As teachers and parents, we have often been stumped by a child with innocent wonder in his eyes and a question on his lips – ‘Why do dogs chase cats?’ or ‘Why is seawater salty?’. Though these pour quoi questions can confound and confuse, we are often left searching for an answer that is fun and educational at the same time. The Ancients often attempted to answer these questions too. Though they might have had different reasons – entertainment, lessons on values and morality, fiction over scientific fact or simply the human need to capture the Infinite into the Finite by telling tall tales! Whatever the reason we have a treasure trove of wondrous stories from around the world and more often than not they play a pivotal role to the shaping of social fabric (more on that in my forthcoming posts).
Geography lessons would be so much better if children could journey through the lush terraced paddy fields of China , see the shimmering snowscapes in Russia or take a magic carpet ride through the Byzantine Empire . I introduced obsolete mathematical units of measurement like the ell and the arm using a revamped version from African folktales featuring a popular figure called Ananse the Spider.
Folktales are often sidelined because we perceive them to be just stories that impart morals and obscure wisdom of the past. They can help us to see the thread that binds us humans to the rest of ecology with the cause and effect relationships that many folktales with their simplistic plots subtly express.
Joan I. Glazer in Literature for Young Children (1986) said, “Literature is more experienced than taught”. Folktales are a record of human experience across diverse topographies, coated in rich vocabulary and enduring icons. In my limited understanding, I find that these tall tales often bring the world closer and help the soul peek through a keyhole into a world where it’s always spring and the flowers are all a-bloomin’
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