Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature

Junior Forms

1. One of the most striking characteristics of young children is the activity of their imagination. They endow their toys with life and personality; they construct the most fantastic and impossible tales; they accept without question the existence of supernatural beings. The problem for the teacher is to direct this activity of imagination into proper fields, and to present material which will give the child a large store of beautiful images--images that are not only delightful to dwell upon, but are also elevating and refining in their influence upon character. The fairy tale, the folk tale, and the fable, owe their popularity with young children to the predominance of the imaginative element. The traditionary fairy tales and folk stories are usually more suitable than those that appear in teachers' magazines and modern holiday books for children. The hardest thing for the educated mind to do is to write down to the level of children without coddling or becoming cynical. The old tales are sincere, simple, and full of faith. They are not written for children, but are the romance of the people with whom they came into existence, and they have stood the test of ages.

The myth is usually not suitable for young children, as it is a religious story having a symbolic meaning which is beyond their interpretation. If it is used at all, only the story in it should be given.

2. Stories of adventure, courage, and the defence of the helpless appeal very strongly to young children. Even the cruelties and crudities of Bluebeard, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp do not alarm or repel children very much, owing to their lack of experience in these matters. Stories based on the love of the sexes are unsuitable for children of this age, although it constitutes the chief element in stories for older people.

3. The child is also interested in stories of simple games, of animals and birds, and of the material world on which so much of his happiness depends. These stories are corrective of the desire which characterizes some children for too many fairy stories. The fairy story and the nature story should be alternated, so that the child's interests may be imaginative without becoming visionary, and practical without becoming prosaic.

4. Most children have a keen sense of the musical qualities of verse. The child of two years of age will give his attention to the rhythm of the nursery rhyme when the prose story will not interest him. The consideration and analysis of these musical qualities should be deferred for years; but it is probable that the foundation for a future appreciation of poetry is often laid by an acquaintance with the rhymes of childhood.

5. The element of repetition appeals strongly to children. In this lies the attractiveness of the "cumulative story", in which the same incident, or feature, or form of expression is repeated again and again with some slight modification; for example, the story of Henny Penny, The Gingerbread Boy, and The Little Red Hen. The choruses and the refrains of songs are pleasant for this reason.

Silverlocks and the Three Bears is an example of a story that has many attractive features. Silverlocks is an interesting girl, because she is mischievous and adventurous. The pupils know a good deal about bears and wild animals from picture books, stories, and perhaps the travelling menageries. The bears have all proper names--Rough Bruin, Mammy Muff, and Tiny; this gives an air of reality to the story. The bears speak in short, characteristic sentences.

Silverlocks runs away from home, goes into the woods, and finds a lonely house which is the home of the bears. They are not at home, so she enters. These actions suggest mystery and adventure.

The construction of the story shows two chief divisions, with three subdivisions. The second division begins with the return of the bears. They find the soup has been tasted, the chairs disturbed, and the beds rumpled; their conversation is interesting, and their tones characteristic. Tiny, the little bear, suffers most; he enlists the sympathy of the children, as he has lost his dinner and his chair is broken. He discovers Silverlocks, but she escapes and "never runs away from home any more".

Senior Forms (books Iii and Iv)

1. In these Forms, the pupil's imagination is still strong, though less fantastic and under better control, and hence stories involving a large element of imagination retain their charm at this stage. The myth, and longer and more involved fairy tales, such as Ruskin's King of the Golden River, Hawthorne's Wonder Book, and Kingsley's Greek Heroes, are read with avidity.

2. Stories involving a number of incidents are wonderfully attractive. This is due to the pupil's instinctive interest in action and personality. Children are more deeply interested in persons who do things than in those who become something else than they were. A description of some evolution of character very soon palls, but a stirring tale of heroic deeds exerts a powerful fascination. This explains the attractiveness of the hero tale, the story of adventure, and the stirring historical narrative. The action should have the merit of artistic moderation. Stories in which there is a carnival of action, for example, the "dime thriller", under whose spell so many boys fall, must be avoided. Literature that leaves the mind so feverish that the pupil loses interest in other subjects is worse than no literature. The easiest way to prevent a taste for this injurious kind, is to give the pupil an acquaintance with works descriptive of noble deeds and virile character. An interest in epic poetry or the historical novel may be developed from the child's instinctive interest in action. Tennyson's Passing of Arthur, Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, Longfellow's Evangeline and King Robert of Sicily, and Scott's Ivanhoe will be read with keen enjoyment. The force and beauty of the language, the faithfulness of the descriptions to life, the historical setting, the lofty imagery, and the logical development will arouse a healthy mental appetite that will find no pleasure in the worthless story of sensation and vulgar incident, or even in some badly constructed compositions of historical adventure.

3. The pupils of the Senior Forms show even more striking interest in animals, pets, and wild creatures than do the pupils of the Junior Forms. To this natural interest is due the engrossing character of nature study. To it is also due the satisfaction arising from the reading of some of the many nature stories that have appeared in recent years.

Thompson-Seton's Wild Animals I have Known and Lives of the Hunted, and Roberts' The Watchers of the Trails are excellent examples of this class.

Complete Wholes Versus Extracts

Scattered throughout the Ontario Readers are to be found extracts from larger works. These extracts are placed there primarily because they have some special literary value. They have fairly complete unity in themselves and can be treated in detail in a way that would be impossible with a whole story. The extract has an advantage over the whole, in that it repays intensive study, while, in many cases, such study of the whole work would not be worth while. It is considered better to give the pupil many of these passages where the author has shown his greatest art, rather than to allow one long work to absorb the very limited time which the pupil can devote to this subject. The study of the extract will have accomplished its mission if it induces the pupil to read the larger work for himself in later years. If the treatment by the teacher is made as interesting as it should be, it is hoped that the pupil will obtain such delight from, and be inspired to such enthusiasm by, these glimpses of literary treasures, that he will not be satisfied until he has enjoyed in their entirety such works as The Lady of the Lake, Pickwick Papers, Lorna Doone, The Mill on the Floss, Julius Caesar, and It is Never Too Late to Mend. An extract may serve as an introduction to the choicest work of an author, may arouse an interest in his writings, and give the pupils a taste of his quality, but, unless it whets their appetites for the work as a whole, its chief purpose will not have been accomplished. These extracts cannot give a panoramic view of a great historical epoch. They do not require that sustained attention that relates to-day's readings with that of yesterday, and that takes a wider survey of many parts in their relation to a central theme. The larger work gives a culture and a liberal education, when it is treated in the proper manner, that is very different from the fragmentary knowledge of an author that would be gained by even the intensive study of many short extracts. The treatment of the extract, as we have said, must be minute; while the whole work should be subsequently read in a method that will be outlined later on under the head of Supplementary Reading.