6.15.2010

A fairy tale... problem?

This post is, more or less, a place holder while I think about the strange phenomenon that I've witnessed last week into this for my Latin II exams.

Pleasantly pleased with myself, I came up with a great alternative to a traditional Latin final.  Instead of doing the 'nuts and bolts' of paradigms and all that jazz, I gave them 'The Emperor's New Clothes", translated in Latin of course.  To prep them for the type of assessment (after we had finished our last test of the year), we read through "The Three Little Pigs."

Only a small handful knew that story and even fewer have any idea what they are translating as I type this.

In fact, one of the only students who had heard this particular tale comes from a fairly traditional Asian home.

What has happened that an entire classroom hasn't heard two (I had previously thought) well known fairy tales that most kids will have heard growing up?

Is this a problem?

Do we have new fairy tales that I just found a niche market to publish in?

Or, are my darkest fears being confirmed that the reason that these kids don't know these tales is that their parents really didn't do a lot of reading to (and with) them growing up?

1 comment:

  1. I'm going to go with the latter. I'd guess kids these days grew up with and x-box controller in one hand and the dvd remote control in the other. Not trying to judge parenting or society, just trying to acknowledge the change. I remember my parents reading to me, but I also remember working at a video store where parents were 1. picking out stacks of movies to occupy the kids or 2. (and what should be a federally punishable offense) renting the movie for the book their child was to read for school.

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