Its present popularity seems in a way to be an outgrowth of the
recognition of its educational value which was given impetus by the German
pedagogues of Froebel's school. That recognition has, at all events, been
a noticeable factor in educational conferences of late. The function of
the story is no longer considered solely in the light of its place in the
kindergarten; it is being sought in the first, the second, and indeed in
every standard where the children are still children. Sometimes the demand
for stories is made solely in the interests of literary culture, sometimes
in far ampler and vaguer relations, ranging from inculcation of scientific
fact to admonition of moral theory; but whatever the reason given, the
conclusion is the same: tell the children stories.
The average teacher has yielded to the pressure, at least in theory.
Cheerfully, as she has already accepted so many modifications of old
methods by "new thought," she accepts the idea of instilling mental and
moral desiderata into the receptive pupil, _via_ the charming tale. But,
confronted with the concrete problem of what desideratum by which tale,
and how, the average teacher sometimes finds her cheerfulness displaced by
a sense of inadequacy to the situation.
People who have always told stories to children, who do not know when they
began or how they do it; whose heads are stocked with the accretions of
years of fairyland-dwelling and nonsense-sharing,--these cannot understand
the perplexity of one to whom the gift and the opportunity have not "come
natural.
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