Storytelling as a space for strengthening ethical and moral action: My Experiences in Brazil

The sentence according to which “The elders are the guardians of morality, because they can and should be bearers of the truth”, constitutes an explicit indicator of the relevance that orality and its operational instruments can provide us. In this attempt, I will share three situations in which I did storytelling and that their unfolding help us to infer some learnings that we think are relevant.
The three schools that I had the opportunity to share stories and experiences were the following:

  •  EBM Julio da Costa Neves 
  • EBM Osvaldo Galupo and NEI Morro do Horácio
  • Hassis Day Care

EBM Júlio da Costa Neves

The basic education school Júlio da Costa Neves is an institution located in the Costeira neighborhood, Florianópolis in Santa Catarina. This school was the first one in which I did storytelling, in addition to other activities in which I got involved. The way I proceeded with the young people from the 7th, 8th and 9th grades, I presented images that contrasted with what was their common sense about the African continent, first I showed pictures of animals and places in the interior of some African countries and asked them if these images alluded to which place in the world, and everyone without exception replied that it was Africa, and then I exposed to them images of cities in African countries such as: Angola, South Africa, Mozambique, Egypt and they answered that it was the United States of America. America, Brazil, Europe. They were unable to associate the images of cities with those of African countries.

EBM Osvaldo Galupo and NEI Morro do Horácio

The School is located in Morro do Horácio, a community in Florianopolis in Santa Catarina. My activity with the students of this school was very special, while the invitation for me to participate was addressed to me by the teacher and librarian of basic education, Sandra, who prepared the students by telling stories from the book entitled “Gira Mundo”, which basically tells the story of two children who exchanged letters by correspondence, one child in Brazil and the other from Angola. When I arrived at school I embodied the child who came from Angola, it was a moment of great nostalgia and I could see it in the eyes of the children, many children wrote letters introducing themselves to me, then we did other activities such as Angolan dances and stories of respect for others and the elderly.

Hassis Day Care

The Hassis daycare is located on Av. Jorge Lacerda, at Costeira in Florianopolis in Santa Catarina; it is close to EBM Júlio da Costa Neves. At the invitation of UDESC/FAED pedagogy students, Stella and Maria Laura, I was able to share different stories with children from the daycare. The activities with them demanded more care and ways of acting; after all we are talking about children from 3 to 6 years old. It was a lovely experience; we played in the garden and ran a lot.

 The three activities made me reflect a lot and more than that, I realized that the students better understood the spaces, the means of transmission and sharing of ideas and information. The activities took place in 2019, and even today the teachers, pedagogy students, librarian, keep saying that the people who were subjects of this action remember me and ask me to go back there, and of course, I get nostalgic to go back there and to be able to delight in little children.

This reflection came to the fore when, in a conversation with a colleague from the AdmEthics research group, Lucas Carneiro, about his thesis, he said a sentence that was more or less like this “… It is important to find other spaces in which the ethics and morals are better exercised and transmitted to people, such as open spaces, spaces for physical exercises and not only...”. This phrase, in a broader sense, helps us to understand that it is important to shift the perspective of analysis and application in the way that certain values ​​are passed on to us and to what extent they influence the way we understand what it would be like to act ethically and moral in various situations in our daily lives.

Another point that concatenates to this one has to do with that, in this case, we are dealing with children and young people and as such it is important to take some precautions as to what would be the most appropriate way of detailing these patterns of acceptable behavior for them, and moving away from a merely utilitarian view of an ethical and moral action.

The phrase that says “… living in society is learning to know how to deal with the limits and excesses imposed by our ancestors…”, in this sense we think that the search for ways in which we can apply the instruments learned and ways to better introject ourselves it is a prudent way of looking at things in life, in this sense, perhaps Storytelling as a space for strengthening ethical and moral action would be a better way to be explored by the academy and beyond.

Photos: My facebook and Schools

Back To Top