Storytelling

Why must studying history involve remembering a procession of dates, they are numbers and they all look the same and is it really important to remember that something happened on a certain date rather than what it happened before and after?

My daughter posted this comment on Facebook recently as she was studying for a history ‘interrogation’ on European History, in Italian. In the typical fashion of a visual learner, history as a subject at school is not her strong suit, she loves the stories but finds the details difficult.

It occurred to me that history is recalled in one of two (or perhaps more) ways. For some people the dates matter, they provide a structure to order things by. For others it is the sequence, not the actual dates, which matters. These people are the storytellers. Time may be a fluid concept for them but the details of the stories are readily remembered, one leading to the next.

For generations storytelling was the way that wisdom, life lessons and history was passed from one generation to the next. In some cultures this continues today. School based education tends to focus on the details; remembering the dates and being able to recall them often takes a higher priority (and value) than ‘the story’. Will the push to ‘educate’ children in indigenous cultures where storytelling and the traditional culture is strong make their life ‘better’? *

Storytelling also provides an avenue for linking events in ways other than a strictly time sequenced order, for seeing the bigger picture. At a time when information can be accessed almost instantly, my feeling is that seeing the bigger picture and drawing the details and messagge together may be of more value in the long term. Which come to think of it, is a theme which also pops up in Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the World. 

*To see more on this idea visit Schooling the World