More Fun Than Arithmetic

At home in Oregon's big timber country where she grew up, perky little Elsa Berner used to hear tall tales about a fellow named Paul Bunyan. She never understood why her schoolteachers talked a lot about Hercules and Thor, but never mentioned Paul.

Years later, Elsa became librarian at the Lake Junior High School in Denver, and began ordering all the books she could on U.S. folklore heroes. She also got a teacher friend of hers all steamed up about it. The teacher, Miss Julia Eriksen, had been raised on homegrown tall tales in a Colorado mining camp.

Last week Denver's course in folklore was going high, wide & handsome. It now has a firm place in the curriculum. The course is not compulsory, but 420 kids this year begged for the chance to try it. They read all about Bunyan, and how he wept so much when his blue ox Babe fell ill, that his tears formed the Great Salt Lake. Then the kids make maps of Utah.

They learn about Mike Fink, the great river boatman ("a helliferocious fellow," Davy Crockett called him, "and an almighty fine shot"), and in doing so learn about pioneer life on the Mississippi too. They follow Johnny Appleseed across the land, read about the places he went, and something of the apple industry ("Johnny wasn't very practical," one little girl complained. "He would have gotten apples faster if he'd planted cuttings instead of seeds"). When they come to Joe Magarac, the man of steel (he could squeeze out eight rails of molten steel at once), they study the steel industry.

The kids sing cowboy tunes and spirituals, and the songs of mines and railroads. But mostly, their heads are filled with the heroes that grew as the nation grew. "It's more fun than arithmetic," said one eighth-grader. "I wish we had a blue ox like Babe out on my dad's ranch. I'll bet she'd dig him a stock pond just like she dug Lake Michigan."

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