INTRODUCTION

A TRAVELER Crossing a plain in India saw at a distance a slave who was busy drawing a bucket from a well. The traveler approached the well, hoping to get a drink. On reaching it he saw, to his surprise, that the bucket came to the top of the well empty. Again and again the slave let down the bucket, and ever it came to the top empty.

"Hold!" cried the traveler at length. "Do you not see that the well is empty? In order to get water from the well, you must either fill it from the reservoirs on the hills or dig down till you reach the natural springs in the earth.”

This little story well symbolizes much that is called language work-routine efforts to draw from the shallow surface of the child's mind full measures of thought and feeling, efforts that we often. thoughtlessly allow to become ends in themselves. Like the slave with his bucket, we go through the motions; we draw from our pupils words, sentences, paragraphs, and punctuation marks, but they are empty. And they will continue to be as empty as the slave's bucket until we change our procedure.

But the story does more than symbolize our futile efforts; it suggests to us, as did the traveler to the slave, what we must do if we would see our efforts crowned with success. We must see to it

that the sources from which we attempt to draw are well supplied; we must see to it that the child contains has command of -something expressible before we attempt to draw anything forth. The slave was told to supply his well either by drawing from the reservoirs on the hills or by sinking the well down to the natural springs. We must supply the child freely from both sources. We must open the ways for an unfailing supply of language material from the "reservoirs on the hill," the reservoirs of fable, fairy tale, legend, myth, story, poem, - literature; we must also tap the abundant and ever renewed resources of the child's own experiences, the springs deep down in the child's reactions to the world about him — his ideas, his ambitions, his feelings and emotions. We must see that from these two inexhaustible sources the materials of thought and feeling flow together and make up the abundant stream of the child's mental life; when we do this, we may draw deeply and without disappointment.

These books, this Manual and the pupils' book accompanying it, the Aldine First Language Book,- have grown out of many years of experiment in teaching "language," so called, out of experience in which the reservoirs of literature and the springs of the children's lives have been tapped successfully, have been made to flow together into a rich mental child life and to flow out, on occasion, into correct forms of expression bearing the

precious stamp of the child-author's individuality. The two books together furnish and suggest abundant and varied material; they show just how this material may be used most successfully; they are full of little plans and devices, every one of them as interesting to the children as a game, but every one purposeful and effective.

The literary materials which the books provide fables, myths, legends, stories of all kinds, rhymes, and poemsthe delight of childhood, answer three tests. They are fully within the range of the child's understanding and appreciation, within his interests, his experiences, and imaginative powers; they are of that type of literature of which some, at least, must be known, assimilated, by every one who would appreciate the best in adult literature; they are expressed in forms that may safely be followed as models. Moreover, although classic, little of this material has become hackneyed by general use in Readers and other texts.

The variety of ways in which these materials are presented arouses the keen interest of the children, stimulates their thought, and quickens their whole mental life. They discuss freely, they dramatize, they reproduce orally and in writing, they work over into new forms, they live and love the contents of stories and poems. These become a precious and an integral part of the children's inmost lives.

In the light of these childhood experiences of the

race, which are the basis of much of this literature of childhood, the child becomes conscious and appreciative of his own objective experiencesexperiences which arise from his association with animate and inanimate nature-plants, animals, playmates, mountains, valleys and streams, winds, sun and moon. The child interprets, appreciates, and assimilates the contents of literature only through his own experiences, his own feelings and emotions, that the literary contents recall and arouse. On the other hand, and just as truly, literature reveals to the child his own experiences, makes him conscious of them and their significance.

The method and spirit of freedom and individuality which pervades all the work or shall we call it play, it is so spontaneous? — - gives every child a confident control of his own resources, his language material. Expression in a language exercise becomes as natural, as abundant, and as individual as on the playground.

With all this attention to content, what becomes of form, the mechanics of language? Are the uses of the marks of punctuation, of capitals, of sentences, paragraphs, and the rest neglected? Not at all; the learning of correct language forms is emphasized, but never as an end in itself, always as a means to an end. In the study of the bits of literature which the child understands and loves, he learns that cer tain forms are necessary to the expression of the

INTRODUCTION

5

content; he learns to appreciate the significance of forms. When he attempts to give expression to his own language material at first taking a bit of literature as a model-he uses the conventional language forms with discriminating intelligence. Forms are taught only as the child needs them to use; but once taught, it is uniformly insisted that he shall always use every language form correctly, and that he shall know why he uses it. This conscious and discriminating use of language forms from the first soon grows into right habits.

Questions are used throughout the pupils' book, for the most part, not to test the pupil's knowledge but to arouse and direct his thought. This accounts for the character of those questions, sometimes quite frequent, that strongly suggest their answers. This type of question is often necessary to insure the trend of thought desired.

The division of the chapters into sections marked by Roman numerals indicates relatively complete units of work rather than lessons. Many of these units can be completed in a single exercise; some will require two, three, or even more periods. The time required to cover a section or a chapter will vary much, of course, with different classes and different teachers.

Between the minimum amount of work that must be done and the maximum that may be done in the completion of the pupils' book there is a margin wide enough to meet all the varying conditions of