The Death of Storytelling

During the time I’ve worked with adolescents, I’ve discovered a frightening dis-interest in reading or communicating experiences. I remember a high school student saying about Scriptures to me at one point that, “If it were a movie, I’d watch it.” Don’t get me wrong, I love film, but we can never permit it to replace literature.

Something else I’ve noticed as a disturbing trend is how adolescents have a horrible distaste for writing, or re-telling what has happened to them. Instead of using the ability to post photos or video of an event to assist others in experiencing their story, the desire to tell the story has been completely replaced by posting photos or video. The next generation has lost its desire to tell stories.

Now, I’m generalizing a great deal. I’m worked with and know many of that age who don’t fall into the problem of which I’m writing here. I’m speaking as a rule, though. Listen to the average middle school (or jr. high, depending on your locale) student when asked to write a story from their lives. Talk about a deer-in-headlights look.

What would the world look like if we lost the art of story telling? I don’t mean documentary recording, I mean story telling. Even the Scriptures were first primarily transmitted orally. I fear it is something that may die in our culture if we don’t do something to resuscitate it, and quickly.

I was grilling out with some family this weekend. While standing on my uncle’s deck, we became engaged in conversation with my uncle’s neighbor, who was also grilling out on his deck (don’t you just love suburbia?). This guy was a missionary, and had a million stories to tell. He said that his wife was a writer (just as I was about to offer my ghostwriting services) and planned to record his memoirs some day. I hope they do.

Or my grandfather on my wife’s side, who has tremendous war stories to tell, and who we may not have much longer. To have a life pass is not that tragic with the certainty that we will see that person again. But to lose the stories…our culture will suffer for that.

There is a private library where we live that has many letters and diaries and journals from those long since gone. Karen loves to go there and explore…she even did a paper on it in grad school. At first I thought it wasn’t really my thing, but how amazing to have those stories preserved.

Every life forever alters history, and irrevocably touches those around it. To honor that life by preserving its story must be the highest respect we can pay. If we lose our cultural aptitude for telling the story, we will have lost our link to our past, and, to overuse a cliche, be doomed to repeat it. We would also lose the fascination for telling fictional stories, one of humanity’s greatest creative endeavors. We would have lost so much, and it would be so difficult to regain.

What do we do to prevent this from happening? Well, the education system doesn’t seem to be working, so who knows. Perhaps spending time with people instead of working two jobs, or placing our elderly in nursing homes instead of listening to them. Whatever it is, we must do it quickly, or be forced to treat the literary casualties of a generation.

2 Comments

  1. great post… I think a factor in turning the students away from writing is the “creative book report” — no writing neccesary, they can use video, playact, make a poster, sew a doll… yes, ther’s a place for that, but I’ve seen it at many grades and classes for every report in the course!

  2. Good thoughts. I agree. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge advocate for using theatre as a teaching method, and the use of video and all other mediums…its just that I fear we’ve permitted them to completely replace the original concept.

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