0. General Information
Dear readers,
'The McCloskey Primer' by Margaret Orvis McCloskey with illustrator Charles Copeland was published in 1909.
This book has been digitalized by Google and made available on Archive.org. The scanning process resulted in many strange characters, spelling errors, poor quality pictures, and other problems in the file. I have tried to correct as many errors as I could find, but you may still find other issues occasionally. I hope you'll accept the imperfections but still find value in reading this story.
The images on this website are taken from http://archive.org/details/mccloskeyprimer01mcclgoog. Because I had to use screen capture to create images from the digitized book, the quality of the resulted images may not be good.
K. C. Lee
Mobile Story Enthusiast
October 01, 2012
TO
JAMES C McDonald
Preface
Practical results and realized ideals depend, in beginning reading, almost wholly upon the selection and the arrangement of material which combines in the highest degree power to attract, technical simplicity, and literary value.
The material which best combines these three essential characteristics is the cumulative tale, - the tale that repeats at each step all that has gone before. This curious type of literary structure is highly dramatic and richly human. It is usually overflowing with humor, and it moves with delightful celerity. These are the qualities which, with the amusing repetition, justify the place of the cumulative tale as an unfailing source of children's love and laughter. Moreover, the fact that among all races and for many ages these tales have satisfied child hunger for romance and for wonder, is convincing proof of their power to meet some special need and to make an everlasting appeal.
In mechanical structure the cumulative tale is so admirably adapted to the needs of beginners in reading as to suggest that it might have been invented for the express purpose of saving children from the stultifying effects of a struggle for mere reading symbols. The simple, logical steps of the story save all strain upon the memory. The vocabulary of the shorter tales is extremely limited: the rhyme of "The Kid" contains only twenty-nine (29) words; "The Kid and the Cabbage," only fourteen (14) that are new, and after a brief introduction this vocabulary increases more slowly than that of the traditional beginners' reader. The repetition is abundant, and it is, fortunately, a sane repetition, for while the symbols repeat, the story bravely marches on. A consistent extension of this reasonable repetition is secured by placing in proper order a series of tales closely related in thought and in form. In this way this primer provides efficient drill, with no break in the continuity of thought and interest.
The great educational value of this kind of material - material developed by a childlike people to meet a universal need - has long been recognized, and the great German writers on this subject from Herder to Rein, Dr. Harris, Dr. Hall, and a host of others have urged that it be substituted for the trivial, diluted stuff so freely and generally imposed upon the innocent and the helpless. In their power to interest, to develop emotional life, to stimulate the rhythmic sense, and to nourish the imagination, these rhymes and tales are unexcelled. Although given in the form of play, their content is rational, and the succession of events is usually so logical that they are an efficient means of learning a chain of cause and effect. Because these tales furnish general types of character and situation, because they give shadows as well as high lights, because they relieve all situations by the tonic and relaxing properties of humor, because, in short, their highest purpose is to give joy, they are, of their kind, well-nigh perfect in aesthetic and ethical values.
As a foundation for future literary study these rhymes are excellent, since they give in the simplest form types of character and situation which are found in higher literature. "The Song of the Kid," for example, typifies, by a form easily within the grasp of a little child, the law of retribution, - he who does wrong suffers wrong, - whereas a profound and elaborate treatment of the same theme is found in Shakespeare's Macbeth.
A specific value of this particular collection is that the study of the different versions of "The House that Jack Built," as they are told to the children of other lands, affords at the outset a basis for comparison; and it foreshadows the conception and the love of universal literature No small degree of importance is attached to the fact that in broadening the child's mind to include some idea of his brothers across the sea, his attention is fixed upon similarities rather than upon differences, and that his first feeling is not one of racial prejudice, but, instead, a feeling of sympathy and kinship.
The rhymes and stories in this volume are classic illustrations of seven universally popular cumulative types. Five of these type themes are represented by widely current English tales, and the other two are illustrated by Norse variants, because, in this instance, the Norse versions are simpler and more attractive. The remaining seven tales are Hebrew, French, Scotch, Gaelic, Russian, and Greek variants of two prime English favorites, "The House that Jack Built" and "The Old Woman and her Pig." Thus the two best known cumulative tales are repeated a sufficient number of times to give a fair idea of their modification in different countries and of their remarkable diffusion in all parts of the world. Regardless of their deeper significance, these foreign rhymes merit the emphasis here placed upon them, for they have finer poetic and dramatic qualities than their English counterparts, and, taken together, they please after the manner of variations on a theme in music.
Practical experiments with these tales as basic material for the first teaching of reading have been made for a period exceeding ten years, in widely different localities, with all classes of English-speaking pupils (including the mentally defective), and with pupils of foreign parentage, who are just learning English. Under all these varied conditions the following results are reported as common: interest never fails; this active interest is constantly stimulated to fresh endeavor by the delightful sense of achievement afforded by the peculiar cumulative structure; the appeal to the intelligence of the child provokes a quick, intelligent response, and soon to every rational exercise, whether in nature, in manual training, or in arithmetic, he brings a new life and power, -"an insight and a stretch."
The reports mentioned agree further in the statement that the exclusive use, in the earliest years, of imagination - nourishing material, presented by a method which, in practice as well as in theory, emphasizes thought and feeling rather than symbols, results in a high degree of educational economy. Not only are the pupils able to deal rapidly and effectively with the formal difficulties of reading, but they become familiar with a better type of form, - a more literary vocabulary, a natural sentence structure, and a simple literary unity.
A knowledge of this higher type' of reading symbols, combined with keen interest and mental grasp, enables the first-year pupils to pass directly and easily from this series to the best English versions of Grimm and Andersen, and late in the first year or early in the second, to such material as The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio and Just So Stories, At this time no mechanical difficulties prevent the enjoyment of good poetry and narrative portions of the English Bible.
But the literary acquisition, the economy of time and effort, and the quickened intelligence resulting from a rational .use of this material are, however important, secondary to more fundamental and far-reaching advantages. These are: the child's first conscious study of his mother tongue is stimulated by a sense of need and inspired by a vision of future joy; the loved nursery tale is a bond which unites the home, the kindergarten, and the school, and gives to the new experience a reality, charm, and promise impossible to associate with artificial exercises designed merely to give a reading vocabulary; but the supreme advantage is, that instead of preparing for some vague, uncertain future, the child is, from first to last, living in the rich land of fancy, - the land of "essential truth."
Acknowledgments for material used are due to G. P. Putnam's Sons for "The Pancake" from Dasent's Tales from the Field, and "Henny Penny" from Jacobs' English Fairy Tales; to The Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Company for "The Boy and the Goats" from Poulsson's Through the Farmyard Gate; and to David Nutt for "The Cock that crowed in the Morn" and "What We Shall Have" from Garnett's Greek Folk Poesy.
M. McC.
Newark, New Jersey
