Chapter 23
Section 23 of Birds in All Nature, Volume 4, Number 5, November 1898, recorded for LibriVox.org by April Walters. Color Photographs and Conversation Lessons Since Nature Study Publishing Company, in January 1897, put before the teaching world the first accurately beautiful representations, not only of the forms of nature, but of the tints and colors also, the brightest minds have been active in noting the effectiveness of the color photograph in school.
Thousands of teachers have vied with each other in applying them in nature study with the most gratifying results. An important discovery has been made at almost the same time by many of them. The lively interest aroused by the bird presented, the agreeable sensations the child experiences in relating incidents and hearing from his mates and teachers about its habits and the reminiscences of delightful outdoor experiences
all tend to warm the child to enthusiasm. This point of warmth is the supreme opportunity of the teacher. Instruction given under such a glow is intensely educative. A few minutes of such work is worth hours of effort where the child is but indifferently aroused. Many of the best first primary teachers do not begin to teach reading during the first few weeks of this child in school. They aim first to establish a bond of sympathy between themselves and their pupils, to extend
their range of ideas, and to expand their powers of expression. Expression is induced and encouraged along all lines, by words, music, drawing, color work, and physical motions. The common things of life are discussed, experiences related, and the imagination brought strongly into play. Songs and recitations are given with the actions of birds, animals, persons, or machines, imitated joyously by groups of children. Games calculated to train the senses and the memory
are indulged in. The whole nature of the child is called into play, and perfect freedom of expression is sought. Experience shows that intelligent training along these lines is profitable. The time of learning reading and spelling is somewhat deferred, and number work is delayed, but the children who are skillfully trained in this way outstrip the others rapidly when they bring their trained powers to bear upon the things that are popularly supposed to be the
business of a school. Superintendent Spear has shown that pupils whose technical instruction has been deferred for several months in this way are found at the end of the second year far superior to others of equal promise who have been put at reading, spelling, and number work directly. To conduct a conversation lesson requires some tact. Not tact in asking questions, nor in talking down to the level of the children. Direct questions are of doubtful value in the first grade.
In fact, the value of the lesson may sometimes be judged by the absence of such questions put by the teacher. The question mark and the pump handle resemble each other, and often force up perfunctory contributions, and sometimes they merely produce a dry sound. Children do not care to be pumped.
Here are a few questions that give the children little pleasure and less opportunity for expression. Isn't this a very pretty bird? Do you see what a bright eye it has? How many of you have seen a bird like this? How would you like to own him and have him at your house?
Don't you think, dear children, God is very good to us to let us have such beautiful birds in the world? Any one of these questions by itself is not harmful, but an exercise made up of such material merely gives the class a chance to say,
Yes, ma'am, and raise their hands. All talk by the teacher and no activity by the class. With a bright smile and a winning voice, the teacher may conduct what appears to be a pleasant exercise with such material, but there is little real value in it under the best circumstances, and it should be avoided systematically. It is unskillful and a waste of time and opportunity.
Attempts to lower one's conversation to the level of little children are often equally unsatisfactory. Too much use of mama bird, baby birdies, clothes, sweet, lovely, chootsy-wootsy, and oh my, is disappointing. Ordinary conversation, opened with a class, in much the same style and language as used by one adult in talking with another, is found to be the most profitable. Introductory remarks are generally bad, though some otherwise excellent teachers do run on interminably with them.
To begin directly with a common-sense statement of real interest is best. Here are a few profitable opening statements for different exercises. One day I found a dead mouse hanging upon a thorn in a field. Mr. Smith told me he heard a flicker say, Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Willie says his bird is fond of fruit, and I noticed that most birds that eat fruit have beautiful bright feathers. This bird likes the cows, and I once saw him light on a cow's horn. Such statements open the minds of young people, where many times direct questions close them. Questions and regular contributions to the conversation flow readily from members of the class when the right opening has been made.
Do not let the class feel that your purpose is to get language from them. Mare talk does not educate. Animated expression alone is valuable. I have plenty of material to use if the class seems slow to respond, and I have patience when they have more to offer than the time will admit. Bear in mind that a conversational lesson on some nature subject is not a nature lesson,
but is given to induce correct thinking, which shall come out in good language. It may incidentally be such a nature lesson as to satisfy the requirements of your course of study in that line, but if you give it as a conversation lesson, let conversation be the exercise. Where a few in class tend to monopolize the time, you may frequently bring a diffident one into the exercise by casually looking at him, as if you felt his
right to be heard. It is better not to ask him to talk, but to make it easy for him to come into the conversation, by referring to something he has previously done or said, or by going near him while others talk. A hand on his shoulder while you are conversing with others will sometimes open him to expression. Sometimes you need to refer to what Willie's father said, or what you saw at his house, or to something that Willie owns and is pleased with.
Many expedients should be tried and some time consumed in endeavoring to get such a pupil into the conversation, instead of saying point blank, now Willie, what do you think? The matter of spoken language is words, largely. The thinking of children is always done in words, as far as school matters go. The thoughts of the average child are correct enough from his standpoint, and when the teacher represses him on his first attempt to carry his part in the exercise,
he is hurt to such an extent that he may never recover from it, and he may always believe himself peculiarly unfortunate in that he is incapable of speaking as others do. The truth is that all children are eloquent. They talk easily, very easily, in comparison with adults who have been frightened out of their natural tongues and who are forever trying to say what they think in terms that they do not think in. All children are sensitive concerning
their speech. Some of the keenest hurts children experience are inflicted by those who notice patronizingly or critically the language they use. Mothers are in a hurry to have them learn English at once and so correct them instantly when such mistakes as rund, mouses, and me wants occur. The child allowed to think in his own terms overcomes his verbal difficulties in a short time if associated at home with those who speak correctly, and he is perfectly excusable for
using what we call incorrect forms until he has acquired the so-called correct ones. There are times when the child's mind is open to acquisition of formal expertness in language. He will find these times for himself and exercise himself in forms without being driven to it at the very times when his mind is most active with other things, which he tries to express to us in his moments of overflowing enthusiasm.
In these moments, he should not be bothered and confused by formal quibbling. In his most active states intellectually, he ought not be repressed. This applies to the child who hears good English at home. It also applies, with slight modifications, to the child who hears imperfect language at home.
The child who will eventually prove capable of correct speech will learn to speak the best language he hears without direct instruction, if encouraged in it, and given the respect a growing child is entitled to receive. Children learn to speak while at play. They are active and much interested when they are acquiring a natural vocabulary.
Much of the vocabulary is wrong from the standpoint of the grammar and dictionary, and they have to unlearn it. They have to unlearn it at school and from the lips of painstaking parents. One reason it is so hard for them to learn the correct forms is this unintelligent way of teaching. Another is that incorrect conversation is heard under
circumstances favorable to retention and reproduction, that is, when the child is much interested and happy, while the correct forms are given to him when he is but half aroused, or when he is somewhat intense over another matter, and many times the intended instruction goes in at one ear and out at the other. When the skill of the teacher and the things of the schoolroom become so powerfully attractive to the pupil that once hearing a new word will fix it,
once seeing a word will make him master it in all its forms, then the language lesson will not need to be forgiven. For language, which is as natural to man as breathing, will flow in the correct forms trippingly from the tongue, being so fixed in the pupil's mind from the first that he will have nothing to unlearn. Conversation lessons are intended to take care of some of the crudest errors in speech before the child has committed the indiscretion of putting them in writing.
It can be done with so much less severity in conversation than in a written lesson. Notice silently the particularly bad expressions and forms of statements of the whole class. Then plan your talking lesson in which those who are not guilty of those errors are allowed to lead. Then let the child whom you consider most likely to profit by hearing correct expression
from his mates give you the necessary statement. If he uses correct forms, let another try. For instance, suppose you have a number of pupils who are inclined to say, the robin isn't so purdy as the blue jay. The reason for this is that the parents of nearly all these pupils will make the same error. If early in their experience with you, you are shocked by their speech and let them know it, you either lose their respect or make them
feel that they and their parents are inferior beings, with no right to speak. It will take a few minutes to speak of something else that is pretty, and let several of your pupils who speak the word correctly give some statements concerning some pretty things. Then call upon one of the offenders, without his suspecting himself to be such, and the probability is that he will say pretty, as you wish.
But suppose he fail. He must not think he does so because of dullness, for he may say pretty for the sole reason that his mates are listening, and he fears they may think he is trying to put on style. If you pass the matter in silence that day, you will find him bolder or more acute the next day, and he will speak the word correctly. In this way, he will seem to himself to be teaching himself.
Self-culture will begin in him, and the credit will be yours. Another teacher would suppress that sort of language and compel the boy to say the word right instanter. But her pupils speak one language in school and a different one in places where they are more comfortable. Aim to set the child to correcting his own speech by his own apparent choice. A single error is easily repressed, but the habit of looking after one's own speech is not easily acquired. It is
easy to make a child feel his inferiority to you, but it is a great thing to inspire him to do the good and wise and elegant things which you are capable of doing in his presence. The process of unlearning words has always been a failure with the majority of pupils, and most of the English speaking race are ashamed of their inability to speak. Men most eloquent and successful in business conversation, who were by nature fitted to thrill the world with tongue and pen, have been
confused and repressed by this process till they believe themselves vastly inferior to others because they cannot translate their thoughts out of the terms of the street or counting room into the language of the grammar school. And so they never try to fill the large places that would have been open to them
if they could but have learned to think in terms which may be spoken right out without fear of opprobrium. Now, since so much of our teaching psychology and common sense have been shown to be radically wrong, let us build up our language work on the high plane of interest in real things,
expressing thought directly and without translation into fitter terms. Let the thinking be done in terms suitable for life, and use the color photograph to ensure that the enthusiasm necessary to good thinking. Be guarded as to how you deal with thoughts that come hot from growing minds. Repress never.
Advise kindly, and know that by following the natural method and language, you are not ruining the speech powers of your best pupils, as has been done heretofore. End of section 23. This recording is in the public domain.
