Dear Families,
Expect information on the last day of school soon. I want to provide the reflections below now.
Rahima Baldwin on Fairy Tales
As was apparent in our parent meeting, some parents have questions about fairy tales--and particularly the presence of evil in the tales--in the education of young children. In You Are Your Child's First Teacher, Rahima Baldwin discusses the role of fairy tales in life of children age 3 to 6 in the chapter "Nourishing Your Child's Imagination." Several of you own the book; there are multiple copies available in the Kathrine Dickerson Memorial library. Here is a relatively easy-to-read, legal online selection from that chapter. This free selection from google, because it is a preview, leaves out pages; if you scroll down to page 200, the following pages (200-204) talk about fairy tales, the role of masculine and feminine stereotypes in fairy tales, and the presence of cruelty and evil in fairy tales. I would being doing you, your children, and our school a disservice if I did not exhort--almost obligate--you to reread this chapter (or at least a selection from it). Although a nursery class with many 3 year olds can do quite well with stories and puppetry of professions (tailor, cobbler, baker, farmer, and soforth), fairy tales provide an essential element of Walforf Early Childhood Education, and even while I encourage parents to question everything, I also encourage parents to try to learn and read as much as possible about those elements of Waldorf education that bother them most--this striving will support your child's connection to school and teacher.
Here are some (perhaps debatable) recommendations I take away from Baldwin's chapter and my reflections on it:
1) Avoid television and video media for children.
2) If you are uncomfortable with an image or description in a fairy tale or nursery rhyme, it is healthier to choose other material completely to share with your child. Often these tales or rhymes are artistic wholes, and leaving out the violent or sad descriptions deprives your child of the benefits of experiencing the whole process. In our work in early childhood (and throughout school) we try to provide the whole experience--baking bread, washing, and the like. Again, this is not a recommendation to rush scary or adult material on your child--find material that nourishes your child that you are comfortable with.
3) Have confidence. Even if you don't like a story (if, say, a first grade teacher tells "Little Red Riding Hood" to one of my children--see more below), another adult's devoted interest and attention to the tale and its significance will convey to your child.
4) While questioning the patriarchal impulses behind written literature in the last few centuries, remain open to the possibility that ancient fairy tales contain a description of our soul's journey, of the queen and king (and soforth) in each of us.
5) When seeking other tales to provide other narratives for our children beyond an androcentric marriage plot, take care (as Baldwin writes at the end of the chapter) to seek fairy tales for young children rather than fables or legends (which have their proper place developmentally in about 2nd grade). It has given me discomfort to observe experienced Waldorf teachers tell legends to their classes in an effort to bring multicultural stories; the mood is not right for early childhood, and I could sometimes observe this in the children's lack of engagement with the story. Baldwin writes, "In trying to distinguish the different types of stories, keep in that mind that fairy tales speak of the development of an individual human soul, and the characters are aspects of each of us; fables exaggerate human characteristics and tendencies in animal form in order to dramatize a moral lesson; and legends speak of the (often exaggerated) exploits of a 'real' human being" (209).
Gender Stereotypes in Fairy Tales and Beyond
Here are a few stories as a way of starting.
1) Twin girls were in my nursery class years ago. Their parents were supportive of the school and their daughters' individuality. One daughter almost always wore dresses to school. The other almost always wore pants. This second daughter told me, very matter-of-factly, "I'm not beautiful like my sister because I don't wear dresses like her." This daughter in pants did show great willingness to take risks, play in mud and sand, climb, role and tumble. Her sister--also a delightful child--tended to show aversions to taking risks, meeting new people, playing in sand and mud, and like.
2) This story comes from an experienced teacher who addressed my class of teacher trainees at the University of Maryland. She did her best to avoid gender stereotypes in her classroom: trucks and dolls were available for girls and boys; stories displayed women and men in different roles; and soforth. She knew not to talk explicitly to children about their clothes (e.g., "What a pretty dress you are wearing today!"). While not forbidding certain types of clothes, she encouraged parents to dress their children in clothes that could get muddy and sandy in outdoor play (these were still the days when all early childhood teachers--not just Waldorf teachers--could take children outside in all sorts of weather, and the days before rain pants that could protect all kinds of clothes). One girl in her class always came in comfortable play clothes (sweat pants, sweatshirt) and loved to play with girls and boys, indoor and out, in sand and mud, with dolls and trucks, receiving all the gifts this preschool had to offer. One day this girl came to school wearing a fairly fancy dress. The teacher, who knew to avoid judging attire ("What a pretty dress!" or "You look terrible!"), made what she thought was an objective comment: "Oh, I see you're wearing a dress today." The child went on to describe that, yes, she was going out for a special lunch at a restaurant with her aunt right after school. They talked a bit about the aunt, and the day proceeded as normal. From then on, this girl only wore dresses to school. The teacher, curious, spoke to the girl's mother. The mother, herself a bit confused, responded that her daughter insisted on wearing dresses to school because her teacher liked them so much.
3) A teacher I worked with at the Park School in Baltimore was considering becoming a public school teacher and was observing at a school in Baltimore. A teacher was putting pictures of various professions up on the board and having children name them and then practice writing the words. When asked about a picture, a boy responded, "That's a fire fighter." "No," said the teacher, "That's a fireman." This was enough to send this teacher-to-be to look into alternatives and to find her way to a Dewey-inspired school (The point of this story is not to beat up on public schools but to show the potency of one phrase in changing an adult's life).
4) When I was assistant at the Waldorf School of Baltimore, I had the privilege of meeting with Andrea Gambardella--master teacher (she herself had been Joan Almon's assistant decades before)--weekly individually in groups. It was very important for Andrea that any visitors to our classrooms--college students and prospective teachers--receive orientation first. I remember vividly Andrea seeming very tense when trying to come up with the most important part of the orientation and saying, "Like, they need to know not to talk about the children's clothes!"
5) Recently in our Butterfly nursery, I have heard one girl tell another (not aware that I could hear, and there may have been previous conversation), "My dress is more beautiful than yours" (before you become too alarmed, note that at least the comments were about the beauty of the dress and not the individual).
These stories can paralyze, making it hard to say anything. I encourage taking the approach advocated in Whole Child/Whole Parent, in which Polly Berrien Berends helps frame parenthood as an incredibly difficult and rewarding opportunity for personal, emotional, and spiritual growth. Parenting becomes an opportunity to be awake and aware. While this is taxing, tiring, and potentially depressing, it is ultimately extremely rewarding. Our children need this from us.
I mean this in no way to be an argument against girls (or boys, who will like to in dress-up play) wearing skirts or dresses. Especially with rain pants protecting them, dresses can be very practical, especially some sorts that make it easy for girls who have recently learned to use the toilet to do so independently and quickly.
Perhaps these stories give you permission to punch a stranger in the supermarket who compliments or insults your child based upon clothes ("Here! William Dolde said to give you this!). (Or to avoid getting yourself arrested and me sued, you might try an awkward but healing phrase such as "Yes, we all have our beauty on the inside, no matter what we are wearing" [as unsatisfying as this is compared to a good jab to the nose]).
A collection of fairy tales like "Star Money," or ones in which it is the plain daughter (or simpleton brother), or ones like "Tatterhood" (in which the sister who is tatters show resolve and autonomy) also provide an age-appropriate way of exploring this. A challenge with fairy tales, however, is that what resonates symbolically (the beautiful attire Cinderalla is able to wear as demonstration of the radiance of her soul) also manifests itself tangibly (wanting to wear a physically beautiful gown--though it may be video and picture versions of the story make this more likely).
As I wrote, even though I think many of the tales in the Grimms' collection provide what is needed at this moment in early childhood, and even while my observations convince me that "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids" is a great story and was the right story for most children in the class (in an effort to be polite and avoid singling out, I alarmed some parents in my last email when I suggested that some children are challenged by the story; based on my observations, eleven children in the class really love the story, and have been reciting it along with me with delight; one parent particularly questioned the value of fairy tales--particularly the depiction of evil and cruelty--in our parent meetings; if your child has expressed discomfort with the story, please let me know), I still have ambivalence about the work of the Brothers Grimm in general--largely based on my graduate studies in English and Irish literature, where I was able to read Jack Zipes' The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding-Hood. As promised, here is a version--collected by Zipes--of what the more ancient version of this story would have been, along with a Kristevan analysis that finds Zipes' reading limited. If nothing else, I recommend you read the "Story of Grandmother" (item 3 in the long list on the link) to get a sense of how different a tale can be, and, despite or because of its potentially disturbing elements (when taken literally in addition to symbolically), how much more initiative and autonomy the girl demonstrates in this story than in most modern versions.
If you choose to read the complete analysis of this story, I recommend reading to the end of the selection so that you can see how the author weaves elements together to reach a conclusion. If this take on fairy tale literature interests you, I recommend the stories and novels of British novelist Angela Carter (a film, "Company of Wolves," was made based upon one of her short stories). In The Bloody Chamber, Carter rewrites many tales to bring forth their violent and sexual images--ultimately to seek that which is liberating for women and men (many of her novels, likewise, explore dark, sexual, violent images with the goal of finding the liberation at the conclusion; she also produces a feminist reimagining of the Marquis de Sade in Sadeian Woman). I hope I have warned you sufficiently that Carter's books are not easy reading or easy on the psyche, but they do, I believe, help in the challenge of living with the paradox of the gifts of fairy tales (and the literary canon) and the discrimination inherent in them.
Metaphor
While working through Carter to take a Freudian or Jungian or Kristevan view of fairy tales or nursery rhymes can help us on our journey of awareness, it becomes necessary to put aside our questions and troubles as we present tale or rhyme to our children (and, again, choosing to avoid a story or rhyme if we find it to disturbing). Children seek our confidence that everything will work out. In light of this here are some non-scholarly reflections on cradles, sewing up a wolf's belly, and pirates I have just written. My point is not to convince you to agree with every decision I make, but to have faith that my confidence in the material will come across to the children. Similarly, I will have faith in and support your decisions.
With warmth and light,
William Geoffrey Dolde
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