STORIES AND HOW TO USE THEM BY RICHARD THOMAS WYCHE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL STORY TELLERS’ LEAGUE

ARTICLE NUMBER ONE

Once upon a time the writer undertook to teach a little school in a far-off seacoast town in the South. The little village was on a sandy bluff overlooking the sound and the sea. Cut off from the main land by an impossible swamp in the rear, yet shut out from the great Atlantic by an ever-shifting sand bar that lay for leagues along the sea coast, it gave the little town an ideal harbor of shallow water, the home of fishermen and oystermen whose cottages were scattered for miles along the sea coast.

Being isolated the inhabitants were compelled to rely upon themselves and in doing this had developed a solidarity of community life and a manhood and womanhood of purity and simplicity that was as refreshing as the breezes that ever swept its shores.

Amid such surroundings I began to teach, and it was my first experience. Not having libraries or lectures to help me, I too must depend on self.

I had never studied pedagogy and knew nothing of teaching except that which I had seen in the university lecture rooms. The teacher who preceded me “heard” lessons and the children “said” lessons. That seemed an easy proposition, for the questions were in the book and the children could memorize and say the answers.

But I soon discovered that the children found no interest in the fact that one word was a verb and another a noun. They memorized the rules and repeated the lessons, but they were not at all interested in the subject. They were bored by this mechanical process, and so was the teacher. Something must be done. One day I told the class the story of “Hiawatha’s Fishing.” Every child listened with rapt attention. I had found something that they were interested in. I requested the children to write the story out for their lessons the next day. The majority of them did so, and read the story as they had understood and written it down. One little fellow said, “I ain’t got no pencil,”—which meant that he didn’t write it. “Tell it then,” I said. He told it in such a vivid and realistic way that the class applauded. I had found something that the child liked. The second day I told the story of “Hiawatha’s Fasting,” then “Hiawatha’s Friends,” and so on, two stories a week, until we had told the whole story of Hiawatha.

But you ask “What did that have to do with grammar?” From the story we got the nouns and verbs we studied and the sentences that the advanced classes analyzed and studied. (The whole school heard the story, it being an ungraded school with classes ranging from primary to high school.)

What else did we do with the story? Let us see. When the children told the story orally or on paper it was creative work, and better for expression than memorizing “Mary had a little lamb.” The child received a mental picture. He heard the story, and retelling it in his own words he created afresh the picture, thereby becoming a creator and an artist himself. In reciting “Mary had a little lamb” he was dealing with words. In telling the story he was dealing with mental images.

One day I saw the children playing out on the campus, and on making inquiries they said, “We are playing Hiawatha and Mondamin and Old Nokomis.” They were dramatizing the story. It was taking effect. Had I been a trained teacher I would have let them do it in class as a part of their work. Twice a week we got the words for our spelling lesson from the story. The children were so much interested in Hiawatha that they wanted to make pictures of Hiawatha. Then I let them illustrate the story, writing in their composition books the story, and illustrating it. As we studied geography, the upper Mississippi Valley and the Lake Regions all took on new meaning because Hiawatha had once lived, toiled, and suffered there.

But what had I done for those children most of all? I had fed their souls,—given them a masterpiece of literature. Starting with the childhood of Hiawatha we had followed him and admired him. We had roamed through that fairy land of dark green forest; heard the whispering pines, saw Hiawatha when he caught the King of Fishers, “Slew the Pearl Feather,” prayed and fasted for his people, punished “Pau-puk-kee-wis,” wooed and won Minnehaha, and when his task was done, sailed away into the fiery sunset.

That something inexpressibly sweet and beautiful that I felt in the vision hour, and longed to impart to the children and heretofore had not been able to, I had at last found incarnate in a hero, while the music, meter, and imagery of poetry had awakened the sense of the beautiful and revealed a new world to the children. New life had come into the school. It had been born again and born from above.

Two months had passed. I had tried an experiment. It had succeeded. Grammar, language, composition, spelling, drawing, story-telling had been taught by that method. Formal language had become linked to literature and thereby to life. The formal had become an expression of the spiritual.

Where could I find another such story? The little goody-goody sissy-prissy stories could not interest us. They all seemed tame in comparison to the sustained effort of a story like Hiawatha. I had discovered that the children could fully appreciate a great story told to them in a living, creative way, and that interest grew each day as we told the long story in sections to the end. The only other hero in literature that I knew in these first years of my experience in teaching was revealed in the story of King Arthur which I had recently studied in a university; but, were the Idyls of the King suited to the children? That was the only source of the story available to me at that time and it was more modern, more complicated in every way, and far more difficult to tell than the one we had just finished. After hearing a number of the Hiawatha stories the children could and did read Longfellow’s versions, but not so with the Idyls of the King. While the children fully enjoyed the stories of the Idyl, the style of Tennyson was not suited nor intended for children. All the imagery, heroic deeds and idealism of Hiawatha were there, but in telling this story much must be omitted. Involved plots must be made direct, and the story simplified. This required much more preparation on the part of the teacher, but we must have another story. It would not do to let the school fall back into the dead rut of lesson hearing, and though I feared they could not appreciate the Arthurian story yet I would try. I began with the finding of a naked babe on the beach, the childhood of Arthur, Merlin’s work, the sword Excalibur, and Arthur’s coronation.

At first the children were not so much interested. Their minds were still on Hiawatha and his deeds; they were loath to leave him. But gradually as I told of Arthur and his deeds, Gareth and Lynette, Geraint and Enid, Lancelot and Elaine, the Quest of the Holy Grail, The Flight of Guinevere, the Passing of Arthur, the interest grew, and at times became intense, especially among the larger boys and girls. The story was coming home to them. King Arthur was a man like ourselves, of our own race. The whole story had brought the children face to face with a great ideal, Arthur, the blameless man. Pure himself, he demanded it in his knights, and bound them by vows of obedience to their conscience and their king. He defended the weak against the wicked; broke up the robbers’ dens and cleansed the land; led his knights in brave deeds, for it is said that when the fire of God filled him none could stand against him in battle. He enjoyed the athletic sports and the tourneys, yet was so gentle, they said his ways were sweet.

As with Hiawatha the story was reproduced, illustrated, correlated with English history and geography, and at the same time it furnished the most excellent material for ethical and æsthetic culture. After the last story was told, the Passing of Arthur, and the children saw with Sir Bedivere, the King pass with the three tall queens in a barge over the sea, they stood in wonder gazing on the splendor of his passing. Defeated in the last weird battle in the West, yet he was victorious in his ideals for he became the spiritual king of his race.

“From the great deep to the great deep he goes,” the children heard but did not quite understand. It was the better for that because it awakened in the child something of the mystery of life and death. In that it served the highest purpose. It helped the child to realize that there are things in life that eye has not seen nor ear heard. Let it not be forgotten that while we use these great stories for formal work, the formal was always the result of the creative. “The letter killeth; the spirit giveth life.” Thus it was that children and teacher left the low plains of the “lesson hearer” and hand in hand walked the upland pastures of the soul.

This is not offered as a model method for teaching, but it is given to reveal the writer’s view-point and the source of his inspiration for these chapters.

THE STORY IN FORMAL WORK

The formal must be an expression of the spiritual else it is not art. This is true whether the idea is expressed in words, wood or iron. To do formal work whether it be oral retelling, composition, illustrating or dramatization of a story apart from the spirit is deadening to the child. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life is true in language and literature as well as religion. Herein is the great possibility for the development of individuality,—letting the child’s life develop after the laws of its nature and not after arbitrary laws forced upon him from above. This is the pivotal point in all our work.

No poet, painter, sculptor, builder, musician, writer or worker of any kind has ever done abiding work who did it apart from the spirit. It is a child’s nature to sing, play, dance or reproduce in some way that which impresses him. Impressions must be expressed in order to become a part of us. If the deeds of Siegfried, King Alfred or George Washington impressed the child he will tell about the hero that he admires. Here the wise teacher finds a basis for his formal work. The interest the child has in the deeds of his hero will tide him over the otherwise drudgery of spelling, composition and language forms. The heroic spirit of the hero has become his and he is not afraid of the task. Furthermore, the love he has for the hero makes the story he tells, writes, or the picture he makes of him a sacred task. He must do justice to the ideal hero. The teacher who telling a story has not gotten so near to the hero that he feels the sacredness of his life has not reached the heart of his story. There is no pattern process or method by which this may be done. Day after day as he tells the life story of a great hero he will catch something of the spirit of the man.

To retell a story is not to reproduce the language word for word, just as it was first told, but to recreate it from your view point. When the child tells a story therefore do not stop him and say, “you did not mention so and so,” breaking up the mental picture process and confusing the child with non-essential facts such as pronunciation, incorrect grammar and so on. Nothing could be more deleterious and destructive to the creative spirit. Put yourself in the child’s place. Could you tell a story if in your presence there was a superior to criticise your words and pronunciation?

No, let the child have the floor. It is his audience. He is responsible for their attention. Stand with head uncovered in the presence of this child artist and orator. Through the story he is giving back to you the world as he sees it and understands it, creating it afresh and telling what it means to him. When you told the story to him it was your message to him; now it is his message to you and to the class. Gradually, as he retells and reproduces stories, the artistic sense grows upon him,—unity, essential points, climax, finish and so on. Naturally as the child gives back his story he will leave out some points originally in the story, they are not essential to his purpose, he is giving his interpretation, and enlarging upon others and actually bringing in new points not originally in the story, but essential to his view point.

The teacher who with rude hands stops the child and says “That is not the way it is in the book or the way I told it,” makes of the child an imitator and not a creator; thwarts at the very outset one of the greatest educational advantages of story reproduction. We do not want to make the child tell a story as the teacher would, but in his own way thereby giving to his work individuality. He is a separate ego and through his personality is giving a new relation of the Divine. Day by day as he hears the teacher and the children of his class tell stories he will get standards of comparison by which he may measure his own work and improve it. Correct grammar and pronunciation? yes, but not here. The speaker, preacher or orator makes mistakes, but he would despise you, and the audience would be disgusted, if you stopped him in his speech to correct grammar. His message and the atmosphere he brings are the essentials. All else should be forgotten for the time. So it should be with the child before the class. He is the orator to reveal to you and the class the world as he sees it. For the time being sit at his feet and help him produce the atmosphere necessary for the telling of the story.

Art comes from within, not from without. Do not force, do not fuss; be quiet; wait for the child to hear the still small voice within. At first he may be timid; it is an untried world for him. He, it is true, has caught glimpses of storyland, seen its beauty and felt its enchantment, but others were leading him. Now he must lead others. As he tries he discovers that he and storyland are somehow very near to each other. As he spreads the wings of his imagination, to his delight, he can fly like Peter Pan, leap and run in this storyland. And soon he will be in the wigwam with Hiawatha or sailing the high seas with Ulysses or slaying the dragon with Siegfried. Such work comes both to child and teacher like a benediction. And the teacher remembers and sees new meaning in the words of the Hebrew prophet “And a little child shall lead them.”