The Story as a Factor in Education

AN is a complex being, the physical, intellectual, and emotional characteristics each playing its distinctive part in governing his life. Each of these phases must be taken into account in providing for the education of the child.

Since most of us agree that the final aim of education is to control conduct, those factors of human nature which have most to do with conduct must receive attention and conscious training. Heretofore the schools have considered intellectual power the greatest factor in directing life activities and have planned their courses of study on this basis. In comparatively recent years there has grown up a feeling that the physical powers must work hand in hand with the intellectual, and this has led to the introduction of manual training shops and industrial schools.

Too many still ignore the fact that, given certain intellectual and physical powers, the great mass of all peoples determine their line of conduct by their feelings, their emotions. Because of this, the training of the emotions along lines which influence conduct for the better should find its place in all efforts at education. This the schools have persistently overlooked, forgetting that the history of primitive peoples teaches us a distinct lesson in this matter.

Those who recognize the necessity of creating pure ideals and lofty purposes have depended on the reading of good literature as the means of placing the individual in contact with those qualities which must awake the desired emotions and govern action. So far as it can be depended on to accomplish what is aimed at, the plan is good, but it falls short for two reasons: first, because there is expected of the child a maturity of interpretation which he is unable to command because of the limited number of his experiences; second, because the mechanics of reading present such difficulties as to hinder the uplift of soul which the matter itself might encourage.

It is here that the story told to the child by the teacher becomes such a powerful aid. It is a living, breathing thing, with her personality behind it. She adapts the matter to his experiences; her own enthusiasm colors it; her own belief and appreciation lifts him, too, into the atmosphere of faith, and her determication to do and to dare involuntarily pledges every child to action.

Men with purposes to achieve have recognized the power of the oral story. The Greek made sure of the patriotism of his sons by making known to them through story and song the glorious history of his race. The story-teller was known in Egypt; the harper's song in Scotland; around the great fires in Norse halls, wonderful tales were chanted, and our own Saxon forbears did not fall behind in making sure through word of mouth that the stirring events of days old found sure lodgment in the hearts of the growing youth and stirred them to dreams of renewed conquest.

Even in our own time, the weakest of political stump speakers knows that when all else fails, a story will hold his audience and unify their thought, so that he may once more urge his theories upon them. The gifted minister knows too, that when he drives home the truth with a well told story, its chances for persisting in the memory and coming to fruition in action is greatly increased. The school, then, has, just at hand, this great power of dealing with the emotional phase of the child's being in such a way as to control conduct.

The world is full of stories capable of building high ideals and inspiring high purposes. The weakness exists in the lack of power on the part of the teachers to utilize them. The question, "How can I become a good story-teller?" is being asked in increasing earnestness. It must be admitted that the power is a gift natural to some souls, spontaneous and almost unconscious, but it must be urged upon all readers that this power may also be acquired and so cultivated as to be almost second nature.

In getting ready to tell the story, the teller must familiarize herself with every detail of it, then image all its characters, its incidents, and their settings. She must see it as living panorama. These images must come into consciousness again and again until they seem to have been personal experiences. An attempt to memorize the exact words of the author is fatal to spontaneity, but as these experiences grow more and more vivid, the beautiful phraseology of the

author who called them into being will cling to them while seeming to be the language straight from the heart of the speaker, and so add the force of conviction to the beauty of expression.

A boy was once told the story of the Rhinegold and was much impressed at the train of evils which followed the stealing of the gold. He organized the story into a little drama which he and his mates performed as a bit of recreation. Later he retold the story to a group of older people with great force and clearness. When asked how it was possible for so young a boy to remember and tell a story so accurately, he answered, "I've been it." So every true storyteller must feel that at some time she has been "it," either as an actor or as an observer in the stories she is to tell. This will give her the convincing attitude, the force of voice, and the purpose of mind which will make her work effective to her hearers.

Many instances prove that the forcefully told story sinks deep into the heart of the hearer, and may long after govern conduct at a critical time. A case in point is that of a boy of twelve to whom was told with faith and earnestness the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Later there came a time when there was presented to him a necessity for choice between that which was profitable and vulgarizing on the one hand, and sacrifice but ennoblement of character on the other. In the struggle between ideas it was the memory of the ideals of the story which won the victory for his better self.

The call for the story-teller with force and persuasiveness is an increasing one. Not only must the schools teach stories to those whom they prepare for the teaching profession, but they must train in the art of story-telling.

From the prattler in the home who listens in breathless interest as he leans against his mother's knee and says "Tell it again," to the wistful boy with his first long trousers who shyly whispers, "That was a bully one; do you know another as good?"-they are looking to us for their heritage and we must make shift to meet the demand. As the teacher grows more proficient, she will see what a powerful aid she has at command and will use it as a reinforcement in many places where instruction now falls short of any vital hold on the child's conduct.

State Normal School, Macomb, Ill.

CORA M. HAMILTON.

Some of the Possibilities of Art in the
Higher Grades

THE

HE tendency of modern times is to do things in the shortest way. This is noticeable in our literature where the long sentences of Johnson have given place to clear, concise expressions and the three volumed novel to the short story of two thousand words; examples might be indefinitely multiplied to show this. In consequence of this gain of time, it is possible for the twentieth century man to be more versatile. People now have myriad interests. The effect of this on the schools has been to introduce into the course of study what seems like a multiplicity of subjects and to demand the strictest economy of time and effort in teaching them. The question at once arises: How is this economy to be secured? Two ways suggest themselves: one is, a careful selection of those elements of the different studies which have obvious connection on the informational side; the other, persistent iteration and reiteration of the principles and processes common to those studies. The first method may be illustrated by the following. A class is studying the different phases of New England life, political, religious, educational, industrial, or social. The geography of New England, studied for its own sake in a previous grade, is first recalled in order that the class may have a clear mental picture of the physical conditions involved. They are then able to understand the historical conditions more easily and in a shorter time than otherwise. The geographical impressions, also, are strengthened by the review. In the second method, I have found the teaching of the principle of good composition in the art work a very great help in impressing the lessons which history, geography, and literature are to impart. Children enjoy recognizing an old friend in a new garb, especially when the first introduction came in graphic, concrete form.

One of the purposes of the drawing is to make distinct the child's ideas. Already many of the newer text-books in English composition recognize the helpfulness of requiring

graphic before verbal expression. A little sketch locating each object required in the composition will aid verbal description. It had been found that the average pupil will have a clearer understanding of a given situation if he can visualize the relation of the parts to the whole and will in consequence translate the idea into words with more pleasure and less loss of time than would be possible without this exercise. His pencil gives stability to his otherwise wavering mental image.

In the mensuration work in the upper grades we find a close relation between the art lessons and the arithmetic. In the necessary sketching of solids to be studied the principles of perspective and foreshortening come into play. The problems in which the slant height of a pyramid is to be found when the altitude and dimensions of base are given, or those in which the solidity is to be found when the slant height is given and the altitude is unknown are made simple to the child by drawings, if each one is required to draw for himself the pyramids with the triangles involved. His mental picture will be more definite, glib guessing or memorizing will be done away with, and a power be acquired which tends to confidence in himself and happiness and honesty in his work. The conditions in problems involving areas, perimeters and so on, when illustrated, become real instead of abstract. The child's appreciation of drawing grows as he realizes how skill with his pencil helps him in other studies. The teacher certainly sees how much time is saved and power gained when the child on beginning problems based on geometric relations immediately makes a sketch and then proceeds to work the example. Of course, all children do not demand this training, but the majority do; the exceptional pupil at once images the conditions from the abstract statement but the average child needs the motor activity and consequent reaction to make his image clear.

This helpfulness extends to the history and literature. Many copies of fine paintings can easily be brought into the schoolroom to make alive the topics in hand. The reading to the class of Joaquin Miller's poem, "Columbus" with a picture of the caravels on the dread waste of the "Sea of Darkness" and Columbus standing at the prow of the Santa