Home	Christian Persecution	Social Issues	Homeschooling	Writing,Seminars	My Personal Page

When we think of literature, many of us think of the novels we were required to read in high school or of some college literature class in which we had to decide whether a poem was written in iambic, dactylic, or anapestic meter. A friend of mine who majored in college admitted to me that literature was hard for her to teach her children, but biology, with which I struggled, was her delight.

In teaching literature, we need to teach certain attitudes, skills, and facts. If we build these, precept upon precept, children will both learn and enjoy literature.

Literature Delights. Teaching literature begins when we tell a Bible story to our son, a folktale to our daughter, or quote Robert Louis Stevenson's "How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue?" to a child as you push him in the swing.

We hardly think of these things as teaching literature, but they are. Somehow we get away from the idea that nursery rhymes, children's poems, and The Pokey Little Puppy are part of our child's experience with literature. However, these early reading experiences help our children develop an attitude about reading and about being read to. The more enjoyable they find literature as children, the more they can enjoy it as they grow older. We want them to carry with them a love for the written word throughout life.

To make these early experiences pleasant, you might make a habit of being together as a family during a time of reading aloud or, in a large family, reading time might be that child's special time alone with Mamma or Daddy. Try to find books at the library or that you buy that will interest him. If he finds a book boring, do not force him to listen to it, but try something else.

Small children often form favorites, so read his favorites to him again and again if he requests them. In spite of being bored with reading the same book night after night, try to read it expressively for him, giving the different characters their own voices. Put your own concerns aside and enjoy his giggles with him.

Read a variety of materials to him as he grows: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography. Children often enjoy the lilt of poetry from Stevenson, Longfellow, Christina Rosetti, and Joyce Kilmer, especially when the poems reflect their world of sunshine, shadows, kittens, trees, family, the things with which they are familiar. A book, such as Favorite Poems Old and New, by Helen Ferris or Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, is a good investment.

As children grow older, they will find works that they need to read that will not bring pleasure, though they are worthwhile reading. Still, try to include the short story, the novel, the biography, the poem, or how-to book that will delight.

teach them truth and to develop their character, as well as to give them a knowledge of God. We want them to learn right from wrong, to choose wisdom over folly, to learn how to choose friends, and to stand up under pressure.

Literature can help a child develop character. One of my favorite stories as a small child was "The Two Carolines" about a little girl who was sweet at school and nasty at home until her mother tricked her by inviting her teacher to her home without her knowledge. My mother would remind me that I should be sweet at both places.

Stories like The Little Engine that Could, the boy who stopped the flood by putting his finger in the dike, and Twenty and Ten teach persistence and courage. Julia Carney's poem "Little Things" teaches kindness. C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe allegorizes the cost of sin and the beauty of Christ's death and resurrection for us. William Bennett's The Book of Virtues and William Russell's The Classics to Read Aloud series help you find stories that encourage good character. Gladys Hunt's Honey for a Child's Heart and Jim Treleases's Read-Aloud Handbook list books they recommend with a short summary of each that will help you choose stories also.

When children read stories full of virtue, those stories become friends and examples to the child. Instead of being overwhelmed with what everyone else is doing, they find people who make the difficult choices, people who can help him make those choices also.

We can explore mountains and valleys, far away places, the past, the present, and the future in books. We can discover America, or the source of the Nile, or the treasures of Troy. We can listen to Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, or Francis of Assisi. Books take us to places we could never go to experience adventures we could never know otherwise. So, in teaching literature, we should teach the facts and motivations we find within it, comparing it to what we know of facts and human motivation from the Scripture and our life.

For instance, would someone like Long John Silver really have sold out his fellow pirates to save his life? Did not Absalom betray his father for power and Judas Iscariot betray our Lord for money? Is it unreasonable for one evil man to betray others to save his own life? Stevenson's motivation and characterization ring true in Treasure Island.

Literature Means What It Says Usually. Perhaps the most frightening thing about teaching literature for most people is interpreting literature, determining what it means. We live in an era when groups of people put their own philosophical bent on whatever they read. When my husband attended a public junior college for one quarter, the professor explained every reading assignment in her literature class sexually. Some people find evidence of the oppression of women, of racism, of homosexuality, or even of Christianity in each piece they read.

To teach meaning, begin by asking what the piece says. In the excerpt from Emily Dickinson's poem above, the poem praises books. In Stevenson's poem mentioned earlier about swinging, Stevenson expresses delight in swinging. Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn and Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin attack slavery as their main point.

In works that are known to be allegorical or satirical, ask what the author is teaching. An allegory tells two stories at once, the obvious, and the lesson. For instance, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, probably the world's best known allegory, Bunyan encouraged his people to be faithful in spite of the persecution they were undergoing by telling the story of Christian who endeavors to reach the Celestial City. In that story, however, he was also teaching what every Christian faces before he reaches Heaven.

C.S.Lewis's Narnia tales are also allegorical stories of sin and salvation with Aslet as Jesus.

Satire differs from allegory by saying one thing but meaning the opposite. It frequently employs sarcasm, irony, humor, and exaggeration to point out the weaknesses of mankind in general or of particular people. Jonathan Swift, England's greatest essayist, used satire in Gulliver's Travels to point out the foibles of English society. He attacked England more bitterly in his essay "A Modest Proposal," which suggests that the starving Irish raise children to be eaten since England "would be glad to eat up our whole nation." The satirist uses shock to teach the reader his vision of the truth. Swift did not really want the Irish to raise children as livestock, but the English to understand the dreadful consequences of their policy on Ireland.

However, most works will not be satirical or allegorical; they will mean what they say. If you have questions, look up background on the author in an encyclopedia. Before you look for a deeper meaning, be sure you understand the direct meaning.

Approaches to Teaching Literature. You can approach the teaching of literature in several ways. You can read just what you like when you feel like it. We did some of that in our sons' earlier years. They read or heard a variety of literature read that way.

Though you have the advantage of variety, you can get in a rut and you may not cover some important works. This approach works better for works written in the last two hundred years than for earlier literature because most of us would prefer something that is easy for us to read than something written in archaic or difficult language, such as Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf, or The Canterbury Tales.

Many anthologies, books of poems or stories, list works by theme. One unit may cover poems, plays, essays, and fiction about war, another about courage, and a third about honesty. Parents who use the unit study approach to teaching may find this method most helpful.

I put together a year's course on genres for our ninth grade. We read some works of nonfiction, including essays by Swift, Addison, Steele, and modern commentators for one quarter. One quarter we studied plays, another poetry, and the final one fiction. During the course the boys learned the terminology unique to each genre and the types of work included. Though both boys dreaded a quarter of poetry, they enjoyed it once they were reading it. I included both serious and humorous poems of every kind, poetry to challenge, some that praised God, some with rollicking rhythm, and some that bored. Over all, they found it enjoyable. Now my younger son writes his own from time to time.

To cover certain authors thoroughly you may want to study literature by author. One older literature series uses four different approaches within each book--the theme approach, the genre approach, the author approach, and the historical approach. In the author approach, the book gives background information about four authors and several works by them. One book studies Longfellow, Kipling, London, and Shakespeare. Another Twain, Frost, Thurber, and again Shakespeare. Though this approach can give you in-depth study of several authors, it should be used consistently for several years to ensure a wide literary knowledge.

You can also study literature according to place. For instance, the year you study your state history, teach literature written by author and poets from your state. Local librarians can help you find information about the state's writers. Then when you study world history, study world literature also. Many curricula have used this approach in the last couple years of high school, teaching American literature during the junior year when most schools traditionally have taught United States history, and then British literature during the senior year.

If you are teaching history using the Greenleaf Press approach, by dividing history into particular time periods, you may want to tie your literature in with it. When you teach ancient history, read some of the ancient myths, discussing how the gods men made differ from the God who made men, the epics and plays written by people of that age, books written about that time period, such as Ben Hur or The Bronze Bow, and books about the archaeologists who have studied those times.

Any of these approaches can work, but one of the benefits of home schooling is finding what works best for your child.

What to Teach about Literature. How much a young person may need to know about literature depends on his ability, interests, and plans for the future, but every adult should have some basic knowledge of literature, as he should of music and art. Literature tends to round an individual's knowledge and experience, allowing him to communicate better.

Most of us should be able to associate certain famous authors and poets with their best-known works. Even the old card game Authors can help with this. Hamlet, Don Quixote, Macbeth, Pilgrim's Progress, The Three Musketeers, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Paradise Lost, Ivanhoe, The Divine Comedy, and other works will be mentioned in editorials or books on other subjects. Having an idea of who wrote them and what they are about can aid your understanding of the work you are reading.

What does a writer mean when he calls a bill before Congress "Orwellian" or a problem a "Gordian Knot?" Books like the What Your Child Should Know In..." series and The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy can help you with phrases like these.

In teaching fiction we introduce the terms characterization, plot, theme, viewpoint, dialogue, conflict, and foreshadowing. We can start teaching some of these terms when a child is still in the elementary grades, for most children can recognize the characters in a story as the people in the story, the plot as what happens in the story, and the dialogue as the talk if we use those terms regularly.

We can point out that an author develops characterization in several ways. Sometimes he tells us directly that "the man was tall and thin and smoked a pipe." He also tells us about the character by what the character does--"He stooped and examined the ground beneath the window." We also learn about the character by what others say about him, such as, " Don't fear, Madam. If anyone can solve this dilemma, my friend can." And the last way the author develops the character is by showing the character's thoughts and words, " It's elementary, my dear Watson."

A skillful author can make us empathize or put ourselves in almost any character's place by what he includes about his character. He can show the character being abused by his stepfather, being laughed at by the neighborhood children, and failing when he tried to do the right thing as an excuse for his evil behavior later on. Because we feel sorry for the character, we excuse what he does. That is one reason we, as parents, have to be careful of what we allow our children to read.

On the other hand, an author should have his characters develop or change because of what happens to him in the story. For instance, when we first meet Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, he is unkempt, slothful, careless, insolent, and a heavy drinker. By the end of the story, he changes radically to a man who shows the greatest kind of love the Scripture tells us of.

The plot is the story's action which is driven by conflict. Though authors experimented with stories without conflict, the writing did not become popular with readers. For a teacher's purposes a story must have conflict, something or someone that prevents the character from getting what he wants. There are several types of conflict. Man versus man means that some other character interferes with your main character's goals. Your average Western or detective story fits into this category.

Jack London's stories often show man against nature. Crane's The Open Boat is another example of this type of conflict. A storm, a desert, an ocean, a blizzard, or some other force in nature prevents the main character from accomplishing his purpose. Many, though not all of these stories, end sadly.

In stories with a man in conflict against himself, a character wants two mutually exclusive things. In a romance the main character may think she is in love with one character but should marry another character. Hamlet displays some of this internal conflict as he tries to decide what to do about his father's murder. The main character may have to choose between riches and right or a good conscience and something he badly wants.

Another type of conflict pits a character against society. Perhaps the town wants a new factory built to supply needed jobs, but the main character does not want to give up the land on which they would need to build it. Elijah and the prophets of Baal provide a Biblical example of this type of story.

Viewpoint confuses some people. The viewpoint refers to who tells the story. If I tell my story, this is a first-person viewpoint. In the parts of the book of Acts where Luke says, "And we...," he is telling it in the first person.

Few stories are written in the second person which we often use when we give directions: "You go down Fifth Street for two blocks until you come to Aunt Mary's Munchies." Most stories are told in the third person. Either a narrator or a person in the story who is not involved with the happenings tell what the main character does.

Flashbacks are devices used by writers to fill the reader in on events from the past that will have a bearing on the story in the future. Perhaps Jean smells lilacs that remind her of the summer she spent with her grandparents. Then will come a scene from that summer that will have affect the story. Or Henry may be face to face with a horse reminding him of falling off a horse and breaking a leg as a boy. His terror of horses since that time will be tested in the story.

Another device, foreshadowing hints at what will happen in the story, so that when it does happen the reader will not be too surprised. Going back to A Tale of Two Cities, when Sidney Carton destroys the credibility of the main witness against Charles Darnay in the trial by pointing out how much he looks like Darnay, the reader knows that similarity will someday be important. When Carton promises Lucie Manette that he will do anything to save her or the life of someone she loves, we know that his promise will later be put to the test.

In poetry we teach figurative language: similes, metaphor, personification, alliteration, and others. We also teach the types of rhyme schemes, and rhythms. A Glossary of Literary Terms by M. H. Abrams is helpful for this. We can also teach the major kinds of poems: the epic, the elegy, the ode, the ballad, the dramatic monologue and the sonnet.

When teaching a play, we should teach the major types of plays--tragedies and comedies. We should teach the structure of acts and scenes, something of the staging, and the cast of characters.

Sometimes a teacher can become so engrossed in teaching how a writer develops the structure of what he writes, whether essay, poem, play, or novel, that we forget to teach what it means, what the young person should learn from it. We can lose the beneficial examples we find in literature of courage, sacrifice, purity, honest, and faith. We can destroy the ability to enjoy a written work.

When we find this happening in our children, it is time to change our tactics. For a while we may need to read a simple poem or a praise of God or a silly poem at meal times without comment or read another type of book as a bedtime story for the family. For when we keep the enjoyment of literature in our children's hearts, we give the examples, the facts, and the meaning a chance to find their way in, too.