August 29, 2024
Sohini R. Chaudhuri
India
Photo credit: From Simon and Schuster
SUMMARY
In this article, I discuss the importance of reading folktales today. We are living in a fast-paced tech-savvy world. Our children consume social media content for hours every single day. Are folktales relevant in this world? Do children learn anything from them? Read the following article to find these answers and more!
BACKGROUND
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Folktales and Child Development:
According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, a folktale is a “very old traditional story from a particular place” passed on to people orally from one generation to the next. In the form of entertaining narratives, they tell tales of an obscure past that no longer exists. Parents and teachers rely on folktales to teach children universal moral values that help in their character building. Imagination is a key element in these stories. From talking animals to enchanted forests, kingdoms underwater to magic potions - in folktales imaginary elements combine with real-life characters to impart valuable lessons. They are mostly short, simple, and easy to remember. Listening to these stories in their formative years (0 - 8 years), children acquire an understanding of acceptable behavior, a universal moral code of conduct, and good manners. The characters who stand up for justice and help others who are suffering gradually become their role models. In this article, I will discuss their importance in a child’s overall mental development and relevance in today’s fast-paced digital world.
Relevance of folktales in the digital age:
The COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it brought, introduced significant changes in our lifestyle. What we eat, how much we save, how we maintain hygiene, and most importantly how we want our children to learn the latest tech skills to keep themselves updated are different today from the time before the pandemic turned our lives upside down. We took several months to process and fully understand the concepts of lockdown, quarantine, sanitization, etc. Many of us found it difficult to bear the additional expenses that all those bottles of sanitizer and dozens of masks incurred. For adults and young parents, it was a lot to deal with. But the ones to suffer the most were little children. A sudden surge in using the internet and gadgets, spending hours on social media platforms, and facing threats like cyber-bullying, disoriented our daily routine.
For the past year, I have been researching children's literature and writing a couple of academic papers on similar topics. As I delved deeper into the world of folktales I understood its relevance today as an essential aid in child development. In almost all folktales an unknown danger is always at the center and the story revolves around how others deal with it adhering to moral values. These stories do not belong to one particular place or time, rather they transmit a sense of timelessness and universality. In the end, the virtuous is always rewarded and the evil is punished. After a long struggle, justice is always served. When a child reads about the fire-spitting dragon or the cunning fox full of malice, he gets used to this idea that in our perfectly harmonious existence, there will always be unwanted elements to cause trouble - be it an unknown virus killing people or an unknown social media user stealing from people or spyware harming your laptop. It is important to keep calm, think intelligently, and act cautiously in the face of danger. In the end, they all will be defeated.
Perfect for today’s fast-paced world:
One can read folktales before going to bed or listen to audiobooks. Watching their multimedia or movie versions is equally beneficial to children’s overall development. Besides inculcating skills of problem-solving, decision-making, and critical thinking, folktales also help in nurturing children’s language development, communication, and expression. While we fear that the fast-paced world of reels reduces our attention span, these short and simple narratives with few characters are appropriate. They are the best ways to develop good habits of reading in children. There are free downloadable volumes of folktales available on the internet. Grab one and get started! Encourage your child to read more such tales!
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REFERENCES
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Folktales-for-a-Better-World/Elizabeth-Laird/9781623717971
https://mymagicmoments.app/the-magical-world-of-childrens-stories-with-morals/
https://www.eurokidsindia.com/blog/discover-the-wisdom-of-indian-folk-tales-morals-for-kids.php
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/folk-tale
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