Sing a song of sixpence,A pocket full of rye,Four and twenty blackbirdsBaked in a pie.
Sing a song of sixpence,A pocket full of rye,Four and twenty blackbirdsBaked in a pie.
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
all the children will rejoice inrye—pie. But there will be some to whomsing—song—sixpence—pocket,full—four,blackbirds—baked, are so many delights, and there may be some to whom the wonderful chime of the vowels will make music. Anyone who knows children willhave noticed the pleasure that the merest babies will take in beautiful or especially pat collocations of syllables. A child whom I knew, just beginning to talk, would say to himself many times a day, and always with a smile of amused pleasure, the phrases "apple-batter pudding," "picallilli pickles," "up into the cherry tree," "piping down the valleys wild." It is probably true that some of his apparent pleasure was that species of hysteria produced in most babies by any mild explosion, and the little fusillade ofp'sin the examples he liked best would account for a part of his enjoyment. But we must think that there was pleasure there, and, whether it were physical or mental, it arose from the pleasing combination of verbal sounds. Most children have this ear for the music of words; and some attempt should be made to evoke it in those that have it not.
This quality, then, is the first thing we ask of the verse we choose for the youngest children. The mere jingles, provided they are really musical, are useful to emphasize this side of verse, because, being free from content, they can give themselves entirely to sound. It is also most desirable that some of these earliest verses be set to music that the children can sing; that the class march to the rhythm of recited verses; that theybe taught, if possible, to dance to some of them. Some such form of accompaniment of the verses, deepens the impression of the music, records in the child's consciousness an impression of the poem as an image of motion, and opens a channel for the expression of the mood produced in the children by the verses—a more acceptable channel of expression, certainly, for all the lyrics and for most of the narrative verses, than mere recitation, and a more artistic one than what we commonly know and dread as elocution.
The teaching of verse gives a chance and an invitation to linger over and enjoy many fine and delicate aspects of the art that we are likely to miss in the story. Something in the nature of verse—the condensation, the careful arrangement, the chosen words—seems to call upon us to go slowly with it. It may be that we linger to apprehend one by one the details of an image or picture, like—
Daffy-down dilly has come up to townIn a yellow petticoat and a green gown,The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back;The cattle are grazing,Their heads never raising,There are forty feeding like one;In the pool drowse the cattle up to their knees,The crows fly over by twos and threes;
Daffy-down dilly has come up to townIn a yellow petticoat and a green gown,
Daffy-down dilly has come up to town
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown,
The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back;
The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back;
The cattle are grazing,Their heads never raising,There are forty feeding like one;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising,
There are forty feeding like one;
In the pool drowse the cattle up to their knees,The crows fly over by twos and threes;
In the pool drowse the cattle up to their knees,
The crows fly over by twos and threes;
some apt or beautiful phrase—
Snowy summits old in story;
Snowy summits old in story;
Snowy summits old in story;
some bit of simple wisdom that deserves pondering; some flash of wit or epigram, or enticing touch of nonsense.
These are really about all that we would pause over in teaching verses to the younger children. Indeed, are not these elements about all of what we call the smaller matters of literary art that elementary children may be expected to concern themselves with—the music of the spoken verse, appreciation of the beauty or adequacy of striking pictures and images, recognition of some specially fit epithet, interpretation of an aphorism or a paradox or a bit of nonsense? We will discuss later some possible ways of getting these things done.
When we say that a poem gives us our best chance to study these finer details, we should not by any means understand that in teaching a poem we are to ignore the other matter of plan and structure. The very condensation and beautiful organization of a poem are likely to result in a charming plan, which both adds to the children's sense of its beauty and helps to fix it in their memory. Every teacher will notice—merely to mention examples—the perfect structure, what we have called the "pattern," of Stevenson's"Dark brown is the river," of Allingham's "I wish I were a primrose," of Wordsworth's, "I heard a thousand blended notes;" and every teacher will realize the greater class utility of a poem with such a structure.
The kinds of poetry suitable by virtue of their content for the children throughout the whole elementary period are first, lyrics of the simpler varieties, beginning with those which are practically only jingles, and going on to those that are more complex in form and more mature in thought, but which still record, as it were, the first reaction of the mind, the primary mood, not the complex and remote moods of developed lyric poetry; and second, poetry of the epic kind, beginning with the Mother Goose ballads, and advancing to the objective heroic ballads in which English literature is so rich, and perhaps (undoubtedly in certain schools) including some of the longer narrative poems of the type of idyls.
It is clear to most teachers that the less the earlier lyrics say, the better. The simplicity of the content makes it possible to emphasize all the more the music and the motion. As the lyrics increase in content, and as we begin to expect the children to enter into the mood which their poem reflects, it becomes important to select such as record a mood or an experience whichthey can apprehend or might legitimately apprehend. Luckily, in our day it is no longer necessary to remonstrate against what one may almost call the crime of requiring children to study and to return "The Barefoot Boy," "Still sits the schoolhouse by the road," "I remember, I remember the house where I was born"—adult reminiscence of childhood, which is undoubtedly the most alien of moods and processes to the child. But we are likely to be caught by the apparent simplicity of certain verses which, written after the pattern ofA Child's Garden—indeed, the class includes some of these very poems—record feelings about children and childhood. These verses, like some of the delightful stories and studies mentioned in a previous chapter are studies and realizations of the child's consciousness calculated to delight and illuminate the adult reader. If children read and understood them, the result would be that ghastly spectacle—a child conscious of his own childhood.
No poetry given to children should be too imaginative, too figurative, or too emotional. Here, to be sure, one must judge afresh for each class. It is obvious that children of the eighth grade can apprehend a poem that would bewilder the sixth; that children in one community, evenin one neighborhood, will understand a poem which children of a different community and upbringing could not fathom. But the standard is, after all, not infinitely variable. A good average seventh grade almost anywhere would appreciate without difficulty, including the spiritual application, Tennyson's "Bugle Song;" they could not find their way among the many figures and the alien imaginative mood, the poignant unknown emotion, of "Tears, idle tears."
It is not easy to go wrong in choosing the ballads. And by "ballads" we are to understand the short narrative poem, traditionary or artistic. The folk-ballads need translation here and there, and are scarcely available at all for the youngest children. But those who are old enough to hear the Robin Hood tales will enjoy the folk-ballads, if the teacher take pains to prepare them and read them aright. As in the case of some of the heroic epics, some editing is necessary for most of the ballads. They should be given in the "say and sing," manner, turning the duller or the link portions into prose narrative, and reading the exciting and beautiful passages in the original form. Even this accommodated form of the folk-ballads may prove impossible in some classes. There are ballads ideal for the grades in nearly all the modern poets—Cowper, Scott, Wordsworth,Campbell, Browning, Longfellow, Whittier, Kipling.
It is not so easy to choose for elementary children among the longer narrative poems. As a matter of fact, a great number of them are of the idyllic kind, and there is in this class of poems something soft and meditative, or over-emotional and, if one must say it—sentimental or super-romantic, that fits them for the comprehension of older readers, and spoils them for the children. Others, such as Scott's narrative poems, are too long and a bit too difficult for children younger than the high-school age. Here and there one finds a poem, like "Paul Revere's Ride," really more ballad than tale; a tender simple tale like "King Robert of Sicily," for a mature eighth grade. "The Vision of Sir Launfal;" not forgetting Morris'The Man Born to Be King, "The Fostering of Auslag," and perhaps other things fromThe Earthly Paradise. The simple but lofty style and feeling of "Sohrab and Rustum" makes it possible for the older children. Any teacher who knows both literature and children will see at once what it is that constitutes the fitness of these poems, and what the unfitness of "Enoch Arden," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," or "Lancelot and Elaine."
Perhaps the only library of literature that isperfectly suited to its purpose and its public, and the only collection of masterpieces to be put into the hands of its readers without misgiving, is the nursery rhymes that we callMother Goose's Melodies. It needs no more general praise, and there is no room for specifications. But it is always in order to urge teachers in this case, as in that of the fairy-tales, to increase their knowledge of those traditionary bits of art. When one knows their origin and something of their social and literary history, they take on new dignity and importance. One ceases to look upon them as mere nonsense to be rattled off for the amusement of the baby, and learns to see them as little treasures of primitive art, miraculously preserved and passed down from baby to baby through these many generations: bits of old song and ballad, games and charms, riddles and incantations, tales of charming incidents and episodes—a gallery of unmatchable portraits, sallies of wit just witty enough for the four-year-old, mild but adequate nonsense; all freed by the lapse of years and the innocence of its devotees from every taint of utilitarianism and occasionalism, winnowed and tested by the generations of mothers and babies that have criticized them, they yield a new charm at every fresh reading to the most experienced reader. They should constitute the first literarymaterial of every English-speaking child. Every well-nurtured child will come to school already in possession of many of them. But he will be glad to go over them for the sake of those less fortunate, as well as for the sake of enjoying them with the whole community, and in consideration of the new pictures, games, and songs that will be joined with them.
Stevenson'sA Child's Garden of Versesis in some sense a quite unique poetic production; and this remains true in spite of the many things produced in imitation of it and inspired by it. It is a wonderful example of the recovery by a grown person of the thread of continuity leading him back to actual childhood; the recovery, too, in many instances of the child's consciousness. It is the gate for us all to the lost garden of our own childhood, pathetic in every line with the evanescence of childhood, "whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu."
Yet in spite of this most poignant appeal to the grown-up person, many of the verses are ideally suited to children. They do not induce in them our mood of pathos and regret, nor do they set their child-readers imaginatively in another experience. They do very really constitute, as Stevenson suggests, a window through which the child sees
Another child far, far away,And in another garden, play;
Another child far, far away,And in another garden, play;
Another child far, far away,
And in another garden, play;
a child with whom he tenderly sympathizes, at whom he lovingly smiles, at whose games he looks on, whose toys and books he knows and loves.
The Child in the Garden is an only child, a lonely child, and a very individualistic child; there is no comradeship in the verses; they cannot be becomingly recited in concert; there is not a chorus or a refrain in the whole book, in which all the children may join; there is nothing communal about them. In spite of all the efforts, they cannot be set to music, except as solos; and if the music matches the mood, it is likely to be difficult for a child to sing. Several of them are too imaginative—"Windy Nights," "Shadow March;" some are a bit ironic—"Good and Bad Children," "System," "A Happy Thought;" some too poignantly pathetic—"The Land of Nod;" some look at childhood too obviously with the man's eyes—"Keepsake Mill;" but all these exceptions leave many altogether suitable for children; and their perfect structure, their musical verse-form, their childlike objectivity, and the divine simplicity of their style render them an unceasing delight.
Though the Child of the Garden was asolitary child, he had a constantly haunting sense of the world beyond—other children in other lands, the foreign countries he might see by climbing higher, the children who would bring his boats ashore far down the river, the children singing in far Japan, the long-ago Egyptian boys, hints at the wider experience and bigger world to which the six- and seven-year-old children are so eagerly reaching out. At the same time nobody but Stevenson—nobody at least, that has written a book—has ever taken adequately the point of view of the human being three feet high—his tiny horizon, the small exquisite objects to which he comes close, the fairy-dells he sees, the rain-pool sea, the clover tree; nowhere else in art is the little world of the little people adequately pictured—the little world, and its obverse, the colossal grown-ups, with their elephantine furniture amidst which the little men and women must ordinarily move.
Many of these poems should be read with the single child at home. For the class at school we may use "Foreign Lands," "Singing," "Where Go the Boats," "My Shadow," "The Swing," "My Ship and I"—the more objective and universal of them.
There are many pretty bits for the youngest children in Christina Rossetti'sSing-Song—abook of nursery rhymes not sufficiently known. Certain of Blake'sSongs of Innocencethe children should know, though they are always found too delicate and contemplative for the whole class. Every teacher of children should know for his own enlightenment the poems of Jane and Ann Taylor, and Dr. Watts'sPoems for Infant Minds. Psychologically speaking, they are in a world completely alien to the modern student of children and of education; but there is a stray verse or two like "The Violet" or "How doth the little busy bee," that may some day fit the needs of the class. Every friend of children, teacher or parent, should know Keble'sLyra Innocentium; he cannot afford to miss the tone and atmosphere of Wordsworth's poems about children and childhood. As a matter of fact, it is only a few of Wordsworth's poems that will go well for class study, though a really enthusiastic teacher may carry even a large class through "The Idle Shepherd Boys" or "The Blind Highland Boy;" the older children should know "Heartleap Well" and "Peter Bell." The true Wordsworthian is born, only occasionally made; if he declares himself in a class in elementary school, the teacher should guide him.
But we should soon learn, and aways remember, that the contemplative and idyllic lyric,however it may delight the chosen child and the adult, will, as a rule, neither please nor train the class, and that poems written for children and about children are not at all likely to be the things children love best and most profit by; the poetry should not linger long in the nursery stage. The class should be pushed on as early as possible into simple but heroic ballads, into lyrics, musical and noble, but simple and easy as to content—all chosen from the great poets.
Even if one desired it, it would probably be impossible to dislodgeHiawathafrom its shrine in American elementary schools; and no one ought to covet the task, for the iconoclast is likely to be set down as a vulgar and egotistic person.Hiawathahas become entrenched in the schools by some such reasoning as this: Here is a poem written by an American on aspects of life among the American aborigines; American children should study it as literature. Children ought to be instructed in primitive life and in myth; therefore they should studyHiawathaas literature. Children should learn much about nature and should learn nature-poetry; therefore they should studyHiawathaas literature.
Of course, there are pretty things inHiawatha.Some of the passages about the forest and the waters, the making of the canoe, the conquest ofMondanim, the picture-writing, may most profitably be interwoven with other things. It is instructive both as to literature and as to fact to put the making of Robinson Crusoe's boat beside the building of Hiawatha's canoe. But there are objections to a long and exclusive course in this poem. The mythical side of it is baffling and discouraging. Once more let me say that aclassis an extremely acute and inquiring personality; after a few days it "wants to know." And it is puzzled and dismayed, and finally frightened off, by the fact that everything means something else. Furthermore, the details both of Indian life and of Indian belief are so chosen and sifted and beautified as to be most misleading, if we are emphasizing that side of the poem. Lastly, it is not good for the young children to have a long-continued and constantly renewed experience in the alien and wearing meter, and the unmusical rhythm ofHiawatha;and the verse-form dictates certain trying peculiarities of style, in especial the slightly varied iteration of detail:
Ah, my brother from the North land,From the kingdom of Wabasso,From the land of the White Rabbit,You have stolen the maiden from me,You have laid your hand upon her,You have wooed and won my maiden.
Ah, my brother from the North land,From the kingdom of Wabasso,From the land of the White Rabbit,You have stolen the maiden from me,You have laid your hand upon her,You have wooed and won my maiden.
Ah, my brother from the North land,
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
From the land of the White Rabbit,
You have stolen the maiden from me,
You have laid your hand upon her,
You have wooed and won my maiden.
This redundancy and repetition do not constitute the direct, forward-moving style we should like to impress on the children. All these considerations are offered to justify the judgment, held in great modesty, thatHiawathashould not be given in its entirety nor should the children be kept at it for any long drill, but, if at all, in chosen episodes and from time to time.
Of course, any teacher may see fit to draw out from Hiawatha the story of any episode and treat it as a story, for dramatization, or as illuminating some phase of the children's interest and activity. And students old enough to interpret the mythical meaning of the poem may profitably read it.
Occasionally, and as something apart from their regular lessons, the children should hear beautifully read passages of the incomparable music of some of the great masters, regardless of their understanding of the content—the first sixteen lines ofParadise Lost; some especially musical sonnet of Shakespeare's, or some passage of lofty eloquence from the plays; some vague and haunting bit of music from Shelly, or Poe, or Keats; some fanfare of trumpets from Byron, or Macaulay, or Kipling.
Every teacher will realize that all the titles and authors and kinds mentioned in this studycannot be put into the children's lessons. It is to be hoped that he will realize that they are mentioned as concrete examples, or suggestive instances of things that are good, and to support the principles under discussion.
The distinctive service of poetry will be the cultivation of the children's sense of the musical side of literature; the opportunity for appreciating some of the minor beauties of the literary art; and among the older children, acquaintance with the more highly imaginative method, and the more intensely emotional moods.
There are many of the elements of drama that are eminently serviceable in the child's literary and artistic training. One cannot use the word "elements" in this connection without explaining that the word as used here does not designate absolutely simple and primitive things. They are elements only with respect to the complex whole which we call a drama. The elements of drama are story, plot, character, impersonation, dialogue, gesture, stage requirements; add to these the matter of literary expression, a pronounced structure which divides the production into clearly distinguished parts or acts; and add the further fact that in all its developed and typical specimens drama is the expression and presentation of a complex social situation, or the vehicle of a mature philosophy. It is quite evident, then, that the fully constituted literary drama will be both too complex and too difficult for children under twelve, and in most communities for any elementary children.
But the elements of drama are not of necessity always in the difficult and elaborate combinationwhich constitutes a literary drama. They appear singly and in simpler combinations here and there in many of the experiences and occupations of the child. They may be selected and combined for him in such products as will secure for him the distinctive joys and discipline of the drama.
For example, there is the element of gesture, which in its elaborated form becomes technical acting. In its primitive and fundamental form it is instinctive with children—well-nigh purposeless at first, uncontrolled and fantastic like the early activities of their imagination, but easily organized and directed toward a purpose. The first step in this direction is the game. Some of the charming group-games the children learn even in the kindergarten are genuine dramatic art. Such games are, at any rate, the first opportunity to channel and to turn into something like artistic expression the children's ceaseless activity.
We have all learned to appreciate the social and physical value of play. We may well add now a respectful estimate of games as art. The group-game may seem at first glance far from the child's literary training; but, as a matter of fact, a good game which has in it, as a good game always has, an orderly process and a climax, is just such an artistic whole as a story. Besides,many of our best group-games are accompanied by a rhythmic chant, often by pretty or quaint verses, such as "Itisket, itasket, a green and yellow basket;" or, "How many miles to Babylon?" or "London bridge is falling down." Acting upon this hint, we may substitute for these verses more artistic lines, or we can furnish more artistic lines with the fitting game. And these activities, channeled and disciplined by the group-game, are receiving the best possible training for dramatic acting by and by.
We must consider dancing as a form of dramatic gesture, and as a training for it. We may all rejoice in the current change of attitude toward dancing, which bids fair to replace it in education and among the arts. We are learning again to regard it as such a controlling and refining of motion as makes an appeal to one's sense of beauty, not as the vulgar, one might almost say sordid, accomplishment it has been in average society for many generations. The rediscovery of the charming and simple folk-dances has given us a new art for the children, which we may substitute for the unnatural waltz, and the mongrel two-step we have been teaching them for years. A dance is a medium for expressing a mood, and a means of communicating it; like the games, it is a methodof channeling and training activity. From this point of view one may see its two-fold relation: on the one hand, to the child's natural activities, taking them up, selecting among them, and combining them into a beautiful whole; on the other hand to dramatic acting, training and controlling the physical movements of gesture and pose and poise. Ideally it may have a closer connection with literature. Not only may dancing reflect a mood; it may tell a story or present a situation; many primitive dances were of this kind. In a previous chapter I have spoken of dancing as a method of motion to accompany spoken verse, as a means of deepening the sense of rhythm. It is possible to represent in this way, not only the movement of the words, but the mood of the lyric, and,mutatis mutandis, the events of the ballad. I have seen the fourth-year class present a little dance of "Hickory dickory dock" invented for them by their teacher, and another class a little older do a humorous dance of "There was a man in our town," than which two performances nothing could be more charming. Of course, these were not in any sense reproductions of the actions suggested by the jingles; there was no gesture that told of running up the clock, or scratching out his eyes; that would be the business of the old gesticulating elocution so deplorable in theartificiality of its would-be realism. The dances were felt to be merely the active response to the rhythm and the mood of the recited words—bits of dramatic tone-color, as it were.
One wonders why all teachers do not make a game of "Charades" a frequent class recreation and discipline, since it has in it so many elements of educational value—the contributions to the children's vocabulary, the sugar-coated persuasion to attend to spelling, the frequent need for the invention of dialogue, the sharpening of everybody's wits, and, best of all, the call for significant pantomime, genuine dramatic gesture, and the fun, which is always educative.
When we come to the element of impersonation, we are nearer the heart of dramatic art, and perhaps deeper into the circle of the child's interests and instincts as well. Imitation is one of the absolute and fundamental aspects of a child's activities. It is impossible to escape calling it an instinct, when one sees that it is deeper and more universal than any impulse or tendency. The interpretation put by more recent psychologists upon the term and the fact of imitation throws a new and grateful light upon it as a principle in drama. In the light of this interpretation, we can not longer think of imitation as a servile, and more or less formal, copying of the thing seen. We arenow saying that in these activities of the children, when they are playing horse, or playing hunter, or playing soldier, they are not copying something they have seen or heard of; theyarekeeping house, theyarehunting, theyaremarching and fighting. Not even bodily activity is a more incessant and absolute aspect of play than this of make-believe. Imaginative children, and those that have some variety of experience, are rarely at leisure to appear in their own characters—so constant is the dramatic and imitative impulse in exercise. Indeed, two little girls I knew, after a forenoon of unceasing and strenuous impersonation of a repertoire ranging from a door-mat and a cake of ice in the Delaware on through the ghost of the murdered Banquo, were finally obliged to sit down in utter weariness, when one of them suggested: "Now let's play we're just plain little girls." In the same nursery of four children the child who returned to the room after any absence always cautiously inquired of each of the others, before taking up affairs: "What are you being now?"
In certain hours of his study of literature and literary appreciation one is ready to believe that this impulse toward impersonation is the very fundamental fact in that appreciation. It is the door through which one enters into the situationsand feelings which make up the life represented in the story, poem, or drama. This it is that gives that strange grip of reality to literature; it is this that turns the appreciation of literature into personal culture, so that in a very real sense one may substitute literature for experience. It is easy to utilize this passion very early, turning it in the direction of art. In the kindergarten they have long known how to adapt it in the play which they so wisely interchange and amalgamate with their games; and the little pantomimes of "Bo-peep" and "Little Boy Blue," of flocks of birds, of butterflies on the wing, and what not, are on the road to true dramatic art. But, alas! this is cut all too short in the school—the average school, where the scholars are converted immediately into the veriest little pitchers—all ears; and, instead of being twenty selves in a day, they are denied the privilege of being even one whole one. This gift for impersonation should, like all their imaginative experiences, be conserved by exercise and guidance; otherwise it remains merely chaotic and accidental, and very soon the child himself is ashamed of it and regards its exercise as a "baby" performance to be left behind in the kindergarten. This exercise and guidance may be given by training the children in little plays, which, to begin with, are not much more than pantomime, butwhich add, as they go on, other elements of the real drama—an organized action and dialogue.
Of course, there is the dramatic monologue—the recitation. But this does not meet the needs of the class. It is impossible that all the children should sympathetically impersonate the same character and realize the same experience. Neither does this sort of exercise—the recitation—give a chance for co-operation in the production of a bit of social art; it does not give them the discipline of apprehending and producing a large whole, and it tends to develop and foster an unendurable kind and degree of egoism.
Where are we to get these plays, since there are practically none of respectable literary quality ready to our hand? One must say "practically none," because there are a few in print which can be used, chiefly dramatizations of folk- and fairy-tales. But, for the most part, and just as it should be, the teacher and the class will have to make their own plays, until in the eighth grade or thereabouts they are ready for some literary drama. As will be pointed out later, these co-operatively produced dramas constitute the best possible return which the children can make of their literary training, and at the same time the best possible means of securing their apprehension of the story they use; since in recasting a story as a playthey will come to know it as plot, as activity of persons, and as a structure made up of essential parts.
Almost the first thing the child sees is the fact that there is something organic and necessary about these divisions and subdivisions. He sees them separate themselves out from the narrative as things in themselves, and then reunite to form a complete whole again. It matters not whether the story be one that he has been taught, a historical episode, or a story invented by himself, the emphasis upon structure, upon organization, which is one of the elements of drama, will be helpful, as a matter of literary training.
As to the dialogue—the actual literature of this communal drama—we must be most indulgent, and on the whole uncritical. A marked peculiarity of the dramatizations of the little people, as indeed of those of their elders, is that they forget to be literature at all, so that what is not dumb-show must be set down as noise. It is a troublesome and delicate task for the teacher who is guiding them to manage to give the dialogue a tone better than mere commonplace and different from mere bombast. It is wisest, on the whole, to get them to choose stories and events that will sway their dialogue toward the bombastic and away from the commonplace; they will certainlybe more spontaneous, and probably more artistic. And it is easy to set into every play some genuine gem of literature—a lyric to be sung, a little story to be told. It is desirable to introduce as much music as possible—really artistic little songs that fit into the atmosphere of the play and help to create it; it makes better "team-work." A dance too, always provided it harmonizes with the tone and spirit of the play, helps the feeling of co-operative production. The children's acting, in the sense of gesture and stage-business, is very likely to be stiff and artificial. Marches and dances that belong in the play make an imperative call for movement, and accustom them to action without self-consciousness and formality.
The story, then, is generally given—it is something the children have read, it is a historical event, though of course it may be furnished by some inventive member of the class, or evolved by them together. Whatever it is, it will in all probability not differ in any way from the story of any narrative. The plot will be the plot of the narrative story; it will be either an accident or a very noteworthy fact, if the material furnished displays a true dramatic plot. There will probably be no true dramatic characterization. The teacher cannot aim at it, and must not expect it; though occasionally the born actor declareshimself and presents us "a man in his humor" in true dramatic fashion. But, on the whole, we are contented if up to the time we are twelve or thirteen we move about the stage, as the persons move through the story, delivering ourselves of such dialogue as is needed to put the action forward—and nothing more. It goes without saying that place must be made for a large number of "sups." An army is a great device, for in the marching and manœuvering most of the class can manage to appear upon the stage first or last.Briar-Rosemakes a great play for the third or fourth grade, for every man in the grade can appear as a thorn-bush in the hedge. There may easily be two different casts for every play. Occasionally there is the opportunity for the whole class to appear in character as audience.
It is almost impossible to say anything concerning the staging, the theatrical side, of these plays that will be helpful everywhere because the facilities vary so widely in different schools and different communities. In general, it is best to have what answers for a stage. There is some mystic influence in the raised platform, the curtain, the proscenium arch that cuts off this performance from the rest of the world and gives it at once the distinction of art. Every dramatic guide ofyoung people should help forward as much as possible the movement to free drama from the tyranny of the stage carpenter, the scene-painter, and the costumer. And with children as with the early folk-players it takes very little to create the illusion. A feather in his head makes the six-year-old a noble red man without more ado. A sash over her shoulder converts a little maiden of the third grade into a haughty princess. But the feather and the sash are good pedagogy as well as good art. An arm-chair makes a parlor; a half-dozen arm-loads of boughs makes a forest. I witnessed a stirring performance ofSiegfried, the Child of the Forest, where the illusion of the deep-forest glades was created by three rubber plants, a potted palm, and a sword-fern in a jardinière! A golden-haired Siegfried with an angora rug thrown over one shoulder, a blackened Mimi with a mantle of burlap fastened about him with a trunk-strap—the whole atmosphere of art was there.
As the children grow older, and alas! in most cases less imaginative, they will require more properties. If possible, they should work together to make the scenery and provide the properties, and should be prevailed upon to make their own costumes. The wise teacher will keep thecostuming out of the hands of the "tender mamas" all he can; for in most cases the participation of the mothers in this side of the preparations, unless they are given specific directions and compelled to follow them, means the introduction of the fatal spirit of competitive finery. The children should be taught to see that the costuming is a part of the art, and that everybody's costume must be brought "within the picture."
Now, up through the sixth or seventh grades (this will depend upon the average maturity of the children, upon the kind of culture in the homes from which they come, upon the character and knowledge of the teachers in the grades through which they have come) the plays that the children have should be of the kind we have been considering—epic material, mere direct story put together under the simplest of dramatic principles—those of analysis into movements, of dialogue and of action in its simpler forms. But in the eighth school year (merely to set a limit), and bridging the children over into their ninth or first year of high school, there may be a change. The child has gradually become conscious of the complexity of life and human interests; he begins to make his adolescent readjustment to the world, to realize in a conscious way its history and its institutions; his own studiesin history have become studies in the interweaving of complex factors; the great social institutions begin to press their claims and offer their attractions; college looms ahead, conditioning all his undertakings; the church makes its appeal or asserts its rights; upon all too many children the institutions of business and industry make their call; in most children their own moral and religious problems, and those of their mates, rise to consciousness. Epic directness and singleness now no longer seem an adequate picture of human affairs. It is now that the child has his first moment of ripeness for the characteristic inner things of the literary drama: the clash and combination of institutions; the revolt of the individual against the institution, with his final destruction or adjustment; the plot which is an interweaving of ethical and complex social forces—the characters generally intricate to begin with, and undergoing profound modification in the process of the action, different from the static epic characters he has known hitherto. In short, we may find that the eighth grade is ready for some specimens of that literary type which is the truest artistic presentation of the social and moral complex, the literary drama. Luckily, there are grades and shades of complexity, and a wide range of choice as to the nature and difficulty of the problems involved.One would scarcely encourage the eighth- or ninth-year school children to attack the intricate adjustment and interplay ofHamlet; he would not like them to follow the baffling complexities of social, personal, and economic considerations throughThe Pillars of Society. ButThe Merchant of Veniceoffers problems and situations which he can understand; inJulius Caesarand inMacbeth, inWilhelm Tell, and in theWallensteinplays, noble and finished dramas as they are, he encounters nothing that he cannot grasp. On the contrary, the ideas and the situations are such as he readily understands, and such as legitimately enlarge his horizon. The Shakespeare, at any rate, will probably be studied as poetry, and the children should be encouraged to act, in whole or in part, any play that they can study as literature.
It may be that the facilities of the school will prohibit any attempt to stage one of these larger plays. In that event chosen bits may be given as dialogue or monologue fitted into a recital of the story, and a description of the situation. The teacher should always remember that the drama is oral literature, and the literature of it makes its legitimate appeal first to the ear. Children memorize so easily, that they will know the play by heart practically as soon as they have finished such a consideration of it as enables them to readit intelligently. If not, the striking and beautiful passages should be deliberately memorized.
Should these dramatic performances be produced before a public? Most certainly yes. Let it be however small a public—two neighboring grades, invited parents and friends; but let the study and effort bear its legitimate fruit in the public presentation. Only when we lead them to turn back what they have gained into a community asset, have we done anything to train our children in social art. And this is so natural and easy in the case of an acted drama that it is a pity to miss the opportunity. Of course, they must love the thing they do. It must be made good enough to give, and be therefore offered. We shall gradually recover from the fright we have been in now for some time as to the children's desire to "show off." How can we be sure we should have had any art, if this motive had not mingled with the others in the production and publication of the art-product? Let us cease to give it an invidious name; instead of calling it the desire to "show off," let us call it the artists' passion—be he poet, painter, actor, what not—to communicate, to turn back into the common life this thing he has but drawn out of the common life to elaborate and beautify.
The child and the theater makes a difficultproblem. One need not say that a habitual theater-going child is a social, and most likely a moral, monster. But children should occasionally see a play with the pomp and circumstance of the stage. In the large cities it is not difficult to find a play or two each year that it is good for a child to see—something of Shakespeare, or some other heroic spectacle; some innocent programme of horse-play and frolic; some pretty pantomime, and occasionally a melodrama neither banal nor over-sentimental. If we but realized the theater as an educational and aesthetic force, we might secure many more such things by an intelligent appeal for them and an intelligent reception of them.
After the children have had these few heroic plays we have discussed for the eighth or ninth grade, they mature so rapidly that their contact with the literary drama ceases to be a child's problem at all; it passes into the field of secondary training, where it must, as things now are in our schools, be approached from a somewhat different point of view.
In this day of reaction, not to say revulsion, against "methods" in teaching, it is with much misgiving that one brings one's self to speak of the practical details of teaching a subject, lest he be suspected of having a method or even a system, or lest those suggestions which he tries to give out as genetic and stimulating merely, be taken as a formalized plan. However, each body of material that has any degree of separateness has a handle by which it ought to be taken; disregarding the poor figure—paths by which one most easily comes to the center of it; certain points of view from which it looks most attractive and manageable. Some such handles, or paths, or points of view it will be the business of this chapter to indicate; and the suggestions to be offered are, it is to be hoped, so simple and so reasonable as to have occurred to many observing and growing teachers.
The somewhat small body of literature to be used in the classes should practically throughout the elementary period be read to the children in class, not read by them. The relation of theliterature to reading-lessons will be discussed elsewhere. It may well be that in the last years of the period many of the members of the class will have reached the stage of reading needful for the interpretative and apprehensive reading of literature; but the majority of the class will not. They will master the difficulties of mechanical reading; they may achieve the plane of intelligent reading. But here the large majority of them linger. Vast numbers of people never push on to the next plane—that of appreciative reading. And it is small wonder; for the combination of mechanical, intellectual, and emotional processes that it involves constitutes it well-nigh the most difficult of achievements. Hosts of estimable and intelligent persons, respectable citizens, live out long years of greater or less usefulness, and never have a glimpse of this kind of reading. It is by no means true that even every good and useful citizen who teaches literature, can do this kind of reading; many times he cannot. But he can read better than the children. They, involved in the difficulties of their inexpert reading, cannot see the woods for the trees; they are obliged to go so slowly, and to absorb so much energy in what one may call the manual work of reading, that they miss the essentially literary things—the movement, the picture, the music.
Of course, when we say "read," we use the word in the broad sense of rendering the matterviva voce, whether it be actual reading from the text or reciting. While the person who is reading a story to children must be most concerned with spirit and meaning, he must not, if he suppose himself to be teaching literature, neglect the matter of style. If the story is a translated one, he must make or choose some beautiful translation. Everything that he reads to them he must work over beforehand, so that he can give it with effective certainty. He more than defeats his purpose who transmits to his children no matter how good a story in slip-shod sentences, commonplace phrasing, go-easy enunciation; or, worse than that, in the ostentatiously childlike language and manner that constitute official kindergartenese, or in the hilariously cheerful manner which marks traditional Sunday-schoolese; or, worst of all, in that tone of cheap irony that so many people see fit to adopt for all their communications with children. It is the tone of the average adult whenever he enters into conversation with any acquaintance under twelve—an underbred or quite uncalled-for tone of badinage, of quizzing, of insincerity. It is an unpardonable misunderstanding of the dignity and seriousness of children to offer them babble when they askonly simplicity, or to treat with flippancy what to them are the serious things of art. It should be quite possible to be serious without being solemn, and cheerful without being hilarious. This matter of a good style and form is so important that a teacher should achieve it at any cost of trouble and study. I like to use every opportunity to say that he should so thoroughly know his story or poem, be it the simplest old fairy-tale, or the veriest nursery-jingle, that he loves and respects it as art; and should so know and respect his audience and his purpose that a good and suitable literary form flows from him inevitably; or, if he is reading an actual text, that every sentence is both appreciative and interpretative. But, if he cannot achieve this, let him in the first instance write out a good form of his story, or find one and memorize it. There is no denying that in the hands of a cold and mechanical person this production will display some priggishness and false propriety. But the failure as literary training would be less disastrous in this case than if the same person gave a haphazard and commonplace impromptu version.
There is such a thing as literary reading as distinguished from the reading of matter technical in content and merely intellectual in appeal. Teachers, accustomed as they are to read for factsand intent upon the logical emphasis, are peculiarly prone to read literature poorly—missing the music and the emotion, rendering it all in the hard intellectual manner that is acceptable only as the vehicle of the colorless matter of a technical treatise. There is also such a thing as the telling of a literary story, as distinguished from the telling of any other story. A narrative of events in history, an account of some occurrence in nature or ordinary affairs, may be expected to proceed from point to point without arrangement or succession other than the order of incidents as they occur. The interest is the interest of fact; the thread is that of cause and effect, or any other plain sequence.
But in the literary story the incidents are sifted and arranged. Certain details are prophecies—foreshadowings of things to come; certain incidents are vital turning-points in the action; certain phrases are the key and counter-sign of the whole story; some paragraphs are plain narration; some are calm description; some are poetic interpretation; some roar with action; some glow with emotion; some sparkle with fun; some lie in shadow, others stand forth in the brilliant light; there are movements in the story, marked by a change of scene, a change of situation, a pause in the action—parts which would be markedin the drama as scenes or acts; there is the gradual approach to the center, the pivotal occurrence, the readjustment of affairs to ordinary life. Ideally, all these things will be indicated in the presentation that an accomplished story-teller makes of a literary story. This seems to set the standard very high—too high for the discouraged attempt of the overworked grade teacher. If so, she may reflect that it is triumphantly true that such is the affinity between the child and the story that he will get much delight and nourishment out of any telling of it. Who has not hesitated between a smile and a tear at the spectacle of a child or a class hanging enthralled and hungry upon a story rendered by a mother or a teacher whose every pronunciation was a jar, whose every cadence a dislocation, and whose every emphasis a misinterpretation?
And remember, the art of story-telling is not the art of the theater, not the art of the actress, but the art of the mother, the nurse; the art of the "spinsters and the knitters in the sun;" the art of the wandering minstrel, of the journeyman tailor, of the exiled younger brother; art designed to reach, not an audience beyond the footlights, but one gathered on the sunny bench of the market-place, on the hearth-stone, under thenursery lamp, in the shady garden, and in their own teacher's schoolroom.
As a practical matter, the teacher, in presenting a story or a narrative poem, should take advantage of the natural pauses, the end of one incident or movement and the beginning of the next, in dividing his material for the actual lessons, so that in a long story or in a drama, the end of the lesson coincides with the close of a series of incidents or the close of one of the larger movements. Nothing spoils a bit of literature more effectually than taking it in accidental or fragmentary bits. At any cost of time and pains, let there be a sense of completeness in each lesson, a feeling of repose, if only temporary, at the end of each instalment. And whether he closes his lesson or not, the teacher should at the close of every such movement in a class of older children pause to discuss, to review, or to summarize. When he makes this recognition of the close of a series of incidents, or of a movement, he accomplishes two things: he secures a certain amount of completeness, and he helps on in the children the desirable sense of organization, of composition, in their story or play.
The nature of the bit of literature chosen must guide the teacher in his first presentation of it. When it is a thing in which the movement israpid, or the interest in the action or the plot intense, it will doubtless be best to go rapidly through the whole, not pausing for any details. Then go over it slowly again, pausing for appreciation and comment. It seems well to repeat here that if the story is long and the plot involves any intensity of suspense, it may be well to let the children know the issue early in the story; the wisdom of this step will depend largely upon the average nerves of the class. There may well be several readings of a thing worth reading once. Every teacher knows how well content the younger children, especially, are to go over a thing many times. The interest of the class of older children may be kept up through the many readings of a story or poem, by shifting each time the ground of comment or discussion, opening up a new question or revealing a new point of interest at each reading. In other pieces, the slower moving stories and lyrics, the children are willing to linger over the details at the first reading.
It is all but impossible to indicate what such details are, or what we mean by lingering over them. I have pointed out in some detail, in the chapter on poetry, the kind of thing that one would linger over for comment and question.
If it is a new, rare, or especially picturesqueword, we may ask questions and receive comments, or according to the situation, give quick and direct information about it: "The golden orangeglows;" "He strung the bowdeftly;" "The butter-cup catches the sun in itschalice." These three words call for attention for different reasons, in addition to the fact that any or all of them might be new and unknown words to the class. In the case of a figure or image we would pause and discuss the various terms and details of it, until most members of the class have at least intellectually apprehended it. Such a complex little figure and image as "footsteps of the falling drops down the ladder of the leaves" calls for leisurely appreciation and assimilation. A peculiar musical onomatopoeic line will interest them; "Burly dozing bumble-bee," is such a line. They will be delighted to discover why this peculiar assemblage of sounds was chosen in connection with this insect. "The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs," indicating and imitating by its slow movement and long vowels the passage of the lingering hours, is an effect they should be led to realize. We should pause to point out, or to inquire into, the implications of some pregnant or pivotal sentence, such as: "Now, Cinderella's godmother was fay;" or, "Cyclops, you asked my noble name, and Iwill tell it: My name is Noman." The bit selected for detailed study may be larger, amounting to a complete incident—for example, Nausicaa with her maids washing her beautiful clothes by the river; some scene or incident full of character and symbolical meaning, as the scene with the hen and the cat inThe Ugly Duckling; some ethical or moral question that calls for judgment, such as Robin Hood's treatment of the unjust abbot, or Portia's decision as to Shylock's bond.
These examples, chosen at random, are intended simply to suggest the kind of thing to be stopped over. It would be a grave mistake to pause over every such detail, or to try to make sure that the children apprehend even intellectually every item as it appears. Leave many of them for subsequent readings; let many of them lie permanently, depending rather on the effects of the general tone and spirit of the production for your results. One of the first lessons to learn about the teaching of literature is that it will not do to teach the whole art on the basis of one specimen—that it will not do to teach in any case all that one could. One must rather try to teach the characteristic, the inevitable lesson—the lesson demanded by the genius of his piece. Let the teacher avoid by all means the pitfall of "talky-talk" and lecture. Keep the literature as nearplay as possible—the play that cultivates and disciplines through the avenues of refined pleasure.
It will often be necessary for the teacher to shorten and otherwise edit the thing he chooses. There will come from time to time dull passages, descriptive passages, passages whose subject-matter is too mature, or in some other way undesirable for his class. He will often be able to economize effort and to secure a better unity of impression, by omitting what is mere enrichment of the picture or reinforcement of the teaching; such incidents may be removed without altering the meaning or the movement. The teacher must be experienced enough to recognize such unnecessary or superfluous incidents; otherwise he only mutilates his story in condensing it.
When the children have advanced to some proficiency in reading, they will, of course, begin to read some of their own literature, reading aloud in the class and often having the text before them as the teacher reads. All the children that can read at all should, as a rule, have a printed copy of anything they are asked to memorize; and as a matter of social duty, the teacher of literature, or the teacher in the literature class, will from time to time have a careful exercise in reading for the younger readers; while he will have much reading aloud from the older grades;remembering that the inevitable obverse of receiving literature through the ear is the rendering it with the voice. But, on the whole, they will fare best if up to and probably through the sixth grade they receive what is distinctively literature through the ear. And even after that they should often hear their material rendered by a good reader in class, even though they may be required to read the same material over beforehand, or subsequent to the class reading.
Every teacher should have in reserve a store of stories and poems, and beautiful passages from great masterpieces which he produces from time to time as a surprise to his class. This is many a time the most effective lesson possible—adding to the children's pleasure the delight of surprise, creating in them the impression of the inexhaustible supply of beautiful things, and testifying to their teacher's own joy in the things he wants them to love.
Other minor and practical matters, more closely connected with the return from the children than the presentation to them, will be discussed in the next chapter.
Finally, the whole matter is conditioned and colored by the fact that in any case the literature is transmitted to the children through the personality of the teacher. This is partially true of alla child's subjects and his whole experience in school; but the fact that literature is so inwoven with feeling, and so bound up with matters of personal taste, that it concerns itself so much with matters of ethics and conduct, makes it peculiarly liable to take on color, to narrow or to widen with the personality of him who chooses and renders it. A teacher must accept this fact, and profit by the obvious warnings that arise out of it; but better than that, build his work upon the many beneficent aspects of the fact. The teacher before his class is the sacred bard at the feast; he is an exhaustless spring of joy, a tireless playfellow, a preacher who never proses, a schoolmaster who never scolds.
The discussion must naturally limit itself largely to the immediate return that we may ask of the children from their lessons in literature; since it is not possible to do more than hint at their ultimate effects. It is, of course, a matter of pedagogical morality to ask from them some immediate and practical return, or some actual literary contributions to the lessons. There are certain modifications of the modern doctrine that every stimulation of the mind or the emotions should eventuate in activity—modifications that apply to all the fine arts. The aesthetic experience is a complete experience in itself; the apprehension, the enjoyment, and the final appreciation which one passes through in his contact with a beautiful piece of art—a picture, a symphony, an ode—constitute a complete psychic experience; they eventuate in a better taste, a higher ideal, the record of a pure and noble joy. They do not demand further activity. We need not feel, therefore, that it is a matter of necessity to ask that in every case the class make some tangible response to every literary impression.
But the teacher of literature must feel that he shares with all their other teachers the responsibility and the duty of making social beings of the children, of equipping them with the means of expression and communication, so that they may turn back into the sum-total a product in exchange for the material they draw out. He must, therefore, associate with the lessons a legitimate amount of exercise for his class in imparting what they have learned and in creating literary products for themselves.
The first and simplest return we ask is the oral comment, the immediate discussion that accompanies the presentation of the work. When a story has been read, there should always be opportunity for question and comment. This the teacher must guide and restrain. Of course, he should be hospitable to suggestions and contributions, patient, and generous to questions. But he must be cautious never to let the talk even on the part of the smallest children remain mere prattle, or degenerate into an aimless scamper around the paddock; he will see that there is a point or a line to cling to, and he will manage that this shall be done. Every teacher knows how one petty or commonplace child, one would-be wit or skeptic, can drag the discussion into the dust and keep it there, unless he is promptly andperhaps vigorously suppressed. Of course, in these discussions there is very small opportunity for training the voice and criticizing the language. Let there be, if possible, a free flow of comment and contribution, uninterrupted by any corrections except those of the most egregious errors. The teacher who guides it should study his questions, and even with the little ones should bring into the light of discussion the vital and salient things, and by means of a question from time to time, keep the conference away from triviality and gossip. He will begin to train his children from the beginning to make legitimate inductions from their material, and will require them to give reasons based upon the actual story or poem. He will be able to lead them to find the precise point of departure in the story for the introduction of their personal experience or their new incident, and he will help them in every case to make clear the application of their own material to the discussion.
It is in this spontaneous and free, but guided, conference that the children get most good out of the literature lessons. Of course, as they grow older the discussion of persons and their conduct, and the ethical and social bearing of events and opinions, may be broadened and deepened. As they grow older, too, more correctness and styleand fulness may be demanded in their impromptu contributions to the discussion. A child may, without suspecting it, and consequently without self-consciousness, acquire some considerable skill in extemporaneous speaking and some genuine intellectual ease in conversation from these class discussions.
Another natural return to be asked from the children is the repetition of the story, in whole or in part, by members of the class in their own words; though of course, after many hearings of it well told the children will have incorporated into their own vocabulary the most useful and characteristic words. This exercise should never be allowed to pass into a careless and slipshod performance; the children should be alive and responding alertly to the call made upon them. Their grammar, their sentences, their emphases and intonations may appropriately be corrected more vigorously in this exercise than in the spontaneous discussion.
The best literary effect is not secured by having the story retold immediately after the children have heard it, nor by having them understand beforehand that it is to be retold as a formal exercise. It may be brought out of them on some later occasion so as to give it the air of an independent contribution to the pleasure of the class. Nothingis more deadly to the atmosphere of a story than the certainty on the part of the children that they are going to be called upon to retell it. This should never become a habitual exercise. It helps in a literary as well as a social way to divide the story in the retelling among the children according to movements, or even according to incidents, since this calls attention to its parts and organization.
We may reasonably expect all the poems taught as literature to be memorized, since it does not take many repetitions of a poem to fix it in a child's memory. The vocal production of this poem gives the best opportunity for cultivating the child in voice, in enunciation and pronunciation. The teacher should not, of course, seem querulous and exacting in small matters, and it is better to leave a few careless spots in any one poem than to spoil the children's pleasure in it by too close criticism; but he can do much to help all the children toward a distinguished manner of expression. These memorized poems, like the stories they learn, should not be regarded as formal exercises to be recited once and be done with. They should be called for from time to time as contributions to the pleasure of the whole class. Time is profitably given now and then to a story or verse tournament, asang-fest, when thewhole store of things acquired is brought out and enjoyed. In the two older classes each child may be required to choose, prepare, and present to the class a bit of literature. The choice and preparation must be done in consultation with the teacher; the presentation to the class regarded as a contribution to their artistic experience and accepted without criticism.
Paraphrasing is a process of doubtful value. It is never possible to express the precise meaning or mood in other words, and in the case of verse it serves to destroy the sense of inviolability of form that one would desire to develop and deepen. The direction, "State the same thought in other words," should never be given. To one delicately alive to the value of words and the shades of thought, it is a mere contradiction in terms. The same may be said of the practice of getting the children to substitute synonyms; in literature, especially in poetry, there can be no true synonyms, and no precisely synonymous expressions.
Many pleasant experiments are to be made in connecting some of the handwork of the youngest children with their literature. The attempt to realize some of their images in actual stuff constitutes an artistic experiment that has its literary reverberations, and helps to deepen theassociation. Let them make a cloak forLittle Red Riding-Hood, a fairies' coach of a nut shell, a boat, a tent—or whatever little object or property is imbedded in the story. Out of practically every story, and out of many of the poems, they get an inspiration for a picture or a bit of modeling. Such associations with literature are legitimate and natural. This appears very clear when we reflect that we are hoping to cultivate the taste and imagination of the children, and to teach them to love human life, with all that this implies, as well as to drill them in language, grammar, and writing.
It seems necessary to handle aspects of the problem of language and writing in connection with literature in several different places, as we come upon the topic from different points of view. As has been said before, it is the duty of the teacher of literature, and of the lessons in literature, to help along the work in the language arts. It is even fair to assume that the children will take more interest in their composition lessons, and will get more profit out of them, when they are attached to something they have done in literature; but this is because they get out of literature more impulse toward creation, and more inspiration toward a beautiful and striking manner of expression. But composition is not merelya medium of creative expression; it is a means of plain communication, and should be developed in both directions and from both sources. This means that the children should write in connection with all their subjects, so that they do not, on the one hand, associate "English" and writing with literature only, and do not, on the other hand, run the risk of forming no style but a literary style.
It is certainly true that we disquiet ourselves and persecute the children unnecessarily concerning the whole matter of writing during the elementary period. The children scarcely acquire the process of writing as a manual thing in the first four years. During the next four by good luck and much toil, most of them manage to reduce it to the stage of a tool. Their consciousness of the process added to their consciousness of their spelling and grammar, leaves them little freedom in using the written composition as an avenue of spontaneous expression. Add to this the fact that a large part of this period—the period of ten to fourteen—is the beginning of the great reticence. They are not telling what they know or feel; they have narrowed their vocabulary down to the absolutely necessary terms; they have seen through every device by which the teacher seeks to get them to express themselves.Their written compositions will be, therefore, dogged exercises, and should be connected, as far as possible, with colorless information subjects. There are exceptional children and exceptional classes, indeed, to whom these generalizations do not apply. We have all heard of classes in distant elementary schools which "loved" to write.
But there will of necessity be a certain amount of composition that will fall in with the work in literature, and will constitute one of the logical returns we ask of the children. This the teacher would like to have as spontaneous and as literary as possible. In general, we should like it to be creative, and not critical or reproductive. We would encourage them to devise new adventures of Odysseus, or of Robin Hood, to give an experience of their own organized into a genuine story, an interpretation and effective description of some incident or event that has interested them or been invented by them. It is necessary, if you expect to get anything literary or creative out of them, to help to put them in the creative and literary mood. Talk over with them the thing they mean to do; see that they have the vocabulary they will obviously need; enlarge their range of comparison and allusion by discussion; lead them to divide their material into suitable parts with someacceptable sequence; enrich their topics by kindred material; guide them into the observation and interpretation of material in the imaginative and literary way.
Some aspects of this process are illustrated in the following experience: A teacher had been reading Howard Pyle'sRobin Hood, with occasionally one of the original ballads interspersed (but not the traditional "Robin Hood and the Potter"), for three months; the children had also memorized during the same time three short lyrics; and in every lesson there had been discussions; the time had come when they must make something. They decided to follow the plan of their book and tell how Robin Hood added a new member to his band. These children were making pottery by way of handwork, and had lately had an interesting visit to see a potter working with his wheel. So the suggestion naturally made by some member of the class, that the new member of Robin Hood's band be a potter, was received with instant favor. The teacher read them "Peter Bell," and their hero promptly became a peddler-potter—the very same, suggested an agile child, whom Tom, the Piper's son, found beating his ass, and upon whom he played the merry trick. By this time the class could be restrained no longer. They climbed over one another'sshoulders, literally and figuratively, with eager suggestions and copious details. After discussing the plan long enough to suggest an organization of the material into three natural parts, the children were set to work. The orderly and patient children produced satisfactory stories, abundant in material and beautiful in detail. All the others produced stories which, however disorderly and careless, were breathless with feeling and overflowing with stuff. Some of them adopted Tom, the Piper's son, as the new member of the band, not being able to forgive the potter for beating the ass; some adopted them both; others, only the Potter, duly lessoned and converted; all provided for the donkey. When they were aroused and provided, there was a spontaneous outflow of what was in every case, allowing for the varying temperaments and acquirements of the children, a really literary production.