By Mary Agidi

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Use the lessons you learned from these stories to comport yourself in society. Don’t steal, don’t lie, listen to your parents, love, and forgive one another.” These were the words of Chief Yemi Ogunyemi to children who participated in his weekly storytelling session featured on the National Television Authority (NTA) Network.

 Children have soft and tender hearts that are malleable; they are impressionable. Hence, what they grow up seeing, hearing, and learning shapes their ways of living and behaviour in society. This is corroborated by the Bible verse in Proverbs 22:6, which says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

 The Yoruba adage, “Trim the branches of an Iroko tree while it is young; if it matures completely, it cannot be bent again,” also emphasises the essence of catching them young by instilling morals, principles, respect, norms, beliefs, and traditions in them as they grow into adulthood.

 Before the advent of Western education, where children are enrolled in schools for academic learning and simultaneously acquire societal ways of living and behaving, one way of teaching children morals and life lessons was through folklore, particularly folktales.

Folklore is the African way of passing intergenerational wisdoms and knowledge. According to Wikipedia, folklore is not something one typically gains from a formal school curriculum or studies in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration.

 Children in the 1980s and earlier had their fair share of enjoying tales from elders in the family. While some of these tales were fictional, others were real-life stories of ancient legends and heroes who had lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. Their life stories were transferred from one generation to another to impart wisdom, lessons and morals. Whether entertaining or dreadful, these tales taught children valuable lessons from the lifestyles of the characters featured.

In a typical Yoruba storytelling setting, an elder would sit surrounded by children, often in the evening and especially under moonlight. Children eagerly anticipated the moment of ÀLÓ (storytelling). Tales like “Tortoise’s Craftiness,” “Iroko and Oluwere,” “Fishermen and Iyemoja (River Goddess),” “Princes’ Fight for the Throne,” and “Warriors Who Fought Demons” were used to instill discipline and morals in the children of those days.

 Nowadays, the narrative has changed. Children, especially those from elite and educated families, are raised with modern, digitized entertainment. Even those in rural areas are no longer entertained or educated with tales told by elders. This practice has gradually gone into extinction, along with the transfer of culture and traditions.

 Chief Ogunyemi’s effort to inculcate morals and good values in children through storytelling demonstrate its lasting impact. The participating children displayed rapt attention and eagerly shared the lessons they learned from each story.

 Each story featured different characters whose roles in the narrative were analyzed. These stories evoked various emotions in the children—empathy, fear, compassion, pity, love, hard work—and taught them about karma and forgiveness. These emotions, without a doubt, would help shape their reasoning and behaviour in life.

It is undeniable that the level of moral decadence today is significantly higher compared to decades ago when storytelling by elders was prevalent. The rate of criminality among young adults today raises questions about their upbringing and whether they were taught to be conscientious and humane.

In a chat with The Hope, a 45-year-old civil servant, Mr. Damilola Tagba, shared how he learned his mother’s dialect through storytelling. According to him, his maternal grandmother, who hailed from a community in Ondo South, would tell them stories while staying with them in Akure. She narrated these stories in their dialect, which helped him learn to speak it to some extent.

 He testified that storytelling taught him valuable life lessons, including logic, wisdom, forgiveness, love, hard work, and discipline, which shaped his behaviour while growing up.

Similarly, a 56-year-old widow, Mrs. Foluke Ajomole, affirmed that storytelling by elders was used to instill good habits in children and discourage bad ones. She said: “My father was a community chief and polygamist with a large family compound. There were elderly women from my father’s extended family in the compound. Every night, we would gather at the centre of the house to listen to different tales from these old women. Some of these tales were accompanied by songs, which we would chorus as taught by the storyteller. It was a fun-filled experience with lessons about good and bad behaviour.”

 In addition to teaching morals, storytelling served as a means of passing down cultural norms, beliefs, values, and ethics from one generation to another. It also helps children think critically and creatively, especially during the question-and-answer period.

Pathetically, many dialects, proverbs, and traditions of African communities are becoming extinct due to the absence of folklore settings like storytelling moments. For instance, family praise poetry, called Oriki in Yoruba is being transferred through storytelling. Today, it is rare to find a 25-year-old who can chant their family Oriki.

 The Ondo State Chairperson of the Nigerian Association of Women Journalists, Mrs. Tola Gbadamosi, highlighted the advantages of storytelling, including the preservation of cultural heritage and traditions. She lamented the absence of storytelling in today’s society, attributing it to the dominance of technological gadgets that have replaced storytelling moments.

Additionally, 43-year-old Mrs. Fola Adewale noted that storytelling promoted unity. She recalled that children in the past would quickly forget misunderstandings once they were gathered for storytelling. She expressed sadness over the gradual extinction of cultural heritage and traditions, noting that today’s children can no longer speak local languages fluently.

The neglect of storytelling can be attributed to technological advancements. Digitalization has replaced many traditional activities. For instance, children who were once lulled to sleep with songs are now exposed to virtual content and cartoons from infancy.

Furthermore, the overwhelming assignments from schools, coupled with parents’ busy schedules, leave little time for storytelling.

 A research report titled “The Use of Stories as Moral Education for Young Children”, published in the International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, stated that “children need to learn about reasoning, and stories can be an effective way to introduce values to young children and create space for them to exercise reasoning. Through examples in the stories, they are able to reflect on their lives.”

 The researchers recognized that stories have the potential to contribute significantly to the moral education of children and adults by providing role models and opportunities to discuss moral dilemmas.

Given the significant impact of storytelling on the intellectual, psychological, and moral development of children, researchers analyzed the role of teachers in inculcating moral lessons during school hours to bridge the gap left by traditional storytelling settings.

 Although schools use storytelling as a pedagogic tool for language learning, particularly in reading and writing, stories are believed to serve as a vehicle for moral education. Through storytelling, children learn their own religious, social, and cultural values as well as those of others. They question, think, and choose how to act, learning to be responsible moral persons. However, the emotional depth provided by traditional storytelling settings remains incomparable.