Storytelling Builds Character, Instills Virtue

Classic Tales Offer Moral Lessons Through Imaginative Experience

Jul 14, 2009

Fairy tales are important for young children as they can help them learn to cope with conflict and they provide lessons in the difference between vice and virtue.

In a culture that worships youth and physical beauty, children are inundated with messages that tell them what to wear, how to style their hair and what soft drink will make them more attractive. Parents can help a child to realize that a person’s worth goes well beyond her appearance, by telling her the story of “Beauty and The Beast,” the classic tale about compassion and inner beauty.

It seems like a simple prescription for cultural woes. Yet, many child psychologists and innovative educators are urging teachers and parents to return to the ancient art of storytelling as a way to instill character, and to help children cope with the challenges in their lifetime.

Storytelling Teaches Good Character

Throughout man’s history, people have used myths, fables and fairy tales to instruct children on ethical and moral expectations. Stories reveal how the world works. Stories allow children to experience great struggles and risks, vicariously. They can take a child on a perilous journey and show them how to overcome obstacles and emerge victoriously.

Good stories speak to the depths of a child’s soul. William J. Bennett, former secretary of education, writes “Never underestimate the power of literature to teach good character. Stories and poems can help students see what virtues and vices look like. They offer heroes to emulate. Their moral lessons lodge in the heart and stay there.” (The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide From Preschool Through Eighth Grade, Free Press, 2000 )

Fairy Tales Put Picture to Vice and Virtue

Stories are very powerful with young children because in the early years, children have a pictorial consciousness, explains Torin Finser, a former Waldorf teacher, currently director of the Waldorf Teacher Training Program at Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene, N.H. Waldorf schools are known for a curriculum filled with fairy tales, legends, mythology and other stories. “Children really see things in pictures. Children will be there in the story and feel what the character is feeling and go through the changes they go through,” he said in a 2005 phone interview.

Fairy tales speak to children because they are in tune with the way a child sees the world. Child Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim writes that a child will be more comforted from a fairy tale than from an adult trying to reason with him. “A child trusts what the fairy story tells, because its world view accords with his own,” writes Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales [Knopf, 1976].

The magic of fairy tales is that they allow one to experience extremely frightening and difficult situations vicariously. Fairy tales play close attention to higher moral laws, states Vigen Guroian, professor of theology and ethics at Loyola College in Baltimore in Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken A Child’s Moral Imagination [Oxford University Press, 1987]. “Fairy tales say plainly that virtue and vice are opposites and not just a matter of degree,” she writes.

Tales Provide Timeless Role Models

The opposition in fairy tales speaks to the child’s experience of growing up. Young children are evolving into individuals and breaking away from their parents.

“Opposing characters in stories help children to experience their own inner conflicts. . . Conflict ends with an increase of love and power to the protagaonists who willingly and courteously do what must be done. This fundamental plot gives a blueprint on very deep levels for the awakening soul life of every child,” writes Nancy Mellon in Storytelling with Children [Hawthorn Press, 2000].

Fairy tales also provide great heroes and heroines. These heroes must navigate their way through a risky world and undergo many tests of their character and will; in the end virtue shines in the main character and the character is rewarded for his heroism.

Betteleheim believes today’s children, lacking the security of an extended family and stable community, need fairy tales even more than children of the past.

Recommended Fairy Tale Anthologies

There are many excellent anthologies parents can purchase, rather than buying separate books for each story. Some of them are:

Bennett, William J., The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories. Simon & Shuster, 1993

The copyright of the article Storytelling Builds Character, Instills Virtue in Early Childhood is owned by Claudia M. Lenart. Permission to republish Storytelling Builds Character, Instills Virtue in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.