During the story-telling one must ask, "In all this what is the part
the child has to play?" In the telling the teacher has aimed to give
what there is in the tale. The child's part is to receive what there
is in the tale, the emotion, the imagination, the truth, and the form
embodied in the tale. The content of feeling, of portrayal, of truth,
and of language he receives, he will in some way transmit before the
school day is ended, even if in forms obscure and hidden. Long years
afterwards, he may exhibit this same emotion, imagination, truth and
form, in deeds that proclaim loudly the return from his fairy tales.
However, if the child is being surrounded by pragmatic influences
through his teachers he will soon become aware that his feelings are
useless unless he does something because of them; that what he sees is
worthless unless he sees to some purpose; that it is somewhat
fruitless to know the truth and not use it; and if words have in their
form expressed the life of the tale, he is more dead than words not to
express the life that teems within his own soul. The little child
grows gradually into the responsibility for action, for expression,
into a consciousness of purpose and a knowledge of his own problems.
But each opportunity he is given to announce his own initiative breaks
down the inhibition of inaction and aids him to become a free
achieving spirit. As the child listens to the tale he is a thinking
human creature; but in the return which he makes to his tale he
becomes a quickened creator. The use which he makes of the ideas he
has gained through his fairy tales, will be the work of his creative
imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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