Storytelling Starters: Time for Action?
Saturday, July 14th, 2012
Wimbledon over, the Olympics coming up, I’m now thinking about a new series of Body Stories to go into this Blog. But I’m not planning to start them till next week. This week, I want to say thanks for all the wonderful things people have been saying about me in their nominations for me to get a Lifetime Achievement Award (see last week’s Blog). If I was able to channel the power of their words and use it for a greater good, I’d employ it to bring about a greater awareness of the need for support for storytelling in these straightened times – especially in education.
On Tuesday 19 June in the Guardian, the journalist and education consultant Mike Baker made a heartfelt plea for ‘breadth and freedom’ in the curriculum. Oral storytelling gives exactly the kind of breadth and freedom I think he was talking about. I would even go so far as to claim that storytelling should be seen as a vital part of the core curriculum, an essential way to develop the language arts that are involved in reading and writing as well as the thinking skills that are required for everything else. (more…)