Awakening the Moral Imagination

I've started reading Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian. I can't remember where I heard about this book, but I was so intrigued that I went online and ordered a copy. It arrived this week. There are six chapters, and I'll do a separate post as I read each one.

Chapter 1 - Awakening the Moral Imagination (Much of ch 1 is posted here.)

Stories are valuable because they say what statements can't. "Stories capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, where characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong or heroes and villians contest the very fate of imaginary worlds." Fantasy stories can help us to retain our sense of the mysteriousness of life. College professors have discovered that ethics and moral character can't be learned from lessons that define what they are, and give practical examples. "Instead, a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination."

In the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, children see that "appearances can be deceptive," and that "unless virtue is present in a person she will not be able to find, appreciate, or embrace virtue in another."

Through fantasy and fairy tales, children can imagine themselves in the hero's shoes, making choices and living with the consequences--all from the safety of a book. Through stories, virtues cease to be dry facts and take on a life of their own. Values can be relative and picked up or discarded at will, but virtues are permanent and absolute. If a person has the virtue of courage, it will come forth in any situation, but a value can be rationalized away.

G.K. Chesterton's Education, or The Mistake About the Child is quoted; all 14 chapters are in Part Four in the book "What's Wrong With The World," which is online.
Chesterton said that modern lessons where teachers attempt to draw out beliefs and values to help children create and clarify their own values were deceptive because, even though they claimed that children were finding their own internal values without the coersion of an outside authority instilling virtue, yet by encouraging certain values and ignoring others, teachers were still exerting their authority. Fairy tales do a better job of instilling virtue because they can shape our character without being dogmatic and heavy-handed. They illustrate virtue in action.

(Dominion Family posted about this book in Aug 2007, but I heard or read about it somewhere else just a couple weeks ago. I wish I could remember where.)

All of the entries in this series:
1. Awakening the Moral Imagination
2. On Becoming a Real Human Child: Pinocchio
3. Love and Immortality in The Velveteen Rabbit and The Little Mermaid
4. Friends and Mentors in The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte's Web, Bambi
5. Evil and Redemption in the Snow Queen and Narnia
6. Heroines of Faith and Courage (and Conclusion)