When we give some readings to children, we are not particular about a message that the book contains. Certainly there exist universal ethics but there are also cultural differences of thoughts and values, and we think what we can learn from a book is not only what the author is trying to convey.
For example in a story that an animal was killed because of his careless action, which had been originated in his kindness, if only a teaching that “Wisdom helps us survive and foolishness makes us suffer” is emphasized (of course the teaching itself may be true), the virtue to be considerate to others might be neglected. In addition, a solution described in a story may not only the one. A book may depict how people become happy by sharing each other. While we learn from it how to behave in the society, we can still think of many other ways to make peace.
Actually, we have found some interesting writings of children who joined our reading program. This time we aimed to let children experience various books and didn’t talk deeply about what we can learn from the book. But when they thought they learned something, they wrote down their ideas.
“Swimmy” written by Leo Lionni is one of the books we introduced to children this time. Some teachings can be learned from Swimmy, such as an importance of cooperation and to be brave. One child was writing that “this story teaches us to respect each other, not to discriminate.” Sure enough, only Swimmy had a different color from other fish but because of it, he played a very significant role to be an eye and made their strategy successful.
We can see what one feels and learns varies even from the same book. Some stories like Aesop fables usually put a summary in the end, saying that this episode teaches this… but not only that, we wish children would experience many stories with wide, flexible viewpoint.
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