To finish my thoughts on story.
Story is what life is made of, in hindsight. We all have stories to tell of our lives. There isn’t a person who doesn’t have a life story with unique details, details that shape who he or she is.
Stories is also the vehicle by which we transmit values. Folk tales, myths, and legends, what we in Classical Writing call traditional tales, uphold the values that a culture wants to preserve and debase values that the culture does not want to keep, or perhaps that it actively wants to dispel with.
Almost all cultures tell stories, and in particular every culture tells stories to its children. In America that would be George Washington and the fabled cherry tree that he supposedly chopped down with his axe. It upholds the value of telling the truth and it honors George Washington for that quality. Other tales, like the parables Jesus told, speak of how God loves us, or of us loving our neighbors. The tales themselves do not wag fingers at us and tell us to go do likewise. That is the beauty of stories, they tell, we listen, and the values are absorbed with out the didactic wagging finger.
Do not get me wrong, there is a time to wag a finger at a child and let him know that what he did was wrong, and he had better not do it again (including consequences). Such incidents are part of parenting and part of managing a class room.
But day to day instructions in values should not (in my opinion) be finger wagging or even didactic (this constant, you should do this, you should not do that, urging). Rather, values should be shown via stories, via our own examples of how we live and how we do things.
Stories are wonderful vehicles of truth. In my own life, I remember books such as the Litte House on the Prairie series as well as Enid Blyton’s Five (perhaps not quality literature in the highest sense, but books I loved as a kid, and books with a fairly strong value system), and I think they shaped much of my early value system of being honest, working hard, belief in God, and so forth. That was particularly true for me since I grew up in an atheist household, where belief did not figure at all.
Folk tales, myths, and legends also include the warmth of human interactions (some of them do). D’Aulaire’s Book of Trolls, for example, has wonderful tales about the stupid ways that trolls act and think. It is a great way to laugh because you are not laughing at or belittling a real flesh and blood human being who has feelings, but fantasy creatures who cannot get offended, and who figure only as creatures that you read about. When you ponder their lack of qualities you may learn to deal with flesh and blood humans in your own life who sometimes resemble those trolls.
The truth found in myths is often profound, complex, and difficult to discern. That is why myth appeals to adults and children alike. Myths, rather than moralizing stories, tell of complex circumstances, dilemmas, and out and out impossible scenaria that people have to go through to survive, or to prove themselves, or to save a loved one. These scenaria allow you and your students to discuss options, choices, how to respond, not with the aim of always giving one clear answer to your students, but with the aim of helping students see that our world can be complex and that people’s circumstances can be impossible.
Not all stories are excellent stories, however. When I was in my early stages of homeschooling I used to ‘like’ McGuffey’s Readers because they were a series of readers that brought the student from early reading all the way through to difficult level material in high school. I still like aspects of the reader structure in McGuffey, but as I have pondered the stories, I find them too moralizing. Often, they do not leave the student free to discuss and come to his own conclusions. Rather they hammer home the point at the end with a bit of finger wagging.
One example I remember was from an old McGuffey book from the 1800s (modern reprints may not have kept this story). The story was about a boy of about 9 or so, who was left by his father on a houseboat. His father had to go to town to get something, and he implored the boy to please stay on the boat and under no circumstances was he to leave the boat. Well, circumstances were such that the boat caught on fire, and because the boy was obedient, he stayed on the boat and perished on the boat. The moral at the end of the story was to admire the boy’s obedience–that he was obedient to the point of perishing in the fire rather than disobey his father.
Now, we would not consider that admirable today, as much as we would consider it tragic that he took a command to that extent. Obviously, we do not want our children to perish in obedience to us. So for stories of that nature, McGuffey seems to be slightly outside a modern value system, or at least a bit more extreme that a modern value system would allow for, but more to my point, many McGuffey stories end with “… and therefore children, you should ________”. Where I would maintain that a story should not end with moralizing, but with the child’s own interest causing him to reflect on the story as he responds to the issues in the story with his own moral compass.
Stories should be pleasurable and they hopefully will engage students in their narratives for their own sakes. If that function of story holds, students will form excellent value systems from excellent stories, not because they were preached to, but because the stories gave the students pause to reflect. A good guided discussion by a teacher will aid the comprehension of the story. Stories work so well for this because students are receptive and willing to listen. They are not caught with their hands in the cookiejar and therefore defensive and uptight. Story time is relaxed and fun, and in that mental state, students are more likely to reflect honestly and carefully on the value choices presented to them.