Saturday, 2 February 2013

Stories and Memories

Artist: credited to Dulac, but looks like Rackham to me (wikipedia)
          A short blog this week.
          Not long ago I posted a blog which talked about how vital stories are: how children need to be told stories in order to learn language.
          Stories enlarge a child's vocabulary and teach them the different ways in which language can be used: plain narrative, or heightened rhythmic, poetic speech, or the formal unemotive language of academia or law courts.
         Telling stories also rehearses the listeners in various situations, leading them through emotions, helping them to identify with beings other than themselves. An argument could be made for our humanity being built of story.
          My cousin, Alan Hess - who often shows up in the comments as 'Anonymous' signing himself as 'Manxli' - sent me this link. I watched it and felt like cheering.

          So there you are. Stories are memory-boxes, which protect and keep save those delicate, unstable memories, fragile as soap-bubbles.
          Now I know why my parents told me so many stories about their childhood, and about their parents and grandparents - and why I loved to hear them so much.
          I have been handed down a box of stories containing scraps of laughter and bits of feeling from as much as a hundred years ago; and when I consider it, they have certainly played a part in shaping the person I am.
          And those other stories - the folktales, the myths and legends. They are boxes storing the memories, observations, laughter and wisdom of thousands of people, from millenia ago.
          Telling stories is important.


=Tamar said...

It's "accidentally". Also, I agree that the picture looks like Rackham's work, especially the face in the stump.

madwippitt said...

Blot - yes, so often fact is stranger than fiction. You couldn't make it up as they say!

Joan Lennon said...

That video was amazing - many thanks to you and cousin Alan for flagging it up - I'm off to share it with some more people!

Anonymous said...

Hi (Sue's cousin here again)

The point about stories is a fundamental truth I think. We as humans evoled in a certain way and telling our peers about where to find food and 'There be danger' is part of our evolutionary characteristics.

We're not designed to drink ' washing up liquid' so let's concentrate on what our bodies and brains are designed for!

I often get quite penetrant about SFL = Systemic Functional Linguistics (What a switch off) , so how about SFL = Stories for Learning. IT's all the same thing at the end of the day!

Manxli (Alan)

Leslie Wilson said...

I do so agree! And that is why kids should be reading real books much more than dreary school readers designed to support a particular reading scheme. And, as a grandmother, I am noticing how my oldest grandson is beginning to love to hear stories about when I was a kid, and when his mother and Aunty Kathy were kids, and so on. And those stories, that we heard as kids from parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, stay with us our life long, as you said.