The educational significance of fairy tales

According to the usual understanding, fairy tales are told to children and are all made up. Actually, it is not. What is made up will not be liked by children. Fairy tales are loved by children because they coincide with their innate collective unconsciousness.

The questions raised by fairy tales are all life problems that people from generation to generation will face one day: fear, death, injustice, despair, finding a partner from childhood to adulthood, and pursuing the meaning of life ... Fairy tales are rich in meaning and emotion, far more comprehensive, richer and deeper than literacy textbooks and textbooks on "reality".

Freud believed that adults can safely express their worries, guilt and wishes in a symbolic way in their dreams. Fairy tales, like dreams, help children vent their emotions such as anxiety, fear and hatred.

Fairy tales often have evil power, which is the projection of children's inner "evil" impulse and will eventually be overwhelmed by children's desire to learn well. Psychologist Bruno. Bethleem said: "Those who abandon traditional folk fairy tales think that if there are monsters in the stories told to children, these monsters must be very friendly;" These people ignore the monsters that children are most familiar with and worried about, the monsters inside themselves. This monster sometimes persecutes them. Don't talk about the monster in the child, hide it in the unconscious, and the child can't weave the fantasy he knows from the fairy tale images around him. Without these fantasies, children can't better understand their inner monster and don't know how to control it. As a result, the child can do nothing about his anxiety, which is far less than the fairy tales he has heard that give these anxieties concrete shapes and show how to defeat monsters. If our fear of being eaten takes the form of a witch, we can get rid of it by burning her on the fire. "

Modern parents are unwilling to admit that their children have such a savage desire to kill. These parents believe that by exposing their children to stories about kindness and rationality, their children can become kind and rational people. This kind of understanding is all wet. Bethleem warned that children would not be able to express their terrible impulses if they were not exposed to barbaric and cruel fairy tales. Hearing these bad things in fairy tales, children will find that he is not the only one who wants to do these bad things, thus creating a sense of relief. The monsters and taboo behaviors in fairy tales make the child feel the beauty of human nature from the opposite side, although he also feels the evil wishes in fantasy. The punishment of the monster at the end of the story can help the child reduce his guilt and self-blame, and make him feel that his evil impulse has been eliminated.

Fairy tales can not only vent negative emotions, but also enable children to acquire human wisdom, social customs and various virtues on the unconscious level. Many personality psychologists have analyzed the symbolic theme of fairy tales. They pointed out that although children can't consciously understand the meaning of these symbols, they play an important role in casting children's confidence and hope for the future and their will and determination to overcome difficulties. Because the folk wisdom contained in fairy tales has been deeply rooted in children's unconsciousness, even if children grow up later, these unconscious contents will still exist in their hearts.

Fromm believes that fairy tales explain social customs in a way that children can understand, although children must grow up to fully understand these customs.

Fairy tales tell children some valuable values and possible cheating, trampling and attacking behaviors in human life in symbolic and metaphorical ways, and teach children how to deal with similar evil behaviors. When children listen to or read fairy tales, they will get these lessons on the unconscious level, and these lessons will be deeply buried in their hearts. When encountering similar situations, these lessons will automatically prompt children to react unconsciously, so they will benefit a lot (even when they grow up). These unconscious lessons may also be an important prerequisite for conscious value judgment and moral understanding on the conscious level.

Fairy tales are of great development value to children and educational significance to teachers and parents. Fairy tales are very compatible with children's spiritual world, and we should provide children with more opportunities to contact fairy tales.

In fact, children like fairy tales very much, and we adults may be tired of talking about them, but children often ask us to retell some fairy tales that they are already familiar with. If you say a wrong detail or pronounce a wrong word, those children will be busy helping you correct it. It is with such enthusiasm that they repeatedly experience these stories, projecting and integrating their love, hate, anxiety, worry, guilt, kindness and so on into the creatures in fairy tales. Fairy tales help them express their feelings, gain wisdom and see hope. Children who have heard Andersen's fairy tale The Ugly Duckling know that no matter how ugly you are, as long as you are a swan egg, you will become a beautiful white swan one day. This belief gives children a lot of beautiful dreams and strength to face the difficulties, setbacks and troubles in their growth.