The Child under Eight Part 7

So Froebel could write with feeling of "the joyful faces, the sparkling eyes, the merry shouts that welcome the genuine story-teller"; he had a right to p.r.o.nounce that "the child's desire and craving for tales, for legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for historical accounts, is very intense."

Surely there was never a little one who did not crave for stories, though here and there may be found an older child, who got none at the right time, and who, therefore, lost that most healthy of appet.i.tes.

Most of us will agree that there is something wrong with the child who does not like stories, but it may be that the something wrong belonged to the mother. One such said to the Abbe Klein one day, "My children have never asked for stories." "But, madame," was the reply, "neither would they ask for cake if they had never eaten it, or even seen it."

It is easy for us to find reasons why we should tell stories. We can brush aside minor aims such as increasing the child's vocabulary.

Undoubtedly his vocabulary does increase enormously from listening to stories, but it is difficult to imagine that any one could rise to real heights in story-telling with this as an aim or end. That the narrator should clothe his living story in words expressive of its atmosphere, and that the listener should in this way gain such power over language, that he, too, can fitly express himself is quite another matter.

First, then, we tell stories because we love to tell them and because the children love to listen. We choose stories that appeal to our audience. It is something beautiful, humorous, heroic or witty that we have found, and being social animals we want to share it. As educators with an aim before us, we deliberately tell stories in order to place before our children ideals of unselfishness, courage and truth. We know from our own experience, not only in childhood, but all through life how the story reaches our feelings as no sermon or moralising ever does, and we have learned that "out of the heart are the issues of life." Unguided feelings may be a danger, but the story does more than rouse feelings--it gives opportunity for the exercise of moral judgement, for the exercise of judgement upon questions of right and wrong. Feeling is aroused, but it is not usually a personal feeling, so judgement is likely to be unbia.s.sed. It may, however, be bia.s.sed by the tone absorbed from the environment even in childhood, as when the mother makes more of table etiquette than of kindness, and the child, instead of condemning Jacob's refusal to feed his hungry brother with the red pottage, as all natural children do condemn, says: "No, Esau shouldn't have got it, 'cause he asked for it."

As a rule, the children's standard is correct enough, and approval or condemnation is justly bestowed, provided that the story has been chosen to suit the child's stage of development. One little girl objected strongly to Macaulay's ideal Roman, who "in Rome's quarrel, spared neither land nor gold, nor son nor wife." "That wasn't right," she said stoutly, "he ought to think of his own wife and children first." She was satisfied, however, when it was explained to her that Horatius might be able to save many fathers to many wives and children. In my earliest teaching days, having found certain history stories successful with children of seven, I tried the same with children of six, but only once.

Edmund of East Anglia dying for his faith fell very flat. "What was the good of that?" said one little fellow, "'cause if you're dead you can't do anything! But if you're alive, you can get more soldiers and win a victory." The majority of the cla.s.s, however, seemed to feel with another who asked, "Why didn't he promise while the Danes were there? He needn't have kept it when they went away."

Another way of stating our aim in telling stories to children is that a story presents morality in the concrete. Virtues and vices _per se_ neither attract nor repel, they simply mean nothing to a child, until they are presented as the deeds of man or woman, boy or girl, living and acting in a world recognised as real. One telling story is that of the boy who got hold of Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's a.s.sistant_ and who said to his mother, "Mother, I've been reading 'The Little Merchants' and I know now how horrid it is to cheat and tell lies." "I have been telling you that ever since you could speak," said his mother, to which the boy answered, "Yes, I know, but that didn't interest me." Our children had been told the story of how the Countess of Buchan crowned the Bruce, a duty which should have been performed by her brother the Earl of Fife, who, however, was too much afraid of the wrath of English Edward. A few days after, an argument arose and one little girl was heard to say, "I don't want to be brave," and a boy rejoined, "Girls don't need to be brave." I said, "Which would you rather be, the Countess who put the crown on the King's head, or the brother who ran away?" And quickly came the answer, "Oh! the brave Countess," from the very child who didn't want to be brave!

Froebel sums up the teacher's aim in the words: "The telling of stories is a truly strengthening spirit-bath, it gives opportunity for the exercise of all mental powers, opportunity for testing individual judgement and individual feelings."

But why is it that children crave for stories? "Education," says Miss Blow, a veteran Froebelian, "is a series of responses to indicated needs," and undoubtedly the need for stories is as pressing as the need to explore, to experiment and to construct. What is the unconscious need that is expressed in this craving, why is this desire so deeply implanted by Nature? So far, no one seems to have given a better answer than Froebel has done, when he says that the desire for stories comes out of the need to understand life, that it is in fact rooted in the instinct of investigation. "Only the study of the life of others can furnish points of comparison with the life the boy himself has experienced. The story concerns other men, other circ.u.mstances, other times and places, yet the hearer seeks his own image, he beholds it and no one knows that he sees it."

Man cannot be master of his surroundings till he investigates and so gathers knowledge. But he has to adapt himself not only to the physical but to the human environment in which he lives. In stories of all kinds, children study human life in all kinds of circ.u.mstances, nay, if the story is sufficiently graphic they almost go through the experiences narrated, almost live the new life.

With very young children the most popular of all stories is the "The Three Bears" and it is worth a little a.n.a.lysis. A little girl runs away, and running away is a great temptation to little girls and boys, as great an adventure as running off to sea will be at a later stage. She goes into a wood and meets bears: what else could you expect! The story then deals with really interesting things, porridge, basins, chairs and beds. The strong contrast of the bears' voices fascinates children, and just when retribution might descend upon her, the heroine escapes and gets safe home. Children revel in the familiar details, but these alone would not suffice, there must be adventure, excitement, romance. One feels that Southey had the a.s.sistance of a child in making his story so complete, and we can hear the questions: "How did the big bear know that the little girl had tasted his porridge? Oh, because she had left the spoon. How did he know that she had sat in his chair? Because she left the cus.h.i.+on untidy, and as for the little bear's chair, why, she sat that right out."

That quite little children desire fresh experiences or adventures and really exciting ones, is shown by the following stories made by children. The first two are by a little girl of two-and-a-half, the third is taken from Lady Glenconner's recently published _The Sayings of the Children_.

"Once upon a time there was a giant and a little girl, and he told a little girl not to kiss a bear acos he would bite her, and the little girl climbed right on his back and she jumped right down the stairs and the bear came walking after the little girl and kissing her, and she called it a little bear and it was a big bear! (immense amus.e.m.e.nt).

"Once upon a time there was a little piggy and he was right in a big green and white fire and he didn't hurt hisself, and (told as a tremendous secret) he touched a fire with his handie. 'What a naughty piggy,' said Auntie, 'and what next?' He jumped right out of a fire.

Auntie, can you smile? (For aunties cannot smile when people are naughty.)"

The third story is said to have been filled with pauses due to a certain slowness of speech, but the pauses are "lit by the lightning flash of a flying eyebrow, and the impressive nodding of a silken head."

"Once, you know, there was a fight between a little pony and a lion, and the lion sprang against the pony and the pony put his back against a stack and bited towards the lion, and the lion rolled over and the pony jumped up, and he ran up ... and the pony turned round and the lion ..."

His mother felt she had lost the thread. "Which won?" she asked. "Which won!" he repeated and after a moment's pause he said, "Oh! the little bear."

This surprising conclusion points to a stage when it is difficult for a child to hold the thread of a narrative, and at this stage, along with simple stories of little ones like themselves, repet.i.tion or "acc.u.mulation" stories seem to give most pleasure. "Henny Penny" and "Billy Bobtail"--told by Jacobs as "How Jack went to seek his Fortune"--are prime favourites. Repet.i.tion of rhythmic phrases has a great attraction, as in "Three Little Pigs," with its delightful repet.i.tion of "Little pig, little pig, let me come in," "No, no, by the hair of my chinny chin chin," "Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in."

Very soon, however, the children are ready for the time-honoured fairy-tale or folk-tale.

The orthodox beginning, "Once upon a time, in a certain country there lived ...," fits the stage when neither time nor place is of any consequence. Animals speak, well why not, we can! The fairies accomplish wonders, again why not? Wonderful things do happen and they must have a wonderful cause, and, as one child said, if there never had been any fairies, how could people have written stories about them?

Goodness is rewarded and wickedness is punished, as is only right in the child's eyes, and goodness usually means kindness, the virtue best understood of children. Obedience is no doubt the nursery virtue in the eyes of authority, but kindness is much more human and attractive.

"Both child and man," says Froebel, "desire to know the significance of what happens around them; this is the foundation of Greek choruses, especially in tragedy, and of many productions in the realm of legends and fairy-tales. It is the result of the deep-rooted consciousness, the slumbering premonition of being surrounded by that which is higher and more conscious than ourselves." The fairy tale is the child's mystery land, his recognition that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy or in our science. Dr. Montessori protests against the idea that fairy-tales have anything to do with the religious sense, saying that "faith and fable are as the poles apart."

She does not understand that it is for their truth that we value fairy-tales. The truths they teach are such as that courage and intelligence can conquer brute strength, that love can brave and can overcome all dangers and always finds the lost, that kindness begets kindness and always wins in the end. The good and the faithful marries the princess--or the prince--and lives happy ever after. And a.s.suredly if he does not marry his princess, he will not live happy, and if she does not marry the prince, she will live in no beautiful palace. And there is more. Take for instance, the story of "Toads and Diamonds." The courteous maiden who goes down the well, who gives help where it is needed, and who works faithfully for Mother Holle,[21] comes home again dropping gold and diamonds when she speaks. Her silence may be silver, but her speech is golden, and her words give light in dark places. The selfish and lazy girl, who refuses help and whose work is unfaithful and only done for reward, has her reward. Henceforth, when she speaks, down fall toads and snakes her words are cold as she is, they may glitter but they sting.

[Footnote 21: This version is probably a mixture of the versions of Perrault and Grimm but Mother Holle shaking her feathers is worth bringing in.]

Fairy- and folk-tales give wholesome food to the desire for adventure, whereas in what we may call realistic stories, adventure is chiefly confined to the naughty child, who is therefore more attractive than the good and stodgy. Even among fairy-tales we may select. "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow-white and Rose-red" are distinctly preferable to "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Puss in Boots,"

while "Bluebeard" cannot be told. It seems to me that children can often safely read for themselves stories the adult cannot well tell. The child's notion of justice is crude, bad is bad, and whether embodied in an ogre or in Pharaoh of Egypt, it must be got rid of, put out of the story. No child is sorry for the giant when Jack's axe cleaves the beanstalk, and as for Pharaoh, "Well, it's a good thing he's drowned, for he was a bad man, wasn't he?" Death means nothing to children, as a rule, except disappearance. When children can read for themselves, they will take from their stories what suits their stage of development, their standard of judgement, and we need not interfere, even though they regard with perfect calm what seems gruesome to the adult.

As a valuable addition to the best-known fairy-tales, we may mention one or two others: _Grannie's Wonderful Chair_ is a delightful set of stories, full of charming pictures, though the writer, Frances Brown, was born blind. Mrs. Ewing's stories for children, _The Brownies_, with _Amelia and the Dwarfs_ and _Timothy's Shoes_, are inimitable, and her _Old-Fas.h.i.+oned Fairy Tales_ are very good, but not for very young children. Her other stories are certainly about children, but are, as a rule, written for adults.

George Macdonald's stories are all too well known and too universally beloved to need recommendation. But in telling them, _e.g._ "The Princess and the Goblins" or "At the Back of the North Wind," the young teacher must remember that they are beautiful allegories. Before she ventures to tell them, the beginner should ponder well what the poet--for these are prose poems--means, and who is represented by the beautiful Great-great-grandmother always old and always young, or "North Wind" who must sink the s.h.i.+p but is able to bear the cry from it, because of the sound of a far-off song, which seems to swallow up all fear and pain and to set the suffering "singing it with the rest."

_Water-Babies_ is a bridge between the fairy-tale of a child and equally wonderful and beautiful fairy-tales of Nature, and it, too, is full of meaning. If the teacher has gained this, the children will not lag behind. It was a child of backward development, who, when she heard of Mother Carey, "who made things make themselves," said, "Oh! I know who that was, that was G.o.d."

Such stories must be spread out over many days of telling, but they gain rather than lose from that, though for quite young children the stories do require to be short and simple, and often repeated. If children get plenty of these, the stage for longer stories is reached wonderfully soon.

Pseudo-scientific stories, in which, for example, a drop of water discusses evaporation and condensation, are not stories at all, but a kind of mental meat lozenge, most unsatisfying and probably not even fulfilling their task of supplying nourishment in form of facts. Fables usually deal with the faults and failings of grown-ups, and may be left for children to read for themselves, to extract what suits them.

Ill.u.s.trations are not always necessary, but if well chosen they are always a help. Warne has published some delightfully ill.u.s.trated stories for little children, "The Three Pigs," "Hop o' my Thumb," "Beauty and the Beast," etc. They are ill.u.s.trated by H.M. Brock and by Leslie Brooke, and they really are ill.u.s.trated. The artists have enjoyed the stories and children equally enjoy the pictures.

The teacher must consider what ideas she is presenting and whether words alone can convey them properly. We must remember that most children visualise and that they can only do so from what they have seen. So, without ill.u.s.trations, a castle may be a suburban house with Nottingham lace curtains and an aspidistra, while Perseus or Moses may differ little from the child's own father or brothers. Again, town children cannot visualise hill and valley, forest and moor, brook and river, not to mention jungles and snowfields and the trackless ocean. It is not easy to find pictures to give any idea of such scenes, but it is worth while to look for them, and it is also worth while for the teacher to visualise, and to practise vivid describing of what she sees. Children, of course, only want description when it is really a part of the story, as when Tom crosses the moor, descends Lewthwaite Crag, or travels from brook to river and from river to sea.

As to how a story should be told, opinions differ. It must be well told with a well-modulated voice and with slight but effective gesture. But the model should be the story as told in the home, not the story told from a platform. The children need not be spellbound all the time, but should be free to ask sensible questions and to make childlike comments in moderation. The language should fit the subject; beautiful thoughts need beauty of expression, high and n.o.ble deeds must be told in n.o.ble language. A teacher who wishes to be a really good teller of stories must herself read good literature, and she will do well not only to prepare her stories with care, but to consider the language she uses in daily life. There is a happy medium between pedantry and the latest variety of slang, and if daily speech is careless and slipshod, it is difficult to change it for special occasions. Our stories should not only prepare for literature, they should be literature, and those who realise what the story may do for children will not grudge time spent in preparation. If the story is to present an ideal, let us see that we present a worthy one; if it is to lead the children to judge of right and wrong, let us see that we give them time and opportunity to judge and that we do not force their judgement.

Lastly, if the story is to make the children feel, let us see that the feeling is on the right side, that they shrink from all that is mean, selfish, cruel and cowardly, and sympathise with whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.

CHAPTER IX

IN GRa.s.sY PLACES

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky, So was it when my life began So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die.

What is the real aim of what we call Nature-lessons, Nature-teaching, Nature-work? It is surely to foster delight in beauty, so that our hearts shall leap up at sight of the rainbow until we die. For, indeed, if we lose that uplift of the heart, some part of us has died already.

Yet even Wordsworth mourns that nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the gra.s.s and glory in the flower!

In its answer to the question "What is the chief end of man?" the old Shorter Catechism has a grand beginning: "Man's chief end is to glorify G.o.d and to enjoy Him for ever." Do we lose the vision because we are not bold enough to take that enjoyment as our chief end? To enjoy good is to enjoy G.o.d.

Our ends or aims are our desires, and Mr. Clutton Brock, in his _Ultimate Belief_, urges teachers to recognise that the spirit of man has three desires, three ends, and that it cannot be satisfied till it attains all three. Man desires to do right, so far as he sees it, for the sake of doing right; he desires to gain knowledge or to know for the sake of knowing, for the sake of truth; and he desires beauty.

"We do not value that which we call beautiful because it is true, or because it is good, but because it is beautiful. There is a glory of the universe which we call truth which we discover and apprehend, and a glory of the universe which we call beauty and which we discover or apprehend."

Froebel begins his _Education of Man_ by an inquiry into the reason for our existence and his answer is that _all_ things exist to make manifest the spirit, the _elan vital_, which brought them into being. "_Sursum corda_," says Stevenson,

Lift up your hearts Art and Blue Heaven April and G.o.d's Larks Green reeds and sky scattering river A Stately Music Enter G.o.d.

And Browning? "If you get simple beauty and nought else, you get about the best thing G.o.d invents."

To let children get that beauty should be our aim, and they must get it in their own way. "Life in and with Nature and with the fair silent things of Nature, should be fostered by parents and others," Froebel tells us, "as a chief fulcrum of child-life, and this is accomplished chiefly in play, which is at first simply natural life."

Let us surmount the ruts of our teaching experience and climb high enough to look back upon our own childhood, to see where beauty called to us, where we attained to beauty.

Among my own earliest recollections come a first view of the starry sky and the discovery of Heaven. No one called attention to the stars, they spoke themselves to a child of four or five and declared "the glory of G.o.d." Heaven was not on high among these glorious stars, however. It was a gra.s.sy place with flowers and suns.h.i.+ne. It had to be Heaven because you went through the cemetery to reach it, and because it was so bright and flowery and there were no graves in it. I never found it again, because I had forgotten how to get there.