During the story-telling what is the part the child has to play? The
part of the child in all this may be to listen to the story because he
has some problem of his own to work out through the literature,
because he has some purpose of his own in listening, because he enjoys
the story and wishes to find out what there is in it, or because he
expects it to show him what he may afterwards wish to do with it. In
any case the child's part is to see the characters and what they do,
to follow the sequence of the tale, and to realize the life of the
story through the telling. He may have something to say about the
story at the close of the telling, he may wish to compare its motifs
with similar motifs in other tales, or he may wish to talk about the
life exhibited by the story. The various studies of the curriculum
every day are following more closely the Greek ideal and giving the
child daily exercise to keep the channels of expression free and open.
And when the well-selected fairy tale which is art is told, through
imitation and invention it awakens in the child the art-impulse and
tends to carry him from appreciation to expression. If before the
telling the story-teller has asked herself, "What variety of creative
reaction will this tale arouse in the child?" and if she has told the
story in the way to bring forward the best possibility for creative
reaction the nature of the tale affords, she will help to make clear
to the child what he himself will want to do with the story. She will
help him to see a way to use the story to enter into his everyday
life. The return of creative reaction possible to the child will be
that in harmony with his natural instincts or large general interests.
These instincts, as indicated by Professor John Dewey, in _The School
and Society_, are:--
(1) the instinct of conversation or communication;
(2) the instinct of inquiry or finding out things;
(3) the instinct of construction or making things; and
(4) the instinct of artistic expression or [of imitating and
combining things].
(1) The instinct of conversation. The little child likes to talk. If
you have ever listened to a little girl of five artlessly proceeding
to tell a story, such as _Little Black Sambo_, which she had gathered
from looking at a neighbor's book, but which she had not yet mastered
sufficiently to grasp its central theme, reiterating the particular
incidents with the enthusiasm and joy and narrative tone of the
story-teller, you realized how the child likes to talk. For there
appeared the charm of the story-telling mode distinct from the story
it told.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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