Life Lessons through Storytelling: Children's Exploration of Ethics

Foreword

Foreword Gregory Cajete Donna Eder, with the assistance of Regina Holyan and her other collaborators, has produced an exquisite interdisciplinary study of storytelling as a vehicle for children’s social and ethical learning. She explores Aesop’s fables and Kenyan folktales to show how open-­ ended storytelling leads to a variety of meanings and lessons, many of which reflect children’s own ethical dilemmas as well as social issues of justice and equality. She also shows how storytelling empowers youth: as they see how the animal characters play important roles in the stories, they develop an understanding of complex ethical issues and develop respect for others engaged in a collective process of learning which leads to a strengthening of community. She illustrates in extraordinary ways how storytelling creates a context for the development of ethical thinking on the part of children . The feelings associated with empathy for other people and other living things are part of an essential developmental stage in children’s social development. The evocation of affective feelings for other living things is a foundational component of “biophilia,” which is the biologically based instinct for relating to other living things. Biophilia may also be said to be the biological instinct which forms the foundation for human relationships, human community, and learning. Human beings are social beings and the development of an understanding for the complex nature of social relationships forms a foundation for the socialization of children within their family , community, and cultural group. The deep psychological mechanisms associated with storytelling facilitate the development of not only self-knowledge but also social and communal knowledge on ix x • Foreword the part of children. Her book provides us with insights into the deeper psychology of learning through story and into how stories are internalized and passed on through personal relationships that develop as a result of both peer and intergenerational mentoring. In all of these aspects, her work makes a major contribution to the area of children’s psychology and social development through the telling and processing of stories. She illustrates how stories act to affect children’s sense of ethics and how this knowledge can be applied to the development of more enlightened curricula which help develop a child’s ethical character. In addition, this book provides important perspectives related to numerous areas outside of education because it presents insights into the affective dimension of human learning, socialization in community, and the role of story in the transference of cultural knowledge and values. A brief exploration of the role of story in indigenous community and teaching will serve to illustrate how her work may give invaluable insights into re-engaging our children in the making and telling of story toward a broader aim of creating healthy community. Indigenous Community as Story Indigenous community is about living a “symbiotic” life within the context of a “symbolic” culture that includes the natural world as a necessary and vital participant and co-creator of community. That is to say, the life of the indigenous community is mutually reciprocal and interdependent with the living communities of the surrounding natural environment. Indigenous communities traditionally mirrored the stages of creative evolution and the characteristics of the animals, plants, natural phenomena, ecology, and geography found in their place through a rich and dynamic oral tradition. The oral tradition therefore became an essential aspect of traditional teaching. Story, through the oral tradition, becomes both a source of content and methodology for indigenous community education. Story allows for the use of individual life, community life, and the life and processes found in the natural world as primary vehicles for the transmission of indigenous culture. The vitality of indigenous culture is literally dependent upon the life of individuals in community with the natural world. Indigenous cultures really are extensions of the story of the natural community of a place and evolve according to ecological dynamics and natural relationships. One way traditional people have always expressed their own symbolic culture is through the ongoing retelling of the ani- mal myth-dreams that concern their own deepest connections within the larger field of nature . . . the message of totemism identifies a human society interacting with groups as teachers and students within a neighborly world. We learn how to structure both our lives and culture not merely by observing nature, but by participating with nature. (Nollman, 182–183) In this sense, indigenous community becomes a Story—a collection...