The Truth About Stories

I've thought about the power of stories lately both from a positive and a negative point of view. I recently read Thomas King's The Truth About  Stories.  Originally delivered as CBC Massey Hall lectures in 2003, King makes a strong case for the power behind the dialectic of conversation and the oral tradition vs the autocracy often engendered by the Western written tradition. I don't entirely agree with his premise.  I don't think it's totally fair to western thought, but the idea of a conversation coming from a more humble place than the written law isn't lost on me.

To sum up the positive: story has the power to move people like research and data can't; in King's words: "The truth about stories is that that's all we are."

I believe I mentioned the story of an educational company's CEO in a previous post. I took a couple of colleagues to hear him share his story. The short version is that the head of this educational company barely scraped though high school and that feat was mostly due to his tenacity but also in part to teachers who understood that his *learning style was nontraditional. One of my colleagues found his story so inspiring that he vowed to use his educational modification platforms to differentiate for his struggling students. 

In my 3 year tenure as a curriculum consultant, I've often shared stories to try to motivate the educators I've worked with. I've shared my own stories -- my favourite is that of my grade 8 teacher who assured me that I'd fail high school English because my spelling was so atrocious.  My point in sharing this story is to motivate teachers to look beyond what they think they see before them in their classrooms.  

I've also told stories I've heard from others. I've shared both failures and successes.  But sometimes I worry that I'm becoming that guy. You know that guy: the one who's always sharing the same stories? That guy whom people dismiss as high on feeling but low on substance? 

That's the negative possibility of story-telling in my estimation.  It's easy to dismiss as unsubstantiated opinion; sugary anecdote not backed up with research or data.  It's especially easy to dismiss stories when they're closely connected to the ego of the teller. 

I was recently at a conference in which one of the speakers -- an internationally renowned educator -- peppered her presentation with constant references to her status, achievements and jet-setting.  One table of teachers with whom I was familiar started to tally the number of times that she dropped the fact that she was currently a superintendent.  How unfortunate that, for these teachers, her ego undermined what was otherwise a well-researched and powerful message. 

As usual, I don't believe that the truth about sharing research to practitioners is a matter of either/or.  I believe it's a both/and.   

Stories are powerful.  According to King, it's all we are.  I would add two things in the case of telling stories with a didactic purpose (to move practitioners forward in their thinking): one is that the teller of stories should have a greater, nobler goal that drives the story -- and, as mentioned above, her ego should be in check. It also goes without saying that her stories should be powerful.  Two, is that  research and data can't hurt.

That's what I love about writers like Malcolm Gladwell. He manages to blend the two perfectly.

King ends every chapter/lecture with the same charge; at the risk of coming across egotistical, I will do likewise:  "[This story is] yours.  Do with it what you will.  Tell it to friends... forget it.  But don't say in years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story.  You've heard it now."
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