School Of Geek – Hit or Myth: Studying Myth in School (With Apologies to Robert Aspirin)

It happens every year: I have to tear my class away from ‘Twilight” or whatever drivel they’re passing their time with and give them the title of the novel study for the term … and they groan in despair and fix me with stares of befuddlement and apathy.

Maybe it’s the content of a novel study that inspires such lackadaisical responsiveness from the generation of the future, or maybe it’s the expectation? You see, they know I’m going to ask them to do effort-laden things like thematic recognition, descriptions of character motivations, or even literature comparisons to other works. That can be stressful, I can admit, because, Heaven fore fend  what if they make mistakes and show themselves to be … wrong?

A good amount of teens are wary of learning in general; not just because of the amount of effort involved, but also because the process of learning involves the risk of being wrong. Being wrong exaggerates the myriad of insecurities the teen years bring and can be a tremendous barrier for kids to overcome. That’s why if the subject being studied can provide a distraction from that risk then sometimes, maybe it’s worth a listen.That’s entertainment while learning – the manufactured word for that is ‘edutainment’. I want to come back to that.

While they groan when I throw titles like “The Outsiders”, or “The Diary of Anne Frank” at them, they never groan when I mention mythology.

Mythology seems to be the recent trend in authoring literature for young people these days. If you look at the popular teen choices, re-worked myths are popping up everywhere. For example, Irish author, Eoin Colfer (Puffin Books’ choice for authoring the new Doctor Who series) used Celtic myths (fairies, elves, leprechauns, etc.) as the basis for his Artemis Fowl novels. Rick Riordan has modified Greek legends into modernized version of stories that included teen social issues like dysfunctional home life, negative school experiences and dyslexia in his “Percy Jackson” series.

The 2012 American Library Association’s list of nominations for Top Ten Teen fiction titles (www.ala.org) identified four novels that were re-worked versions from classic legends or fairy-stories. Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen: a novel about Will Scarlet, one of Robin Hood’s key followers. The twist? Scarlet is actually a girl in disguise. Then there’s Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, a re-telling of the fairy tale, Cinderella, except this time, Cinder is a cyborg-mechanic who lives with her step-mother and stepsisters.  Meg Cabot’s Abandon is a re-tooled Persephone legend about trying to escape from the underworld. It’s been described as a ‘Percy Jackson’ for girls. The mythological inspiration for The Scorpio Races may be a little obscure, but the idea of killer sea-horses is clearly derived from the Celtic legends of the kelpies: flesh-eating horse-creatures that rise from the seas around Scotland in search of human flesh.

Not only are these successful, but popular and apparently what young people want to read – with an obvious modern twist added for novelty’s sake.

The question is: why?

There’s a strong oral tradition that goes along with the relating of mythology. I remember when I was seven and long car-rides with my dad always involved the telling of classic Greek legends over and over to pass the time. In Toronto, mythology is introduced to kids in school around grades three and four. It’s a strong component of the oral storytelling unit, and kids and teachers both enjoy it.

Story-telling is not only a classic educational method, but it’s also fun to hear a good story told well. It is a vital component of learning to communicate and it’s also entertainment in its purest form. Also, a good story is remembered, so classic myths usually find their ways into contemporary literature. When a kid picks up a book that has this connection, it becomes instantly familiar and non-threatening. There isn’t a lot of insecurity about reading a familiar tale and when new information is added (i.e.: the modernization of the legend or comparative contemporary social issues experienced by the protagonist), it isn’t a lot to process or interfere with the enjoyment of the story and is therefore, easy to assimilate.

Edutainment.

The themes in legends are easy to discern, since they involve basic human experiences, as are the character motivations. All the typical things you ask for students to pick out of the content are fairly obvious or have been explained to them before. There isn’t a lot of risk involved for students when they read mythology in class and it also explains why teen authors/publishers are tapping into this vein. Kids are reading it, so parents are willing to purchase the books; students feel secure answering questions about the material in class so teachers see it as a comfortable teaching venue. It’s pretty much win-win on the outside.

The downside is that re-telling legends over and over in different forms and so forth can cause them to lose their original inception. Elements of cultural and historic significance get under-rated, like places or people. The historicity of the stories vanishes or gets supplanted by the 21^st century ideals that are added for novelty’s sake.

There’s very little effort involved in studying mythology. It’s entertaining, a minimum of new conceptual information to absorb and little risk to developing egos. I mean, it’s not like they’re being asked to understand Northrop Frye’s “Great Code” and the metaphorical level of language that mythology falls into. Well, not until third year university, I guess. Still, it does ‘sour the milk’ when it is time for them to study other forms of literature.

Mythology is the foundation for science-fiction and fantasy literature. Embryonic geeks cut their teeth on Norse, Greek and other popular mythology and we see the reverberations in comics, and other pop-culture literature. The impetus mythology provides for kids to improve their literacy and communication skills is a powerful force for learning and as a teacher, parent and geek, it’s kind of hard for me to defy or argue with that that. Regardless of the lack of original thinking, the safety of their fragile egos, or reduction of effort that studying other forms of literature involve, I suppose I can settle for vampires who fall in love with human teens or something.

Oh crap.

I forgot about the vampires.