CENTRE FOR NEWFOUNDLAND STUDIES TO.TAL OF 10 PAGES ONLY · MAY BE XEROXED (Without At!~hor's Permission) National Library Bibliotheque nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisisitons et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 0-612-89707-9 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 0-612-89707-9 The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a Ia National Library of Canada to Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, preter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. Ia forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve Ia propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni Ia these ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes reproduced without the author's ou aturement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a Ia loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur Ia protection de Ia vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this dissertation. ont ete enleves de ce manuscrit. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans Ia pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the dissertation. Canada FOLKLORE-IN-EDUCATION: A TEACHING TOOL IN THE CLASSROOM by Linda Lines A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Folklore Department of Folklore Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's Newfoundland ABSTRACT This Thesis examines the material available to folklorists interested in the folklore-in-education branch of public sector folklore and develops a method of assessing the quality of folklore-in-education materials . A survey of teachers and a literature search of materials available to educators interested in teaching folklore in their classrooms follows . This thesis maintains that educators have little knowledge of current folklore-in-education strategies and have poor access to the resources they need to remedy this situation. Such a lack of knowledge and resources reveals a lost opportunity to teach the K - 12 core curriculum, as well as art, music , physical-education, multiculturalism, living, and research skills - all subjects which can be taught in a way that is interesting, enjoyable, and personally enriching for students . The final chapter of this thesis is a detailed description of a seminar course designed to teach educators to use the folk culture that surrounds us as a means to teach the curriculum. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Neil V. Rosenberg who has helped me so much to begin and complete this work . Dr. Rosenberg has been the ideal thesis mentor for me: patient , prompt, professional, meticulous and very very smart. I also would like to mention my niece Lorelee Parker with thanks for her help researching, proofreading, and editing the many drafts, Jordy Miller who helped me with my old and failing computer, Arlene Wallacer for the loan of her printer, Kate and Matt Owen for a new computer and Mike Lines for everything. i ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract . ........ ...... .... .. .. .. .... ..... .... .. ii Acknowledgements ..... .... .. ....... .............. .. iii Table of Contents ... ... .... ... ... .. ..... .. .. ... ......... i v List of Appendices ........................ ....... .... ... v Chapter 1 "Folklore-in-Education": Current Strategies and Resources ................ 1 11 Chapter 2 "Folklore-in-Education : Resources Available to Educators . ... ........... 51 Chapter 3 Learning to Teach the Teachers: A Process ........ .......... .. ...... .... 112 Chapter 4 Teaching folklore in the Classroom: A course of Instruction for Teachers .......... 138 Conclusion .............................................. 164 Summary ..... .............. ............................ 16 9 Works Cited .. ... ... .. ... .. ... ....... .. .. ... ..... .. 176 Appendix A .................. .... .. .... ..... ..... 202 Appendix B .. ..... ........ .. ........... .. ....... ..... 2 0 5 iv LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A A Survey of the Use of Folklore by Educators .... ... 202 Appendix B Responses to the Survey . ........ ... .... ... .. ... .. .. 2 0 5 v Chapter 1 "Folklore-in-Education": Current Strategies and Resources. Years ago, I began this work as a children's librarian. In libraries and in schools I told stories to primary grade students and taught storytelling to the intermediate grades. Later as a high school teacher, I told myths and hero legends to try to make ancient history "live" for my grade eight students. I encouraged my Canadian history classes to research and tell stories of how they or their ancestors came to Canada. I learned that the stories most appreciated by the children seemed to be folktales, that the lessons in which I told myths and legends were remembered better. I remember the strong emotional tension rising up in a Canadian history class when two girls, both of American heritage, told stories of how their fathers came to Canada-one was a draft dodger and one was the American Consulate. In that same class a grade ten boy brought his grandfather's diary. It chronicled the day to day life in Germany and Italy of a Canadian soldier on the run from the Nazis as he tried to reach the allied lines. It was high adventure- an unexpected and vital look at history. That particular class had about fifteen new Canadians from China. These students 1 were not interested in Canadian history until I showed them accounts , collected from Chinese railway workers , of the hard and bitter life of early Chinese immigrants. Suddenly they were outraged and wanted to know everything about the Chinese experience in Canada. It was this power of narrative - oral history, ancient legend, and folktales - that led me to decide to pursue a graduate degree in folklore. Of course I now blush to think how little I knew about folklore and especially of how to use it effectively. But it is still the vital and mysterious experience in that classroom which intrigues me; I still want to use folklore in the schools but now I also want to apply current folklore scholarship to my use of folklore and to teach other educators how to do the same. To that end, I will use the scholarship developed by folklorists working in both the academic and the public sectors to examine the use of folklore in the schools . The first step in this investigation will be to delineate the boundaries and the content of this branch of folklore scholarship. The next step will be to identify the components crucial to the effective use of folklore i n the classroom. The third step will be to survey those material s which apply the b e s t folkloric a n d educational scholarsh ip to folklore-in- e duca tion programs. I h op e this inquiry will 2 elucidate the kind of scholarship essential to those of us who would use folklore to teach young people in our school systems. Folklore-in-education is a particular section of the larger field of public folklore. Robert Baron and Nicholas Spitzer define public folklore in the first sentence of the introduction to their book Public Folklore as "the representation and application of folk traditions in new contours and contexts within and beyond the communities in which they originated, often through the collaborative efforts of tradition bearers and folklorists or other cultural specialists" (1) . Folklore-in-education is a term public folklorists use when speaking of introduc ing tradition bearers, f olklore items, folklore scholarship o r methodology to students in grades K to twelve. Teachers, librarians, and other people interested in multiculturalism and heritage frequently use folk traditions in the schools as part of curricula or as enriching entertainment- - just as I did. And they do this usually in profound ignorance of folklore scholarship and the basic concepts associated with the study of folklore--just as I did. They perpetuate wrong-headed ideas about folklore and folk traditions that are often hundreds of years out of date--just as I did. This is not folklore- in-education, nor 3 is it public folklore. It is not public folklore because there is no folklore scholarship involved and because there is seldom any folklore present . What is called folklore by people unaware of the basic notions of folklore scholarship is often simply an item or a text lacking the contextual information that would make the item meaningful. Although Baron and Spitzer do not make the presence of folklorists or cultural specialists mandatory in their definition/ in the above scenario there is no understanding of the basic ideas of folklore scholarship or even an awareness that there is such a thing as folklore scholarship. 1 Rather, such wrong-headed ideas co-opt an item of folklore for pedagogical or entertainment purposes, and do not constitute public folklore . They can be entertaining, but also extremely damaging to an understanding of what folklore is. But not only is the use of folklore by the 1 Using the example of a folktale, the written folktale found in a book is only a partial record of the actual item of folklore which was the telling of the story by a tradition bearer to her or his audience. The record of the folklore item lacks all the body language and tone of voice of the teller which would convey much informati on to the audience. It also lacks the atmosphe re in which the story was told and the reason it was told. As well, the recorded story has usually been rewritten i nto sentences and paragraphs, bowdlerized, and otherwise changed by the author to suit a very different audience f rom the one o riginally present at the telling.