In Montessori education, fantasy stories are considered taboo. Since folktales are stories of fictional worlds, is it good or bad to read them aloud to children?
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Profile
Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.
Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. CEO of StudyX and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Works as a software developer and game designer. Father of two.
Folktales are music, the memory of humanity, and mathematics heard by the ear.
Hiro
Today I want to open the door to folktales. I’d like to invite you into the world of folktales.
Yati
You can’t hide that you’re a fan of Toshio Ozawa. [laughs] In Montessori education, we’re taught to choose picture books with “content grounded in reality.” Things like “a mouse wearing clothes” or “an elephant with big ears that can fly” should be avoided because children might think they’re real. Are folktales grounded in reality?
Hiro
That’s quite a blunt question to start with. I’m a self-proclaimed folktale researcher who informally studies the works of Professor Ozawa, a researcher of folktales and legends.
Yati
My apologies. So, are folktales grounded in reality?
Hiro
There’s a program called Folktale University. They’re not running lectures now, but they have handbooks and such, and you can study folktales academically. To give you the conclusion first: folktales “transcend reality.”
Yati
[laughs] What do you mean?
Hiro
So it’s not whether folktales are grounded in reality, but whether reality is grounded in folktales. Whether the essence of folktales is being preserved.
Yati
What do you mean?
Hiro
This is borrowed from Professor Ozawa, but “folktales are humanity’s cultural heritage of oral tradition.” Folktale research began around the end of the 19th century and apparently flourished as a discipline in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
Yati
I see. And then?
Hiro
A European named Max Lüthi studied the texts of European folktales and revealed characteristics of their narrative style: using the same words when the same scene appears, synchronizing time, and not narrating realistically. Professor Ozawa in Japan collected Grimm’s fairy tales from Germany and Japanese folktales, spending about 13 years carefully reading and analyzing about 60,000 Japanese folktales. As a result, he confirmed that Japanese folktales share these same characteristics. Additionally, from his experience translating folktales from around the world, he confirmed that folktales from Africa, China, Siberia, South America, and other regions share these features too.
Yati
I’d like to understand this commonality more concretely. Can you give a well known example?
Hiro
Let’s take Jack and the Beanstalk. First, “once upon a time, a poor widow lived with her son Jack. They had nothing left but a cow.” Then, “Jack’s mother told him to take the cow to market and sell it.” Clean and simple. You immediately know who the characters are and what the situation is.
Yati
What do you mean?
Hiro
It’s not a complicated story like “Jack had three siblings and they argued about who should sell the cow, and the mother was thinking about getting a job.” It’s told with a clean structure. So anyone listening can easily picture the scene. There’s no mishearing.
Yati
It’s mathematical.
Hiro
Exactly. “Poor” contrasts with “rich,” “down below” with “up above,” “Jack” with “the giant.” Everything is in clear opposition.
Yati
I never noticed that.
Hiro
So actually, folktales are “mathematics for the ears.”
Yati
I’m good at math, but I never noticed.
Hiro
Continuing the story: on the way to market, Jack meets a mysterious man who offers him magic beans in exchange for the cow. What are the chances of that happening?
Yati
[laughs]
Hiro
If he’d left five minutes earlier or later, he never would have met the man. This is “synchronization of time.” It’s convenient.
Yati
I see.
Hiro
Then his mother throws the beans out the window in anger, and by morning a giant beanstalk has grown up into the clouds. Does that happen?
Yati
[laughs]
Hiro
And then Jack climbs the beanstalk. The naming is simple too. Magic beans, beanstalk, Jack. Easy to remember.
Yati
That’s why listeners can remember it easily.
Hiro
Right. Here’s where the repetition comes in. Jack climbs the beanstalk the first time, sneaks into the giant’s castle, and steals a bag of gold. He comes home. Then he climbs the beanstalk a second time and steals a hen that lays golden eggs. He comes home. Then he climbs a third time and steals a golden harp. Each time, the giant wakes up and chases him, shouting “Fee, fi, fo, fum!” The same scene told with the same words, three times.
Yati
That’s “using the same words when the same scene appears.”
Hiro
Right. And at the end, Jack chops down the beanstalk, the giant falls, and Jack and his mother live happily ever after with their treasure. But there’s no vivid description of the giant hitting the ground, or blood, or anything graphic. The violence is passed over quickly.
Yati
This is “not narrating realistically.”
Hiro
Right. Another important thing: folktales start with “Once upon a time,” signaling “I’m about to start a folktale now, this is a made up story so please don’t take it too seriously.”
Yati
That’s kind.
Hiro
At the end of the story, it ends with phrases like “and they lived happily ever after.” In Grimm’s fairy tales, it’s a bit more elegant, ending with something like “And if they haven’t died, they’re living there still.” This signals the end of the folktale.
Yati
This is like “end of proof,” isn’t it?
Hiro
Right. Like “Q.E.D.”
Yati
So in the end it’s “a made up story,” but what happened to whether it’s grounded in reality or transcends reality?
Hiro
That’s why it’s mathematics. Mathematics is the abstraction of reality, right? Mathematics describes the universe, right? So folktales describe reality, and they transcend it.
Yati
I see! Did you realize that yourself? Is Professor Ozawa saying this?
Hiro
I’m saying it on my own. But no one considers folktales as mathematics. That’s why they get arbitrarily made into animations or embellished unrealistically. Those aren’t authentic folktales. I think they’re the type of fantasy that Maria Montessori was concerned about.
Yati
Not many people read folktales aloud with that level of understanding.
Hiro
Not many. More like zero. Many families do it for vague reasons like “it’s good for emotional education” or “it’s good for the brain.” The saving grace is that there’s still a habit of parents reading aloud to their children in their own voice. Apparently there are products now that project animations on the ceiling with a projector to put children to sleep.
Yati
I don’t have many memories of being read folktales, and when I became a parent, there were so many folktales I was learning for the first time. I really empathized with them and even cried. Like the Japanese folktale “The Mice’s Sumo.”
Hiro
I see. The time parents can read aloud to their children is only a few years in a lifetime, so I think we should treasure it more.
Yati
Right. I was surprised when you said the Japanese folktale “Straw Millionaire” explains the essence of Montessori education in a way children can understand.
Hiro
Did I say that?
Yati
Usually people interpret it as “even with just straw, if you keep trading, you can become wealthy.” What you said was, “The main character boy encounters environments where he can give everything he has at each moment, and through that, he can grow.”
Hiro
Did I say that?
Yati
You did! I was so convinced. Folktales are grounded in reality! Folktales are amazing! That’s what I thought.
Hiro
I don’t really remember that, but folktales are parables, so they’re also a medium for conveying various ways of thinking and lessons.
Yati
It makes you think you shouldn’t do bad things. Also, what I find fascinating is that things like the “Urashima Effect” are scientifically correct but counterintuitive and hard to understand in daily life, yet they appear in Japanese folktales, so Japanese people accept them readily. While Westerners struggle with quantum mechanics like “it’s in a state of superposition and you don’t know the contents until you observe,” Japanese people just accept “the big wicker basket, perhaps?” in the Japanese folktale “Tongue-Cut Sparrow.”
Hiro
Right. So there are two things I want to say here. In the original Grimm’s fairy tales, there are descriptions that modern readers find disturbing, like the stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit the glass slipper in Cinderella, or the wolf eating the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood. There’s a trend of changing these stories because they’re considered too cruel. But this ignores the fact that these stories have been passed down through many people’s mouths and ears over centuries. I think this forgets the essence that folktales speak to the true nature of life and are meant to pass on to future generations how humans should coexist with nature.
Yati
I see.
Hiro
Nature is harsh. Eat or be eaten. Everyone is equal. So I think it’s also a reflection of humanity’s increasing distance from nature.
Yati
In folktales, humans and animals are close enough to talk and communicate.
Hiro
The other thing is that folktales exist only during the time they’re being told.
Yati
Not “existing in books.”
Hiro
Right. Written text and oral narration for the ears are different things. When you transcribe oral narration into writing, it often feels boring when read with the eyes. But that’s because there are techniques so that listeners won’t mishear, so characteristics are easy to remember, and so scenes are easy to picture. That’s why there’s a lot of repetition and simple language is used frequently.
Yati
It’s similar to songs.
Hiro
Right. Professor Ozawa says folktales are music. He emphasizes the importance of voice and rhythm. And the message.
Yati
There are skilled and unskilled storytellers.
Hiro
I want to be careful about that too. When telling folktales, don’t act. Narrating plainly without emotion is considered refined.
Yati
I didn’t know that.
Hiro
Tell it as if you’re passing on a story you heard. The importance of folktales lies in the simplicity of their logical structure. As I said earlier, they’re “mathematics for the ears,” so any age is fine to start, but there’s something called “recursive structure of language” that needs to be acquired by around age 5. So until age 5, I think it’s better to read aloud authentic folktales. If the recursive structure of language isn’t acquired, there will be struggles with tasks related to linguistic logic. For example, in programming or writing, situations requiring multi level logical development will be difficult.
Yati
Can you give me a concrete example of recursive language structure that’s acquired by age 5?
Hiro
There’s a simple test called LEPS. In technical terms, it measures the development of prefrontal synthesis, or PFS. PFS is said to be the brain function that forms the foundation of language ability and imagination, and there’s a critical period for this development, reportedly before age 5.
Yati
So the foundation of language ability and imagination is determined by age 5.
Hiro
Right. As a concrete example of the test, it’s things like “Put the orange cup inside the green cup” or “Put the red cup on top of the blue cup.”
Yati
That sounds easy.
Hiro
Neurotypical children over 4 can pass this test with almost no problem. Many children with ASD score low regardless of age, showing delays in PFS development.
Yati
I see.
Hiro
PFS is the ability to freely combine multiple objects or scenes in your head, and it’s considered the foundation for advanced imagination, grammatical understanding, and creative thinking.
Yati
So real world experiences along with reading aloud become important.
Hiro
Ages 6 to 12 is a period of expanding imagination, so how you spend the 3 to 6 age period is important for laying that foundation. Especially whether there’s a rich language environment or not affects one’s entire life.
Yati
So we should start by reading folktales aloud?
Hiro
Yes. There are authentic and inauthentic folktales, so who retells them is important. Please read aloud stories retold by people who properly understand the function of folktales.
