Exploring Education with/in “Little Red Riding Hood”

Erica Hateleye: erica.hateley@qut.edu.au t: @ejhateley

February, 2015

Leray, Little Red Hood (2011)

Lecture Plan

Fairy Tales as an Educational Genre

LRRH and the transition into literary culturePerrault

The Brothers Grimm

What LRRH teaches and howNarrative and narration

Social values

LRRH as a pretext for contemporary youth literaturePicture books

Film / Comic books / Middle-years fiction / YA novels / Applications for tablets & smart phones

Fairy Tales in the Contemporary ClassroomNarrative / Narration / Space & Place / Gender / Agency

Primary / Lower Secondary / Upper Secondary

Why LRRH?

“Obviously, this tale is still the most popular and certainly the most provocative fairy tale in the Western world. Why? Simply put, because it raises issues about gender identity, sexuality, violence, and the civilizing process in a unique and succinct symbolic form that children and adults can understand on different levels.” (Zipes 343)

The tale has many variants (but hasn’t been fully Disneyfied)

It features a child protagonist—a child with agency, whose actions and decisions have consequences

Theory & Practice / Curriculum & Pedagogy

Shulman defines pedagogical content knowledge as that “which goes beyond knowledge of subject matter per se to the dimension of subject matter knowledge for teaching […] the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others” (9).

As teachers, we need to understand what is significant or meaningful about a field, and how to help our students understand that.

Ideally, our students will also use new understanding to make meaning in their own lives.

Fairy Tales as an Educational Genre

Fairy tales existed orally for centuries before being written down and published; as such, they are part of a folk narrative tradition whose purpose is both entertainment and education—a vessel for the transmission of desirable social values:

“Although fairy tales are certainly not solely responsible for the acculturation of children, they are an integral part of the complex layering of cultural stories and influences that affirm and perpetuate cultural norms. […] Fairy tales contribute to the formation of the boundaries of agency, subjectivity, and anticipated rewards. They are powerful cultural agents that tell us how to be.” (Parsons 135-136)

Fairy tales also serve as powerful tools for the symbolic or unconscious exploration of issues which may frighten or overwhelm individual readers if confronted directly:

“By dealing with universal human problems, particularly those which preoccupy the child’s mind, these stories speak to his budding ego and encourage its development, while at the same time relieving preconscious and unconscious pressures.” (Bettelheim 6)

The transition into literary culture:

Charles Perrault (1697)

“The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stop and listen to wolves” (Perrault 12)

“gobbled her up” (13)

Moral: “not all wolves / Are exactly the same. / Some are perfectly charming” (13)

Overtly coded as a narrative about sexuality, as befits Perrault’s intended audience of late seventeenth-century courtiers. Red’s naïveté does not save her from violence—the gendered and sexual politics of this tale likely bother us today, but the suggestion that Red should have been better prepared for her journey into the world resonates.

Characters here are understood from the outside—by their actions and appearances.

(Trans. Maria Tatar, 1999)

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1812)

“don’t stray from the path” (Grimm 14)

“Little Red Cap had no idea what a wicked beast he was, and so she wasn’t in the least afraid of him” (14)

“A huntsman happened to be passing by” (15)

“Never again will you stray from the path and go into the woods, when your mother has forbidden it” (16)

Less explicitly coded by way of sexuality (although that meaning is still present). Here, the addition of literal and symbolic parental figures—along with injunctions and rescues—is in keeping with the Grimms’ intended audience of middle-class, literate householders and children in the early nineteenth century.

This version narrates characters’ thoughts (interiority), and thus models self-regulating and motivated individuals.

A second story, appended to the tale, reassures us that Red has learnt her lesson.

What the Perrault-Grimm LRRH teaches…

“The Perrault and the Grimm versions became the classical stories of Little Red Riding Hood and have served as the models for numerous writers of both sexes throughout the world who have either amplified, distorted, or disputed the facts about the little girl’s rape” (Zipes 349)

The attack on Red may be read as rape, or on a spectrum of violence or violation (often contemporary children’s versions use a more general “stranger danger” logic)

“both Perrault and the Brothers Grimm remained intent on sending a moral message, and they did so by making the heroine responsible for the violence to which she is subjected” (Tatar 6)

Symbolic narrative:The risks of going out into the world on one’s own;

Not heeding cautions / rules;

Threats from strangers, regardless of their appearance;

Participating in a conversation without attending to the responses (or the rhetorical situation).

Address learning from experiences—Perrault seeks to teach his reader; the Grimms teach their reader and their protagonist (who thus models an ideal learning).

LRRH as a pretext for contemporary youth literature:

Has a small number of key characters, settings, and plot-points, allowing for huge variation with high recognition

Is present across media, genres, and age-ranges

The “bare essentials” for LRRH

CHARACTERS: girl, wolf, grandmother(?)maybe mother and woodsman

SETTINGS: woods, grandmother’s housemaybe home

PLOT POINTS: travelling through woods to grandmother’s house, first encounter with the wolf (do the “wrong” thing), second encounter with wolf (“punishment”)

maybe direct instruction from mother, rescue by woodsman

The moral coding of the Perrault-Grimm text—that the girl must be punished, and is responsible for her own mistreatment—is less fixed in contemporary youth literature. This is important, because it tells us that a single plot does not entail a single moral or social meaning.

To place a child (especially a girl) in a red cloak at the centre of your story is to call up a long history of tellings and retellings of LRRH

Nonetheless, it is a story deeply concerned with the consequences of decisions made by child characters. And, as we know from Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility!

Fairy Tales in the Contemporary Classroom

Narrative / Narration / Space & Place / Gender / Agency

Primary / Lower Secondary / Upper Secondary

Introducing or reminding students of fairy tales gives them a sense of cultural knowledge and shared reference points.

Engaging with multiple versions of a story may help students:

“to develop tools of literary understanding such as comparing and contrasting the new and old stories; being sensitive to setting, plot, and characterization; and understanding the concepts of point of view and sequel” (Sipe 20)

Recommended reading: Bourke (2008) on his experiences embedding a critical literacy approach to fairy tales in his first-grade classroom.

Narrative / Storycharacter & story elements (key characters; home/away/home, or the Hero’s journey: separation, initiation, return)

Can be used to learn about and explore narrative sequencing

Can be used to compare different versions of a story—which cards and/or how many cards do we need to reproduce different versions?

Can be used as the basis for children to write their own fairy tales using traditional elements

Can be used to explore other stories – e.g. who is “the wolf” in a story where there isn’t a literal wolf?

And, students can take elements (such as characters or settings) from the traditional tales to tell entirely different kinds of stories…

7-8 year olds explore fairy-tale narrative structures. 2015.

Scieszka, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (1992)

Narration / Voice

From “Once upon a time” to “Let me tell you a story” — Exploring first and third-person narration

A powerful teaching and learning exercise can be the rewriting of a fairy tale (sometimes even just a paragraph or two) as a first-person narrative

Aids students’ linguistic and literary understanding of how narration shapes readers’ experiences and perspectives

Undertaking a comparative version of this exercise—rewriting Perrault and Grimm in the first person will help students explore the implications of external versus interior depictions of characters

Often students will choose Red as their first-person narrator

An extension of such activities is the familiar “tell the story from another character’s perspective” (Mother, the Wolf, Grandmother, Woodsman, someone else entirely)

Illustration

The child “should be given the opportunity to slowly make a fairy tale his own by bringing his own associations to and into it. This, incidentally, is the reason why illustrated storybooks, so much preferred by both modern adults and children, do not serve the child’s best needs. The illustrations are distracting rather than helpful.” (Bettelheim 59)

In our strongly visual culture, this claim seems out-dated and wrong-headed…

Engaging with the visual texts and cultures of fairy tales can empower students to understand the complex relationships between words and pictures in the making of narrative meaning, and also to understand themselves as potential collaborators with others, or individual creators: joining the long cultural conversation that is the fairy-tale tradition.

And, of course, by engaging with visual textual elements, we offer equal opportunity to our students who may come from many different language communities, or have different levels of literacy attainment!

Wordless LRRH texts

Serra, Rotkäppchen (2011)

Tripp, “Little Red Riding Hood” (2014)

Gustave Doré (1867)

Walter Crane (1875)

Arthur Rackham (1909)

Jessie Wilcox Smith (1911)

Words & Pictures

Polish teaching project—“Around the Little Red Riding Hood” (2013)—which connected English language instruction, fairy tales, illustration, and dramatic performance. (Starz)

children may be asked to produce their own illustrations; with increasing levels of self-reflexivity about visual codes as we progress up through the years

Children may be asked to produce their own verbal text (oral or written) to accompany illustrations

Urban LRRHs

Ekman, Rødhatten og Ulven (1985)

Frisch, The Girl in Red (2012)

Moon, Little Red Riding Hood (1983)

Reading One’s Own “Woods”

After shared exploration of different types of spaces and places in LRRH stories, students use drawings or photography to identify the safe and unsafe spaces in their own communities

Connects with what Morgan et al. (2014) describe as “place-conscious pedagogies”

Students can use these photos or illustrations to retell LRRH set in their own community, or to tell stories about their own lives. Or, indeed, to start with the template of LRRH and then move onto their own stories.

Works Cited:Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1976. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.

Bourke, Ryan T. "First Graders and Fairy Tales: One Teacher's Action Research of Critical Literacy." The Reading Teacher 62.4 (2008): 304-312.

Ekman, Fam. Rødhatten og Ulven. Oslo: Cappelen, 1985.

Frisch, Aaron. The Girl in Red. Illus. Roberto Innocenti. Mankato: Creative Editions, 2012.

Grimm, Brothers. "Little Red Riding Cap." Trans. Maria Tatar. The Classic Fairy Tales. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 1999. 13-16.

Leray, Marjolaine. Little Red Hood. 2011. Trans. Sarah Ardizzone. London: Phoenix Yard Books, 2013.

Moon, Sarah (illus.). Little Red Riding Hood. Mankato: Creative Education, 1983.

Morgan, Anne Marie, Barbara Comber, Peter Freebody and Helen Nixon. Literacy in the Middle Years: Learning From Collaborative Classroom Research. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia, 2014.

Parsons, Linda T. “Ella Evolving: Cinderella Stories and the Construction of Gender-Appropriate Behavior.” Children’s Literature in Education 35.2 (2004): 135-154.

Perrault, Charles. "Little Red Riding Hood." Trans. Maria Tatar. The Classic Fairy Tales. Ed. Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 1999. 11-13.

Scieszka, Jon. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. Illus. Lane Smith. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Serra, Adolfo. Rotkäppchen. 2011. Baar: Aracari, 2012.

Shulman, Lee S. “Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching.” Educational Researcher 15.2 (1986): 4-14.

Sipe, Lawrence R. "Using Transformations of Traditional Stories: Making the Reading-Writing Connection." The Reading Teacher 47.1 (1993): 18-26.

Starz, Dorota. "Around the Little Red Riding Hood." (2013). Available at: http://zszagnansk.edupage.org/files/ksiazka_Around_the_Little_Red_Riding_Hood.pdf

Tatar, Maria (ed.). The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 1999.

Tripp, David W. “Little Red Riding Hood." The Graphic Canon of Children's Literature. Ed. Russ Kick. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2014. 32-45.

Zipes, Jack (ed.). The Trials & Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1993.