tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post1548180458848810249..comments2024-03-27T06:42:26.250-07:00Comments on Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: "Tales from India" - by Bali RaiKatherine Langrishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-8402770564664379012017-08-18T15:21:45.371-07:002017-08-18T15:21:45.371-07:00It sounds like a wonderful book - I wonder if I ca...It sounds like a wonderful book - I wonder if I can get it in ebook? Sue Bursztynskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09362273418897882971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-72797004250499404542017-08-18T14:38:22.467-07:002017-08-18T14:38:22.467-07:00Thanks for your interesting post. To the best of m...Thanks for your interesting post. To the best of my knowledge, though,fairy tales from *any* nation do not currently form much if any part of the English school curriculum. It's a shame your little Turkish little boy could not tell a Turkish fairy tale: but I don't think the issues Bali addresses in this post, or indeed in his book, are questions of integration. You can indeed have two homes and it's good to have stories from both of them available in a child-friendly format. I'm looking forward very much to reading these! Katherine Langrishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12529700103932422873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-16629030044244722272017-08-18T08:18:26.491-07:002017-08-18T08:18:26.491-07:00School cannot and should not attempt to cover all ...School cannot and should not attempt to cover all facettes of life. Teaching about many different cultures would be too great of a challenge for both the curriculum and the teacher. Especially with fairy tales I can see the difficulties since it is easier to for the teacher to focus on and easier for the children to understand, one subtype of fairy tales and in Europe that would be the European Fairytale as defined by Max Lüthi. (However Indian fairy tales especially are very similar to their European cousins and could likely be integrated into a curriculum without much ado) That said our current approach to teaching culture seems very oldfashioned. While in earlier decades it made sense to focus on the one predominant culture in a country, because 90% of the class would belong to that culture, but when half or even the majority of the class belong to so called "minorities" that approach becomes flawed.<br /><br />I had a subject in elementary school. It was called "Heimat- und Sachkunde. It was meant to teach the students about their surroundings, before secondary schools would delve into geography and history of the wporld (or at leasrt Europe). Heimat means "home". We learned about my home. Our village, our region, our Bundesland. But my home wasn' the home of the boy who moved over from Saxony, a Bundesland that just a few years prior had belonged to a different country and who some children were not allowed to play with for that reason. It wasn't the home of the circus girl who had joined us for a few months and who almost none of us were allowed to play with. It wasn't the home of the boy from Italy. It was the home of the boy from Turkey. But he knew he also had a different home where his grandparents lived. They learned about the culture the now lived in, but they didn't learn about their home. Even then I understood that this wasn't fair. Perhaps the attempt was to make them feel at home in our village, but looking at the grades they got and their general disinterest in the subject, that attempt wasn't very successful.<br /><br />In 9th grade I joined a project meant to help elementary school children from other countries learn German. Most of them were Turkish, this was before the refugee rush. One year we decided to do a project with the group about fairy tales. We picked a few standard Grimm tales, but also wanted to include fairy tales from the cultures the children came from. To our shock barely a child could tell us one. A few may just have been too shy or too unsure about their German skills, but many honestly didn't know any. It was only then that I realized that many immigrants not only didn't learn about their home in Heimat-und Sachkunde, they didn't learn about their home at home. And despite what some perhaps well-meaning, but misinformed individuals might think: Being removed from your native clture does not make you integrate into the "main" culture faster. Those children were not at home in their parent's birth country, but they were not at home in Germany either. They only were in our project in the first place because they had difficulties learning the language. Teaching children, both immigrants and natives about the culture that other children in the class, isn't an eexcuse for immigrants not to adapt to a life in the country that can hopefully one day become their home, it encourages a mutual understanding and helps the students understand that you don't have to choose one over the other. Like the boy from Turkey you can have two homes.Juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16990100281865596375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-38721287573221897662017-08-17T04:32:08.677-07:002017-08-17T04:32:08.677-07:00I shall buy this! The first second-hand book I rem...I shall buy this! The first second-hand book I remember buying for myself, age about 10, was Romila Thapar's Indian Tales, from a bookshop in Broadstairs...Jane Stempnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-33188823386427125442017-08-17T03:08:52.735-07:002017-08-17T03:08:52.735-07:00Totally intriguing! Will definitely seek out your ...Totally intriguing! Will definitely seek out your tales. I remember my eyes being opened by my Indian boyfriend years ago to just a tiny fraction of India's literary heritage & being so shocked I'd never heard any of these stories before. Rowena Househttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11548957772863528477noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4950999049789394042.post-37732115880636929572017-08-17T02:18:39.023-07:002017-08-17T02:18:39.023-07:00Totally fascinating to hear about the problems Bal...Totally fascinating to hear about the problems Bali had to overcome to make these tales accessible and relevant for today - especially re women - and I look forward to reading them.Pauline Francishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02028713184925768005noreply@blogger.com