Narrative Skills as Children We Must Learn

Narrative Skills

As children we must learn how to interact with the world we were delivered into. One type of children's education comes in the form of literary training. Children must learn to conceptualize meanings from a set of two dimensional objects as well as the story being read or told. Upon the surface this seems like a fairly straight forward process. However, as this article points out, when the process of learning is dissected it is definitely more complex than it may first appear. For example, it takes a high level of cognition to realize that a certain two dimensional object represents a three dimensional counterpart in the real world. Connecting the association between a two dimensional representation of a pig on a page and a living, breathing pig on a farm takes quite a bit of mental ingenuity.

This article highlights many of the subtle aspects and processes that occur during child development in regards to literary events. Literary events are events that require that a child, or even an individual, process abstract representations often found in books or other mediums to be able to function under culturally construed situations. For example, street signs tell individuals how to function under certain circumstances to ensure their safety as well as the safety of others. A stop sign can convey information by shape, color, and with four letters. Learning how to find meaning in such a situation is an important stage in childhood development in which the entire society could benefit from understanding the process and possibly facilitating such development in children.

Different Approaches

The author studied two different approaches or schools when conducting the investigation. The first group that was researched was the mainstream communities which were often composed of middle class families that were considered traditional in most aspects. This group was believed to make consistent use of bedtime stories in a nightly ritual. Primarily mothers would read to the children and interact with them in a way to facilitate the children decontextualizing various pieces of information. This form of learning is also central to many mainstream early education programs in which teachers ask students to provide feedback and guide students to pre-specified answers.

The other community of parents represents towns from neighboring communities in which are considered something less than mainstream. They are composed of individuals who have worked in textile mills or have lived off the land such as farmers for example. These communities have cultures that are specific to that individual community often with regional dialects and other characteristic that are unique to those groups. It was also mentioned that these groups placed no less emphasis on the importance of education. However, the children in these communities often performed worse in school than the counterparts in the more mainstream communities.

Towns Studied

The author found substantial differences between Roadville (non-mainstream) and Maintown (mainstream). For example, when a Roadville adult reads a book to the children they generally do not go beyond explain the literary event beyond the basic book reading. That is they don't place emphasis on the abstract material that the book is trying to convey. Other differences include such items as cooking without recipes as well as playing games without following the written instruction; or at least not following them closely.

Other difference was also witness in the children themselves. Children in Roadville often asked for any clarification for the reasons or meanings behind basic commands. For example, it was noted that when a young child was learning to play baseball that the adult utter a command such as loosen your arms. The child just accepted the command without any question about the intentions of the instruction or questions requesting feedback to determine whether they were performing the action correctly. On the contrary, the children in Maintown often tried to understand the motive or more fundamental reasons why they were commanded to do something. For example, if the child was asked to loosen up while trying to bat in a baseball game they might ask questions as to why they needed to do that or perhaps if they were doing the action correctly.