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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 137 814 CS 203 319 AUTHOR Mullican, James S., Ed. TITLE Focus on Folklore. INSTITUTION Indiana Council of Teachers of English,Terre Haute. PUB DATF 77 NOTE 64p.; The Inqiana Council of Teachers of Englishis an affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of Enalish JOURNAL CIT Indiana English Journal; v11 n2 EntireIssue Win 1976-77 EDRS PRICE MF-$0.83 HC-$3.50 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Adolescent Literature; Class Activities; *English Instruction; *rolx Culture; *Folklore Books,Higher Education; Instruclional Materials; Museums; Secondary Education; Teaching Techniques ABSTRACT -This issue of th-e-"Iiidiand-English Journal"is devoted to various facets of folklore. Topicsof articles are folklore museums as resource sites for teaching;American folklore and the English classroom; writing about folklorein the freshman English class; some folklore and related materialsfor composition classes; developing teaching materials and activitiesfor folklore study; folklore among adolescents;. dramatizingfolklore: procedures for "Tzar Trojan and the Goat Ears"; thename "Young Goodman Brown" as a key to the rites of passage in Hawthorne's Story; andfolklore and fairytale presentatioin as valuable mediamaterials. (JM) *********************************************************************** Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * materials not available from othersources. ERIC makes every effort * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and thisaffects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductionsERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction ServiceEDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document.Reproductions * * supplied by,EDRS are the best that can be made fromthe original. *********************************************************************** rvLuJ VN rOLKLVKL \ Indiana Council of Teachersof English Dfficeof ContinuingEducation and Extsided Services Indiana State University Terre P2ute, Indiana INDIANA ENGLISH JOURNAL Member of the NCTE Information Exchange Agreement S. U S OEPARTivEHT OF HEALTH. EDUCATION S. WELFARE NATtONAL INSTITUTE OF Volume 11, Number 2 EDUCAYION Winter 1976-77 THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO- OUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZAI ION ORIG,N- ATING IT POINTS OF -IEW OR aPINioNs STATEO Do NOT NECESSARIL. RERRE 6 CONTENTS: SENT OFFICIAL NATIO/. AL INS7ITUTE OF ECPJCATION POSITION OR POLICY 2:Contributors 3: Folklife Museum's: Resource Sites for Teaching Willard B. Moore 11:American Folklore and the English Classroom Leonidas Betts 15:Writing About Folklore: Folklore in the Freshman English Class Ronald L. Baker 25:Some Folklore and Related Materials for Composition Classes Karl Ames 34:DevelopinglTeaching Materials and Activities for Folklore Study Janice F.\Byrne and James E. Byrne 40:Folklore Arhong Adolescents Carolyn Eastwood 47:Dramatizin&the Folktale: Procedures for "Tzar Trojan and the Goat Ears" James Walden and Edward Berry. 51:The Name "Young Goodman Brown" as a Key to the Rites of Passage in Hawthorne's Story Ronald L. Baker 59:Folklore and Fairytale Presentations: Valuable Media Materials al P. May 63:The Party f \ Adele KookogeY, EDITOR ; James S. Mullican, Indiana1 State University ASSOCIATE EDITORS\ Victur H. Jones, Indiana 8 ate University Harold 0. Spicer; Indiana state University TERmIsSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPY- RiGHtED MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Indi.na _Council of Teachers- of English TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE NATIONAL IN- STITUTE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRO- DUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM RE- OuIRES PERMISSION OFTHE COPYRIGHT OWNER CONTRIBUTORS: University of Texas KARL AMES, an AssociateProfessor of English at the folklore in the New York at Austin, taughtthe first course in American City high schools (1940).He is a long-time memberof the American Folklore Society. the TexasFolklore Society, and theNew York Folklore Society. Indiana State University,RONALD L. BAKER A Professor of English at also the edits the Midwestern Journal ofLanguage and Folklore. He is President of the Hoosier. FolkloreSociety. EDWARD BERRY is serving hissecond =fear as Coordinator ofChildren's State Drama in the Speech Department(Theatre Division) at Indiana University. He teaches in the. areasof children's theatre aridcreative drama, involving college studentsdirectly in working with children. and LEONIDAS BETTS, an AssociateFi-ofessor of English and Education coordinator of student teachingin English at North CarolinaState University, is also the editor ofthe North Carolina FolkloreJournal. ..iAMES E. BYRNE has developed a coursein myth, legend, and folklore at St. Charles (Illinois) HighSchool, where he teaches. Coultrap Middle School (Geneva,Il- JANICE F. BYRNE, a teacher at in linois), has been working for sometime in developing mini-courses varous aspects offrontier living and folklore. Social. CAROL IN EASTWOOD teachesCORE (Language Arts and Studies) ina Wheaton,Illinois, junior high school.She teaches anthropology on a part-time basis,for the College of DuPage(Glen Ellyn, -Illinois). the Curriculum ADELE KOOKOGEY, theLanguage Arts Specialist in Enrichment Center of RahwayJunior High School (NewJersey), is a frequent contributor to IEJ. The Curator of Education atConner Prairie PioneerSettlement, WILLIARD B. MOORE teachesfolklore at Earlharn Collegeduring the winter term. He is inthe process of developing amulti-level educa- tional program for youngpeople and adults at theConner Prairie museum. lists of resources in media hivebecome virtually JILL P. MAY's annotated Professor of Education at a traditionin IEJ Ms. May is an Assistant Purdue University. 3 WILLARD B. MOORE Folk life Museums: Resource Sites for Teaching Science classes c.isit science museums. Art teachers take their students to museum exhibitions. Why shouldn't students and teachers of folklore have a museum experience too? They should and they can. As in other museums, folklife museums can involve students in tactile, visual, oral, and analytical experiences through first-hand acquaintance with traditional buildings and artifacts, craft pro- cesses, narrative folklore performances, and settlement patterns. Some stu- dents, especially beginners, can use the museum visitation as a firm stepping stone between classroom discussions about fieldwork and the actual under- taking of gathering data on one's own. , Folk museums, an appellation little known among the public in this country, do in fact exist here though not as abundantly as in Europe. It was in Sweden that the prototype of folk museums around the world was opened in 1891 (Allen, p. 93; Alexander, p. 271). Similar museums developed through the early and middle decades of this century in Scandinavia, Hol- land, Germany, the British Isles,' and Canada. In the United States, museums which approximate the European models are sometimes referred to as "historical reconstructions," "open air museums," or "living historical farms" (Kelsey, 1976, p. 22). and should not be confused with those history museums which rely heavily upon the static presentation of docc;ments and artifacts,.often related to some single person or family of national historic significance. Folk museums attempt to present a total environment. This holistic presentation of -material and non-material culture is often sought by folklore teachers in literature as they try to show their students something of the wholeness and vividness of life as it relates to the performance of what we have come to call folklore (Spradley and McDonough, p. xiii). In this medium the student is forced to rely upon the novelist's dramatic skills and knowledge of cultural details, and the student's role is always passive and vicarious at best. People in the process of learning about folklife in its totality can enrich their classroom discussions and their readings about' genres by spending a day at a museum where they can observe and partici- pate in the milieu of traditional life in which these genres occur. Such pre- sentations will vary widely, depending on the museum's focus, and the visi- tor might find anything from a threshing party to a granny woman's 4 monologue on herb lore. from a storekeeper's yarnsabout keelboatmen to a ,larmer's demonstration of half dove-tail cornertimbering. This context or milieu is, of course, artificiallycomposed. It is impossi- ble to return to or to reproduce the 1830's orthe 1930's. Our bodies, our language. even our basic environment have changed.-Many raw materials, not to mention artifacts, are no longeravailable to us at any .price. Most museums have replaced these missingthings with reasonable substitutes or reproductions which intensive research has indicated as appropriate or ap- proximate. What one sees is, as Kelsey points out, "a patterned, coherent ac- count of the past that is intended to be true ... notthe past itself". (Kelsey, 1975, p. :35; 1976, p. 22). It follows then that the moreextensively a museum is interpreted by its staff to present a total social oreconomic environment, the more subjective are the selections of details of thatreconstructed en- vironment. Museum interpreters, no matter how thorough theirtraining, no matter how familiar they are with themuseum's time-space frame and the documents which support it. naturally select or emphasize onedetail over another. Their act of interpretation is therefore of necessity and bycircum- stance subjective to some extent. In most

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