Moving Beyond Textbooks to Teach Values and Skills to Children

chillibreeze writer — Yasmin Ali

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Popeye has made news. No, not for bashing Bluto or rescuing his lady love Olive and Sweet Pea; these are all in a day’s work for him. According to The Telegraph, a scientific study by the Mahidol University in Bangkok concluded that the sailor man has influenced kids around the world to gulp down more vegetables every day. Popeye’s dietary habits has seen cash registers ringing in Britain, where the sales of canned spinach, like the ones Popeye fishes out from the pockets of his sailor suit and squeezes the contents into one mouthful, rose by more than 24% in 2010.

The findings of the study had varied scientific and non-scientific quarters intrigued. Moms around the world felt inclined to relax TV times for their kids, provided they were watching the “right kind” of cartoons. On the other hand, education researchers found new reason to delve into the merits of introducing non-traditional media like comics, fairy tales, and movies in the classroom. They had and still have to contend with the cynicism in the likes of Doris, of Miracle on 34th Street, who believed and also made her daughter believe that Santa Claus and fairy tales are nothing but a “lot of nonsense.”
The supporters, however, have history to back their claims. Fairy tales were integral parts of a child’s growing up years in Victorian England. Tales of wicked stepmothers, lazy kings, greedy farmers, eldest sons whose wayward ways caused them to squander their fortunes, and youngest sons who made it big in the world even after being unjustly stripped of their inheritance served as powerful moral lessons for children. There were detractors even then, who lambasted these tales as pure fantasies and thus incapable of serving any good. But tales of fantasy have time and again proven successful in whetting the moral imagination of children; the ant, the tortoise, and Harry Potter have taught more about the values of hard work, perseverance, honesty, and integrity than any rule book on ethics and codes of conduct. American author Flannery O’Connor has rightly observed that the story steps in where a statement falls short; after all didacticism is mostly lost on kids.

Cultures all around the world believe in the power of stories, make-believe characters, and scenarios that lay bare the consequences of one’s actions, to create convincing and thus compelling notions of what is good, just, and right—values that should be instilled in children in their formative years. This is evident in the sundry folklores, fairy tales, and fables that have endured through the ages—Aesop’s fables, tales by Hans Christian Anderson, Mother Goose nursery rhymes, and many more. The belief also finds expression in popular comics of recent times like Tintin, Asterix, and Lucky Luke—the moral dilemma of Snowy over whether or not to take a swig from a broken Loch Lomond bottle; the cry of Dogmatix, supposedly the world’s first canine environmentalist, every time a tree is felled; and the lonely cowboy who is a good Samaritan. Meanwhile, the superheroes and superwomen from the pages of Marvel comics continue to convince kids that good always triumphs over evil.

Times-They-Are-a-Changin’
It is evident that children learn best when their mind is stimulated and thus engaged. Kings and queens, brave knights and wizened animals, honest men and women come alive from the pages of storybooks and comics have always riveted their attention. And so have video games and interactive learning programs, in recent times. Advances in digital and multimedia technology have led to a shift in the mode of instruction, although the focus remains intact: teach children in a way that best appeals to them. In fact, in an age where it is almost impossible to keep a child away from the computer, this is the most obvious route imparting education could take.

An interactive learning program provides an immersive learning experience by creating an atmosphere that engulfs the senses and letting children take part in the events on screen. This gives a child more control over his learning environment than just flipping the pages of a book. Simulated programs improve upon the learning experience by actually giving a taste of reality and letting children figure out for themselves the consequences of their actions and/or decisions.

While interactive learning programs have largely been received favorably by conservatives, video games have received more than their fair share of brickbats. Proponents, however, remain unfazed; they after all, have countless success stories. While real-life strategy games like Age of Empires test a child’s logical reasoning and analytical and reflective thinking capabilities, learning environments like the Second Life let children step into the shoes of an avatar of their choice and steer the course of action, virtually. While every coin has two sides, it cannot be argued that employing interactive media is indeed a creative and definitely one of the most engaging ways to teach young kids. It is in fact, the need of the hour in an age where distractions are plenty and attention spans are low.

The tussle between textbooks on the one hand and storybooks and interactive media on the other hand, looks to rage on for some time to come. But it is a promising sign that more and more people, and especially decision-makers are realizing that when it comes to catching ‘em young, there are few better alternatives than an interesting story and arresting visuals.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in February, 2012. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

“Yasmin is a graduate in Mass Communications and is currently working as a freelance content writer. She has previously worked with several multinational companies on projects that involved creating SEO content, e-books, articles for the web, and white papers. She has also worked as an Instructional Designer and has developed K-12 and corporate learning storyboards for e-learning clients. She is currently based in Kolkata.”

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