STORIES: THE BRIDGE OF UNDERSTANDING
“Storytelling has the power to teach us to care deeply and think clearly.”
(National Storytelling Association, 1994)
Story and storytelling can be used as effective educational tools that inspire children’s learning and exploration of social justice issues. Stories are a primary means of developing an educated imagination and are a powerful conveyor of cultural mores and human experience. On examining the course of human evolution, it appears that once language developed as a means of communication, stories arose to explain the unexplainable (Jennings, 1991: 6), and by resolving enigmas, stories clearly presented themselves as educational.
Stories act as a reference point for children as they decipher what living in the world is all about. Vandergrift (1980 cited by Raines & Isbell, 1994) explained this value of story with the notion that each experience a child has with a story, builds on previous interactions and provides a structure for stories that will follow. “Literary and general linguists insist no story can be understood at a single level” (Bruner, 1986). One story shared with a group of people will be experienced by each person differently. The story will trigger different personal connections, different messages and different levels of meaning. In the same way a story shared with a child recurrently over time will have an evolving sense of meaning, as the child’s knowledge and understanding of the world develops. Saxby (1992) identified that ‘preschoolers have a natural tendency to explain and explore both their inner and outer worlds through narrative’.
Dyson and Genishi (1994) also declare that stories have ‘interrelated evaluative and social functions” in that “through stories we fashion our relationships with others…expressing in ways subtle and not so subtle our feelings about the people around us’. Nolan Clark (1969) also acknowledges the vibrant cultural interchange of stories, in that they nurture a free and joyous interchange of acceptance and respect among all peoples (cited by Cooper, Collins & Saxby, 1992). The sharing of cultural stories in respectful ways plays an essential role in embracing positive cross-cultural relations and global harmony.
Given the power of story and the nature of young children – storytelling can be an effective means of exploring social justice issues with young children. ‘In the early childhood field Social Justice specifically is about the promotion of equity for those individuals and groups in society who are ‘disadvantaged’ in some way’ (Holmes, 1997). To gain an understanding of social equality, children need to develop empathy and concern for others. Most people no matter what their age need to feel the emotion of another’s personal experience in order to feel empathy and be motivated to take on social action; this readily occurs with stories that speak to the heart.
In Remote Control Childhood Diane Levin defines five steps for young children taking social action:
1. Help children take action on matters in their own lives that they really care about.
2. Give children many opportunities to problem solve and take responsible actions on issues related to their home/ school environment.
3. When children become aware of social concerns they can become activists that help others understand these concerns and problems.
4. Provide opportunities for children to talk to other children about what they have learned in the process of problem solving around an important social justice issue.
5. Help children learn that they can take action to promote change in the wider community.
(Levin, 1998)
A toddler group at a child care centre had been experiencing stories that explore empathy. This is a beginning goal to taking social action. For example, the children had frequent experiences with the picture book ‘Come on Daisy’ by Jane Simmons that tells of a duckling losing her mother. The children readily connected with the emotions of missing their mother and they were all greatly excited when the duckling found her mother. These children then began to demonstrate empathy to one another in such ways as getting another child’s comforter for them. This is a demonstration of Levin’s first step for taking social action. The children have acknowledged that another child has a need that they can relate to and so they have taken action to resolve the need, by getting their blanket or bear to comfort them.
At the same child care centre, the preschooler group had many experiences throughout the year 2000 with Aboriginal Reconciliation, which involved taking social action at a broader community level. The children and staff were learning together that they can take action to promote change in the wider community. Some of the experiences included attendance at the Social Justice in Early Childhood Group’s National Healing Day Picnic where they participated in Aboriginal crafts and music and planting a ‘Sea of Hands’. Many of the children also walked across the Harbour Bridge
The concept of persona dolls was developed by Kay Taus (a member of the Anti-Bias Task Force, USA
A persona doll called ‘Elsie’ was used to share her own Stolen Generation story with the group of preschoolers. Elsie told the group how she was taken away from her mother by the government and what her life was like in the mission afterwards. This story was loosely based on some of the life stories shared by Aboriginal women in the book ‘Murawina’.
The children responded very strongly to this story with feelings of anger towards the government –
Child: “Put them in a brown bear cage”
Child: “Hang them upside down”
The children were then asked what they do at the centre when something unfair happens -
Child: “You tell them you don’t like it”
Child: “You say sorry”
From here we went on to talk about what we could do help Elsie address the ‘unfair’ situation that had happened to her. The children clearly expressed that “we have to tell the government to say sorry”. Letter writing was collectively decided as the best way to express this message. However there were some sceptics who felt that the government would just throw their letters into the bin. Here are a few of the messages that the children verbalised to express the sentiments of their drawings.
“The Government took Elsie. Elsie sends a letter to the government to say my mother didn’t die.” (Girl, 5 years old)
“Say sorry to the Aborigines. You’re not very nice government ‘cos you didn’t say sorry to the Aborigines” (Boy, 5 years old)
“I took all the Aboriginal children (the sisters, brothers and Elsie) back to their mother” (Girl, 5 years old)
The next day we wrote a group letter to the Government together to enclose with their drawings and messages. We all decided that it would say:
“To the Government,
Could you please say sorry to the Aborigines for stealing children from their families and home, and invading their land. Please find enclosed our drawings and messages.”
Immediately on completing the ‘s’ of ‘messages’ the children stood to sign their names on the bottom, and some suggested that we invite John Howard to come to their child care centre to say sorry, so they all could hear and see him say it.
This example shows that the children can quite readily became very passionate about a community issue of injustice, however they perceived the situation as a rigid dichotomy: Elsie is ‘good’ and the Government is ‘bad’. This is important to address so that the children do not consolidate a belief that the Government is always ‘bad’. Levin (1994) argues that this is typical of young children’s thinking when addressing issues of social justice. Situations of unfairness will often be perceived as one party being ‘good’ and the other party being ‘bad’. We can guide young children’s thinking by helping them to perceive more than one attribute to a category. To assist in creating a balanced perception of the government for this group of preschoolers other issues of social justice that involved government taking positive action (such as the gun ban) were discussed. Levin states that a change in children’s thinking can occur when they have new experiences that give them new content to use in trying out and building new ideas. The use of stories that speak to our hearts and minds play a powerful role in drawing in children’s attention to share with them new meanings, content and ideas. And if these stories are shared again and again over time and their content and messages explored in many different ways (drawing, dramatic play, discussions, construction and displays), children’s understanding of the complexities of social justice can be deepened.
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