Here and Now: Story Book

by Lucy Sprague Mitchell

Our school has always assumed that children are interested in and will work with or give expression to those things which are familiar to them. This is not the kindergarten gives domestic life a prominent place with little children. But with the kindergarten the present and familiar is abandoned in most schools and emphasis is placed upon that which is unfamiliar and remote. It is impossible to conceive of children working their own way from the familiar to the unknown unless they develop a method in understanding the familiar which will apply to the unfamiliar as well. This method is the method of art and science—the method of experimentation and inquiry. We can almost say that children are born with it, so soon do they begin to show signs of applying it. As they have been in the past and as they are in the present to a very great extent, schools make no attempt to provide for this method; in fact they take pains to introduce another. They are disposed to set up a rigid program which answers inquiries before they are made and supplies needs before they have been felt.

We try to keep the children upon present day and familiar things until they show by their attack on materials and especially upon information that they are ready to work out into the unknown and unfamiliar. In the matter of stories and verse which fit into such a program we have always felt an almost total void. Whether other schools feel this would depend upon their intentional program. Surely no school would advise giving classical literature without the setting which would make the stories and verse understandable. It is a question whether the fact of desirable literature has not in the past and does not still govern our whole school program more than many educators would be willing to admit. What seems to be more logical is to set up that which is psychologically sound so far as we know it and create if need be a new literature to help support the structure.

374 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

Attending Radcliffe against the wishes of her father, Mitchell went on to become the first dean of women at the University of California at Berkeley, starting out as advisor to the dean in 1903. She devoted her life to the education of children.

Reviews

[GoldGato · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1921, the urban and rural schools of the United States decided to write new stories for children which would make them easier to remember and to read. The idea was for the children to write tales as they thought they should be, based upon their age bracket. A toddler, for example, would want to repeat a thought over and over, like this:

Round, round, round, round, round
Round, round, round, round, round

The Beatrix Potter type of books were considered unreal, as rabbits and hedgehogs didn't speak to little children. Instead, a child would want to write about a train that was seen or a horse that was eating. That sort of thing.

I feel sorry for the children of the 1920s and 1930s who had to endure these "classics".

There is little imagination to any of these, as though it was heretical to think of fairies and flying clocks. I understand the goal, as the post WWI world strove to modernize. But jeepers, why be a child if you can't relate to elves and dragonflies? The Introduction and Foreword take up the first 46 pages, as the psychological points are delivered.

It was a time of change, as cars began to overtake horse-drawn carriages. The only story I liked was Once The Barn Was Full Of Hay.

Down the alley he knew so well,
Went the old horse for the last time.
For he never came back again.
They had no need of him; they liked their auto better!

So sad. The family throws away the loyal horse of many years because they've purchased a mass-produced automobile. America in the 1920s was becoming urban, and this story reminds us of the folly that can lead to being part of a modern world.

This book is a relic of its time, but it was interesting to see how they viewed the need to re-write a child's eye on life. However, give me erudite pigeons and chatty geese dressed in aprons any day, because children should believe in the silliness of nature.



Book Season = Year Round (round, round, round, round, round)

[Jimmy Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucy Sprague Mitchell was treading on completely new ground when she advocated that children should be taught based on an exploration of interests, rather than memorization of mandated topics. With her (extra wealthy) cousin, Mitchell developed the Bureau of Educational Experiments, working at Caroline Pratt's Play and Harriet Johnson's Nursery Schools in New York (one wonders what the parents of those children thought). This book is the result of those "experiments," observing and working with the children there: stories and poems designed for (or by) children ages two through seven.

My hardcover edition was updated in 1948 from the 1921 original to reflect advances of technological progress, but still with the complete 42-page introduction "What Language Means to Young Children." With that introduction, Mitchell provides her perspective on the proper content and form of learning for children; in the process she shares her methods, beliefs, and concerns.

Much of this, today, seems like articulating the obvious, but when she started writing her stories and poems for children in the 1920's, Mitchell was perceived as beating a new drum. Using stories that allow a child to participate in the telling, or make repeated sounds during the refrain of a poem, were new to the teaching structure.

I didn't agree with all of Mitchell's comments - the dangers of anthropomorphism, of confusing nonsense with familiar, or avoiding adventure stories that involve "impossible" heroism, for example - but that may be due to the times in which the book was written.

Based on our standards today, I found the stories to be consistently simplistic in content, with the concession to a child's growth being expanding the length. I'm not sure if that means we have greater expectations of children today, if we've made more advancements on our learning curve of teaching, or if we're pushing our children too hard. But appropriate for today's child or not, certainly Mitchell gave us a powerful building block in the fruits of her research.