My mother is a Pre-School/ Nursery teacher at St. Joseph's School in Haverhill, Ma. Its a small catholic school of only a couple hundred students in nursery to 8th grade. (I actually went there for 10 years.) Anyways, for my topic I want to research fairy tales in early childhood education, how they are taught, and how the students react to them. I know when I was a little kid I remember my mom reading fairy tales and nursery rhymes to me, and watching all the Disney movies with my sister and all that fun stuff. However, what I did not know that I found out while I was talking to my mother, is that she used to change the endings to the stories so that I wouldn't get scared! ME scared? pshttt.. My mom teaches three and four year olds, and although she doesn't teach them fairy tales, she does teach them students nursery rhymes. My mom told me that when she reads them the story of the old lady who lived in a shoe, at the point in the rhyme when the old lady "whips" her children to bed, my mom will casually change it to "kiss" her children to bed. Her students have no idea that a change was made and no one gets scared or nervous. I don't know about you guys, but if I was whipped to bed, I would not be happy and probably be scared to go to bed... As for the fairy tales, another woman my mom works with who teaches Pre-School (4-5 years old) has "Fairy Tale Week". She mostly teaches her students about the Three Little Pigs and the importance of building a strong house and helping out others. Yet, the big bad wolf sometimes scares the kids, so at the end of the tale, instead of the wolf eating the pigs, she changes it to that the wolf becomes friends with the little pigs and has dinner with them! I thought that was funny.
Something else I found interesting is that she doesn't even tell the story of Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood anymore because they terrify the kids to the point where some even cry. How crazy is that? My mom thinks its because of how strongly kids today are told never to talk to strangers or wonder off on their own, yet when my mom was little, she was told all these stories, even the scary ones. She even told me that she thought they were scary, but she handled it and they told them in school anyways. Does this mean that kids today are too sheltered? Or is this just the way our world has become, that teaching children about scary things just isn't an acceptable thing anymore because kids of this young age simply can't grasp onto the idea that not everything is good? These are questions that I will hopefully answer in my paper. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? If so, feel free to add in!
Even this version of the Three Little Pigs has yet another alternate ending!
