Children's Literature: A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes — John Shaqi
Children's Literature: A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training ClassesCurry, Charles Madison
General
Children's Literature: A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes
Curry, Charles Madison
Children -- Books and reading; Children's literature -- Study and teaching
One of the great qualities in childhood which
makes it apt for receiving historical
impressions is just this capacity for giving
body to the phantoms of the mind. The limits
between the real and the legendary or
miraculous which are drawn by the critical
intelligence do not exist for the childish
mind. . . . It would then be a great educational
disaster if this valuable faculty in childhood
were allowed to run to waste. There are certain
years in the development of every normal
intelligent child when the mind is full of
image-making power and eager to make a friend
or enemy of any god, hero, nymph, fairy, or
servant maid who may come along. Then is the
time when it is right and fitting to affect
some introductions to the great characters of
mythology and history; that is the age at which
children will eagerly absorb what they can
learn of Achilles and Orpheus, of King Arthur
and his Knights, of Alexander and Christopher
Columbus and the Duke of Wellington. I do not
think it is necessary to obtrude any moralizing
commentary when these great and vague images
are first brought into the landscape of the
child's intellectual experience. A little
description, a few stories, a picture or two,
will be enough to fix them in the memory and to
give them body and shape together with the
fairies and witches and pirate kings and
buccaneering captains with whom we have all at
one time been on such familiar terms. Let us
then begin by teaching the past to small
children by way of stories and pictures.
_Dramatization._ The play spirit that leads children to play lady,
doctor, church, and school will also lead them to enjoy dramatizing
stories, or "playing the stories," as they call it. Some stories, of
course, are so lacking in action as to be not well suited for
dramatization, and others have details of action, character, or
situation that may not well be represented in the schoolroom. The
teacher may be surprised, however, to see how ingenious her pupils are
in overcoming difficulties after they have had a little assistance in
playing two or three stories. Unconsciously the pupil will get from the
dramatization a training in oral English, reading, and literary
appreciation that can hardly be gained in any other way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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