Literature in the Elementary School Part 8

Many of these poems should be read with the single child at home. For the cla.s.s 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's _Sing-Song_--a book of nursery rhymes not sufficiently known. Certain of Blake's _Songs of Innocence_ the children should know, though they are always found too delicate and contemplative for the whole cla.s.s. Every teacher of children should know for his own enlightenment the poems of Jane and Ann Taylor, and Dr. Watts's _Poems 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 cla.s.s. Every friend of children, teacher or parent, should know Keble's _Lyra 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 cla.s.s study, though a really enthusiastic teacher may carry even a large cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s should be pushed on as early as possible into simple but heroic ballads, into lyrics, musical and n.o.ble, but simple and easy as to content--all chosen from the great poets.

Even if one desired it, it would probably be impossible to dislodge _Hiawatha_ from 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. _Hiawatha_ has 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 study _Hiawatha_ as literature. Children should learn much about nature and should learn nature-poetry; therefore they should study _Hiawatha_ as literature.

Of course, there are pretty things in _Hiawatha._ Some of the pa.s.sages about the forest and the waters, the making of the canoe, the conquest of Mondanim, 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 a _cla.s.s_ is 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 of _Hiawatha;_ 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 Waba.s.so, 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 repet.i.tion do not const.i.tute 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, that _Hiawatha_ should 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 pa.s.sages of the incomparable music of some of the great masters, regardless of their understanding of the content--the first sixteen lines of _Paradise Lost_; some especially musical sonnet of Shakespeare's, or some pa.s.sage of lofty eloquence from the plays; some vague and haunting bit of music from Sh.e.l.ly, or Poe, or Keats; some fanfare of trumpets from Byron, or Macaulay, or Kipling.

Every teacher will realize that all the t.i.tles and authors and kinds mentioned in this study cannot 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.

CHAPTER XIII

DRAMA

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 p.r.o.nounced 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 const.i.tuted 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 combination which const.i.tutes 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 subst.i.tute 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 att.i.tude 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 subst.i.tute 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 method of 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 cla.s.s present a little dance of "Hickory d.i.c.kory dock"

invented for them by their teacher, and another cla.s.s 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 the artificiality 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 cla.s.s 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 are now 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; they _are_ keeping house, they _are_ hunting, they _are_ marching 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 situations and 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 subst.i.tute literature for experience. It is easy to utilize this pa.s.sion 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 b.u.t.terflies 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, but which 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 cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s 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 const.i.tute 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 play they 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 certainly be 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 cla.s.s, 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 declares himself 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 manoeuvering most of the cla.s.s can manage to appear upon the stage first or last. _Briar-Rose_ makes 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 cla.s.s 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 of young 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 n.o.ble 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 of _Siegfried, 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 jardiniere! 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 the costuming out of the hands of the "tender mamas" all he can; for in most cases the partic.i.p.ation 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 compet.i.tive 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 inst.i.tutions; his own studies in history have become studies in the interweaving of complex factors; the great social inst.i.tutions begin to press their claims and offer their attractions; college looms ahead, conditioning all his undertakings; the church makes its appeal or a.s.serts its rights; upon all too many children the inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions; the revolt of the individual against the inst.i.tution, 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 of _Hamlet_; he would not like them to follow the baffling complexities of social, personal, and economic considerations through _The Pillars of Society_. But _The Merchant of Venice_ offers problems and situations which he can understand; in _Julius Caesar_ and in _Macbeth_, in _Wilhelm Tell_, and in the _Wallenstein_ plays, n.o.ble 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 read it intelligently. If not, the striking and beautiful pa.s.sages 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 a.s.set, 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' pa.s.sion--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 difficult problem. 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 circ.u.mstance 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 ba.n.a.l 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 pa.s.ses 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.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PRESENTATION OF THE LITERATURE

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 cla.s.ses should practically throughout the elementary period be read to the children in cla.s.s, not read by them. The relation of the literature 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 cla.s.s will have reached the stage of reading needful for the interpretative and apprehensive reading of literature; but the majority of the cla.s.s 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 const.i.tutes 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 matter _viva 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 const.i.tute 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 ask only 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.