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Cameron Jarek

Yoojin Jang

English 106

5 April 2020

Educating by Story-Telling

The world has numerous different outlooks on fairy tales and their purpose or potential

within society. Three things that we know for sure that fairy tales poses are the ability to

educate/communicate with nonexpert audiences, the ability to attract the attention of an

audience, and the ability to spark ones imagination. With that being said you could predict that

fairy tales serve an important role within education. This is when people start to disagree on

whether or not fairy tales should be studied in the classroom. There is a lot of different research

and suggestions to put into consideration when determining if fairy tales should be

utilized/studied in the classroom. Many people believe story tales are apprehensive about the

message they convey, while others believe that story tales convey an important lesson/message.

Some research suggests that fairy tales are a bad influence on women due to them painting the

picture of the man being the typical/usual hero in narratives or that fairy tales are dangerous for

individuals who lack imagination and tend to take falsehood as truth. All too often people tend

to look for the negative aspect within things and end up overlooking true intentions. That same

case applies towards fairy tales within education when research nit-picks negative aspects within

fairy tales and fails to determine the stories true intentions.

Majority of fairy tales that are told today are thousands of years old and have been passed

through generation after generation. According to research “ever since the beginning of things

the story-teller has been a personage of power, and individual welcomed by young and old alike”
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(Dunlap and Hetherington pg. 1). With that being said the story teller has to be an individual

who has a great amount of knowledge of the story interest of children, teens, and adults to keep

that particular audience engaged with the story. Due to fairy tales being created by the story

teller, they have the ability to keep any aged audience engaged with the story. Keeping your

audience engaged is even more important when teaching in the classroom or anywhere outside

the classroom. When students/individuals become disengaged with what is going on during class

they are not able to retain the information being communicated towards them. Fairy tales are a

great solution to the particular problem of trying to communicate information from one expert

individual to another nonexpert individual. Communicating information from one expert

individual to another nonexpert individual is what education is all about. Utilizing fairy tales

within education keeps the audience engaged with the material/information being passed on to

them from the expert individual.

One of the biggest challenges that the educator faces is finding a way to

communicate/teach a nonexpert audience in a way where everyone can comprehend. “Research

suggests that narratives are easier to comprehend and audiences find them more engaging than

traditional logical-scientific communication” (Dahlstrom pg. 1). Utilizing narratives/fairy tales

to educate nonexpert individuals is one of the most effective ways of entertaining (engaging) the

audience while also educating them over a particular topic chosen by the author. Using these

tactics in the classroom would create an easier way for educators to pass information down

towards their students.

Fairy tales not only have the ability to educate and engage an audience, but they also

have the power to spark imagination. “Chesterton’s pithy sentence celebrates the potential that

lurks in stories: the power to attract our attention, spark our imagination, and paint new scenarios
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of hope” (Singhal pg.1). Narratives/fairy tales are one of the best ways to spark an individual’s

imagination due to them creating an image where things pervades our entire existence.

Imagination is one of the most important aspects of life because it leads to elaborate theories and

dreams and inventions in any profession. Using these narratives/fairy tales in the classroom will

spark students imagination and the overall impact it will have on society is overwhelming. The

youth and young adults are the future of the world and developing their imaginations will lead to

further inventions/developments within every aspect of life including engineering, finance,

management, IT, etc. Imagination is the first step to changing the world without even knowing.

With the common knowledge and research regarding the use of fairy tales within

education, one can see that fairy tales/narratives provides overwhelmingly positive results not

only within the classroom but also in our society as a whole. With the rise of entertainment

education due to digital games, more people are becoming aware of the importance of

entertainment education. Educators all over the world should implement fairy tales into their

curriculum and be aware of the importance of entertainment education.

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Works Cited

Cather, Katherine Dunlap., and Clark W. Hetherington. Educating by Story-Telling, Showing the

Value of Story-Telling as an Educational Tool for the Use of All Workers with Children.

World Book Company, 1918.

Dahlstrom, Michael F. “Using Narratives and Storytelling to Communicate Science with

Nonexpert Audiences.” PNAS, National Academy of Sciences, 16 Sept. 2014,

www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/Supplement_4/13614.full.pdf.

Singhal, Arvind. Introduction: Fairy Tales to Digital Games: the Rising ...26 Feb. 2013,

www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02560046.2013.766971?needAccess=true.