Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature - Ontario. Department of Education

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its activities, its ideas and emotions, and those things about which human interest and emotion cluster. It gives breadth of view, supplies high ideals of conduct, cultivates the imagination, trains the taste, and develops an appreciation of beauty of form, fitness of phrase, and music of language. The term Literature as used in this Manual is applied especially to those selections in the Ontario Readers which possess in some degree these characteristics. Such selections are unlike the lessons in the text-books in grammar, geography, arithmetic, etc. In these the aim is to determine the facts and the conclusions to which they lead. Even in the Readers, there are some lessons of which this is partly true. For instance, the lesson on Clouds, Rains, and Rivers, by Tyndall, is such as might be found in a text-book in geography or science. Here the information alone is viewed as valuable, and the pupil will probably supplement what he has learned from the book by the study of material objects and natural phenomena. When this lesson is to be studied, the pupil should be taught not only to understand thoroughly what the author is expressing by his language, but also to appreciate the clearness and force with which he has given his message to the world. The pupil should be called upon to examine the author's illustrations, his choice of words, and his paragraph and sentence structure.

      Each literature lesson in the Reader has some particular force, or charm of thought and expression. There is found in these lessons, not only beauty of thought and feeling, but artistic form as well. In the highest forms of literature, the emotional element predominates, and it should be one to which all mankind, to a greater or less degree, are subject. It is the predominance of these emotional and artistic elements which makes literature a difficult subject to teach. The element of feeling is elusive and can best be taught by the influence of contagion. There is usually less difficulty about the intellectual element, that is, about the meaning of words and phrases, the general thought of the lesson, and the relation of the thoughts to one another and to the whole.

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      This is a psychological problem which can be solved only by a study of the interests and capacities of the children. These interests vary so greatly and make their appearance at such diverse periods in different individuals and in the two sexes, that it is a difficult matter to say with any definiteness just what qualities of literature appeal to children at any particular age. Moreover, the children's environment and previous experiences have a great deal to do in determining these interests and capacities. There are, however, certain characteristics of different periods of childhood which are fairly universal, and which may, therefore, be taken as guiding, determining factors in the selection of suitable literature.

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      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".

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      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

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