Gwen Sanchez's CU

Social Communication through Fairy Tales

Gwen Sanchez

Academic Setting

This unit is an approach to teaching fairy tales to high school students who may have special academic needs, but it is appropriate to all secondary students. The students I serve range from socially–behaviorally challenged to developmentally delayed, but all are academically challenged either in some or all subject areas, some due to learning disabilities and some due to cognition or behavior impeding their ability to learn.

Albuquerque High School (AHS) is the oldest high school in the city of Albuquerque (the original building was abandoned in the early 1970’s). In 2001-2002, 1835 students were enrolled, 68% were Hispanic, 20% were Anglo, 5% each were the African American and Native American enrollments, 2% were Asian and the remaining were a mixture of “other.” This reflects a higher ethnicity mix than the other ten high schools in Albuquerque Public Schools.

Socioeconomic status descriptions can be extracted by looking at the percentage of students who receive free or reduced-cost meals. Usually, the higher the percentage of students who need free or reduced lunches, the more likely a school is to have a larger percentage of students with special needs related to poverty. At Albuquerque High, 25% of the student population receives free or reduced lunches. However, this area also serves Altura Park, Spruce Park and other University areas, where doctors, lawyers and university professors reside, and many of their children attend their local high school, Albuquerque High School. They represent the upper middle class. National tests reflect this diversity: although AHS has a large number of students below the average range for national percentiles, it also has a significant number who score between the 90^th and 99^th percentiles. AHS does not show a solid block of scores in the average range for these tests, which, according to the aforementioned formula, seems to indicate that both a strong socioeconomic middle class and working class are lacking.

The goals and objectives of this unit will be based upon Bloom’s Taxonomy and the New Mexico Media Literacy Standards. The core part will focus on students being able to identify and define the information found in fairy tales, comprehend the meanings of the tales and use this knowledge in new situations for the first component of the unit. After the instructor measures their acquisition of this knowledge, the students will need to advance to recognition of hidden meanings, to predict and draw conclusions from new data, and to evaluate the messages from fairy tales. At the end of the unit, students should be able to identify a target audience of a particular fairy tale. In particular, they are to determine what tales are saying about their age group and gender. I hope to capitalize upon the students’ interest in fairy tales while teaching them history, technology, problem-solving, and listening skills. My ultimate goal is to make these high school students want to learn more about history, story telling, and their own culture.

Context and Background

Rationale

I work in the “self-contained” classrooms, which means that the students in these classrooms are “at-risk” for dropping out of school, often bluntly stating that they have not found much to excite them in their curriculum. However, I plan to utilize their interest in fairy tales as a way to examine language, culture, history and making inferences. I hope they will find characters in fairy tales that they can either identify with or set themselves apart from in the tales.

I chose fairy tales because of their interest in the stories they heard in their youth. These students often struggle with auditory memory problems coupled with an inability to sequence events. However, when they are interested in material, as they often are in fairy tales, they can recite long quotes from memory without the use of visual cues or verbal prompts.

The use of fairy tales appears to honor the interests of these students, even of the non-reading ones: they are very responsive to the concrete messages of the stories. Rather than studying some vague, abstract texts, which do not hold the students’ attention, the subjects of many fairy tales are directly related to struggles with growing up many of them are experiencing. It is intriguing to me that many students, who have great difficulties comprehending information presented in school or retaining information from lessons, can recite fairy tales and movie plots based on fairy tales (complete with dialogue). The students have expressed interest in the subject matter through their fascination with stories. It is now my responsibility to translate that into a working curriculum backed by objectives. My ultimate goal is to develop a curriculum around fairy tales, which will be the tool utilized to help direct my own students in creating their own stories.

Subject Background for Fairy Tales

Communication and the Oral Tradition

Communication consists of sending and receiving messages. Whether the intent of “the message” is delivered to one person or to many, the above definition of communication holds true. These messages may be direct, or part of the manifest message. Indirect or latent effect messages are more subtle; they tap into associations that may not have been intended. All stories are an attempt at communication and can be evaluated according to what message the storyteller is sending. Students need to be able to identify and receive messages being sent to them; a unit on fairy tales fulfills this goal. In order to achieve this, the students are required to learn a brief history of storytelling, the genres of stories, and the motifs employed to develop a tale.

Oral communication is a subset of the broad definition of communication as is literacy; the age-old tradition of aural/oral stories is part of communication (Hallett & Karasek). Throughout the ages, folk tales were passed down through the generations in oral form. It is important to remember that these tales were part of social communication; the tales themselves could either stabilize or challenge the status quo of the storytellers’ and audiences’ society.

As the world has always been full of mystery, narratives became a communicative means to explain the dangers of the world and the world in general. This, of course, was the basic function of mythology or folk tales. Myths, also, reflected the conflict between gods, non-humans, and humans; they dramatized the struggle between nature and culture. The old, dark forces were usually personified as trolls, ogres, dragons, giants, or other hybrid figures such as cannibals.   Often these stories had magical elements showing that things were not always what they seemed to be. In myths the gods had the power, and the people had to learn to live in harmony with them (Zipes, Folk & Fairy Tales 375). The Odyssey of Greece and The Illiad of Roman times reflect gods and humans in conflict. In fables, such as Aesop’s Fables, animals had human characteristics that mimicked the failings of individuals (Zipes, Creative Story Telling). Although we do not know the exact nature of the interaction of the peoples listening to these stories with the narrator, we do know that these early oral traditions were a significant part of socialization (Zipes, Fairy Tales & the Art of Subversion 7).

The early folk tales were the precursors of the literary fairy tales. Folk tales, which were shared in group sessions with a multi-generational audience, reflected the conflicts of a feudal society in which the aristocracy had the control over everyone in the lower and middle classes.   These stories showed the cruelty of famine as well as the early deaths of children and mothers. These early folk tales were not imprinted by Christian thought, but rather a reflection of pre-Christian traditions, many of them centered on the fairies and their secular power of compassion. Indeed, women may have told many of the tales (Zipes, Folk & Fairy Tales 374). The core message was that help is available for those most in need; as in these stories there were people with magical powers, who could provide a sense of hope for the hopeless. In other words, everyone had a chance to be a prince or a princess. Often the magical agents of change in these narratives were fairies, which is why these stories are called “fairy tales.”

The History of Fairy Tales

It is important to recognize that fairy tales are not universal and are not timeless; they reflect the culture of a specific time and place where they were told or recorded. It can be argued that as a literary genre, fairy tales came into existence in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s (Zipes, Folks 379). In the early 1700’s aristocratic woman used the folk tales that they had heard to display their skills as raconteurs (Sharit 324). These tales were not used to instruct children, nor were they used to entertain a mass audience. Rather, they were used in exclusive salons, as a sort of soiree to showplace the women’s linguistic talents (Zipes, Origins 26). Their stories, then, were for a particular audience: adults from the aristocracy.

Charles Perrault, a French lawyer who became a writer and poet, is most closely associated with the French literary fairy tale of that time. He was a member of the French court and was at his height of his career in 1697, when he published a collection of fairy tales that became a classic (Gardner 14). His literary versions of oral folk tales were to become some of the best-known stories in the Western world. They were popularized by Disney and have become the stories many people have read or heard (Lieberman 186). Because Perrault was writing for the court of France, he edited out any coarseness and vulgarities of his characters that might have offended his readers (Tatar 4). Instead, he added messages about vanity, morals, and idleness.

Up until this time, fairy tales were not written for children. The concept of a child being uniquely different than adults did not emerge until the seventeen century. At that time, infant mortality was so common that the idea of bonding with very young children, even for aristocrats, appeared to be a tenuous proposition. Also, most commoners were struggling with the other harsh realities of life and just eking out an existence took up all their time and energy. Shavit notes that children in feudal and Renaissance times joined in adult activities at an extremely young age: ten to thirteen years of age for the upper-class children and even younger for lower classes (Shavit 318). She contends that the increase of survival rates of children, the rise of the Industrial Revolution and an increase in life expectancy all contributed to the idea of a “childhood” (320). Up until this time, children were part of the adult society and shared the adults’ experiences.

It was not until the late 1800’s that fairy tales were written explicitly for children. In fact, the idea that fairy tales were meant exclusively for children is a Victorian notion (Windling 13). Fairy tales, which were starting to be regarded as too simple for educated, sophisticated adults, developed into a separate category (Shavit 323). Adults could still enjoy the tales by reading them to children, but fairy tales became increasingly an important part of children’s education.

In fact, by the mid-1800’s, children’s literature was systematically used for instruction.    In Germany, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected folk tales from a variety of storytellers. They invited into their home the storytellers and recorded the stories they heard. Later, the brothers edited the tales, eliminating “undesirable” elements, such as mothers banishing their own children from their homes, that made the stories more palatable to a middle-class audience (Zipes, Brothers Grimm xxviii). While, initially, the fairy tales were written for adult audiences, they now changed into material meant to instruct young children about middle-class values. In Catherine Kawan’s essay on fairy tales and feminism, she claims that children’s literature “is a powerful instrument of indoctrination” (Kawan 29). Evidently, the Brothers Grimm took part in that “indoctinization” process.

It may be helpful to look at the evolution of one fairy tale from oral tale to the literary fairy tale written by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. An excellent example is the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.” In the folk tale, it is a young girl who, at the request of her mother, takes some food and drink to her grandmother. She meets a werewolf at the crossroads of the Needles and Pins Roads and tells him which road she will take. The wolf then takes the other road, kills the grandmother and sets aside some of her flesh and blood. In the meantime the little girl is picking up needles on her way to grandmother’s. When she finally gets to her grandmother’s house, she is told by the disguised wolf to eat the meat and drink the blood in the pantry. A cat makes a caustic remark to her in reference to eating and drinking her grandmother. Next she is told to undress and a very long discourse occurs with the girl ascertaining that this is not her grandmother after the “grandmother” tells her that the teeth are “all the better to eat you with, my child.” The child escapes through the ruse of her body. She claims that she has to go to the bathroom and escapes. The elements that stand out as unusual to a modern reader are the werewolf, the roads that refer to sewing, the “eating” and “drinking” of the dismembered grandmother, the cat talking to the girl, the slow undressing ritual, and the cleverness of the little girl in devising her own escape. Is this the same tale that young Americans have heard in their bedrooms, seen on TV, in movies and in classrooms? These unusual motifs reflect upon the fear of cannibalism during the middle ages, the relationship of the young girl to the werewolf in undressing and going to bed with him, and the self-reliance of peasant girls in that society.

In Perrault’s published version of 1694, Little Red Riding Hoods wears a red hood and is adored by her mother and grandmother. Two other ideas are immediately introduced: that the grandmother is sick and that the wolf is afraid of woodcutters. The little girl meets the wolf, takes the longer route to grandmother’s house, dawdling on the way. The wolf goes straight to the house, eats the grandmother and waits for the little girl. They then have the famous dialogue about his big arms, legs, ears, eyes, and teeth. The shocking story ends with the little girl being eaten by the wolf. The moral, as stated by Perrault, is that girls should not talk to strangers.

The Grimm Brothers states the emotional bond between the family and the little girl, the great care the grandmother took in making the red cap and the specific instructions given to her by her mother. She is given bread and wine for the grandmother and sets off to the woods, meets the wolf, chats about her task and her destination and takes up the wolf’s suggestion that she take her time and look around, even stops to gather some flowers for her grandmother. Grandmother, in the meantime, is being gobbled up by the wolf, who then attires himself in her bedclothes. The famous verbal exchange between the little girl and the wolf is greatly shortened and Little Red Cap is quickly gobbled up. When the wolf goes to bed and snores, he attracts the attention of a passing woodcutter, who opens the wolf’s belly and releases the grandmother and girl. With the girl’s help, the woodcutter kills the wolf by putting stones into his stomach. The tag ending is that the girl reminds herself to obey her mother and never stray from the path again.

Why are there such diverse variants of the same story? The older, oral tales centered on the very real horror of little children being attacked and killed by animals and even other humans in the forests and other isolated spots. The wolf represents a cannibal; acts of cannibalism may have existed during times of famine. Such cruel acts were attributed to werewolves and witches in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. This tale was one commonly told as a cautionary tale. The roads of pins and needles refers to the fact that many girls in Southern France became sewing apprentices and were sent out of the house at an early age. Most impressively, the heroine is clever and uses her own wits to save herself.

Perrault removed the offensive details of the girl eating parts of her grandmother, yet she is still being invited into bed by the wolf and the tale ends with her shocking death. The story focuses on the little girl’s red hood; a narrative device that may point to the girl’s coming of age. The wolf represents a transition point for girls; he is a symbol of men. Perrault is more interested in pleasing his aristocratic audience rather than maintaining the folk tale. He encourages the reader to visualize Little Red Riding Hood, along with the wolf, the forest, the food, and the grandmother’s hut. His description is rich in adjectives and attributes.

The Brothers Grimm were interested in trying to use fairy tales as a reflection of their local cultural heritage and the emerging middle class. Not surprisingly, the family is accentuated: mother and grandmother are fleshed out as caring and industrious: the mother is cooking and too busy with other domestic tasks to take the food to the grandmother herself and the grandmother made the cap for her granddaughter with great care. Yet when the child disobeys her mother and strays from the path, it is a man, a forester or woodcutter, who saves the two females. The women in the story are no longer able to save themselves, but need a male figure to rescue them. Clearly, the man is independent, while the female is dependent upon a man. The suggestion is that women need to tend to the house and hearth and should not stray off the path that society has set for them as homemakers.

Modern Adaptations

The most recent trend in fairy tales is to include revisions that stray from the traditional tales of the stereotypical central male or female figures of strength, cunning, or attractiveness. By acknowledging the fact that many listeners/readers do not fall into those categories, all students may find a tale that resonates with them. This approach can evoke strong reactions from students who may not have been able to relate to the “beauty” and “prince charming” characters of some fairy tales.

            Feminists such as Marcia Lieberman take a look at the preexisting fairy tales. Lieberman analyzes the role of women in “traditional” fairy tales, arguing that these images modeled traditional female roles and showed readers how to predict consequences of certain acts and exposed the value system of the past and present. Lieberman looks at several polarized ideas presented in fairy tales; one is that females in fairy tales are either sweet tempered and lacking of power, or ill favored and ill natured. The object of the young female is not very subtle, either. Debunking the promise of living “happily ever after,” many feminists have looked at courtship and marriage as presented in fairy tales and questioned if waiting for a rescuing prince should not be the ideal for a female.

            Looking at issues of sexual and physical abuse in fairy tales is as important as it is difficult. Being confronted with such abuse in their own homes, many students may have a strong reaction. The pedagogical goal has to be to evoke responses while maintaining a certain distance from the story to enable students to evaluate characters and their own reaction to pain, pity, alienation, and/or rejection. Fairy tales offer hope to those who are alienated; the instructor and the students must be persistent and courageous in analyzing the messages (Laudau xi).

Motifs

Fairy tales are formulaic. Over the years, Zipes has identified common motifs for fairy tales (Zipes). Vladimir Propp listed thirty-one typical elements of a fairy tales, which can be reduced to the following functions. These motifs are:

1.      Characters

a.       Protagonist or Hero (female or male)

b.      Antagonist or Villain

c.       Fairy godmother or helper

2.      The quest or goal (the expulsion or interdiction)

3.      Magical elements

4.      Place elements

a.      Home

b.      Limbo or “Woods” (no laws, a test)

c.      Paradise

By using the elements of fairy tales, students are better equipped to ask probing questions, participate in discussions and judge messages in the fairy tales. These functions will be fundamental to the curriculum devised for my unit.

Implementation

“Mother Ordered to Relinquish Rights to Children” reads our recent newspaper headline, while another claims that “Teenager Flees Abusive Father.” Such headlines reflect the reality of child abuse and the fact that many parents are forced to give up their children. In light of this situation, students need a way to relate to fairy tales and to make their own endings (futures). By helping to understand the various narrative elements of fairy tales, they will gain the critical skills needed to recognize, analyze, and evaluate the influences of fairy tales on them.

How do fairy tales reflect social communication? To what extent are stereotypes accepted as the norm for the students? Do the students recognize the messages? If they do relate to the stereotypical characters in the story, do they accept the stereotypes or reject them? Are they hurt by them, angered, or merely annoyed? How is a teacher (or a parent) to know how much these stereotypes affect the group that they supposedly represent (young people)?

Fairy tales are a type of entertainment. They lend themselves to multimedia, whether they are literary tales, tales heard on the radio or out loud, or seen in movie theaters or on television. With guidance, the students who participate in this curriculum unit will gain the critical skills of recognition, analysis, and evaluation to determine the various messages of the tales, ultimately, without the direct intervention of teachers. If the students understand the parts that resonate with them, literacy could be increased, and the students will possess good tools to tackle an increasingly complex world.

            Behavioral Objectives:

1.      The student swill be able to identify and define motifs of fairy tales.

2.      The students will recognize hidden meanings, predict and draw conclusions from tales, and evaluate the messages.

3.      The students will describe a target audience from a particular tale and evaluate why the tale was presented that way.

4.      The students will analyze the use of language and vocabulary appropriate for a variety of audiences and purposes.

5.      The students will evaluate fairy tale statements as facts versus opinions.

Evaluation:

The student will demonstrate the above objectives in pre and post testing and through the completion of teacher-devised tasks.

Pre-Test:

Given a fairy tale title, the students will write out what they know about the chosen fairy tale in detail

1.                   Identify the various motifs of fairy tales

2.                   Visualize and describe a scene from a fairy tale

3.          Identify the direct or indirect messages

4.             Evaluate the values presented in the story

Lesson Plans:

Day 1: Make predictions/ prepare a summary:

�         Give the class the title of a fairy tale, such as Beauty and the Beast, and allow the students to write out what they know about the chosen fairy tale. Then, review the best-known version of the tale

�         Compare their memory or predictions with the traditional tale

�         Contrast the “popular” version with other versions

The students should be developing an awareness that there are different versions of fairy tales. To further develop this awareness throughout the unit, the students will be assigned two tasks for the unit:

a) bring a brand item or its advertisement to class. This can be anything: lipstick or lipstick ad, chewing gum or ad, etc. They will need to write some reason they identify with this item.

b). Students will identify and bring in at least one article from a paper on a local event (newspapers are in the classroom).

Language Arts—Standard #1:

Benchmarks: Analyze, evaluate and use a wide range of language resources in order to think, speak and write effectively

Days 2/3: Begin the unit on the history of fairy tales. Show the movie, The Neanderthal from The Discovery Channel. This movie traces early man and his sense of fear and wonder about nature, which can lead to a discussion of the creation of myths.

Activity 1: Go to the Bosque on a field trip or turn off the lights in the classroom and have the students take turns to describe: thunder, hail, the wind, blizzards, floods and rain from a “primitive” standpoint. Where does it come from, how does it affect people, how can you control the weather?

Read the Navajo coyote myths for tales about how nature is explained in stories. Brainstorm which animals were around during this time period and have the students describe whether those animals were predators or prey (Discovery Channel’s site for Walking with Prehistoric Beasts offers a good reference for this task).

Ask what other elements affected early people. How about darkness? Or diseases? Have each student write a short made-up tale about something that would have seemed mysterious to these people.

Activity 2: Write a scary story that can be your own experience, some incident someone told you, or some story you heard. Tell these stories in the dark. Stories can be videotaped to add extra elements of mood. Which stories do you think the Neanderthals would have chosen? Why? Were these stories based on fact or opinion? Observation or guessing?

Language Arts Standard #5

Benchmarks—Express facts, ideas and opinions clearly

Social Studies Standard #3

Benchmarks-Recognize that people may describe the same event or situation in different ways

Days 4/5/6: The Myths: Egyptian, Greek and Roman.

Present what a myth is and why the early civilizations needed myths to define their world. Summarize the chief gods of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman myths. Try to have the students relate these gods and goddesses to present-day people. Is Venus/Aphrodite Jay Lo or Brittany Spears? Could Osama bin Laden be Ares/ Mars, the god of war of Greek/Roman myths, or Set, the Egyptian mischief-maker? Most students have heard of the more prevalent Greek/Roman myths, such as The Odyssey, but they may be unfamiliar with a less popular myth of How Fire and Hope Came to the Earth (in Zipes, Creative Storytelling).

Also, most students are less familiar with Egyptian mythology. I show parts from the movies, The Grinch and Ghost to emphasize the concept that if your heart were deemed too small from bad deeds, a monster, Ammut, would devour your soul at death. The students do not relate to Ammut until they see the demons coming for the guilty in Ghost.

Activity: Have the students pick a god that they would want to be, or create a new god. What are that god’s features? What could s/he do? What activities did s/he like to participate in? The students could draw their god and where that god lived.

Days 7/8: The Middle Ages: Evaluate how historical inquiry is influenced by culture and society/determine fact versus opinion.

Comprehension of the process of communication will be developed through watching others. Observation (training in description and attributes): one big part of communication is observing your partner(s) while you communicate.

Activity: Start by telling “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” (in Zipes, Creative Storytelling). Have a student from another class disrupt the class by running in and snatching your (empty) purse. Act shocked! Have the students describe every detail of the theft. Afterwards, the eyewitness observations can be listed on the board; invariably, someone makes a judgmental comment. Use this to determine opinions versus fact: The thief had on a “red” shirt is fact; s/he had on an “ugly” shirt is an opinion. Also, force the students to use specific descriptive words such as color or shape.

After all students have shared their information, have the ”thief” come back in and see how many items the students remembered accurately. They can compare their lists of items to make this really competitive. The student who had the most accurate description wins. The students hand in their papers. Next, once the “thief” has left, erase the board and have them rewrite the description of the “thief” on a clean sheet of paper. Return their original papers with their notes and have them compare their final statement to their original.

Activity 2: Discuss a legend versus a rumor and finish “The Pied Piper”. Ask the class if they think this story was a made up tale or based on any facts. Tell them about Children’s Crusade and other events of that time.

Language Arts—Standard #5

Benchmarks: Express facts, ideas and opinions clearly

Day 9/10: Body Language: this can include facial expression. Body language is culturally inflected, which leads to insights into our culture.

Activity 1: Have each of the students draw their own version of a wolf. The students will vote on which picture is the scariest and explain why it seems scary. Is size the only effect or is it facial expression? Which one is the least scary? Why?

Read “The Story of Grandmother” (in Hallet & Karasek). Allow the students to act out action words listed in the story just by their facial expression and body language. Give out other action words on cards and have the other students guess the target word. Communication Workshop Cards by Linguisystems, can be used.

This activity is much like the game of Charades. Students like role-playing because it gives them a chance to be creative and to move around. In this activity it is easiest to use action verbs, but more subtle actions and even emotions are useful for this activity. For example, “scared” is relatively easy to act out, but even “smug” can be shown through expression. Elicit from the students if they use different body language for different audiences. When do they want to “look cool?” When do they use body language to show disdain? It is not what you say, but the way you say it. This is not only true of storytelling, but also of teens in general.

Activity 2: After body language has been established, give students magazines to try to get examples of body language and expression. What are the messages? Read other versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” (Perrault’s and Grimm’s ) and show various artists’ renditions of the wolf and “Little Red Riding Hood” (in Zipes). These drawings and the magazine pictures may be combined with Erving Goffman’s ideas in Gender Advisements to see what messages are being shown for the stories about a young female and a wolf.

Language Arts Standard #7

Benchmark: Students analyze the use of language and vocabulary appropriate for various audiences and for a variety of purposes

Day 11: How better to gain an understanding of famine than to employ food? Utilize the Food Guide Pyramid from the Department of Health to suggest if we are eating any better now than before (processed food versus natural food)? Was whole wheat better than bleached wheat? Is pasteurized milk better than fresh milk? Are we suffering from food or vitamin deficiencies?

Activity 1: Read “Hansel and Gretel” (in Tatar). Discuss the idea of famines and what people may have done during times of want. Teach about how the concept of childhood is historically changing.

The idea of the harvest fairs generated out of the late Middle Ages, when huge markets were set up to trade goods, including foodstuff. Throughout the United States our harvest fairs occur sometime in late summer or early fall. Activity 2: Show a large picture of a harvest fair, such as “Story Connections” (Fall) from Communication Skill Builders. Have the students describe it according to attributes. Make certain the fair has some agricultural aspect. Since early times, these fairs were a great time for narratives; storytellers would tell audiences a vast number of stories. Summarize by concluding: What is the origin of state fairs? Why were the organizers trying to gather people together? Why was food such an important element in oral stories?

Activity 3: Bring in a guest to describe coal mining in New Mexico. My guest grew up in Dawson, a mining community that is now a ghost town. The mining town of Madrid is even closer and may be used for a field trip; Silver City and other cities have rich, mining histories. Mining was part of industrialization although it is a very ancient occupation and is very dangerous. Also, contrast this person to a farming community.

Another invited guest speaker still farms in an isolated part of Northern New Mexico. He will come in to discuss farm life and goat ranching during the Depression, when he was a child. As in fairy tales, children were sent out to the wilderness, unsupervised, to herd animals, which is similar to Little Red Riding Hood being sent to the woods to take her grandmother some food.

These two occupations may explain how people had to endure hardships and how tales were created to explain these difficulties. Even though people worked or were farmers, they still suffered from want. This is a hard concept for young people to grasp.

Science Standard #15

Benchmark: Evaluate the limitations of science and technology on society

Language Arts Standard #5

Benchmark: Students utilize prior experiences, knowledge, culture and home language in written and spoken products for all curriculum areas.

Days 12/13: Retelling the message: given the skills that the students now have in communication, they are ready to react to what they are seeing.

Activity: Read Perrault’s version of “Cinderella” and have each student participate in describing parts of it, such as the fireplace and Cinderella’s appearance. Perrault’s text is very descriptive. Encourage providing salient features in colorful terms by promoting attributes such as color and size for descriptions that can either be listed on the blackboard or elicited through the help of a card with an attribute word on it.

This should help in actually creating a mental image, a tool they can use in restating material. When the students disagree, discuss how we all have a different view of even simple ideas and that reality to one person is not the same to another. We may all have different rendition of the story in our heads! Nancy Bell’s Visualization and Verbalization� activities would further expand on these tasks.

Make inferences from the stories and history:

Activity 1: Read Jacob and Wilhelm’s version of “Snow White.” Help the students recall “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Snow White.”

�         Identify the consequences of the fairy tales studied

o       How do these consequences reflect society?

o       In what way are some consequences “old fashioned”?

�        Create new consequences for selected fairy tales

�        Identify how many stories have women/girls as protagonist

o       What do you think the role of woman was?

o       What was the role of the fairy godmother?

Contrast these stories to Angela Carter’s “Donkey Prince.” Is the female in this story helpless? What was the role of women in this story?

Activity 2: Thinking Outside of the Box: Read orally some familiar stories from The Stinky Cheese Man: “Chicken Little,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Ugly Duckling,” etc. First, have the students retell the original story. What was the purpose of this story? Example, “Little Red Riding Hood” was a warning for girls to never talk to strangers or they may come to harm. Read the oral folk tale and the literary stories of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm to provide background of the “historical” versions of “Little Red Riding Hood.” In the new “Stinky Cheese Man” story, why do we laugh at the ending? What has changed in society to make the original purpose less relevant…or is it?

Have a newspaper or magazine article ready about some person who was alone and came to harm. Are these articles sensationalist? Read some stories from the Politically Correct Fairy Tales. How has society changed so that we feel we need to rewrite stories? Have each student write a new story based on a familiar tale or invent a new myth. I usually have a few come to the front of the class to tell one together. I use a hacky sack: each student has to tell his/her part of a new story until someone else misses the sack. Another way to do this is to let students work in groups with one being the scribe. These stories may be videotaped.

Language Arts Standard #5

Benchmark: Students utilize prior experiences, knowledge, culture and home language in written and spoken products for all curriculum areas.

Day 14: On this day, the students need to develop the ability to enjoy and understand fairy tales.

Activity: The students need the item or advertisement that they brought in to express something about themselves. In the past, students have brought in basketballs, make-up ads, perfume, hand lotion, a valentine card, and stuffed animals. Students need to write directly on their item or its advertisement of why they identify with this particular brand or object. It can be a statement, a poem, a rap song, etc. Does this item make you look sexier, cleaner, and more wholesome? Would people in ancient Egypt, Rome, the Middle Ages, or even one hundred years ago have used this product—why or why not?   Did Egyptians use eye make-up? (Yes, they did). Did Romans wear wigs? (Yes, they did). If people were starving in the Middle Ages, would they buy make-up? (Who knows?) Would you?

Read Steven Gould’s “The Session” (Windling). Can you relate to the vanity of Snow White’s stepmother or the stepsisters in Cinderella, or does that seem ridiculous to you?

Social Studies Standard #4

Benchmark—Analyze multiple historical and contemporary viewpoints within and across cultures while employing empathy and critical inquiry

Science—Technology and the History of Science--Standard #15

Benchmark: Analyze the limitations of science and technology in the solution of human problems and social challenges

Day 15: The goal activity is to analyze the messages in fairy tales and to change the script according to each student’s life.

Activity: Use the assigned news stories about local events (assigned the first day). As an example, one news clip is about a woman who had lost custody of her six oldest children and was about to have her youngest taken from her. The news item was, of course, very high interest and the students were intrigued. I asked them what the problem was, what else could the mother have done to reclaim her children and what other solutions do the students have to the mother’s dilemma? Now that the students understand that there are alternatives to life’s problems, I want to expand this lesson further. After collecting a variety of these news items, the students tell me of the image that is given of their communities and whether or not that image fits their own perception of their communities.

Have the students re-write a story as a fairy tale. How does the new story reflect your community? How is your story different from the original article? We do not have to settle for the beginning of a fairy tale that we feel has been handed to us by virtue of our childhood beginnings; we can all re-script our entire lives to an entirely different fairy tale.

Language Arts Standard #5 variety for audiences and purposes

Benchmarks: Evaluate and choose the most effective strategies to organize and deliver oral communication; use the most appropriate writing skills to fit a particular purpose on a regular basis; express facts. ideas and opinions clearly, articulately, and appropriately for a specific purpose or audience; analyze the use of language and vocabulary appropriate for various audiences and for a variety of purposes…utilize prior experiences, knowledge, culture and home language in written and spoken products for all curriculum areas

Language Arts—Standard #3 Students will listen and read for a variety of purposes.

Benchmarks: Listen to, analyze, evaluate and react to all forms of oral discourse delivered live and through technology; find, select and read materials appropriate for specific purposes; increase and refine the use of vocabulary appropriate to specific purposes; evaluate the quality of any given piece of written or verbal information and determine its usefulness for the intended purpose; and use print and non-print sources to apply and evaluate options to solve problems and to help meet the challenges of life

Fairy Tales—Student Vocabulary:

Analyze: to recognize patterns and organize parts; to identify hidden meanings

Antagonist: someone who stands in the way of the main character’s quest or drives the main character away from home.

Attributes: characteristics of someone or some object. They are descriptive and can be fact or opinion.

Communication: a message that is sent and received; it can be through a variety of symbols or modes of communication, whether in visual, auditory or audio-visual forms

Community: a group of people with some common bonding such as familial relationship, friendship, location or religious beliefs.

Critical: evaluating with the goal of judging the quality of something

Criticism: evaluating or judging another’s (the medium’s) efforts; can be positive or negative

Direct messages: this is the message deliberately being sent by the media.

Evaluate: to compare and distinguish between ideas; to judge value of theories and presentations

Fairy tale: a story adapted and derived from a folk tale.

Folk tale: a tale that has circulated through oral retellings; it comes from the peasant tradition in the Middle Ages

Group identification: how a person sees him/herself; this is an idea from sociology that every human being has a need to belong

Indirect messages: messages that are not the overt part of a product being presented

Interdiction: a prohibition or to forbid someone from doing something

Issue: a social problem that has received media coverage

Latent messages: these are the messages that are implied or indirect, such as “Little Red Riding Hood” being bad for not obeying her mother in some fairy tales

Listening: seeking understanding by receiving the auditory message

Manifest messages: similar to direct messages, but much more complex; such as Beauty in “Beauty and the Beast” being involved with an incestuous relationship with her father

Mixed messages: the signal is one message, such as exploring their sexuality at too young of an age is bad for kids, but the other message is that kids are sexual. One signal is communicating one message, while another signal is sending another, contradictory idea

Problem solving: seeking solutions to the puzzle presented

Reality: what we call truth or real, is really a perception of reality. Different people view situations differently. What is one person’s truth, may be seen as false to another

Stereotype: a typical representation of some group or something; often it is negative. It is an exaggeration, an over-generalization in that certain traits are ascribed to a group; The wolf is a stereotype of men as sexual predators

Subculture: can be inclusionary (to invite people into the group) or exclusionary (to exclude people from the group by linguistics, skills, etc. with an “us against them” mentality)

Symbols: a sign that stands for something else, such as designs, places, words, ideas, music that can represent family life, religion, power, nationalism, childhood nostalgia or any other concept. Usually, a smaller symbol is used to represent something larger.

Synthesize: to pull various strands of information together and to evaluate what is created

Villain: can be the antagonist or can be someone even more wicked who attacks the hero (such as the step-mother in Hansel and Gretel versus the witch). The witch in this story is the villain

Documentation

Bell, Nancy. Visualization and Verbalization� Manual for Language Comprehension and Thinking. San Luis Obispo, CA: Gander Educational Publishing, 1986, revised 1991.

This manual is for those educators who have received the training on the Visualization and Verbalization� method, in which students are given strategies to help them “paint a picture” in their heads of what they are observing. Of particular importance are the various structure words that are the key to recollection. The method is taught after the instructor has been trained in the technique.

Bloom. Benjamin S. (Ed.) Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals: Handbook I. New York; Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1956.

This is the standard for Bloom’s taxonomy, ranging skill levels taught from basic to evaluative.

Dodge, Ellen. P. Communication Lab™. E. Moline, IL: LinguiSystems, Inc., 1994.

This manual describes how to help students identify communication skills through brainstorming techniques and through role-playing. Simple definitions of hard terms for communication are offered and various devices explored to engage the students, parents and educators in a program to help identify good listeners/learners and those who need to fine-tune their communicative skills.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Seabury Press, 1970.

This book caused a major paradigm shift for teachers in the 70’s. Now we understand that we must collaborate with students to find their interest level, that the students are not disenfranchised people and that they are able to look critically at the world. These ideas are very important for high school students.

Gardner, Martin. “Little Red Riding Hood.” Skeptical Inquirer, September/October, 2002: 14-16.

A clever summary of many of the analyses that this particular tale has undergone.

Hallet, Martin and Barbara Karasek (Eds.) Folk and Fairy Tales. Orchard Park CA: Broadview Press, 2002.

This book gives several versions of fairy tales and tells the reader about the various authors.

Kawan, Christine. “A Masochism Promising Supreme Conquests: Simone de Beauvoir’s Reflections on Fairy Tales and Children’s Literature” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tales Studies, 16:1.: Detroit: Wayne State Press, 2002: 29-48.

This gives a feminist’s view of fairy tales.

Landau, Elliott, Sherrie Epstein, & Ann A. Stone. (Eds.) The Exceptional Child through Literature. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1978.

The child who is challenged in different ways is represented through a collection of stories.

Lester, Paul M. Images that Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media. Westport, Connecticut: Prager, 1996.

This looks at how minorities are portrayed in American media and the messages that are sent: manifest and latent. This can be used for fairy tales.

Lieberman, Marcia. “Some Day my Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tales.” In Don’t Bet on the Prince, Zipes, J. (ed.), 1987:185-200.

            A feminist looks at the role of females in fairy tales.

McGuire, William J. “Persuasion, Resistance and Attitude Change”. In de Sola et al. (eds.), Handbook of Communication, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973: 216-252.

This chapter looks at attitude change theory and its application to media and story-telling effects.

Rowe, Karen. “Feminism and Fairy Tales.” Don’t Bet on the Prince, Zipes, J. (ed.), 1987:209-226.

Another article on feminism that debunks some of the myths that surround fairy tales.

Shavit, Zohar. “The Concept of Childhood and Children’s Folktales: Test Case—‘Little Red Riding Hood.’” The Classic Fairy Tales, Tartar, M. (ed).,1998.

The whole concept of childhood and its fairly recent development is explored in this chapter.

Tatar, Maria. (Ed.) The Classic Fairy Tales. NY: Norton, 1998.

This is an excellent overview of several versions of similar stories.

Windling, Terry. (Ed) The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors. New York:TOR Books, 1995.

This entire book is about the darker side of childhood, which includes sexual and physical               abuse.

Zipes, Jack. Don’t Bet on the Prince. New York: Routledge. 1989.

As the title implies, the typical fairy tale heroine should draw on more strength than the vain hope of being saved by a prince, and, perhaps after proper analysis, it is seen that she does.

---. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. New York: Routledge. 1991.

A modern look at fairy tales is given in this book.

---. (Ed) “Once There were Two Brothers Named Grimm.” The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Bantam Books. 1992.

This is a fascinating history of the Brothers Grimm, from their childhood and judicial training to their collecting and editing folk tales, which were to become some of the “classic” fairy tales of the Western world.

---“The Origins of Fairy Tales.” Fairy Tales as Myth. 17-48.

This is a very rich source for explaining the complex concepts found in fairy tales.

Students’ References

Garner, James F. Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co. 1994.

Not only race and gender are treated equally, but species are no longer discriminated against in these refurbished fairly tales.

Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.

As the name implies, almost anything that you can think to analyze in an advertisement is examined in this book according to gender. Beyond the obvious choices of using sexy females to sell “male” products, the use of groupings, of hands, of gazes, etc. are included and analyzed for the message. Literally hours could be spent gathering new pictures (such as those for Little Red Riding Hood) and critiquing them utilizing the methods offered in this book.

Scieszka, Jon & Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese Man. New York: Scholastic, Inc. 1992.

The familiar fairy tale will never be the same after being re-invented by these authors.

Other materials:

Christensen, Alec. Neanderthal: the Movie. http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~christen/Aboutanthro/weekly/aa042301c.htm 6/23/2002

Communication Workshop™, published by Linguisytems

Ghost. Dir. Jerry Zucker. Perf. Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopie Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn.              1990.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Dir. Chuck Jones. Perf. Animation. 1995.

Neanderthals. Discovery Channel, 2001.

Story Connections™, Series 2, Book 3, published by Communication Skill Builders.