The Moral Instruction of Children - Felix Adler (new ebook reader .txt) 📗

spiritual, and the ideals, too, will become correspondingly elevated. In speaking of fairy tales I have in mind chiefly the German Märchen of which the word fairy tale is but an inaccurate rendering. The Märchen are more than mere tales of helpful fairies. They have, as is well-known, a mythological background. They still bear distinct traces of ancient animism, and the myths which center about the phenomena of the storm, the battle of the sun with the clouds, the struggle of the fair spring god with the dark winter demons, are in them leading themes. But what originally was the outgrowth of superstition has now, to a great extent at least, been purified of its dross and converted into mere poetry. The Märchen come to us from a time when the world was young. They represent the childhood of mankind, and it is for this reason that they never cease to appeal to children. The Märchen have a subtile flavor all their own. They are pervaded by the poetry of forest life, are full of the sense of mystery and awe, which is apt to overcome one on penetrating deeper and deeper into the woods, away from human habitations. The Märchen deal with the underground life of nature, which weaves in caverns and in the heart of mountains, where gnomes and dwarfs are at work gathering hidden treasures. And with this underground life children have a marvelous sympathy. The Märchen present glowing pictures of sheltered firesides, where man finds rest and security from howling winds and nipping cold. But perhaps their chief attraction is due to their representing the child as living in brotherly fellowship with nature and all creatures. Trees, flowers, animals wild and tame, even the stars, are represented as the comrades of children. That animals are only human beings in disguise is an axiom in the fairy tales. Animals are humanized—i. e., the kinship between animal and human life is still strongly felt, and this reminds us of those early animistic interpretations of nature, which subsequently led to doctrines of metempsychosis. Plants, too, are often represented as incarnations of human spirits. Thus the twelve lilies are inhabited by the twelve brothers, and in the story of Snow-white and Rose-red the life of the two maidens appears to be bound up with the life of the white and red rosebush. The kinship of all life whatsoever is still realized. This being so, it is not surprising that men should understand the language of animals, and that these should interfere to protect the heroes and heroines of the Märchen from threatened dangers. In the story of the faithful servant John, the three ravens flying above the ship reveal the secret of the red horse, the sulphurous shirt, and the three drops of blood, and John, who understands their communications, is thereby enabled to save his master's life. What, again, can be more beautiful than the way in which the tree and the two white doves co-operate to secure the happiness of the injured Cinderella! The tree rains down the golden dresses with which she appears at the ball, and the doves continue to warn the prince as he rides by that he has chosen the wrong bride until Cinderella herself passes, when they light on her shoulders, one on her right and the other on her left, making, perhaps, the loveliest picture to be found in all fairy lore. The child still lives in unbroken communion with the whole of nature; the harmony between its own life and the enveloping life has not yet been disturbed, and it is this harmony of the human with the natural world that reflects itself in the atmosphere of the Märchen, and makes them so admirably suited to satisfy the heart of childhood.

But how shall we handle these Märchen and what method shall we employ in putting them to account for our special purpose? I have a few thoughts on this subject, which I shall venture to submit in the form of counsels.

My first counsel is: Tell the story; do not give it to the child to read. There is an obvious practical reason for this. Children are able to benefit by hearing fairy tales before they can read. But that is not the only reason. It is the childhood of the race, as we have seen, that speaks in the fairy story to the child of to-day. It is the voice of an ancient, far-off past that echoes from the lips of the story-teller. The words "once upon a time" open up a vague retrospect into the past, and the child gets its first indistinct notions of history in this way. The stories embody the tradition of the childhood of mankind. They have on this account an authority all their own, not indeed that of literal truth, but one derived from their being types of certain feelings and longings which belong to childhood as such. The child as it listens to the Märchen, looks up with wide-opened eyes to the face of the person who tells the story, and thrills responsive as the touch of the earlier life of the race thus falls upon its own. Such an effect, of course, can not be produced by cold type. Tradition is a living thing, and should use the living voice for its vehicle.

My second counsel is also of a practical nature, and I make bold to say quite essential to the successful use of the stories. Do not take the moral plum out of the fairy-tale pudding, but let the child enjoy it as a whole. Do not make the story taper toward a single point, the moral point. You will squeeze all the juice out of it if you try. Do not subordinate the purely fanciful and naturalistic elements of the story, such as the love of mystery, the passion for roving, the sense of fellowship with the animal world, in order to fix attention solely on the moral element. On the contrary, you will gain the best moral effect by proceeding in exactly the opposite way. Treat the moral element as an incident; emphasize, it indeed, but incidentally. Pluck it as a wayside flower. How often does it happen that, having set out on a journey with a distinct object in mind, something occurs on the way which we had not foreseen, but which in the end leaves the deepest impression on the mind. The object which we had in view is long forgotten, but the incident which happened by the way is remembered for years after. So the moral result of the Märchen will not be less sure because gained incidentally. An illustration will make plain what I mean. In the story of the Frog King we are told that there was once a young princess who was so beautiful that even the Sun, which sees a great many things, had never seen anything so beautiful as she was. A golden ball was her favorite plaything. One day, as she sat by a well under an old linden tree, she tossed the ball into the air and it fell into the well. She was very unhappy, and cried bitterly. Presently a frog put his ugly head out of the water, and offered to dive for the ball, on condition, however, that she would promise to take him for her playmate, to let him eat off her golden plate and drink out of her golden cup and sleep in her little snow-white bed. The princess promised everything. But no sooner had the frog brought her the ball than she scampered away, heedless of his cries. The next day as the royal family sat at dinner a knock was heard at the door. The princess opened and beheld the ugly toad claiming admittance. She screamed with fright and hastily shut the door in his face. But when the king, her father, had questioned her, he said, "What you have promised, you must keep"; and she obeyed her father, though it was sorely against her inclination to do so. That was right, children, was it not? One must always obey, even if one does not like what one is told to do. So the toad was brought in and lifted to the table, and he ate off the little golden plate and drank out of the golden cup. And when he had had enough, he said, "I am tired now, put me into your little snow-white bed." And again when she refused her father said: "What you have promised you must keep. Ugly though he is, he helped you when you were in distress, and you must not despise him now." And the upshot of the story is that the ugly toad, having been thrown against the wall, was changed into a beautiful prince, and of course some time after the prince and the princess were married.

The naturalistic element of the story is the changing of the prince into a toad and back again from a toad into a prince. Children are very fond of disguises. It is one of their greatest pleasures to imagine things to be other than they are. And one of the chief attractions of such stories as the one we have related is that they cater to the fondness of the little folks for this sort of masquerading. The moral elements of the story are obvious. They should be touched on in such a manner as not to divert the interest from the main story.

My third counsel is to eliminate from the stories whatever is merely superstitious, merely a relic of ancient animism, and of course whatever is objectionable on moral grounds. For instance, such a story as that of the idle spinner, the purport of which seems to be that there is a special providence watching over lazy people. Likewise all those stories which turn upon the success of trickery and cunning. A special question arising under this head, and one which has been the subject of much vexed discussion, is in how far we should acquaint children with the existence of evil in the world, and to what extent we can use stories in which evil beings and evil motives are introduced. My own view is that we should speak in the child's hearing only of those lesser forms of evil, physical or moral, with which it is already acquainted, but exclude all those forms of evil which lie beyond its present experience. On this ground I should reject the whole brood of step-mother stories, or rather, as this might make too wide a swath, I should take the liberty of altering stories in which the typical bad step-mother occurs, but which are otherwise valuable. There is no reason why children should be taught to look on step-mothers in general as evilly disposed persons. The same applies to stories in which unnatural fathers are mentioned. I should also rule out such stories as that of The Wolf and The Seven Little Goats. The mother goat, on leaving the house, warns her little ones against the wolf, and gives them two signs by which they can detect him—his hoarse voice and black paws. The wolf knocks and finds himself discovered. He thereupon swallows chalk to improve his voice and compels the miller to whiten his paws. Then he knocks again, is admitted, leaps into the room, and devours the little goats one by one. The story, as used in the nursery, has a transparent purpose. It is intended to warn little children who are left at home alone against admitting strangers. The wolf represents evil beings in general—tramps, burglars, people who come to kidnap children, etc. Now I, for one, should not wish to implant this fear of strangers into the minds of the young. Fear is demoralizing. Children