THE POWER OF STORIES

Children love to feel amazement, wonder and tenderness as well as alarm, concern and suspense as they follow real life dramas. Once we realize this, who would offer our children anything less than development through joyful aliveness? Is there any comparison between the eyes of a child drafted into regimented minutia and a child captured by fascinating explorations? When we offer children the legacy of feeling most alive. deadening academics will yield to the life-enhancing stimulus to discover, embrace and express.

“Heart Wings: An Account of Children Learning through Heart-Centered Education” – Vicki Johnston

ARTERIES FOR LEARNING

Children often become restless during even a short elaboration of facts about history, science or culture. Yet, As indigenous peoples have known for centuries, the storyteller holds the children’s rapt attention. Tribal storytellers know a valuable secret about learning.  History, science and culture can ride on the cadence of an evocative tale. Do you know that buried in the symbols of ancient myths and legends, avant-garde scientists now find confirmation for discoveries about our pre-historic past? In addition, this time-honored way of teaching captures children’s attention for maximum absorption and retention of information. The Harmonies Way Teaching Stories with Art, emerged from the recognition of the power of stories, and continue to expand as remarkable realizations come to the fore.

STIMULATION OF THE IMAGINATION

There’s more to the power of an evocative tale. The living images of a good story stimulate a major artery  of intelligence–the imagination. Modern civilization has devalued childhood fantasy, casting it aside to attend the serious business of data-bit accumulation. Nonetheless, imagination is the vehicle for true genius. Brilliant minds don’t regurgitate. They reach into the fourth and most human part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, to envision new possibilities. The imagination bridges the gap between known reality and unknown potentials.

ENCODED SKILLS FOR ARTICULATION

But there’s more to appreciate in storytelling. Evocative narratives that share knowledge and stimulate the imagination also encode skill in articulation without laborious drills. It’s similar to the immersion in livingness that encourages the tiny child’s mastery of language. The brain’s processes are too complex to be confined to contrived drills. High interest in a well-written or told story expands vocabulary and the ability to master clauses and sub-clauses.

COMMUNING WITH HEART AND HEAD

There’s still more to the story. Like musical compositions with themes and sub-themes, stories can speak simultaneously to heart and head. The new scientific proofs of the consciousness in the heart speak to the importance of ethical overtones in the teach/learning environment. Accounts of the heart’s virtues such as compassion, courage, loyalty, perseverance and gratitude offer edifying models for harmonizing relationship complexities. Meaningful tales and the heart commune.

TO SPARK CREATIVITY

Since the first teaching story written in 1992, the Harmonies Way Stories have continued to reveal their multifaceted value at the Center for Living Ethics. The kingdoms of plants, animals and people breathed to life in stories, enliven pretend centers, plays, child creations and constructions, and the children’s own stories.

THEMES FOR RESEARCH AND DESIGN

The well-researched narratives for older children have grown to book length and include 10 or more lessons.  As thematic units they stimulate individual and colaborative research and project design as well as the creation of plays, songs and the children’s own stories.

THE MUTUALISM OF STORIES AND ART

Children have a choice as to what to do with their hands while listening to a story. They may work with beeswax or clay, or they may produce a drawing encouraged by the artwork that accompanies the tale. Children universally love to listen to stories and they love to draw. While civilization bypasses both art and the soul of the child by going straight to the cold shapes of letters, art strengthens fine motor co-ordination and prepares the hand for writing the child’s way — with the soulful evocation of shapes and colors that mean something to spiritual beings.

BALMS FOR BODY, MIND AND SOUL

As we look ever more deeply into this process it continues to reveal hidden layers of energetic benefit. The imposition of boring drill suppresses childhood exuberance and thwarts nature’s blueprints. Tests violate children’s health by poisoning vital organs and systems with cortisol. Conversely children’s relaxed high interest in a story, brings the heartbeat into coherence, bathes their bodies in beneficial hormones, and stimulates lively discussion.

The mother’s heart beats with intuition and insight to restore childhood to children. When the children once again gather around the skirt of the mother for their lessons, she will delight them with stories.