More wolves – this time, a l’envers

I have two books in front of me as I write. One is the book I was going to write about – Sandra Beckett’s Recycling Red Riding Hood – the other (Rosa’s) is the movie companion for New Moon

It strikes me that the relationship between Bella and the Native American werewolves is in some ways a Conte a l’envers, as Beckett describes them.

Working from the writings of Gianni Rodari (who has more than seventeen entries in the Beckett index), she explores how Red Riding Hood has become such a universal tale that it is possible to play with the plot (including the Perrault text and images) as a tale told “Upside Down, Inside Out and Backwards.” And in finding a heroine like Bella Swan, and placing her in the situation she does, Stephanie Meyer effectively creates a Conte a L’Envers, a mixed-up version where a young woman in the woods is the one who holds the power over the wolves who are her friends, her would-be lovers. Bella smacks a werewolf on the nose as if he were a boy stepping out of line in a soap-opera prom; we are somewhere Angela Carter might recognise.

As something of a footnote, it is interesting to see this reversal taken even further in the movie book I have in front of me, where the wolves, however terrifying they are as wolves, are, in human form, mostly young and lacking in much body hair, exemplified in the website a – very far from the older, predatory wolves in so much of the Red Riding Hood iconography, yet drawing on the idea of the wargus (see this entry) as on the margins of society.

Beckett takes the wonderful Zipes exploration of Red Riding Hood to a new stage. She uses a European overview – rather she uses an understanding of countless retellings in Europe – to look at what Rodari calls A sbagliare le storie, Getting Stories Wrong, and what other contemporary writers identify as Upside-down stories. Ths method is exemplary; it allows Beckett to explore the variety of Riding Hood stories (if Zipes removes the ‘little,’ Beckett presents a rainbow of different coloured hoods!), and in doing so to look again at what makes this story so special. Hats off to her – hoods down, whatever – for updating the critical literature to include exploration of two lacunae in Zipes’ book: The wolves in the Ahlbergs, notably in Jeremiah in the Dark Woods and the Jolly Postman, and the RRH tales of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes.

Reviews

I really want to be writing about the Sandra Beckett book I’m reading, but instead, a brief word on the Cambridge Review. Not this one – tempting though it might be – but this one.

A compare-and-contrast with the Rose review would be tempting if time-consuming, and would feel like Harry Hill’s TV Burp where two improbable ideas or characters are represented in a playground fight….

So for now here are the links without too much comment, except to note the follwing reactions – from Julian Grenier (as one example from the DCSF site) and Diane Hofkins (linked from the Cambridge Primary site)

Suffolk Chalk Pits

More questions than answers in this post: a work in progress.

The more I think of there really being chalk pits in Suffolk, the more I want to explore more deeply my assumptions about the universal mythic landscape. A sideline about a pub called “The Lime Burners” and here is their link – suggests to me all those out-of-town (or out of settlement) occupations that might have been part of the storyteller’s landscape. Quarriers, limekiln workers, miners (like the seven dwarfs?), charcoal burners – all people whose occupation maybe allowed them a little latitude. It is interesting that charcoal is now something of a tourist attraction, even mentionedin the sanitised Suffolk walks discussed here. I suspect no-one on these well-signposted walks will discover demonic figures gleefully plotting by a fire!

Is this part of a warning myth, as I’ve speculated before? Part of a recognition that people away from the huddle of village and town are not recognised? Not “one of us”?

Philip Pullman, in today’s Observer, is deep in Bettelheimland when he talks about the Fairy Tale protagonists and their struggle for Independence and adulthood – and maybe this is where the two themes intertwine, although this is merely conjecture:

Is there a warning about the ‘others’ in the woods because they are dangerous, or because they represent a possible different set of choices? A world away from the close-knit and settled farming community?

Or is it that, for adventures to take place for the young, the protective adult needs to be absent?

It doesn’t answer my query about Tom Tit Tot, though.

A minor moan and some useful links

Just looking back at previous posts, notably this one and this, exploring notions of pedagogy in the early Years, I am struck by the poor structure of the new FS website.

Look at this link. I had thought this would take me to the stuff it “used” to, about assessment in Learning and Development, but it’s now taken up with CPD issues. I have no earthly reason to dislike CPD really, but where is the rationale for the structure?

And where do I find those fantastic clips of children playing that are so illustrative of the kind of good practice in EY? Surely this is clumsy planning, not a real philosophy of education that equates CDP with high quality play and meaningful interaction with children?

So, after a bit of a hunt, here are:

A video (2 and a half minutes) of a real observation session – all the more valuable because the practitioner is hard pressed to keep her observation and the conversation going!

Another of outdoor play (about the same length) and another on a wet day in the sand pit.

I do like this last one. Maybe the interaction isn’t perfect (I’ve yet to see real footage that is), but it does underline the importance of talk wherever and whenever it’s needed. Even huddled under a rain-spattered awning.

And I have to go back to Ellis and his trap for baddies http://testsandexams.qcda.gov.uk/19384.aspx

I got away to a place in the wood I’d never seen before

A significant detail in Jacobs’ telling of Tom Tit Tot, especially since this story has a cognate in Rumplestiltskin that has rather that precedence over the English version, and according to a much earlier commentator, has much in common with a range of stories world wide in which magic secrets overheard allow someone to escape some nemesis. The English story, of course, needs the demonic Tom not to be readily available, but his not expecting to be overlooked is itself worth mentioning. The creature is in ‘an old chalk pit’ – a hollow away from sight, like the dwelling of Stig in Clive King’s book – but an oddly accurate topographical detail. Does this suggest a particular place to the original tellers and audiences? Or a particular kind of place?

If we assume Edward Clodd is correct that this is a Suffolk tale, we could ask where are “The Woods,” or “Woods with Chalk Pits?” This one, perhaps? But does a mythic landscape need this? At times it does: stories that explain why a geographical feature is how it is depend on the audience knowing the site and wanting an explanation of the feature. Sometimes the post eventum nature of this might seem obvious, as in the Robin Hood connections in Sherwood or the strong suggestions of such at Tintagel. At times certain features are needed for the story: a church, a path (a crossroads for Bzou – see earlier posts), but in general woods becomes The Wood so that The Witch can live in them; they are universalized by being used as the stage set for mythology.

Physically Active Play

There was a time when I would have thought it impossible to be recommending, or even exploring, physical exercise as a good thing in Early Years. Ghosts of my own dire football sessions at Junior School and the humiliations of being so poor at the very skills PE teachers and so many of my peers valued at Secondary School would lurk at the back of my professional discussions about how Early Years teachers should avoid the “PE in the Hall” scenario as much as possible.

Even though those days are long past, it still rather surprised me that I found myself agreeing so much with this publication from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last year.

I can criticise it for the continuing misuse of Bruce’s term ‘free flow play’ when they say In all three settings we saw the principle of free-flow play clearly enacted, with children moving freely around their space

But this is nit-picking.

To start off, the research suggests that “rare for children not to be physically active when they were outside” (p64), and seems to me to offer compelling arguments for supporting good design of outdoor environments. Most important (from my point of vieew, at any rate) is the clear statement in the report (p66) that

Physically active play in early years appears to be influenced by a range of factors, not least the ethos of the setting and support and encouragement from staff at an individual child level.

It surprised me, for example, that only 9% (p57) of active play was shared with adults, with a spectrum that ranged from intense involvement to little or no involvement., although interventions were observed around behaviour management. In other words, there was some play with chidlren and a lot of supervision. Now, that is not necessarily a bad thing: children play independnetly in the best settings, and a research report that suggests more intervention would be necessarily a good thing would be a blunt intrument indeed.

The variations in intervention are interesting; the correlations between design, adult role, quality and amount of physical play are complex and I need to unpick them a bit further. The case studies (p60ff) are worth reading even if just for their insights into children’s lives in EY settings.

The final section of Ch 6, however, might be of interest as final-year undergraduates and others look for research topics, and is offered here without further comment from me. :

6.5 Recommendations for further research

Further research is needed to build on the work started in this project. In particular:

· childrens’ views of play – eg using the Mosaic approach which uses observation, interviewing and other participatory tools to listen to young children’s perspectives (Clark and Moss, 2000)

· intensity of physical activity in different play activities in early years

· exploring differences between sub-groups of children in early years settings – for example ethnic group, social background, disability/special education needs, geographical variations

Elusive, contested, dynamic, complex: some thoughts on teaching Spirituality at HE

Context

The context for these reflections, as it was for the work in first place, was a Spirituality and Young Children module for undergraduate students in Early Childhood Studies.

ECS students focus on the early years of a child’s life from (Pre) birth to approximately 8 years of age and the field, according to our handbook, draws on a number of academic disciplines to give you a broad and reflective understanding of early childhood. ECS students study some modules that focus on child development from a psychological perspective, others that consider more sociological aspects including the role of family and culture in development. “You will be encouraged to consider how childhood itself can be viewed in very different ways by different people. “

In other words these are not theologians or students of the phenomenology of religion, but they are people with experience and a theoretical understanding of the phenomena of childhood.

Exploring contemporary definitions of spirituality meant looking at the literature

From a more or less conservative Christian standpoint (or at least resolutely within an incarnational standpoint in Christian Theology) the work of Kees is important: he would place the study of spirituality at an interdisciplinary level amid anthropology, psychology, sociology and the social sciences, encompassing professional understandings, theological insights, textual and theological study)

Eaude says it is inherently elusive and contested – something EC students are strangely familiar with in another context, since they have grappled with definitions of play since their first taught session in the Univ. – and this has a further echo later in this paper.

What does the literature mean by Spirituality? – and can this ‘biographical’ construct be applied to young children??

We used the work of Andrew Wright quite heavily, esp by mid-point in the Semester. when I felt it was time to look at academic definitions of Spirituality:

Universal search for meaning – common theme in modern writing on spirituality, and I’ll return to it in my final section. Spirituality is an elusive and dynamic concept whose complexity is revealed when viewed in the light of: a mind–matter dualism; the contrast between the sacred and the profane; and the notion of spirituality as the cultivation of self awareness.

Despite their differences, these three routes have in common a concern for the ultimate meaning, purpose and truth of human existence.

Eaude again:

In many ways, the term ‘spirituality’ poses similar problems. This has, for me at least, the connotation of being primarily interior and individual, based within a religious tradition. Yet what I seek to describe is something more basic, and wider, than religious faith or commitment, rather more akin to a universal search for meaning and identity.

Approach

What ways did I use (and how successful were they) to explore concepts of Spirituality? – what did the students think about defining spirituality

We began not with the literature but with three clips: from Into Great Silence; from Kundun and from the Snowman.

Their responses were very varied:

from

The Snowman was the most striking for me, particularly because of the music factor. The visual also played well with the music and it did have that effect of kind of an ‘out of body’ experience.
I felt that the most relevant clip for me was The Snowman as well because I think it got all the areas that I believe spirituality to be in. (Music, Nature, Soft/Quiet places) Though the Dalai Lama film was interesting, I think I couldn’t get past that they were actors and it was a film (silly I know since The Snowman was a cartoon, of all things) BUT I felt it had to do with more of the religion-y things than something more spiritual-though religion and spirituality do go hand-in-hand at times. Die Grosse Stille did have a “dark factors” that I didn’t particularly like, but the music was soothing and I can see people going into a tra[n]ce over it and reaching into something more spiritual for them.
Like C, I really think it is hard to give a general idea of what spirituality is that will satify a large crowd, BUT, to me, it is (on very simple terms) to feel and be aware of something greater than ourselves. If things can provoke this feeling or awareness, whether it be via music, nature, quiet, or whatnot, than I would say that that is all that matters. For me in these films, it seemed to go down to the music (which all films had) and that is what does it for me.

to me the dali video struck me as more spiritual except i wonder how much of that was to do with tradition and story telling. The monk film i felt i was to involved with how hared the life seemed it was an extreme to me. You would need to be very devoted to the religion. but that may not be the same as spititual (not to me anyway)

and

I found the most striking clip was the snowman, and perhaps the most spiritual. However this may be because it brings back many childhood memories so i can relate much more than i can for the others. I feel its a very powerful clip particularly with the music. I also find it a very pensive clip which personally i think contriubtes to something being spiritual.
I think they can all tell us something about spirtuality in different ways depending on what you think is spritiual. The issue of religion may also be important; i personally do not think spirituality is always associated by religion.

perhaps the most well-reasoned of the responses was

This clip (Kundun) struck me of more for it involved a child which is my areas of interest. However, I asked myself is ‘Children’s spirituality’ different from “adult” spirituality?
Spirituality has different meanings to different people depending on their world view or philosophy of life
These clips description of spirituality demonstrate how culture, religion and spirituality are intertwined and are therefore all relevant to anyone belonging to one of either. This may as well show us that children are socialised into whatever spirituality notion or belief they are brought into.
How the child may express his or her spiritual beliefs will undoubtedly be influenced by, and may parallel the child’s cognitive development
Like adults, children draw on previous experiences of life including religious and spiritual beliefs to make sense of life events and to cope with crises. They will have a range of preconceived ideas, fears, concerns and fantasies which are usually linked to their stage of cognitive development and prior experiences.
May we say then, that the child’s spiritual development grows when they make sense to their experiences in relation to the adult’s meaning of the notion of spirituality?

This has an echo for me in the work of from Ping Ho Wong’s “Conceptual investigation” (2006): the success of the spiritual education of the common people still depends to a large extent on a spiritual social ethos, picked up by one student who summed up her argument:

I do agree that the issues raised are rather crucial. I was pondering on the question about culture and first thought maybe looking at a country like India one can say that the spirituality is embedded in their culture. I would say that it naturally feels a more spiritual place which I can’t say about the UK.
On the other hand, I also thought that we as humans are always striving, or constantly looking for something, looking for eternal happiness or maybe we are looking for something much, much deeper!

In order to explore something of the phenomenon of religion we also made two visits to places of worship (we had intended a third visit to somewhere non-faith based but snow necessitated a change in timetable). Of course we’ve come into the domain of RE/RS here in order to hep students meet the aim of looking at religious identity. In the first – a Roman Catholic Church on a modern monastic pattern – the students were left to ask questions and they did so largely around the function of furniture “What is this for?” Questions of children’s participation were raised, mostly around “Can they see?” and “What do they do all the time.” This latter question came up in our second visit – the local synagogue – where we were guided through the artefacts, layout and practice by an eloquent and plain-speaking guide, who said “I’m not sure Judaism has much to do with spirituality: it’s about practice, about keeping God’s commands –“ something the students picked up on next week in the University-based class.

Perhaps we failed to grasp fully in the taught session the significance of Eaude’s three-part question:

what is distinctive about spiritual development?
what is the nature of children’s spiritual experience?
to what extent can and do young children engage in spiritual experience?

It should be noted that many of the final assignments looked specifically at these issues.

A codicil:

What is my own construct as (in some ways) a ‘Christian educator’?
I am still uneasy about the wresting of spirituality away from traditional faith communities, if only because it seems to me that too many of the definitions we are left with are about ‘meaning’ and ‘life stories’ which seem to me to be less appropriate for young children – as in “…that which enables, or enhances personal integration within a framework of relationships by fostering exploration, conscious or otherwise, of identity and purpose…” (Eaude, 2006)

– and I worry there is sometimes (by no means always) a lack of honesty here: does use of words like character, meaning &c stand as shorthand for bigger words and concepts like transcendence and God or are they an attempt to make spirituality applicable to as wide a range of people as possible?

I am, perhaps, happier with the notion of transcendence as being capable of being all-inclusive – multi-faith, agnostic, perhaps even humanist – where, for example, Ping Ho Wong draws on Hay’s work to talk about ‘mystery sensing’ ‘value sensing’ beyond the material, and states that spirituality comes in different degrees and shades, like the colours in a colour circle, and for some purposes at least, no radical break should be assumed to exist between spiritual and unspiritual states

If they aren’t – if spirituality is as Champagne (2003) suggests Being Alive categorised in three modes sensitive, (perception) relational (interpersonal) and existential (choices, games, symbolism) – then I’d suggest that at the heart of children’s spirituality is play. If as Bruce suggests, play “is an integrating mechanism that brings together everything a child knows feels and understands” then it is , in some ways a spiritual experience. There isn’t time in this paper to explore this notion, but in discussion with the ECS students it was one that had some resonance: play as “dizzy” (Kalliala, Caillois) , and a reflective and integrating practice (Bruce) play in which a child is “a head taller than himself” (Vygotsky).

Play as spiritual practice for young children: perhaps the title for another, more reasoned, paper.

Champagne, E (2003) Being a Child, a Spiritual Child International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, Vol. 8, No. 1

Eaude, T (2003) Shining Lights in Unexpected Corners: new angles on young children’s spiritual development International Journal of Children’s Spirituality Vol. 8, No. 2, August 2003

Eaude, T (2005) Strangely familiar? – teachers making sense of young children’s spiritual development Early Years, Vol. 25, No. 3, November 2005, pp. 237–248)

Eaude, T (2006) Children’s Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development, Exeter: Learning Matters

Waajman (“Spirituality: a multifaceted phenomenon,” Studies in Spirituality 117, 2007)

Wong, P H (2006) A conceptual investigation into the possibility of spiritual education drawing on a Confucian tradition International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, Vol. 11, No. 1, April 2006, pp. 73–85:

Outside Over There: The story of the Grandmother

It was interesting reciting the edgy DeLaRue/Zipes’ reconstruction of the Story of the Grandmother to PGCE students in the woods today, those lovely dappled woods where the magpies chatter and one group saw a deer and we all felt at ease with children in the outdoors. In some ways it felt rather like the side-by-side comparison of Red Riding Hood stories on Katherine Harris’ site or rather the student project on the site

And it set me in mind of the power and transferability of Sendak’s Outside Over There, represented in Labyrinth , where themes such as burgeoning sexuality, sibling rivalry – not to mention the more complex issues of siblings and new babies in reconstituted families – are dealt with so openly. Is OOT more menacing because of the subtler treatment of the themes? Or is it merely ambiguous to the point of being open to any interpretation?

George

Not “Don’t do that” but a link to the Being Human BBC3 blog that explains why there’s a link to the show on my work blog – apart from the quality of the drama, of course.

This link takes us to a series of clips on werewolves. Timid, high-voiced and nervy, George is the antithesis of the monstrous werewolf or even the ordinary, opportunist carnivore, canis lupus, the grey wolf. Or is he? He is – as are all three protagonists – without hope, one of Agamben’s criteria for the wargus (see my post from November of last year). And at a deeper level, this is what makes the ghost, the vampire and the werewolf essentially human in the post-modern world: they muddle through, ineffectual and without an aim, hopeless.

And rather than characterise this by a link to Richard Dawkins, I’ll link this to another anti-religious polemicist (although perhaps with more of a sense of purpose, and to my mind a better writer anyway), Tony Grayling.

He would probably chastise me for not distinguishing between aimless and hopeless. But they both sound like cows from Cold Comfort Farm…

The Gambia

My initial thoughts (selfishly) after this, my third trip to the Gambia, is about HE pedagogy. It was challenging (refreshing, positive) to have to teach – direct teaching – without recourse to the law of the rectangle, the whiteboard, the interactive WB, powerpoint, video footage. How do we manage without the technology? How does the technology dominate the teaching – and does it affect the ‘message’?

So here’s the song (to the tune “London Bridge is falling down”) I made up and I’ll ponder its significance at another time:

Watch the children every day, every day, every day;

Watch the children every day: Observation.

See what they can nearly do, nearly do, nearly do;

See what they can nearly do: that’s assessment.

Of course the idea of teaching “without” these things already presupposes a negative model of teaching in Gambia College. It wasn’t like that at all. What I had as ‘raw materials’ (if we can use that image, and I’m not at all sure I like it) was a sense of committed good will that was forgiving of my foibles, and a readiness to work.