Chapter 6 THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION

1. The teacher's preparation must be concerned with a variety of subjects. The first rule to be observed is: Select the tale for some purpose, to meet a situation. This purpose may be any one of the elements of value which have been presented here under "The Worth of Fairy Tales." The teacher must consider, not only the possibilities of her subject-matter and what she wishes to accomplish through the telling of the tale, but also what the child's purpose will be in listening.

She may select her tale specifically, not just because it contains certain interests, but because through those interests she can direct the child's activity toward higher interests. She must consider what problems the tale can suggest to the child. She may select her tale to develop habits in the child, to clarify his thinking, to give a habit of memory or to develop emotion or imagination. She may select her tale "just for fun," to give pure joy, or to teach a definite moral lesson, to make a selfish child see the beauty of unselfishness or to impress an idea. The Story of Lazy Jack, like the realistic Epaminondas, will impress more deeply than any word of exhortation, the necessity for a little child to use "the sense he was born with."

In the selection of the tale the teacher is up against the problem of whether she shall choose her tale psychologically or logically. As this is the day of the psychologic point of view in education, the teacher realizing this feels that she must select a tale for a particular purpose, according to the child's interests, his needs, and the possibilities it offers for his self-activity and self-expression. Looking freely over the field she may choose any tale which satisfies her purposes. This is psychologic. But in a year's work this choice of a tale for a particular purpose is followed by successive choices until she has selected a wide variety of tales giving exercise to many forms of activity, establishing various habits of growth. This method of choice is the psychologic built up until, in the hands of the teacher who knows the subject, it becomes somewhat logical. It is the method which uses the ability of the individual teacher, alone and unaided. There is another method. The teacher may be furnished with a course of tales arranged by expert study of the full subject outlined in large units of a year's work, offering the literary heritage possible to the child of a given age. This is logical. From this logical course of tales she may select one which answers to the momentary need, she may use it according to its nature, to develop habits, to give opportunity for self-activity and self-expression, and to enter into the child's daily life. This method of choice is the logical, which through use and adaptation has become psychologized. It uses the ability of the individual teacher in adaptation, not unaided and alone, but assisted by the concentrated knowledge and practice of the expert. Such a logical course, seeking uniformity only by what it requires at the close of a year's work, would give to the individual teacher a large freedom of choice and would bring into kindergarten and elementary literature a basis of content demanding as much respect as high school or college literature. It is in no way opposed to maintaining the child as the center of interest. The teacher's problem is to see that she uses the logical course psychologically.

2. Having selected the tale then, from a logical course, and psychologically for a present particular purpose, the next step is: Know the tale. Know the tale historically, if possible. Know it first as folk-lore and then as literature. Read several versions of the tale, the original if possible, selecting that version which seems most perfectly fitted to express what there is in the tale. As folk-lore, study its variants and note its individual motifs. Note what glimpses it gives of the social life and customs of a primitive people. The best way to dwell on the life of the story, to realize it, is to compare these motifs with similar motifs in other tales. It has been said that we do not see anything clearly until we compare it with another; and associating individual motifs of the tales makes the incidents stand out most clearly. Henny Penny's walk appears more distinctly in association with that of Medio Pollito or that of Drakesbill or of the Foolish Timid Rabbit; the fairy words in Sleeping Beauty and the good things they bestowed upon Briar Rose in association with the fairy wand in Cinderella and the good things it brought her; the visit of the Wolf in The Wolf and Seven Kids with the visit of the Wolf in Three Pigs and of the Fox in The Little Rid Hin. It is interesting to note that a clog motif, similar to the motif of shoes in The Elves and the Shoemaker, occurs in the Hindu Panch-Rhul Ranee, told in Old Deccan Days.

All the common motifs which occur in the fairy tales have been classified by Andrew Lang under these heads:-

(1) Bride or bridegroom who transgresses a mystic command.

(2) Penelope formula; one leaves the other and returns later.

(3) Attempt to avoid Fate.

(4) Slaughter of monster.

(5) Flight, by aid of animal.

(6) Flight from giant or wizard.

(7) Success of youngest.

(8) Marriage test, to perform tasks.

(9) Grateful beasts.

(10) Strong man and his comrades.

(11) Adventure with Ogre, and trick.

(12) Descent to Hades.

(13) False bride.

(14) Bride with animal children.

From a less scientific view some of the common motifs noticeable in the fairy tales, which however would generally fall under one of the heads given by Lang, might be listed:-

(1) Child wandering into a home; as in Three Bears and Snow White.

(2) Transformation; simple, as in Puss-in-Boots; by love, as in Beauty and the Beast, by sprinkling with water, as in Beauty and the Beast or by bathing, as in Catskin; by violence, as in Frog Prince and White Cat.

(3) Tasks as marriage tests; as in Cinderella.

(4) Riddle test; as in Peter, Paul, and Espen; questions asked, as in Red Riding Hood.

(5) Magic sleep; as in Sleeping Beauty.

(6) Magic touch; as in Golden Goose.

(7) Stupid person causing royalty to laugh; as in Lazy Jack.

(8) Exchange; as in Jack and the Beanstalk.

(9) Curiosity punished; as in Bluebeard and Three Bears.

(10) Kindness to persons rewarded; as in Cinderella, Little

Two-Eyes, and The House in the Wood.

(11) Kindness to animals repaid; as in Thumbelina, Cinderella,

and White Cat.

(12) Industry rewarded; as in Elves and the Shoemaker.

(13) Hospitality rewarded; as in Tom Thumb.

(14) Success of a venture; as in Dick Whittington.

After studying the tale as folk-lore, know it as literature. Master it as a classic, test it as literature, to see wherein lies its appeal to the emotions, its power of imagination, its basis of truth, and its quality of form; study it as a short-story and view it as a piece of narration. It is rather interesting to note that you can get all there is in a tale from any one point of view. If you follow the sequence as setting, through association you get the whole, as may be seen by referring to Chanticleer and Partlet under the heading, "Setting," in the chapter on the "Short-Story." Or, if you follow the successive doings of the characters you get the whole, as may be observed in the story of Medio Pollito, described later in the "Animal Tale" in the chapter, "Classes of Tales." Or if you follow the successive happenings to the characters, the plot, you get the whole, as may appear in the outline of Three Pigs given in the chapter which handles "Plot." Note the beauty of detail and the quality of atmosphere with which the setting surrounds the tale; note the individual traits of the characters and their contrasts; observe how what each one does causes what happens to him. Realize your story from the three points of view to enter into the author's fullness. Get a good general notion of the story first.

3. The next step is: Master the complete structure of the tale. This is the most important step in the particular study of the tale, for it is the unity about which any perfection in the art of telling must center. To discern that repose of centrality which the main theme of the tale gives, to follow it to its climax and to its conclusion, where poetic justice leaves the listener satisfied-this is the most fundamental work of the story-teller. The teacher must analyze the structure of her tale into its leading episodes, as has been illustrated in the handling of structure, under the subject, "Plot," in the chapter on the "Short-Story."

4. The next step is: Secure the message of the tale. The message is what we wish to transmit, it is the explicit reason for telling the tale. And one evidently must possess a message before one can give it. As the message is the chief worth of the tale, the message should dominate the telling and pervade its life. A complete realization of the message of the tale will affect the minutest details giving color and tone to the telling, and resulting so that what the child does with the story will deepen the impression of the message he receives.

5. The next step is: Master the tale as form. This means that if the tale is in classic form, not only the message and the structure must be transmitted, but the actual words. Words are the artist's medium, Stevenson includes them in his pattern of style, and how can we exclude them if we wish to express what they have expressed? A tale like Kipling's The Elephant's Child would be ruined without those clinging epithets, such as "the wait-a-bit thorn-bush," "mere-smear nose," "slushy squshy mud-cap," "Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake," and "satiable curtiosity." No one could substitute other words in this tale; for contrasts of feeling and humor are so tied up with the words that other words would fail to tell the real story. If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part of speech, note the vision of tropical setting opened up by the exclamation, "O Bananas! Where did you learn that trick?" This is indeed a tale where the form is the matter, the form and the message are one complete whole that cannot be separated. But it is a proof that where any form is of sufficient perfection to be a classic form, you may give a modified tale by changing it, but you do not give the real complete tale. You cannot tell Andersen's Tin Soldier in your own words; for its sentences, its phrases, its sounds, its suggestive language, its humor, its imagination, its emotion, and its message, are so intricately woven together that you could not duplicate them.

When the fairy tale does not possess a settled classic form, select, as was mentioned, that version in which the language best conveys the life of the story, improving it yourself, if you can, in harmony with the standards of literature, until the day in the future when the tale may be fortunate enough to receive a settled form at the hands of a literary artist. Sometimes a slight change may improve greatly an old tale. In Grimm's Briar Rose[1] the episode of the Prince and the old Man contains irrelevant material. The two paragraphs following, "after the lapse of many years there came a king's son into the country," easily may be re-written to preserve the same unity and simplicity which mark the rest of the tale. This individual retelling of an old tale demands a careful distinction between what is essential and internal and what may have been added, what is accidental and external. The clock-case in The Wolf and Seven Kids evidently is not a part of the original story, which arose before clocks were in use, and is a feature added in some German telling of the tale. It may be retained but it is not essential to the tale that it should be. Exact conversations and bits of dialogue, repetitive phrases, rhymes, concrete words which visualize, brief expressions, and Anglo-Saxon words-these are all bits of detail which need to be mastered in a complete acquirement of the story's form, because these are characteristics of the form which time has settled upon the old tales. Any literary form bestowed upon the tales worthy of the name literature, will have to preserve these essentials.