10 Top Reasons Why Story Still Matters
1. We humans are storytelling animals. The drive to story is basic in all people, and exists in all cultures. Stories shape our lives and
our culture - we cannot seem to live without them. As social participants in our world, we need real opportunities for conversation so
that we can order our thoughts and make sense of our experiences. We pass the time in conversation, talk and chatter - exchanging ideas
and stories.
2. I tell my story. You retell it, with all of your own life experiences playing upon it, and suddenly it is your story. Then we tell
our two stories to a third member of the story tribe, who listens to both and builds a new, personalized version that shocks us with
its twists and turns, and causes us to re-cognize our self. And we are present at the birth of a new story; we now have three for our
story bag, and every time I choose one of those stories to share, I will unknowingly, unwittingly include bits and scraps from all of
them and suddenly I am telling a different story, but it is still mine, and the story is inside, outside and all around my head. Such
is membership in the story culture. We tell our own stories- our daydreams, our gossip, our family anecdotes. We become human through
our stories.
3. Have we lost some of our sense of personal storytelling, or has the process altered? In a less technological time, people told
each other their life stories regularly and productively, in times of friendship, trouble, celebration and mourning, engaging with
each other, forging intimate alliances and creating their own identities. The need for a network in which we can safely story is
still present, but we may have to search for others (even in virtual chat rooms) to listen to our tales, and to share their own
experiences, to help us connect with "the other villagers in our lives" so that we can be a part of it all, so that we are included,
so that we matter. It may be as simple as someone saying, "Guess what just happened to me," and someone else listening. We need to
tell life stories to our loved ones, to share what we saw with our fellow workers, to gossip with friends, to talk to the people
who sell us our groceries and our gasoline and fill them in on what has recently happened; we need to have a storytelling way
of life. We give structure and order, through telling stories, to our mountain of memories and emotions, making sense of and giving
cohesion to our lives. And, of course, we tell ourselves stories 'in the head,' reweaving personal tales to ourselves from our own
storylines of events that have captured us like fish in a net, worrying about what we will say next time, or replaying comments others
have made about us, or remembering a holiday where life was so completely full. And sometimes these stories are told aloud with no one
listening but the mirror in front of us or the empty chair beside us.
4. Through story, we can compare the worlds others create with our own representations, re-evaluate our feelings and ideas, come to terms
with past experiences, enter into the lives of others, and hone our own abilities to predict and anticipate. Children play out their lives
through story; it tells them that life will go on, and gives form to what has happened, what is happening, and what may happen, ordering
their experiences through anecdote and tale. They need stories from us to give reassurance to their inner stories, the ones that demonstrate
their curiosities, fears and concerns. And we can connect them to other people, other times, other selves, and, of course, other stories.
5. Story is a continuous process. We borrow from others to see how our story fits theirs, then we remold it, add to it, alter
it, tell it again anew, always exploring fresh possibilities.
6. Narrative is not just a powerful way of validating one's life to oneself and to others; it can also be a useful tool for analysis
and for assimilating one's understanding of scientific and technical concepts. How do we grasp such things as the big bang theory,
evolution, and the behavior of the AIDS virus when it attacks cells, or anything we don't have the technical expertise to understand?
Indeed, who has ever had, save perhaps Einstein, the technical capacity to comprehend such things? Quite simply, we describe it to
ourselves as a story.
7. Story can help us to gain an understanding of the complexity of our emotional responses, demonstrated by the expressive voices
of characters speaking eloquently and powerfully of their feelings. We cannot teach children emotions; we can only help them reveal
them and attempt to understand them. Children must filter their emotional experiences through their intellects, making sense of all
kinds of information, turning story experiences over and over in their minds, and integrating thought and feeling. Aidan Chambers
says that children can think and feel with the images that story offers them, storing them in the "museums of their minds" and
classifying them for later use.
8. Stories do things to people. We know that things happen to people when they read or hear stories, that any theory about the
place of story in schools has to begin with this fact. Story is not an exercise in explanation or persuasion, but an experience
between the teller and the told.
9. Evidence presented in volumes of research over the past few years
confirms that children who come from homes where storying is a daily
activity and where stories and talk are plentiful anticipate learning
to read with pleasure and indeed often turn up at school already able
to do so, while children who have not had this experience are often
the ones who find learning to read difficult. How can we as wise adults
responsible for children nourish and strengthen that developing narrative
framework, especially when it has such impact upon developing literacy?
In The Meaning Makers, Gordon Wells's (1986) account of a
fifteen-year study of English children's literacy and language growth,
he states that "it was the sharing of stories that we found to be
most important." In fact, telling and listening to stories appears
to make as significant a contribution to early literacy as reading
print.
10. Literary story is missing in the lives of many children. Aside
from television's passive, non-interactive storying, some children
hear no stories read or told until they go to school. With broken
families, crowded schedules, new curricula, and urban development
comes the tragedy of children without a storehouse of stories. Grandparents
who might have told stories may be unavailable or live far away; the
home may not be a storying place; books may be foreign objects; television
may dominate the home and limit talk-time; parents may be shift workers;
single parents may lack time and energy for sharing story; crowded
homes may lack quiet places for reading silently; storytelling may
not be considered a significant experience by the adults in the home.
It may be that school will have to bear the burden of story on its
shoulders, that teachers will be the storytellers who reach most children.
And yet with the burden come the related strengths that accompany
story in school: curriculum connections; embedded literacy situations;
tribal circles of shared experience; modeling of story strength by
adults; a sensitivity to authors and illustrators, along with a recognition
that the child belongs in this authoring relationship; a wide range
of story content, chosen to broaden the child's experiential background,
and inclusion of a body of story that carefully and subtly looks at
issues of identity, community, sex, race, equity, culture and so on,
and constitutes an exploration of genres and modes of story that may
be unavailable to a child at home; books by a diversity of authors-
North American, South American, Australian, New Zealand, European,
African and Asian, male and female, old and young, books out of print,
books hot off the press. |
Writing in Role
Boys Will Be Boys...
|
