A teacher who uses the oral story as an
English feature with little children must
never lose sight of the fact that it is an aid
in unconscious development; not a factor
in studied, conscious improvement. This
truth cannot be too strongly realized.
Other exercises, in sufficiency, give the
opportunity for regulated effort for definite
results, but the story is one of the play-
forces. Its use in English teaching is most
valuable when the teacher has a keen
appreciation of the natural order of growth in
the art of expression: that art requires, as
the old rhetorics used often to put it, "a
natural facility, succeeded by an acquired
difficulty." In other words, the power of
expression depends, first, on something
more fundamental than the art-element;
the basis of it is something to say,
ACCOMPANIED BY AN URGENT DESIRE TO SAY IT, and
YIELDED TO WITH FREEDOM; only after this
stage is reached can the art-phase be of
any use. The "why" and "how," the
analytical and constructive phases, have no
natural place in this first vital epoch.
Precisely here, however, does the
dramatizing of stories and the paper-cutting, etc.,
become useful. A fine and thoughtful principal
of a great school asked me, recently,
with real concern, about the growing use of
such devices. He said, "Paper-cutting is
good, but what has it to do with English?"
And then he added: "The children use
abominable language when they play the
stories; can that directly aid them to speak
good English?" His observation was close
and correct, and his conservatism more
valuable than the enthusiasm of some of
his colleagues who have advocated sweeping
use of the supplementary work.
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