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| In Praise of Reading |
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 A few years ago I had the opportunity to listen to groups of parents of four and five year olds express their hopes for their children. In over fifty groups of parents one clear hope that was repeatedly expressed was the hope that their children would know the difference between right and wrong, that they would develop a moral sense. This begs the question: how can parents help their children develop a good moral character? According to William Kilpatrick, Gregory and Suzanne M. Wolfe, authors of Books that Build Character: A Guide to Teaching Your Child Moral Values through Stories, reading aloud may be one of the most important contributions parents can make toward developing good character in their children. They offer the following reasons: Stories can create an emotional attachment to goodness, a desire to do the right thing. Stories provide a wealth of good examples – the kind of examples that are missing from a child's day-to-day environment. Stories familiarize youngsters with the code of conduct they need to know. Stories help to make sense out of life, help us to cast our own lives as stories and unless this sense of meaning is acquired at an early age and reinforced as we grow older, there is simply is no moral growth. Thus, one way to help youngsters to know and care about right and wrong is to acquaint them with good books. When we see others from the inside, as we do in stories, when we live with them, and hurt with them and hope with them, we learn a new respect for people. Imagination as the key to virtue In making the case for the relationship between storytelling and moral behaviour Kilpatrick et al stress the centrality of imagination. They say: "Explaining the difference between right and wrong is important of course but explanations fail to touch children on the level where it really matters – the level of imagination. The word comes from image – a mental picture and these pictures have a way of sticking in our memory and making demands on our conscience long after the explanations have been rubbed thin by frictions of daily life. We need moral propositions and moral principles, but we need images too, because we think more readily in pictures than in propositions. And when the moral principle has the power to move us to action, it is often because it is backed by a picture or image." Flannery O'Connor once said: "A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way… You tell a story because a statement may be inadequate." Kilpatrick continues: "Imagination is one of the keys to virtue. It is not enough to know what is right. It is also necessary to desire to do right. Desire, in turn is directed to a large extent by imagination. This is why books are so important for moral education. They inspire a love of goodness. The dramatic nature of stories enables us to 'rehearse' moral decisions, strengthening our solidarity with the good. But if the desire to do right is not developed at an early age our other efforts to teach values to children won't bear much fruit." How stories help moral formation How do stories help to encourage character? The authors suggest that stories do it in four ways. First, stories provide codes of conduct. They acquaint us with the ideals by which people in our society hope to live, values such as honesty, courage and kindness and second, they offer us good examples of people trying to live by those standards. Third, stories help to broaden the mind. Mark Twain writes: "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness… broad, wholesome, charitable views cannot be acquired, by vegetating in one's little corner of the earth." It is the same with books. They give us a bigger picture of the world and its inhabitants. The authors say: "While sitting safely at home we get to meet people in different lands and different centuries. We also get to meet people of different types. One result is that we become better judges of character. By meeting certain character types in stories we are better prepared for the day when we will meet that type in person. A young person who reads widely gets more than the pleasure of plot and setting; he or she gets an introductory course in character studies. But acquaintance with a wide variety of 'types', important as it is, is only the beginning. With some of the characters we meet in stories, we form a much deeper relationship than acquaintance. We enter imaginatively into their lives. We form a bond of empathy and even identity. And psychologists tell us that no other factor is more crucial to moral development than empathy. The ability to see and feel things as others see and feel them is the key that unlocks our prison house of self-absorption. We sometimes forget that the first gift of a story is transport. The story takes us somewhere. More important, it takes us out of ourselves. To enter a story we must leave ourselves behind, and this, it may be argued, is what is needed to get a proper perspective on ourselves. The willingness to let go of self-concern is a pre-requisite for both moral health and mental health." Fourth, stories help us to make sense out of our lives. The authors explain: "A plot. A purpose. A sense that our struggles and sufferings have meaning. The supreme gift of stories is their reassurance that these can be found. By giving us a larger vision a story may help us find meaning in experiences that might otherwise seem chaotic or pointless. Because there are many more things that don't make sense to them, children need this reassurance every bit as much as adults." Finally, stories also help to make sense of morality. The authors again: "How well do motives for virtuous behaviour hold up without the sense that there is something like a plot in our lives? Not well at all. If life is 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,' then it doesn't really matter how one behaves. But to feel that one has been given a role to play in a meaningful story, and that one the has the chance of playing one's part well – that is a considerable source of motivation…. The voyage from childhood to responsible adulthood is long, difficult and stormy. Good stories provide compass, chart and bearings for the journey." Books that build Character Written in 1994, Books that Build Character (Touchstone Books) provides a list of books with a brief introductory summary to each book for younger readers (4 to 8), middle readers (8 to 12) and older readers (12 and up) under the headings: picture books, fables and fairy tales, myths legends and folktales, sacred texts, books for holidays and holy days, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and fantasy and science fiction. A valuable resource for anyone who wishes to build a family, parish or school library. What other contemporary books would you add to the list? |
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