port than the facts it gives. All this,
of course, concerns the content of stories--the intentional material it
presents to the child and has nothing to do with the pleasure of the
presentation,--the relish which comes from the form of the story. I
do not wish this to be interpreted to mean that I think all fairy
stories forever harmful. From the beginning innocuous tales like the
"Gingerbread Man" should be given for the pattern as should the "Old
Woman and Her Pig." Moreover, after a child is somewhat oriented in the
physical and social world, say at six or seven,--I think he can stand a
good deal of straight fairy lore. It will sweep him with it. He will
relish the flight the more for having had his feet on the ground. But
for brutal tales like Red Riding-Hood or for sentimental ones like
Cinderella I find no place in any child's world. Obviously, fairy
stories cannot be lumped and rejected en masse. I am merely pleading not
to have them accepted en masse on the ground that they "have survived
the ages" and "cultivate the imagination." For a child's imagination,
since it is his native endowment, will surely flourish if he is given
freedom for expression, without calling upon the stimulus of adult
fancies. It is only the jaded adult mind, afraid to trust to the
children's own fresh springs of imagination, that feels for children
the need of the stimulus of magic.

The whole question of myths and sagas together with the function of
personification must be taken up with the older children. For the
present we are still concerned with four-and five-year-olds. Two sets
of stories told by four-and five-year-old children in the school seem
to me to show what emphasizing unrealities may do at this age. The
first child in each set is thinking disjunctively; the second has his
facts organized into definite relationships. Can one think that the
second child enjoyed his ordered world less than the first enjoyed
his confusion?

TWO STORIES BY FOUR-YEAR-OLDS

Once there was a table and he was taking a walk and he fell into a pond
of water and an alligator bit him and then he came up out of the pond of
water and he stepped into a trap that some hunters had set for him, and
turned a somersault on his nose.

* * *

There was a new engine and it didn't have any headlight--its light
wasn't open in its headlight so its engineer went and put some fire in
the wires and made a light. And then it saw a lot