sometimes it is difficult even to suppress such self-expression. One
reason the kindergartner tells her stories, rather than reads them, is
that she may have her eyes on the children and thus take advantage of
their desire to make contributions of thought. The same tendency is
shown in the home, when children want to "talk over" what their
parents or other persons read to them. They fail to respond in this
way only when they are afraid, or when they have attended school long
enough to have this tendency partly suppressed.

_4. The character of children's literature_

Finally, the fact that children's literature, like that for adults,
presupposes much supplementing, is strong reason for presupposing that
ability on their part. Any moral lessons that belong to fairy tales
must be reached by the children's own thought; the same usually
applies to fables also. Hawthorne understood the child mind as few
persons have. Yet it is astonishing how much ability to supplement
seems to have been expected by him. It would be surprising if such
experts were mistaken in their estimate of children.



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING CHILDREN TO SUPPLEMENT THOUGHT


_1. Importance of using text-books_

Teachers can make use of text-books at least enough to give much
practice in supplementing text. Text-books are so uncommon in some
schools that one might conclude that they had gone out of fashion