Abstract
USE OF TALES IN CITIZENSHIP AND DEMOCRACY EDUCATION
Anonymous Turkish folk stories play an important role in creating a cultural interaction of the past and present. Tales are among the most appealing anonymous folk literature types. Tales are also universal oral narrative contents that represent the cultural heritage of societies and have developed orally and in written over time. The last phase was to transfer those tales into electronic platforms and keep their functionality they have since the old times. We can say that the number of academic works on tales in Turkey has increased after accepting folklore as a scientific discipline. In this regard, we believe that highlighting the common values in a multicultural society has an important role on keeping social stability and peace. The tales can be effectively used in identifying those common values in such communities. Besides, if we think that socially accepted values are not existed suddenly and transferred to the next generations by the older people, the importance of the tales might be understood easily in transferring common values. In this study, we show that the values such as benevolence, righteousness, not to be selfish, not to lie, hospitality, respect for elders and parents, sacrifice, generosity, kindness, sharing and justice can be taught to students by using the tales compiled and transferred by Naki Tezel. Teaching those values through the tales selected in this study will train students in becoming good citizens and lead to the growth of generations that are not disconnected from their histories. The tales selected for our study were taken from the book titled ‘Turkish Tales’ by Naki Tezel prepared for “Turkish Culture Source Materials” series published by National Education Press in 1971. The tales were selected by using criterion sampling method which is among the methods of qualitative studies. The criteria for selecting the appropriate tales were selected by the authors. In this sense, the main criteria was to have tales containing at least two value judgements given in Citizenship and democracy education textbook. The tales were read by the researchers in different places. The researchers, then came together and compared their findings. Then, the researchers gave the final decisions about which tales should be selected.
Keywords
Tales, Values Education, Citizenship, Culture.