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Introduction •  1. Introduction Shonda: I would have been the eggs. Donna: The eggs? And how would you have acted? Shonda: I would have broke open and said, “Mommy move us.” This book shows how communities can be strengthened through the use of storytelling with children. I chose to study children’s ethical explorations through storytelling because I believe we need to approach ethical concerns related to youth in a proactive manner. In a previous book, I tried to address problems of bullying and ridicule in schools through a conflict intervention program. As I worked with a variety of elementary school students in KACTIS (Kids Against Cruel Treatment in Schools), I began to see that it is not enough to offer programs that prepare children for conflict and bullying. Other forms of social and ethical education are needed. In this book I present a more comprehensive approach to teaching ethics that encourages children to be active participants. This approach allows children to develop and explore their own ethical concerns as part of the storytelling experience. Because children have different concerns than adults, it is important that we teach ethics in an open-ended manner, allowing opportunities for children to imagine themselves within a story and explain the story’s relevance in their daily lives. My first storytelling sessions for this study were with two groups of fourth- and fifth-grade students in a school in the midwestern United States. During these sessions they heard one of Aesop’s fables titled “The Eagle and the Scarab Beetle.” In this story the beetle pleads with the eagle to spare the life of a hare. When the eagle becomes disdainful and refuses to do so, the beetle tries to get revenge on the eagle. One of the tricks the beetle plays on the eagle is putting a pellet of dung in Zeus’s lap, a place the eagle felt her eggs would be safe from the beetle. When Zeus stands up to shake off the dung pellet, the eggs fall to the ground and break. After hearing the story, the children were given a chance to say who they identified with in the story. Although I expected them to identify with the eagle, the beetle, or perhaps the hare, I was sur1  • Life Lessons through Storytelling prised when Shonda said she would have been the eggs. As shown in the quotation introducing this chapter, she went on to say that if she had been the eggs she would have broken open and asked the mother eagle to move them. It never occurred to me that someone would see the eggs, rather than the beetle or hare, as the small, vulnerable “characters” in the story. After Shonda drew our attention to the eggs, other children in the group also spoke of acting to protect the eggs’ safety. In the other group, I found a similar concern for the welfare of the eggs. Rosann, one of the group members, had this to say: “I think that he [the beetle] should have punished the eagle, not the eggs, ’cause the eggs didn’t do nothing. The eagle did. He should have punished—took out the eggs very carefully and then hid them from its mom and then kept them warm, but made up the nest to scare the eagle so it wouldn’t ignore him no more.” Here, Rosann describes how the beetle should have carefully handled the eggs, while at the same time frightening the eagle to teach her a lesson. Again, Rosann was not the only student in this group to express concern about how the eggs were treated. After hearing the responses of these two groups, I was convinced of the importance of discovering the meanings that children interpret in a story rather than focusing on the meanings that adults intend for them to receive. I made a note that day about how these children appear to have a strong sense of justice in that they do not believe innocent beings should be hurt. Shonda and Rosann’s concern for the eggs reflects compassion for the most innocent beings in the story, indicating that some children may already have a high degree of concern for the welfare of others as well as a concern for promoting justice. In our approach to ethical education, it is crucial that we, as adults, allow children’s own meanings to be expressed and that we respect their meanings. This will, in turn, foster children...

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