A TRADITIONAL STORY REBORN

Monkey and the Crocodile Session 

The monkey and the crocodile story was taken up as a stimulus with one of the classes for Philosophy for Children session. 

We proceeded with the steps as always where earlier week's 'Thought for the Week' was discussed, 'Focusing' excercise was conducted and then we proceeded to the story - Monkey and the Crocodile. 

The story is an old school fable and has been narrated since time immemorial. We all would also be aware of this story. The story can be summarised in brief as follows:

There was a monkey and there was a crocodile, they were really good friends.

Monkey knew how to climb a tree but did not know how to swim. Crocodile knew how to crawl and swim but did not how to climb.

Once, the crocodile invited the monkey for lunch over the other bank of the river. Monkey wondered how do I travel?

 The crocodile offered a lift.

In the middle of the river, crocodile gave the monkey a shock. 'Our king needs a monkey's heart, I am taking you to him.'

 Monkey wanted to escape but he had no way, then he told the crocodile, 'Oh Crocodile, why didn't you tell me earlier, my heart is safely keep in the tree. Let's go back to the tree and get the heart that you want'. Crocodile agreed.

Monkey quickly climbed  up the tree, and dropped a hard brick, told the crocodile - 'Oh Crocodile, you are a fool, who can survive with a heart away from his body'.

After reading out the story, the next part in P4C technique is discussing the various aspects of the story. Now, comes the interesting part. Here, after reading out the story, one of the child expressed his disinterest in the story as it was a repetitive story and he felt it was a kindergarten level story where there was nothing to explore. I wondered what do I do now? How do I deal with this situation because I had a set plan and a set discussion pattern that I was prepared for. This came uncalled for and I decided to turn the tables around. One of the important aspects of the 'Thinking Through Philosophy' process is that we are supposed to take everyone's agreement on a particular view before proceeding with any point of discussion, if there's any disagreement at all, it needs to be first discussed about, because every opinion needs to be respected. On a similar note, I asked all the children present in class that whether the agreed with the same view as that of the child, and majority of the kids agreed with the view and they were wondering why are we even discussing this?

I raised the same question back to them - Why do you think we are discussing this story even when we have heard it many times before? I put them into breakout rooms - a feature on Zoom and asked them to discuss on this aspect. I wasn't expecting much from the kids but the kids truly surprised me. They came up with points like how friendship was an important aspect in the story, how trust played a very important part that forms a major aspect of our lives and they came up such different points and their reasons for the same. I realised by the end of the session that all the aspects that I had planned to discuss with this group of children for the story had been already thought upon by these kids. It was truly an eye-opening experience that how kids become aware of the littlest details and connect it to their own personal experiences if they are made open to different dimensions of something. The kids at the end of the session while sharing their reflections admitted that this story was heard so many times before but still it seemed like a new story to them and from one story, they could create multiple stories and conversations. This awareness about something is extremely important.

The kids have a capacity to think which needs to be fostered and this is an collective task. Why I say it is an collective task is because many a times when kids ask certain questions to us, and keep repeatedly asking it - we usually get annoyed but what needs to be understood is that the kid has still not got the answers and they feel it's a safe space to communicate, the only reason why they come back to us. Usually we get very impatient and just take the kid for a toss, assuming that the kid is just blabbering. But maybe if we change our own view, we could look at them and appreciate them for what they really are. We could ask them their very question and lead their curiosity to an effective discussion which can also increase the understanding and bonding between kids and us. I somewhere read that 'We want kids to be independent and self-reliant when they grow up, but we want kids to listen to us when they are young.' I agree with the pun intended because I believe that it's right from start to foster their natural curiosity which would make them confident, independent and curious.