A teacher who uses the oral story as an English feature with little children must never lose sight of the fact that it is an aid in unconscious development; not a factor in studied, conscious improvement.  This truth cannot be too strongly realized.  Other exercises, in sufficiency, give the opportunity for regulated effort for definite results, but the story is one of the play-forces.  Its use in English teaching is most valuable when the teacher has a keen appreciation of the natural order of growth in the art of expression:  that art requires, as the old rhetorics used often to put it, “a natural facility, succeeded by an acquired difficulty.”  In other words, the power of expression depends, first, on something more fundamental than the art-element; the basis of it is something to say, accompanied by an urgent desire to say it, and yielded to with freedom; only after this stage is reached can the art-phase be of any use.  The “why” and “how,” the analytical and constructive phases, have no natural place in this first vital epoch.

Precisely here, however, does the dramatizing of stories and the paper-cutting, etc., become useful.  A fine and thoughtful principal of a great school asked me, recently, with real concern, about the growing use of such devices.  He said, “Paper-cutting is good, but what has it to do with English?” And then he added:  “The children use abominable language when they play the stories; can that directly aid them to speak good English?” His observation was close and correct, and his conservatism more valuable than the enthusiasm of some of his colleagues who have advocated sweeping use of the supplementary work.  But his point of view ignored the basis of expression, which is to my mind so important.  Paper-cutting is external to English, of course.  Its only connection is in its power to correlate different forms of expression, and to react on speech-expression through sense-stimulus.  But playing the story is a closer relative to English than this.  It helps, amazingly, in giving the “something to say, the urgent desire to say it,” and the freedom in trying.  Never mind the crudities,—­at least, at the time; work only for joyous freedom, inventiveness, and natural forms of reproduction of the ideas given.  Look for very gradual changes in speech, through the permeating power of imitation, but do not forget that this is the stage of expression which inevitably precedes art.

All this will mean that no corrections are made, except in flagrant cases of slang or grammar, though all bad slips are mentally noted, for introduction at a more favorable time.  It will mean that the teacher will respect the continuity of thought and interest as completely as she would wish an audience to respect her occasional prosy periods if she were reading a report.  She will remember, of course that she is not training actors for amateur theatricals, however tempting her show-material may be; she is simply letting the children play with expression, just as a gymnasium teacher introduces muscular play,—­for power through relaxation.