University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS
BY BLANCHE E. HAZARD

THE demand at the present day for reading-books is not like that of fifty or even fifteen years ago. Any collection of poetry and prose used to be thought adequate, if made up of words of certain brevity and paragraphs of appropriate choppiness about miscellaneous subjects. Such a Reader was a good exercise book for a drill in the mechanical process of reading.

In these days of teaching children instead of subjects, the demand is not merely for something to read, but for something worth reading, both for its style and its matter. During the last ten years various Readers have appeared, made up of selections which were good literature and at the same time suited to young pupils. The subject-matter of such Readers covers a wide range, including science, geography, and history, descriptions of people and the world we live in; for we are teaching children to live and to be interested in the lives of others.

Good reading-books may also be applied to the problems of "anticipation and correlation" in education; we have come to realize that at a given age certain faculties can be developed more advantageously than at other times. When the first bold pioneers of "anticipation" tried to urge that some subjects formerly reserved for secondary schools should be taught in the grammar grades, there were cries of dismay

and honest fears of a "stuffing process" by which Latin and algebra were to be brought back into grammar grades, and science and history into primary grades. Yet many schools throughout the United States have proved that good teachers working with good tools on wise plans can perform the impossibility. Among the necessary tools are supplementary Readers so used as to correlate the work of the grades.

For this reform it is not essential to ask faithful and efficient teachers to do more work, but to use effectively their time and strength and that of their pupils, so that they may reach the ideals of the present day education. While they are teaching reading, they are to think of the children not only as acquiring a mechanical skill, but also as getting ideas about things in life; hence the growing use of "nature readers," "history readers," and "geography readers," or as commonly termed "Supplementary Readers." The very name involves the conclusion that these books are helping children to a knowledge of subjects.

What are the characteristics of a good modern reading-book ? (1) Clear thought simply expressed; (2) Good English; (3) Interesting pieces that will train in expression; (4) Valuable matter that is worth remembering for its own sake. In my own work of teaching methods to Normal School classes in the Rhode Island Normal School and of supervising the history study in the primary and grammar grades of the Observation School connected with this Normal School I have found the system of supplementary readers an aid to the teacher and a stimulus to the pupil. In talking with young children both in and out of school, reading to them, hearing them read to

me, and listening to their unconstrained and valuable criticisms, I have been convinced that they can understand and enjoy proper selections from real literature.

Colonial Children, like the other Readers of this series which are to follow, is an attempt to give good literature to children, and at the same time to do two other things: to let people of bygone days speak for themselves; and to lay good foundations for accurate knowledge of history. Hence the sources of American history have been re-examined and narratives have been selected which seem interesting to children, and simple enough in thought for them to understand.

The stories are the same in substance as when they were first told, two and three centuries ago; but their garb has been changed without adding a detail or altering a statement of fact. The spelling and phraseology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been corrected so that the story may be easily understood by young children. Nevertheless as much of the quaintness of expression has been kept as was allowable by rules of present good usage, with due reference to the mental development of the pupils of the fourth to the sixth grade. Those children can now read aloud to their listening schoolmates the words uttered by such leaders as Governor William Bradford, Governor John Winthrop, John Smith, and William Penn, great men of action, who were also writers of clear thought and pure English style.

Perhaps a proper definition of oral reading might be this, getting the thought out of a writer's words, and then expressing it in such a way as to pass that thought on to others. An interest that awakens imagination leads readily into an ability to get and to transmit another's thought. This volume should have

in the training of expression as much helpfulness as the many artificial story books, for it is full of adventure, wonderful happenings, graphic descriptions, and altogether delightful tales. I have seen and heard history stories read by children in all the grades from the third to the sixth; and I have observed that even little children cannot help giving the right expression when they read of triumph or of sorrow, for their voices are unconsciously modulated to suit the thought, because the feelings which control the voice are awakened.

Reading aloud with taste and expression is only part of the school training. Children must learn to read both to and for themselves; to get the sense by the appeal of the printed page to the eye, as well as of the spoken words to the ear. That children do not acquire this power generally in the primary and grammar schools is known to secondary school teachers; repeatedly in my high school classes I have found that reading twenty pages of a comparatively easy history or even of a novel, was a "time-taking task" without definite results in the way of securing the ideas. Since this power cannot be acquired without years of training, a beginning should he made in the elementary schools. There is no doubt that many of these stories would be most profitable and engrossing "seat work," a means of relaxation, which would not involve mischief making.

Varying conditions in schools and courses in the East and in the West, and in different schools also of one state, prevent a general statement as to the grade for which this reading-book is intended. In selecting and revising the extracts we hoped that it might fit the average fifth grade, or say children ten or twelve

years old, and my own experience and a test of many of the pieces show that average children of that age can use it pleasurably.

The fourth requirement for a Reader is that it contain valuable subject-matter, worth remembering for itself: we believe that the pieces in this book not only cultivate the imagination and train the vocal expression, but may aid the memory and aid the judgment so as to be an ultimate help in the study of history in the fifth or in higher grades. While intended primarily as a reading-book, the volume has been made up in accordance with the principles of the scientific study of history: large bodies of sources have been searched; opinions have been weighed and balanced; and the merits of the writers and their writings have been considered; kindred subjects have been grouped; chronological order and historical perspective have been kept in mind. If a teacher in the fifth grade is required to teach American history, in a simple though formal way, with a text-book or without, she will find in this book a tool adapted for her work.

For example, to make real the Norsemen who visited our country so long ago, leaving few or no traces of their coming, she can turn those shadowy beings into seeming flesh and blood by reading the story of the Wineland Baby (No. 1). She can be sure that children will remember not only the story, but the story-teller, when Columbus (No. 2) or Higginson (No. 20) tell what they saw in the New World. The real nature of exploration will come home to the pupils with force as they read about Balboa (No. 5) and Pizarro (No. 6) and De Soto (No. 7). A fuller appreciation of the courage of the colonists will be possible

for the children who notice the dangers, real and imaginary, which were faced in the journey over the ocean and during the first years in the wilderness; any of the selections grouped in the chapter "On the Sea" and "In the Wilderness" will furnish these pictures.

The volume contains some of the earliest and most authentic accounts of the native Indians: but it was not all scalping and war dances. The girls who read of their home-life (Nos. 33 and 34) and the true story of Pocahontas (No. 35) will find that the Indians can interest as well as frighten them; the boys will get enough excitement in the stories of rescue from Indian captivity found in Nos. 41 and 43; while both boys and girls will find much to admire in the character of the Indian chieftain, Passaconnaway (No. 39). Colonies seem more real to boys and girls when they find that there were real children on the Virginia plantations and in the New England towns; as "fathers" and "mothers" the parents of these children (read Nos. 56 and 59, 60 and 61, 65, 66, and 67) become infinitely more interesting than the old-fashioned "colonists" could ever be. That personal impression once gained, pupils may read Nos. 46 to 55 about "How the Colonies Grew." That the accounts of the colonial schools, in the closing chapter of this Reader, will make the children more eager to go to their own schools, is, perhaps, too much to promise, but that all these stories wisely used will tend to keep this rising generation from "hating history" is confidently expected.

To a sixth grade teacher, who takes up the formal study of American history, with a class that has become acquainted with Colonial Children during the

previous year, there will come a grateful appreciation of the worth of a supplementary Reader that gave the children something not only to read, and to read with expression, but to remember; she will see a practical outcome of the system of "anticipation and correlation," and she will be doing her share in working out this problem in our primary and grammar schools.