While conducting storytelling sessions at schools, I am often requested for stories with morals. I can understand the concern: both teachers and parents desire that children should listen to narratives that teach them values and lessons, ostensibly to build their characters.

But we should also ask ourselves this: are these codes of behaviour and rules of conduct, which we want inculcated in our children and reinforced through story texts, known to and daily practised by us? If they are, then they must be pre-existing in our society, and observed and learned by our children. They are in no great danger of becoming unmindful about, or forgetting them.

However, if there are values and lessons which we, as a society in which our children are being raised, cannot teach them through our conduct, it is the adults who are culpable, and in need of an immersion programme in values.

Stories are powerful tools and, historically, one of their functions was to teach moral codes. But it must be reiterated here that stories alone, no matter how moving and skilfully told, cannot be burdened with the work of imparting higher values and morality to our children. It is, properly, the responsibility of society, which begins with the family unit, and it is there that we need to turn our remedial focus, if we need the moral compass of our children set right.

If children do not observe the values we want them to learn being practised around them, no amount of sermonising through stories is going to develop any regard for them in a child’s mind and will, in fact, teach him or her duplicity and hypocrisy.

An obsessive focus on stories as the vehicle for morals and values also imposes limits on their educational potential. To experience various emotions should be an important part of a child’s education, and only stories serve this need.

A number of years ago, I was conducting storytelling in Lahore schools from The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man. In the story, Moochhander performed feats of strength in a circus with his moustaches, until one day white hairs begin to appear in his moustaches and, unable to lift heavy weights or swing from his moustaches, he is sent home. While moping over his tragedy and missing the circus, his moustaches come to his help and he is able to find work again in the circus, performing feats of skill.

In those days, the video game Angry Birds was all the rage, and during my storytelling sessions, teachers from more than one school requested me to speak to the children and tell them to read books instead of playing Angry Birds.

I hate telling children to stop doing what they find enjoyable, but I also appreciated the teachers’ concerns. First of all, I asked the children how many of them played Angry Birds, and raised my hand first. Finding a fellow guilty party, the children freely raised their hands.

I asked them just two questions. Did you feel sad when Moochhander lost his circus job? Their answer was a resounding Yes! Then I asked if they felt sad while playing Angry Birds, when the pigs stole the birds’ eggs. At this point, the children exchanged bewildered looks. It was simple to explain to them at that point that stories engage our emotions and we enjoy them in a different way than video games, which only demand that we have certain skills.

A story is a powerful educational tool because it presents complex bits of information in a comprehensible, linked and memorable form. It does that by using and organising language in a particular way. The storyteller uses humour, drama and the whole spectrum of emotions to involve the reader in the text.

A child’s ability to comprehend such a text, and also derive pleasure from it, serves as a powerful incentive for the child to view reading as an enjoyable activity. As a result, the child will re-read and revisit the text and seek more such texts to enjoy. To be of value as an educational tool, not all stories should necessarily have a lesson at the end. But it is also true that all great stories teach us important things.

Recently, I conducted an introductory workshop on storytelling for teachers. For these introductory workshops, I used my favourite folktale about a podna’s [small weaver bird’s] adventures as it sets out to rescue the podni [the podna’s female counterpart] from the clutches of a king. In an earlier column, I had written why the many characters and the non-stop adventure makes it a perfect story for teaching interactive storytelling.

The podna first encounters a cat (a natural predator), a lion, ants, fire and a river, and they all demand to know where the podna is headed in his frog-cart with such express haste. When the podna tells them about the podni’s abduction by the king, they all join him in his rescue mission.

As the king unleashes his might on the podna through his brood of hens, horses, elephants and prison, the assistance of the cat, lion, ants, and fire help the podna foil them. And ultimately, he orders the river to drown the king and his palace. The king finally begs the podna’s forgiveness and all of them return in safety and triumph with the podni.

At the end of the workshop, one teacher asked: What is the moral of the story?

I read stories for fun and an enjoyable story is an end in itself. But since I have been asked about the moral of this particular folktale a number of times, I have thought about it, and now have an answer: the podna’s adventure is a story about how the podni, who lived and sang in the forest, was abducted from her home, and how the different elements of nature — animals, insects, fire and water — joined hands to rescue her, so that the forest rang again with her song.

The columnist is a novelist, author and translator.

He can be reached via his website: micromaf.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 27th, 2024