What’s the use?
Michael Morpurgo’s moving piece about Norway on Radio 4 Today (26.07.11) eloquently spells out why ancient folktales like Beowulf are still so important – for us all. They delineate the fight against evil that is always to be fought. The monster Grendel still stalks our earth. We need hope, love and courage to overcome it.The more I see and read, the more convinced I become that Michael Morpurgo is right. There’s a vital need in today’s world for stories and storytelling. (And Michael Morpurgo is not just a brilliant author – he’s a fantastic oral storyteller too.) Storytelling brings imagination and the power to foresee. It helps us think about actions and their consequences. It helps us feel and know more deeply. It helps us think for ourselves. And I feel desperately sorry that, with cuts, cuts, cuts, dominating current experience both inside education and out of it, storytelling with children will be temporarily forgotten. But – as Michael Morpurgo suggests – it is now more needed than ever.
What will the Autumn bring? I’m thinking about a new series of blogs about the Magic of Objects – simple ways of rivetting children’s attention to stories with simple, beautiful objects. Anyone interested?