What should we read to our students?

Traditional tales were not originally written for young audiences. As a result, we find a high content of sex, violence and sadism in them.

Thus, in versions such as "Hansel and Gretel", it is the mother of the children who forces her husband to abandon them in the forest due to food shortages. The same thing happens in "Snow White", as it is her mother, and not her stepmother, who wants to end the life of the beautiful young girl because of sexual rivalry. Finally, the mother is forced to dancing to death wearing heated iron shoes. In "Cinderella", the stepsisters, induced by their mother, cut their toes and heel to fit into the golden slippers. Some birds and the blood reveal the imposters, who are hardly punished, as their eyes are ripped by some pigeons. In the traditional version of "Rapunzel", the young girl is given to a witch by her parents in exchange of food. The witch locks her up in a tower, but a prince discovers her and climbs up every night using her long braids. The result of these visits is Rapunzel’s pregnancy, who later on gives birth to twins.

Little by little, these texts were adorned and sometimes censored from edition to edition, since they reflected the extreme harshness of life in the Middle Ages. The authors of these stories had to change several details of the originals, in order to satisfy the demands of the bourgeois public.

Although today's children know about the existence of evil, death, violence... These stories are too cruel to be shown to the students in their original versions, because rather than presenting the reality to our students, we run the risk of fostering these attitudes.

However, the versions we know present to our children have a lack of realism and show a fantasy world where there is always a happy ending. Therefore, we may make our children believe that if they behave well and do everything they should do, the result will always be success and happiness.

Perhaps the best option is a mixture of both versions. A version which promotes the values ​​presented in the adapted stories, but at the same time prepares our children to face the reality of life found in the original tales.

Learning with music

Education experts have looked for teaching methods to help children learn in an innovative way when attempting to speak English. This is how Carolyn Graham’s Jazz Chants arose. These are poems that use jazz rhythms to illustrate English stress and intonation patterns. Jazz Chants provide an innovative and exciting way to improve our student's speaking and listening comprehension skills while reinforcing language structures. This method can also be used to help children learn the contents of the subjects taught in school in an easier and more effective way.

These songs are used as teaching methods because they have an easy and repetitive rhythm that encourages students to learn and improve their oral communication. By using these chants the teacher achieves more dynamic lessons that foster students to participate by clapping their hands, stamping their feet and moving their body. Jazz Chants may be use in any subject and with students of all ages. In advanced courses, we can ask them to create their own jazz chants from the contents taught in class. This promotes creativity, a sense of rhythm and communication among students. It also fosters the expectation of creating more and better songs. You can use jazz chants in different ways: to practice stress and rhythm, to help your students sound more natural when speaking English, to review important words and structures, to practice pronunciation...

In order to create a Jazz Chant we will choose an interesting topic for students. Then, we will select three words containing one, two and three syllables. The words we will use should be related to the subject we are going to teach, so the words to be used will be real language adapted to the students’ level. The words order should be the following: first the word with two syllables, then the one with three and finally the word with one syllable. This order will bring musicality to the song and will be the pattern to follow. Once created the song, we will put it into practice in the following way: first will sing the three words twice and students will clap their hands at the end of the pattern, after they will repeat the first two words twice, and finally, they will sing the pattern again. In the following video we can see how Carolyn Graham creates a Jazz Chant: 

Click to watch the video