e 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.

In the presence of art, schools have always taken a modest attitude. For
some reason or other they seem to think it out of their province. They
regard children as potential scientists, professional men and women,
captains of industry, but scarcely potential artists. To what school of
design, what academy of music, what school of literary production, do
our common schools lead? We are not fitting our children to compose, to
create, but at our best to appreciate and reproduce.

Mrs. Mitchell as story teller in this new sense of writing stories,
rather than merely telling them, is having an influence in the school
which has not been altogether unlooked for. The children look upon
themselves as composers in language and language thus becomes not merely
a useful medium of expression but also an art medium. They regard their
own content, gathered by themselves in a perfectly familiar setting as
fit for use as art material. That is, just as the children draw and show
power to compose with crayons and paints, they use language to compose
what they term stories or occasionally, verse. Often these "stories" are
a mere rehearsal of experiences, but in so far as they are vivid and
have some sort of fitting ending they pass as a childish art expression
just as their compositions in drawing do.

So far as content is concerned the school gives the children varied
opportunities to know and express what they find in their environment.
Mrs. Mitchell finds this content in the school. It is being used, it is
even being expressed in language. What she particularly does is to show
the possibility of using this same content as art in language. She does
this both by writing stories herself and by helping the children to
write. The children are not by any means read to, so much as they are
encouraged to tell their own stories. These are taken down verbatim by
the teachers of the younger groups. Through skilful handling of several
of the older groups what the children call "group stories" are produced
as well as individual ones.

We hope this book will brin