Читать книгу Educating by Story-Telling - Mrs. Katherine Dunlap Cather - Страница 8

If the work of the narrator is to be of real value, he must have a knowledge of the story interests of childhood, for otherwise the talent of a Scheherazade, careful preparation, and an extensive repertoire will fail to produce the desired results, because a narrative that deals with mythical heroes cannot make a lasting impression upon a child who craves animal and primitive wonder tales, even though it be written in language and style suited to his understanding. The heart or framework of the story must be made up of events that are fraught with interest in his particular period of mental development, and must introduce personages with whom he would like to companion, and whose movements he will follow with approval, pity, condemnation, or rejoicing. Under such conditions the boys or girls or dogs who contribute to the action of the tale are not strangers out of a book, but mean as much to him as the people and animals he knows, and because they do mean much he lives the tale. It becomes part of him and he of the story. His emotional nature is stirred, his power of evaluating is strengthened, and some of the foundation blocks of character are laid.

Naturally the question arises, “How is one to know which tales to choose, when there is such a wealth of stories and such a diversity of interests? Is there any rule or guide to keep the conscientious but untrained worker from the pitfalls and show him the right road from the wrong?” Such a guide there is—the psychological axiom that the child between birth and maturity passes through several periods or stages of mental growth which determines his interests.

The little child, the one from the age of about three to six, is interested in familiar things. He has not yet reached the period of fancy during which he wanders into a world of make-believe and revels with fairies and nixies, but dwells in a realm of realism. His attention is centered on the things and the personages he knows—the mother, the father, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cows, chickens, and children of his own age—and consequently he enjoys stories and jingles about these creatures. He chuckles over the accounts of their merry experiences and sympathizes with them in their misfortunes, because they lie close to his interests. This is why Mother Goose has been and is beloved of little children. The rhymes do not introduce griffins and ogres and monsters that must be seen through eyes of fancy to be seen at all, but abound in accounts of creatures he has beheld from his windows and associated with in his home. Mother Hubbard and her unfortunate dog, the crooked man and his grotesque cat, the pigs that went to market, and the old woman in the shoe lie close to his world because he knows dogs and cats and pigs and kind old women, and therefore the rhymes and jingles that portray them are dear to his heart.

Especially fascinating in this period of early childhood are stories that contain much repetition. “The Old Woman and Her Pig,” “Little Red Hen,” “Chicken Little,” “The Gingerbread Man,” and “The Three Billy Goats” delight little people, and although they have heard them again and again they always watch eagerly for the “Fire, fire, burn stick,” “I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a piece of it fell on my tail,” and are disappointed if the well-known expressions are omitted. The repetition strengthens the dramatic element and helps to make the pictures vivid, and the child loves to experience again the thrill he felt upon first listening to the tale.

Stories introducing the cries and calls of animals are much loved at this period. The squealing of the pig, the barking of the dog, the clucking of the hen, and the quacking of the duck give charm to a narrative because the child has heard those sounds in his own garden, in his own dooryard, and along the road, and knowing them, is interested in them. This is the secret of the success of many kindergarten tales that fall far below the requirements of a good story. Often almost devoid of plot and lacking in suspense element, still they hold the attention because of the animal cries and calls they contain. The little hearer chuckles as the baby pig squeals, the mother pig grunts, or the dog barks, and listens delightedly to what, without these cries and calls, would not interest him.

This too is why the racial tales fascinate today just as they fascinated five hundred years ago. They have a clearly defined plot that of itself would hold the interest, they introduce familiar characters, contain much repetition, and abound in animal cries and calls.

Broadly speaking, then, for the period of early childhood, the time of realism which extends from the age of about three to five or six, the narrator should choose stories of animal and child life, those which introduce sounds peculiar to the characters and which abound in repetition.

But he should not make the mistake of following this rule too literally or his efforts will result in failure, because children live under widely different conditions. The boy of the city slums, whose horizon extends only from his own row of tenements to the next row up the street, will not be held by tales of cows and sheep, because he does not know cows and sheep. His knowledge of four-footed creatures is confined to dogs and cats and an occasional horse that goes by hitched to the wagon of a fruit or vegetable vender, and the tales that mean something to him are those of animals of his world, and of children. Many a settlement and social worker has learned the truth of this through sad experience. A most gifted story-teller in a New York settlement house gave to her group “The Ugly Duckling,” and gave it exquisitely too, but it meant nothing to the children because they never had been in the country. A barnyard was as remote from their interest as a treatise on philology is from that of a Finnish peasant. They did not know ducks and geese and chickens, and consequently punched their neighbors and grew pestiferous during the recital of a tale that would have entranced country children.

The same mistake was made by a professional story-teller who gave a coyote tale to a group of Italian children. They never had met this “outcast in gray,” never had shivered as he howled in the night, and the story brought no pictures before their eyes. They were inattentive and disorderly throughout its rendition, and the narrator declared them an impossible group. Yet that same afternoon a college girl with no special training in story-telling told them of a lost nanny goat, and they sat fascinated. In the first instance the trouble was not with the children but with the narrator. She knew much of technique but little of psychology and could not hold the children’s attention, while the other girl, possessed of far less native ability, entertained them because she understood the story interests of childhood. The narrator must have, not only an understanding of the psychological periods and interests of childhood, but a knowledge of the environment of the children with whom she works.

There is a wealth of sources from which to draw for this early period. Often it is necessary to adapt material, because many a tale whose framework is suited to little people is told in language beyond their understanding. “David and Jonathan,” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, is a good example. Written for adults, yet it is so universal in its appeal that the lad of six listens to it with as much sympathy as his father or mother. The account of the affection of dog and master for each other, the pathos of the separation and the joy of the reunion, touch him as much as they touch his parents, and to receive it from the lips of one who feels and loves the tale will make him kinder to dumb animals and gentler to the aged.

This is true of many another story that is the creation of an artist. I mention particularly Ouida’s “Dog of Flanders,” John Muir’s “Stickeen,” and Ernest Thompson Seton’s “Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac,” each of which I have used with children of all ages. The characters in them are living, breathing creatures, the kind that if met in real life would arouse affection and awaken both laughter and tears, and whether these stories are told in monosyllabic language or colored by fine rhetorical effects, they strike the tender places and appeal to the best. When the child meets Nello before the altar of the cathedral in Antwerp, kneeling in front of a painting by Rubens and fondling his dog, he instinctively feels that this boy is not a stranger living in a far-away land and speaking a foreign language, but that he represents all the orphaned children in the world, and that his affection for his dog is the same tie that binds every other child to the pet he loves. So too with Monarch, the majestic captive of Golden Gate Park. He is not just a bear, a creature larger and more ferocious than many other animals. He typifies wild life caged, and the boy who has pitied him in listening to the account of his tramp, tramp, tramp about the pit, never quite forgets that proud but eternal unrest, the ever present longing for the white peaks and the pines.

One need not fear that putting these stories into simple language may be deemed a sacrilegious act, or that telling the plot of a masterpiece will kill delight in that masterpiece itself. Goethe’s mother, sitting in the firelight in their home, gave her boy tales from the old poets, creating in him a desire to read that helped to make him a profound student and master thinker. And the twentieth-century child will doubly enjoy reading a beautiful piece of literature at some future day, because in the magical long ago it touched his heart. Workers with little children should be ever on the alert, seeking stories that deserve the name of literature, with plot and characters that will appeal to their small charges, because such stories mold a child’s taste and give a key that will unlock doors into the great treasure house of art. Whenever the mother or teacher or librarian reads a story that is a literary gem, let her analyze it and determine whether or not, if told in simple language, it would delight a child. The old-time narrators who molded national taste and ideals did this constantly, and the great story-tellers are doing it today.

Sicilian peasants, for instance, have a knowledge of the classics that amazes the average American. The stories are pictured on the market carts, those gaudy conveyances that brighten the island highways from Catania to Palermo, and the conversation of these simple folk is colored with allusions that would do credit to a professor of literature. Most of them cannot read, but they know the plots of Jerusalem Delivered, “Sindbad the Sailor,” “The Merchant of Bagdad,” and many more of the world’s great stories. They heard the tales in childhood, and their fathers before them heard them from the lips of men who loved to tell them, and so they have become a national heritage. Let us do as much for the children of our land, that the men and women of the future may have a noble culture and more splendid possessions than their parents have, and let us do it in the world-old way, by story-telling.