Stories in the Public Schools

No longer are school-teachers content to have kindergarteners hold a monopoly of story-telling. Richard T. Wyche, in his excellent work, “Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them,” says: “In the grades the child is occupied largely with reading and writing, the mastering of form, the book, and the desk—things that for the moment deaden rather than inspire, but are means to things of primary interest to him. So much time is necessarily put on form and learning to read the story that the pleasure and inspiration of the story itself is given a secondary place.” While this is recognized, the oral story, well told, is finding an ever-widening acceptance in the grades as the most popular and successful method in education. Good story-telling is being utilized in many subjects of the curriculum, for many purposes and in many departments, within and without the classes, because its artistic and educational possibilities are so great.

Richard T. Wyche gives his experience as a teacher in a little school in the South. The teacher who preceded him “heard lessons”—and the children “said lessons”—an easy way, he says, “for the questions were in the book, and the children could memorize and say the answers without interest or profit. They were bored by this mechanical process as was the teacher.” One day he told the class the story of “Hiawatha’s Fishing,” and every child listened with rapt attention, full of interest. Many of the children wrote out the story for their lessons the next day. One little fellow who did not write it told it in such a vivid and realistic way that the class applauded. Two stories a week followed until the whole story of Hiawatha was told. All the children were interested, and within two months, grammar, language, composition, spelling, drawing, had all been taught by the story-telling method.

The story is now seen to be so important a method in education that we may expect to see this art become a part of the equipment of all teachers, and the story literature of the world become more and more accessible and adaptable to the unfolding life of childhood and youth in our public schools.