Good music is played and the children listen and move freely in time to it, sometimes marching or dancing in circles, sometimes quite freely “expressing” whatever feeling the music calls forth in them.  The stress is laid on listening; if you see a picture you reproduce it, if the music makes you think of trees or wind, thunder or goblins, you become what you think of.  It is astonishing to see how little children learn in this way to care for music by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Dvorak, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven.  The music is of course selected with skill, and care is taken that the “expression” shall not make the children foolishly self-conscious.  Emphasis is always placed on listening, and the children’s appreciation is apparent.  Such appreciation must enrich their lives.

CHAPTER XII

FROM FANCY TO FACT

     Creeps ever on from fancy to the fact.

Fairy tales suit little children because their knowledge is so limited, that “the fairies must have done it” is regarded as a satisfactory answer to early problems, just as it satisfied childlike Man.  Things that to us are wonderful, children accept as commonplace, while others commonplace to us are marvels to the child.  But fairy tales do not continue to satisfy all needs.  As knowledge grows the child begins to distinguish between what may and what may not happen, though there will always be individual differences, and the more poetic souls are apt to suffer when the outrush of their imagination is checked by a barbed wire of fact.  The question “Is it true?” and the desire for true stories arise in the average child of seven to eight years, and at that age history stories are enjoyed.  Real history is of course impossible to young children, whose idea of time is still very vague, and whose understanding of the motives and actions of those immediately around them is but embryonic.  They still crave for adventure and romance, and they thrill to deeds of bravery.  Bravery in the fight appeals to all boys and to most girls, and it is a question for serious consideration how this admiration is to be guided, it certainly cannot be ignored.  It is legitimate to admire knights who ride about “redressing human wrongs,” fighting dragons and rescuing fair ladies from wicked giants, and at this stage there is no need to draw a hard and fast line between history and legendary literature.  It is good to introduce children, especially boys, to some of the Arthurian legends if only to impress the ideal, “Live pure, speak true, right wrong, else wherefore born?” Stories should always help children to understand human beings, men and women with desires and feelings like our own.  But in history and geography stories we deal particularly with people who are different from ourselves, and we should help children to understand, and to sympathise with those whose surroundings and customs are not ours.  They may have lived centuries ago, or they may be living now but afar off, they may be far from us in time or space, but our stories should show the reasons for their customs and actions, and should tend to lessen the natural tendency to feel superior to those who have fewer advantages, and gradually to substitute for that a sense of responsibility.