the real treasures of the past (of which there is a goodly store), the seeds of true culture have been deeply sown in their affections.

The opportunities of the home for good story-telling are almost boundless. Parents who perceive its worth and are willing to take time for it, find in this early period greater opportunity to mould the lives of children and put them into sympathetic touch with things of beauty and value than at any other time. At this age children are well-nigh wholly at the mercy of their elders. They will take what we give them and take it at its full worth or worthlessness. They absorb these things as the tender plant absorbs rain and sunshine.

The kindergarten has naturally found in the story one of its chief means of effectiveness. Stories, songs, and occupations are its staples. Dealing with this same period of early childhood, before the more taxing work of the school begins, it finds that the children's minds move with that same freedom and spontaneity in these stories with which their bodies and physical energies disport themselves in games and occupations.

It is fortunate for childhood that we have such wholesome and healthful material, which is fitted to give a child's mental action a well-rounded completeness. His will, his sensibility, and his knowing faculty, all in one harmonious whole, are brought into full action. In short, not a fragment but the whole child is focussed and concentrated upon one absorbing object of thought.

The value of the oral treatment of stories is found in the greater clearness and interest with which they can be presented orally. There is a keener realism, a closer approximation to experimental facts, to the situations, the hardships, to the sorrows and triumphs of persons. The feelings and impulses of the actors in the story are felt more sharply. The reality of the surrounding conditions and difficulties is presented so that a child transports himself by the power of sympathy and imagination into the scenes described.

There is no way by which this result can be accomplished in early years except by the oral presentation of stories. Until the children have learned to read and have acquired sufficient mastery of the art of reading so that it is easy and fluent, there is no way by which they can get at good stories for themselves. Average children require about three years to acquire this mastery of the reading art. Not many children read stories from books, with enjoyment and appreciation, till they are nine or ten years old; but from the age of four to ten they are capable of receiving an infinite amount of instruction and mental stimulus from hearing good stories. In fact, many of the best stories ever produced in the history of the world can be thoroughly enjoyed by children before they have learned to read. This is true of Grimm's and Andersen's stories, of the myths of Hiawatha and Norseland, and of the early Greeks, of the Bible stories, the "Arabian Nights," "Robin Hood," besides many other stories, poems, ballads, and biographies which are among the best things in our literature.

In these early years the minds of children may be enriched with a furnishment of ideas of much value for all their future use, a sort of capital well invested, which will bring rich returns. Minds early fertilized with this variety of thought material become more flexible, productive, and acquisitive.

For many years, and even centuries, it was supposed that early education could furnish children with little except the forms and instruments of knowledge, the tools of acquisition, such as ability to read, spell, and write, and to use simple numbers. But the susceptibility of younger children to the powerful culture influence of story, poem, and nature study, was overlooked.

We now have good reason to believe that there is no period when the educative and refining influences of good literature in the form of poems and story can be made so effective as in this early period from four to ten years. That period which has been long almost wholly devoted to the dry formalities and mechanics of knowledge, to the dull and oftentimes benumbing drills of alphabets, spelling, and arithmetical tables, is found to be capable of a fruitful study of stories, fables, and myths, and an indefinite extension of ideas and experiences in nature observation.

But the approach to these sunny fields of varied and vivid experience is not through books, except as the teacher's mind has assimilated their materials and prepared them for lively presentation.

The oral speech through which the stories are given to children is completely familiar to them, so that they, unencumbered by the forms of language, can give their undivided thought to the story. Oral speech is, therefore, the natural channel through which stories should come in early years. The book is at first wholly foreign to them, and it takes them three years or more of greater or less painful effort to get such easy mastery of printed forms as to gain ready access to thought in books. A book, when first put into the hands of a child, is a complete obstruction to thought. The oral story, on the contrary, is a perfectly transparent medium of thought. A child can see the meaning of a story through oral speech as one sees a landscape through a clear window-pane. If a child, therefore, up to the age of ten, is to get many and delightsome views into the fruitful fields of story-land, this miniature world of all realities, this repository of race ideas, it must be through oral speech which he has already acquired in the years of babyhood.

It is an interesting blunder of teachers, and one that shows their unreflecting acceptance of traditional customs, to assume that the all-absorbing problem of primary instruction is the acquisition of a new book language (the learning to read), and to ignore that rich mother tongue, already abundantly familiar, as an avenue of acquisition and culture. But we are now well convinced that the ability to read is an instrument of culture, not culture itself, and primarily the great object of education is to inoculate the children with the ideas of our civilization. The forms of expression are also of great value, but they are secondary and incidental as compared with the world of ideas.

There is an intimate connection between learning to read and the oral treatment of stories in primary schools which is very interesting and suggestive to the teacher. Routine teachers may think it a waste of time to stop for the oral presentation of stories. But the more thoughtful and sympathetic teacher will think it better to stimulate the child's mind than to cram his memory. The young mind fertilized by ideas is quicker to learn the printed forms than a mind barren of thought. Yet this proposition needs to be seen and illustrated in many forms.

Children should doubtless make much progress in learning to read in the first year of school. But coincident with these exercises in primary reading, and, as a general thing, preliminary to them, is a lively and interested acquaintance with the best stories. It is a fine piece of educative work to cultivate in children, at the beginning of school life, a real appreciation and enjoyment of a few good stories. These stories, thus rendered familiar, and others of similar tone and quality, may serve well as a part of the reading lessons. It is hardly possible to cultivate this literary taste in the reading books alone, unrelieved by oral work. The primers and first readers, when examined, will give ample proof of this statement. In spite of the utmost effort of skilled primary teachers to make attractive books for primary children, our primers and first readers show unmistakable signs of their formal and mechanical character. They are essentially drill books.

It seems well, therefore, to have in primary schools two kinds of work in connection with story and reading, the oral work in story-telling, reproduction, expression, etc., and the drill exercises in learning to read. The former will keep up a wide-awake interest in the best thought materials suitable for children, the latter will gradually acquaint them with the necessary forms of written and printed language. Moreover, the interest aroused in the stories is constantly transferring itself to the reading lessons and giving greater spirit and vitality even to the primary efforts at learning to read. In discussing the method of primary reading we shall have occasion to mention the varied devices of games, activities, drawings, dramatic action, blackboard exercises, and picture work, by which an alert primary teacher puts life and motive into early reading work, but fully as important as all these things put together is the growing insight and appreciation for good stories. When a child makes the discovery, as Hugh Miller said, "that learning to read is learning to get stories out of books" he has struck the chord that should vibrate through all his future life. The real motive for reading is to get something worth the effort of reading. Even if it takes longer to accomplish the result in this way, the result when accomplished is in all respects more valuable. But it is probable that children will learn to read fully as soon who spend a good share of their time in oral story work.

In discussing the literary materials used in the first four grades, we suggest the following grading of certain large groups of literary matter, and the relation of oral work to the reading in each subsequent grade is clearly marked.

ORAL WORK. READING.

_1st Grade._ Games, Mother Goose. Lessons based on Games, etc. Fables, Fairy Tales. Board Exercises. Nature Myths, Child Poems. Primers, First Readers. Simple Myths, Stories, etc.

_2d Grade._ Robinson Crusoe. Fables, Fairy Tales. Hiawatha. Myths and Poems. Seven Little Sisters. Second Readers. Hiawatha Primer.

_3d Grade._ Greek and Norse Myths. Robinson Crusoe. Ballads and Legendary Andersen's & Grimm's Tales. Stories. Child's Garden of Verses. Ulysses, Jason, Siegfried. Third Readers. Old Testament Stories.

_4th Grade._ American Pioneer History Greek and Norse Myths. Stories. Historical Ballads. Early Biographical Stories Ulysses, Arabian Nights. of Europe, as Alfred, Hiawatha, Wonder Book. Solon, Arminius, etc.

This close dependence of reading proper, in earlier years, upon the oral treatment of stories as a preliminary, is based fundamentally upon the idea that suitable and interesting thought matter is the true basis of progress in reading, and that the strengthening of the taste for good books is a much greater thing than the mere acquisition of the art of reading. The motive with which children read or try to learn to read is, after all, of the greatest consequence.

The old notion that children must first learn to read and then find, through the mastery of this art, the entrance to literature is exactly reversed. First awaken a desire for things worth reading, and then incorporate these and similar stories into the regular reading exercises as far as possible.

In accordance with this plan, children, by the time they are nine or ten years old, will become heartily acquainted with three or four of the great classes of literature, the fables, fairy tales, myths, and such world stories as Crusoe, Aladdin, Hiawatha, and Ulysses. Moreover, the oral treatment will bring these persons and actions closer to their thought and experience than the later reading alone could do. In fact, if children have reached their tenth year without enjoying those great forms of literature that are appropriate to childhood, there is small prospect that they will ever acquire a taste for them. They have passed beyond the age where a liking for such literature is most easily and naturally cultivated. They move on to other things. They have passed through one great stage of education and have emerged with a meagre and barren outfit.

The importance of oral work as a lively means of entrance to studies is seen also in other branches besides literature.

In geography and history the first year or two of introductory study is planned for the best schools in the form of oral narrative and discussion. Home geography in the third or fourth year, and history stories in the fourth and fifth years of school, are best presented without a text book by the teacher. Although the children have already overcome, to some extent, the difficulty of reading, so great is the power of oral presentation and discussion to vivify and realize geographical and historical scenes that the book is discarded at first for the oral treatment.

In natural science also, from the first year on the teacher must employ an oral method of treatment. The use of books is not only impossible, but even after the children have learned to read, it would defeat the main purpose of instruction to make books the chief means of study. The ability to observe and discern things, to use their own senses in discriminating and comparing objects, in experiments and investigations, is the fundamental purpose.

In language lessons, again, it is much better to use a book only as a guide and to handle the lessons orally, collecting examples and stories from other studies as the basis for language discussions.

It is apparent from this brief survey that an oral method is appropriate to the early treatment of all the common school studies, that it gives greater vivacity, intensity, simplicity, and clearness to all such introductory studies.

The importance of story-telling and the initiation of children into the delightful fields of literature through the teacher rather than through the book are found to harmonize with a mode of treatment common to all the studies in early years.

In this connection it is interesting to observe that the early literature of the European nations was developed and communicated to the people by word of mouth. The Homeric songs were chanted or sung at the courts of princes. At Athens, in her palmy days, the great dramatists and poets either recited their productions to the people or had them presented to thousands of citizens in the open-air theatres. Even historians like Thucidides read or recited their great histories before the assembled people. In the early history of England, Scotland, and other countries, the minstrels sang their ballads and epic poems in the baronial halls and thus developed the early forms of music and poetry. Shakespeare wrote his dramas for the theatre, and he seems to have paid no attention at all to their appearance in book form, never revising them or putting them into shape for the press.

This practice of all the early races of putting their great literature before the people by song, dramatic action, and word of mouth is very suggestive to the teacher. The power and effectiveness of this mode of presentation, not only in early times but even in the highly civilized cities of London and Athens, is unmistakable proof of the educative value of such modes of teaching. This is only another indication of the kinship of child life with race life, which has been emphasized by many great thinkers.

The oral method offers a better avenue for all vigorous modes of expression than the reading book. It can be observed that the general tendency of the book is toward a formal, expressionless style in young readers. Go into a class where the teacher is handling a story orally and you will see her falling naturally into all forms of vivid narrative and presentation, gesture, facial expression, versatile intonation, blackboard sketching and picture work, the impersonation of characters in dialogue, dramatic action, and general liveliness of manner. The children naturally take up these same activities and modes of uttering themselves. Even without the suggestion of teachers, little children express themselves in such actions, attitudes, and impersonations. This may be often observed in little boys and girls of kindergarten age, when telling their experiences to older persons, or when playing among themselves. The freedom, activity, and vivacity of children is, indeed, in strong contrast to the apathetic, expressionless, monotonous style of many grown people, including teachers.

But the oral treatment of stories has a tendency to work out into modes of activity even more effective than those just described.

In recent years, since so much oral work has been done in elementary schools, children have been encouraged also to express themselves freely in blackboard drawings and in pencil work at their desks by way of illustrating the stories told. Moreover, in paper cutting, to represent persons and scenes, in clay modelling, to mould objects presented, and in constructive and building efforts, in making forts, tents, houses, tools, dress, and in showing up modes of life, the children have found free scope for their physical and mental activities. These have not only led to greater clearness and vividness in their mental conceptions, but have opened out new fields of self-activity and inventiveness.

So long as work in reading and literature was confined to the book exercises, nearly all these modes of expression were little employed and even tabooed.

Finally, the free use of oral narrative in the literature of early years, in story-telling and its attendant modes of expression, opens up to primary teachers a rare opportunity of becoming genuine educators. There was a time, and it still continues with many primary teachers, when teaching children to read was a matter of pure routine, of formal verbal drills and repetitions, as tiresome to the teacher, if possible, as to the little ones. But now that literature, with its treasures of thought and feeling, of culture and refinement, has become the staple of the primary school, teachers have a wide and rich field of inspiring study. The mastery and use of much of the preferred literature which has dropped down to us out of the past is the peculiar function of the primary teacher. Contact with great minds, like those of Kingsley, Ruskin, Andersen, the Grimm brothers, Stevenson, Dickens, Hawthorne, De Foe, Browning, AEsop, Homer, and the unknown authors of many of the best ballads, epics, and stories, is enough to give the primary teacher a sense of the dignity of her work. On the other hand, the opportunity to give to children the free and versatile development of their active powers is an equal encouragement.

Teachers who have taken up with zeal this great problem of introducing children to their full birthright, the choice literature of the world suited to their years, and of linking this story work with primary reading so as to give it vitality,--such teachers have found school life assuming new and unwonted charms; the great problems of the educator have become theirs; the broadened opportunity for the acquisition of varied skill and professional efficiency has given a strong ambitious tone to their work.