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THE STORY IN PRIMARY INSTRUCTION

Sixteen Stories and How to Use Them

by

SAMUEL B. ALLISON. PH. D.

Principal of the Walsh School, Chicago

and

H. AVIS PERDUE

Primary Instructor, Chicago Normal Practice School






A. Flanagan Company
Chicago

Copyright 1902
By A. Flanagan Company




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE

  INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION                                              5

  THE STORY IN PRIMARY INSTRUCTION                                     5

   1. The Mastery of a Vocabulary not the Material of Instruction.
   2. A Wider Circle and Purpose, Growing out of the Child’s Life
           and Needs.
   3. Language Teaching.

  THE SELECTION OF THE SUBJECT MATTER                                 11

   1. Phase of Mind Activity in Early Civilisation.
   2. A Third Element of the Race Products.
   3. The Legendary and the Mythological the Child’s Natural Food.
   4. How Are We to Discriminate as to the Material to be
           Selected?
   5. Narratives Selected and the Basis of Selection.
   6. The Four Story Groups.

  THE PROBLEM OF CORRELATION                                          20

  SUGGESTIONS                                                         23

   1. The Treatment.
   2. Reproduction.
   3. The Preparation.
   4. Narration.
   5. The Deepening.
   6. The Nature Material.
   7. Ethical Material.
   8. Reading.
   9. Drawing. Etc.
  10. Dramatisation.
  11. Construction.


  SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIVE STORIES                                        35

  THE SEVEN LITTLE GOATS                                              35

   1. The Mother Goat.
   2. The Wolf.
   3. The Wolf in the House.
   4. The Mother Goat’s Return.
   5. Detail of Form Work (Diagram).

  THE STARDOLLARS                                                     44

   1. At Home.
   2. In the Fields.
   3. In the Forest.

  LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD                                              48

   1. At Home.
   2. In the Woods.
   3. At Grandmother’s House.

  THE SWEET RICE PORRIDGE                                             54

   1. The Little Girl and her Mother.
   2. The Wonderful Rat.
   3. The Mother Well Again.
   4. The Flood of Rice.
   5. The Valley Filled Up.

  MOTHER FROST                                                        63

   1. The Lost Spindle.
   2. The Maid in the Well.
   3. The Return Home.
   4. The Idle Maid.

  SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED                                             70

   1. The Home.
   2. How Snow-White and Rose-Red Played.
   3. The Bear.
   4. A Dwarf In Trouble.
   5. The Dwarf Fishing.
   6. The Dwarf and an Eagle.
   7. The Bear Again.

  THE COCK AND THE HEN                                                83

   1. On the Mountain.
   2. The Travelers.
   3. At the Inn.
   4. The Innkeeper.

  DEATH OF THE COCK                                                   89

   1. The Cock’s Death.
   2. The Funeral.
   3. Crossing the River.

  BIRDIE AND LENA                                                     93

   1. How the Hunter Found Birdie.
   2. The Cook.
   3. How Birdie was Saved.
   4. The Search.
   5. The Servants Go Again to the Forest.
   6. The Cook Punished.

  THE WOLF AND THE FOX                                               102

   1. At the Farm Yard.
   2. At the Farm House.
   3. In the Cellar.

  THE STREET MUSICIANS                                               107

   1. How the Musicians Came Together.
   2. In the Forest.
   3. The Robbers Return.
   4. Detail of Form Work (Diagram).

  THE STRAW, THE COAL AND THE BEAN                                   116

   1. The Meeting.
   2. The Journey.

  CINDERELLA                                                         120

   1. How Cinderella Got Her Name.
   2. The Fair.
   3. The Ball.
   4. How Cinderella Went to the Ball.

  THE WONDERFUL TRAVELER                                             130

   1. The Traveler.
   2. The Kind Man Grants Wishes.
   3. The Proud Man Overtakes the Traveler.
   4. The Proud Man’s Wishes.

  HANS AND THE FOUR BIG GIANTS                                       141

   1. The House in the Country.
   2. Leaving Home.
   3. Hans in the City.
   4. The King’s Palace.
   5. Hans Starts on his Journey.
   6. Hans Meets Another Giant.
   7. Hans Meets a Third Giant.
   8. Hans Meets a Fourth Giant.
   9. How Hans Got the Necklace.

  THE FIR TREE                                                       155

   1. In the Forest.
   2. The Wood-Cutters.
   3. Other Trees Go from the Forest.
   4. The Fir Tree Has its Wish.




INTRODUCTION.


I.

THE STORY IN PRIMARY INSTRUCTION.

The greatest need of the primary school to-day is some positive
content or subject matter of instruction. The popular conception of
such a school is that its main function is to teach the young child to
read, write, and cipher. That is, that it has to do mainly with the
formal aspects of language and numbers. So long as a certain amount of
facility is gained in these formal arts, there is little disposition to
demand anything more.

Even so great an authority as the Committee of Fifteen has championed
this view, and has given as its deliberate judgment that the first
four years of school life should be devoted to the mastery of the
formal phases of instruction. While it may be contended that it is not
meant to exclude the giving of a positive subject matter, still it is
interpreted as sanctioning the present obvious over-emphasis of the
formal side of language in our primary schools.

A strict conformity to this formal program would mean that the first
four years of school life, the most impressionable period in the
pupil’s school career, are to be empty of any real subject matter.
The mastery of written and printed forms is to be set up as an end in
itself, losing sight of the fact that they are but means for conveying
the thought, feelings, experiences, and aspirations of the race from
one generation to another.

When we consider what the child at the age of six or seven really
is; when we consider his love of story, his hunger for the concrete
material of knowledge, his deep interest in the widening of his
experience,--it is evident that such a course is out of all harmony
with his real nature. It is the giving of stones when the cry is for
bread. It is even worse than the proverbial making of bricks without
straw. It is attempting to make bricks with straw alone.


THE MASTERY OF A VOCABULARY NOT THE MATERIAL OF INSTRUCTION.

It will be granted that the mastery of a printed and a written
vocabulary is of the utmost importance. As a subordinate end, the
ability to interpret the printed page and to express thought in
correct form is the most imperative demand upon the school. But these
acquirements are not a content in themselves. They are not the material
of instruction. In themselves, they do not enlarge the understanding or
furnish the food which the young mind hungers for--and must have if it
is maintained in a condition of health. They are mere forms, and the
dwelling upon them during the impressionable years of childhood results
in a deadening of his interest and dwarfing of his powers, so that the
over-emphasis of this phase of education to the exclusion of content
defeats its own ends.

Laying the foundation for a future character edifice, keeping active
the developing interests, the widening of his experience, the formation
of interpretative concepts,--these are of greater value from the point
of view of language mastery, even of its spoken and written forms, than
the persistent drill in its formal elements.

Language teaching must be approached from the content side if we are
to get any genuine interest in the overcoming of difficulties on the
part of the child. There is no interest for the child in the language
forms themselves when presented in abstraction and emphasized as such.
He may be drilled into proficiency, but the interest does not come from
the relation of these formal elements to his own needs or activity.
The interest has been external and it flags as soon as the external
excitement is withdrawn. A genuine interest, an intrinsic one growing
out of his own needs and nature, can be fostered only by supplying a
subject matter adapted to the various levels of thought through which
his development leads him. If this is furnished, it is no partial,
intermittent attention that the pupil gives. While dealing with such a
content he is not forming the habit of mind-wandering and inattention
so frequently seen when children are kept closely to word drill and to
reading for elocutionary purposes.


A WIDER CIRCLE AND PURPOSE, GROWING OUT OF THE CHILD’S LIFE AND NEEDS.

The possession of a wide acquaintance with the standard subject matter
of child literature before serious attempts at learning to read are
made, will subordinate the acquisition of a reading vocabulary as means
to an end desired on the part of the child. There will be purpose in
it for him. The learning to read will be seen as a step necessary to
a fuller expression of activities already going on, and difficulties
will be overcome because their mastery is a means in a wider circle of
purpose growing out of the child’s own life and needs. If, in early
years, the emphasis is removed from the form to the content side of
instruction, if his native hunger for folklore and nature-material is
satisfied, the learning to read will be lifted out of drudgery and will
be accomplished with self-effort, and with a rapidity truly surprising.

The early forcing of technique is not a real gain in the child’s
education, however much may be apparently accomplished. Immediate
results are not a safe guide for instruction in the primary grades.
They are, many times, a positive loss in time, and are gained at the
expense of dwarfing the mental and physical powers. There is no real
need of forcing the process of learning to read if the teacher is ready
with a subject matter which the child is already going out to meet.

The time of the first year of school life would conduce far more to
the child’s progress if spent with learning to read and write as a
secondary consideration, and the giving of a real body of culture,
ethical, and nature material as a main purpose. Subsequent progress
would be all the more rapid and instruction be all the more educative
because a wider range of interest would call forth self-active
participation of all the powers. The widening of experience and the
formation of interpretative concepts would allow further instruction
to be grasped with sufficient avidity to carry it over into actual
assimilation into the self.


LANGUAGE TEACHING.

What has been said with regard to the relation of reading to a content
is equally true with regard to what is known as language teaching. It
is a hopeless task to endeavor to give skill in the use of language
independent of a content which is not in accord with the pupil’s own
stage of development. The interest, to be genuine, and productive
of self-effort, must always be in the content. An enrichment of his
vocabulary, a proper use of words, correct form of oral and written
speech must come, not for themselves, but as results of an effort to
the adequate expression of something which the pupil is interested to
communicate.

The widespread criticism directed against the results of language
teaching in our schools no doubt has something of justification.
This defect does not come from lack of attention to the matter, or
from indifference on the part of the teachers, but largely from the
over-emphasis of the purely formal aspects of language. The matter is
approached from the wrong side. In early years, to get form we must
emphasize content. In the primary grades, formal insistence on correct
technique should be at the minimum, while richness and variety of
subject matter should be at the maximum.

Nor is this without application to the remaining forms of language
expression,--drawing and music. Skill in aesthetic forms can come only
from an interest in something to be expressed in these forms.

When we consider that the child, up to the eighth or ninth year of his
life, has not a sufficient mastery of a reading vocabulary to enable
him to get for himself out of books material for which he has deepest
need, and which is his natural and proper nourishment, the imparting to
him orally such material assumes an aspect of gravest importance. Shall
his early years of school life be barren and empty? Surely the teacher
has a duty in this respect beyond giving merely formal instruction.
She should not allow the pressure for immediate technical results to
deprive the child of his inheritance in the folklore and the epic
treasures of the race.

It has been shown by experiment that, with young children, instruction
is taken more readily through the ear than through the eye. Their
pre-school education has been acquired largely through auditory
impressions and exists in the mind in the form of auditory images. To
throw the emphasis at once on visual impression and imagery is too
violent a break in their mental habits.


II.

THE SELECTION OF THE SUBJECT-MATTER.

The kind of content proper to early childhood is determined by the
nature of the child himself. It is the child that is to be educated.
The teacher must take him as he is, with full trust that the
strengthening of those powers at present active will result in his
highest good. All attempts to improve on nature has been abortive.
Every normal child is active in those ways which the race experience
has embedded in him. His activities are echoes of those by which the
race has been successful. The conception of the child standing over
against the real subject matter of education and in direct antagonism
to it, between which and him there is no intrinsic relation and into
which he must be introduced by external means, is not in harmony with
an optimistic philosophy or with a correct understanding of pedagogical
principles.

There must be, in the nature of things, a relation between the
activities already functioning in the child and the material the
assimilation of which will constitute him not only a thoroughly
equipped individual but also a socially efficient factor. It is a
mistaken view to suppose that the exercise and the development of the
activities dominant in early childhood will lead away from the best
interests of the individual or endanger his efficiency as a member of
society. It is anomalous to assume that the impulses and interests of
childhood must be suppressed or eradicated in order to fit him for
participation in social life. These impulses have been implanted in
his nature by actual participation in a social life on the part of his
ancestry, and they are the possibilities of a worthy social development.

While this is true, while the determining factor in the selection and
arrangement of the subject-matter of education is the child himself,
yet the undoubted parallelism between his growth and that of the race
widens the scope and furnishes the broader basis for such selection
and arrangement. It matters little to what extent such a parallelism
is accepted. The principle once established makes it a matter of
indifference whether we proceed from the individual or from the
broader standpoint of the psychological history of the race. This
psychological history is made out by a study of the literature products
left behind in the ascent from the lower levels of development to the
higher, as represented in modern civilization.


PHASE OF MIND ACTIVITY IN EARLY CIVILIZATION.

A survey of the literary remains of the past gives conclusive proof
that the characteristic phase of mind activity in the dawning periods
of civilization is the imaginative or mythical. The earliest literary
product of every people is the epic, whose chief elements are legends,
myths and the heroic, and whose authorship is not individual but of
the race itself. Such a product, not the creation of any one mind, but
slowly fashioned through the centuries by the poetic genius of the
race, however trivial it may seem, has strong claims on our deepest
veneration. It should receive most careful study and consideration.

These epic remains come from the innermost life of a people. They are
the expression of this life. They are eloquent witnesses of a strong
imagination dealing with the mysteries of earth, of sky, and of life
itself. They tell of the morning of history, when man was close to
nature--a part of nature. The earth, trees, waters, animals--all forms,
animate and inanimate, had voices for him. He communed with them. He
treated them as of equal rank with himself.


A THIRD ELEMENT OF THE RACE PRODUCTS.

But, in addition to their imaginative character and their closeness
to nature, these race products have still a third element of the
utmost value for use as material for primary instruction. While they
“enforce no moral” they tell “a story, and the moral in solution with
the story.” Each tale is a narration without comment. The ethical
teaching involved is in the most concrete form. It is not set out and
emphasized, but lies wrapped up in the movement of the narrative itself
and awaits the exercise of the child’s ethical judgment.

Viewed from our ethical standpoint, folklore does not always come up to
the highest standard. There are objectionable features in many tales.
In this respect they reflect the uncritical and even crude morals of
the time. While this is true of some of the tales, in many the ethical
teaching is pure, lofty and wholesome, and furnishes an element greatly
needed in our primary schools. We have here held up for esteem and
veneration these virtues of head and heart and action that lie at the
base of a happy, considerate and industrious home life. Baseness,
cruelty, ingratitude, and laziness are brought home to the individual
in their consequences. The