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Need fairytale with social values CAN YOU HELP?

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Fuzzipeg1	Need fairytale with social values CAN YOU HELP?	Lead	[-]
Posts: 1 (02/09/08 05:17:50) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Tags : None I'm completely new to this site but I'm hoping somebody out there may be able to help me! I'm at the end of my 3 year BA (Hons) Degree in Early Years Education and am doing my Dissertation on the importance of fairytales in early years and whether children can develop social values and/or moral judgement from these tales. I'd like to concentrate on just ONE tale and wonder whether anyone could recommend a good one full of moral judgement and social values. The children I will be studying are aged 7 so feel I should steer away from Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Frog Prince for obvious reasons! Hansel & Gretel seems to be aimed at the very young (oral stage etc) but it doesn't seem to be packed with any obvious social values (and rather deals with anxieties such as starvation and desertion), whereas Red Riding Hood may highlight the 'don't talk to strangers' on the surface (in some versions anyway!) Any advice would be VERY greatfully received! Thanks.
MaryCatelli	Beauty and the Beast?	#1	[-]
Posts: 158 (02/09/08 08:56:37) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Learning not to judge by appearances?
MaryCatelli	common tale?	#2	[-]
Posts: 159 (02/09/08 08:59:29) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Do you want a common tale, such that children nowadays would be like to have heard it? Because while uncommon tales would open up the choices quite a bit, there are a lot that a child is very unlikely to have heard nowadays.
Fuzzipeg1		#3	[-]
Posts: 2 (02/09/08 13:50:23) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Beauty and the Beast is certainly a possibility thanks! Some of the literature I've found relating to possible negative effects of fairytales certainly includes that of appearance (ie, beauty is good and ugly is bad) so this would certainly be a good one for comparison. Much of this negativity seems to come from feminist literature. I was thinking of using a common tale, and would of course choose an appropriate version, but an uncommon tale (if you could recommend any) could certainly be used - many of the older, more uncommon tales seem to include certain inappropriate material (not that I agree it's inappropriate all the time but I'm doing my study on a class of children and will have to be careful with regard to ethics of course). I've quite a few books relating to this subject including that of Bettelheim, Zipes, Meyer and Sheldon (The Witch Must Die) and am referring to a copy of the Classic Fairytales by Opie & Opie (1974) which is a great reference for the very first printed versions of the tales and their histories. I was planning on asking the children a series of questions (regarding relevant values/moral judgement) BEFORE reading a particular version of the tale, then ask them to draw a picture (to see how they identify with the story and characters therein) and then ask them the SAME questions as before (this way I will be able to measure whether any learning has taken place). I was also intending on distributing questionnaires to the children's parents to try and ascertain the importance they place on exposing their children to fairytales. Don't know if you've done any research before and am not sure how my own research will pan out - in fact, are the children likely to learn such values from the one reading of the tale??? Anyway, if you have carried out any research and have any tips, please let me know!!! This is only a small research study but I really appreciate your reply to my post above, and it would be great to hear from you again with any other advice which would be greatfully received! Thanks, Fuzzipeg1 x
kristiw		#4	[-]
Posts: 37 (02/10/08 14:04:16) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	If I understand you, you're going to use questionnaires to see if children's moral assessments change (i.e., they learn something) after hearing a particular fairy tale. If that's the case, it would probably work better to use one they aren't familiar with, since most kids know not just the basic fairy tales, but what moral values they have already learned to associate with them. They might think the questions are a test, to see if they are understanding the stories "correctly." Is your question whether fairy tales inherently contain moral messages, or whether fairy tales in society today still function to inculcate moral and social values in children? In which case it would work better to ask kids about fairy tales they enjoy than introducing them to new stories. For myself, I think the messages of the fairy tales aren't implicit in the form or plot content. They're stories that lend themselves readily to absorbing many different moral and social implications, which is why similar stories exist cross-culturally and why feminist revisionist fairy tales have been so successful. (And I'm not sure "negativity" is the right word: writers like Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Anne Sexton and others who have used fairy tales to critique certain 'fairy tales' about gender have certainly been free with the stories, but usually out of a real love for those stories and an understanding that, like in a lot of fairy tales, sometimes the story needs to be cut to pieces in order to bring it to life again.) I guess what I'm saying is, you're assuming you'll be able to tell children the stories "out of context," so they will react to the stories alone-- but the kids are going to react to the context you're creating for the stories and try to understand them the way they think you want them to. Kristi Willsey (Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University)
petajinnathandersen		#5	[-]
Posts: 7 (02/10/08 16:29:00) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	What about 'Snow White and Rose Red'? That particular tale covers kindness, not judging by appearances, and greed, while being appropriate for younger children. ~Peta http://home.petajinnathandersen.com http://journal.petajinnathandersen.com
Fuzzipeg1		#6	[-]
Posts: 3 (02/11/08 03:17:46) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Thanks Kristi! Your message has raised a lot of questions about the direction my research is taking - I am a complete novice and this is my first piece of research - I chose this subject because it is something that interests me deeply. As this is only a small-scale study, I am very limited to time and resources and will be marked upon the research process rather than the results. If you have any suggestions for a basic study I would be grateful as you are obviously extremely knowledgable within this subject whereas I have just read a few books and like fairytales!! I have considered whether it might be preferable (and easier!) to determine whether children identify with characters within folk fairy tale/s (by way of drawings) and thus, ascertain whether there is indeed a place for them within the early years/national curriculum. Thanks again for your time, Fuzzipeg1
kristiw		#7	[-]
Posts: 38 (02/11/08 10:22:53) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Glad I can help. I did a similar project with college-age women, asking them to tell me their favorite stories and looking at their performances linguistically for things like active and passive voice, direct versus reported speech, and so on. I found a lot of interesting parallels between the fairy tales and personal narratives they told me about their life (the same phrases appearing in both, interesting doubling of characters). I also told them stories and had them tell them back to me right away-- they don't give you the text word for word; it becomes a different story in which certain events or characters become more visible. And I asked them to tell the stories back in a variety of ways: tell it in first person, from whatever character they liked, tell it the way you'd like it to go, tell it the way you think it might have really happened, and so on. I think having kids draw their favorite stories would be a very interesting and productive place to look. I think you might find a lot of scenes lifted out of cartoons and Disney movies, but that in itself will be interesting. The common critique is that mass media representations are replacing children's imagination, but that doesn't necessarily follow, even if the images are appearing in their artwork: are they adding new scenes? do they draw themselves into the films? as who? what scenes are they choosing as the most important? I'm not an expert on visual representation, but I know there are a lot of books, especially psych-oriented ones, on early children's art and how it reflects their feelings about themselves and their place in the world. Good luck with this.
Fuzzipeg1		#8	[-]
Posts: 4 (02/13/08 07:25:30) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Thanks for all your words of wisdom Kristi! Perhaps I could contact you again further into my study to let you know how I get on!!

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