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.
