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"The Story Hour." Address delivered before the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, July 29, 1965 by Rachel D. Harris. American Liberty League. 400dpi TIFF G4 page images Digital Library Services, University of Kentucky Libraries Lexington, Kentucky LFP_rblue_2_06_07 These pages may freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. "The Story Hour." Address delivered before the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, July 29, 1965 by Rachel D. Harris. American Liberty League. unknown unknown 1965-07-29 Is Part of the Reverend Thomas F. Blue Papers, ca. 1905-1935 housed at the Louisville Free Public Library, Louisville, KY. This electronic text file was created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). No corrections have been made to the OCR-ed text and no editing has been done to the content of the original document. Encoding has been done through an automated process using the recommendations for Level 1 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file. THE STORY HOUR An Address Delivered Before The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF TEACHSRS IN COLORED SCHOOLS « At Cincinnatif O. July 29, 1915 by Rachel D. Harris Assistant in the Louisville Free Public Library In Charge of Children's Work in the Colored Libraries of Louisville The Story Hour # * When we introduced the Story Hour into the Louisville Free Public Library system, our aim was single. We desired that the children coming to us should cultivate a taste for the best in literature by reading the books on our shelves* These books had been carefully selected by some of the best trained librar-ians of the oountry and represented the choicest in juvenile literature.. we gathered the children together in groups and told them the stories from the books on our shelves and had the natural result* Most every child wanted to read the book containing the story just told. This method kept our story books in constant circulation. We then became brave and a daring plan was made at a considerable expense to the Library Board. The head of the Children's Department planned an outline of stories from English history beginning v/ith the earliest epoch through the reign of Queen Victoria. Our Board gave ub a liberal supply of English histories adapted for children and ire entered upon this course with a determination to make the expense worth while and indeed the result far exceeded our expectation. There never remained on the sh&jyes in the children^ room a single English history. There was a constant demand for them and many a child was led to a love of the study of history through this course. Even girls learn to love the study. Tell some of the incidents in the stories of Little Nell, Tiny Tim, Davy Copperfield and Oliver Twist to older children and a desire for Dickens will be awakened* Girls and boys have been led to a desire to read Victor Hugo's masterpiece by being told some of the interesting adventures of Jean Val Jean or little Cosaette. Different authors on the story and its purpose express the paramount aim of the story in different ways, yet they do not, in the main, disagree. Sara Cone Bryant, the established authority on the subject says: "The message of the story is the message of beauty, as effective as that message in marble or paint. Its part in the economy of life is to ffive .1 oy. And the purpose and working of the Joy is found in that quickening of the spirit which answers every perception of the truly beautiful in the arts of man* To give joy; in and throuffi the joy to stir and feed the life of the spirit, this is the function of the story in education". And again, *The greatest aim of storytelling is to enlarge the child's spiritual experience and stimulate healthy reaction upon it." In a recent issue of the Story Tellers1 Magazine th* editor makes this statement; "How of all the great aims of th« Story Tellers Magazine the greatest is to teach young people o£' the on-coming generation through the medium of well told stories the value and beauty of those cardinal virtues of heart and soul, which uplift the individual and form the foundation stones of true character building." Children love the story fom of education and information beyond any other as do we all, makes no difference what our age. Our Gracious Master Himself used this pleasing and convincing means of conveying his message of true conduct of living to the throngs that listened to him daily. It becomes a comparatively simple matter with the right kind of a story, to encourage children through the medium of their hearts to a true and lasting understanding of the cardinal virtues of obedience, perseverance, patience, gentleness, courage, courtesy,purity and the proper application of the .4- Golden Rule. ••Through the Soul" interest they are led to an acquaintance and understanding of the humanities and receive lasting impressions of the real meaning of duty, honor, truth, honesty, patriotism, loyalty and kindred virtues. By means of the story properly selected children are led to avoid selfishness, covetousness, cruelty, trickery, lying, meanness, deceit and kindred vices* This, of course, does not mean that the story Hour has the power to instantaneously v/ipe out the above vices and instill the foregoing virtues, entirely overcoming all hereditary tendencies, but the seed i3 sown and is compelled to bear good fruit. In making my round of visits during the past year a certain principal of one of our large schools, a man of broad experience and a student of human nature, called to me with a deeply perplexed countenance: "Could you spare the time to come to our school again very soon? I want you to hold story hour in one of my rooms. There is a class of boys there who seem to have inherited all the vices under the sun, but above all-selfishness and untruthfulness.■If you have every used the story hour for just such a purpose you will see why he did not say to me, "Since you have taught Sunday school so long and since you are a member of a ainister's family, won't you come and give these boys a lecture on the evils of lying and selfishness?* I returned the f llowingweek and told the stories "The golden pears" and "The tv/o brothers** I do not know of tho subsequent result of these stories but I do know I left a more subdued and thoughtful class for at least part of that day. Those two aims-the cultivation of a'taste for good literature and the forming of a foundation of true character building-alone would make the story hour worth while, but *tis not There is nothing Biore helpful to a teacher in the class room than the fixed attention of the pupils; and there is no method more conducive to the cultivation of the habit of fixed attention than the story period. The story not only cultivates the habit of fixed attention but in doing so establishes a friendly relation between teacher and pupilf without which the most brilliant teacher will fail. One ot the boys who frequents our library gave us so much trouble that among our staff we oalled him the "library pest". He was prevailed upon one Bunsday afternoon to attend our story hour* We now call him "Sunny Jim". His rapt attention during the telling of our stories is so encouraging and stimulating that we feel that something is radically wrong if "Sunny Jim" is not present; and woe to the thoughtless one who laughfe at the wrong time, or makes the least noise while those stories are being told. *jimfs* look is more banefully eloquent than any lecture we could &ive. .6- ^. Has there erer ooift* a tia# in your school roo» whW the atmosphere was so tense that i% seemed charged with dyna~ mite, ready to explode at any moment? W$$n you felt "all out of sorts51 and the class manifested the same condition. I met a tea,cher in such a predicament who took me bodily to her room notwithstanding my assuring her that I had to "make another school" that day. "You will have to come" says she "or something will go off in here sure* By telling the story of Peikf a nonsense !Torwe{$ian tale, the atmosphere was cleared, everybody happy, and a deep sigh of relief told of its effect upon the teacher who happened to be a good story teller herself, but confessed she came to school that morning without her anecdote which she so often used as an antidote. Keep your class in a good humor and you can teach them most anything* There are so many "whys" for the story hour that we can not speak of them all but there is one other very important thing it does for the child-it aids in verbal expression; it increases its vocabulary and corrects its errors in IDnglish. In the reproduction of stories children readily learn to forget self and speak fluently, acquiring almost imperceptibly an ease in expressing thought ♦ I have this story from another teacher. It seemed that the children in her class "with one accord" refused to iearn the use of the verb 3to eat". It was "I et« or "I done et" almost -7- constantly* She tried one experiment of having the class reproduce for several mornings the story of the "Greedy eat". You know this story has a repetition of the expression "I have eaten" • I have eaten ray friend the parrot; I have eaten an old woman, and an old man; I have eaten a man and his donkey, etc., and I will oat you. She states that this little nensenee tale helped effectively in eradicating thi3 error in English, and fixing the expression"eat you"instead of "e-ohu." If the lesson in historyf geography, nature, language and even spelling were made not lessons hut simply stories to he reproduced, they would he learned much more readily- There are no four words of greater use to the teacher in all grades then "Once upon a time." To illustrate the fundamental aim of the story hour I wish to tell you the story "The Knights of the silver shield" and ask that you try its effect on any class from the third grajde even through the high school. *