Long ago, the public schools in the U.S. (and nearly everywhere else) made a decision that has affected the teaching of storytelling ever since:
Grades are to be objective!
That sounds harmless, doesn’t it? After all, we don’t want grades to be based on teacher bias or on random chance. But, in the case of teaching storytelling, a focus on objective evaluation actually undermines key storytelling skills.
The Value of Grading
Grading can be very helpful: done appropriately, it can give students feedback on what they already know well, what they need to work on, and what progress they’ve made in the time since their previous grades.
A problem arises, though, when we try to grade things objectively that are NOT inherently objective!
Does Objective Grading Work with Storytelling?
The “problem” with grading storytelling is actually storytelling's greatest strength: storytelling is subjective. Like much of human cognition and communication, storytelling involves very complex processes that, in turn, have very complex results.
When people tell stories in friendly conversation, for example, they usually seek connection: the vivid sharing of experience that storytelling excels in. They seek resonance between their experience and the experience of their friends, partly by trading stories back and forth.
As effective as such shared experience can be, though, neither the teller nor the listener can possibly be fully aware of all the layered complexity that happens during storytelling. This means that, with storytelling, an approach that assumes that “the teller can be fully aware of what she is doing at every moment” is bound to lead to confusion—and all too often to dismal failure.
The Three Differences
Like the memorized story-scripts often told for graded school assignments, stories told in the “real world” each have an intention, a method, and a result. But each of these three facets varies substantially from the artificial “storytelling” that tends to be sponsored in schools.
A. Intention
By “intention," I mean the goal for telling a story. In ordinary conversational storytelling, people often seek connection: the vivid sharing of experience that oral storytelling excels at. They seek resonance between their experience and the experience of others—perhaps with an implied lesson like “that’s why I never want to go camping again,” or “that’s why I’m always glad when my parents leave town unexpectedly."
In the end, the story is judged, not by its objective form, but by its complex, often slippery impact on relationships.
Said differently, you can expect the goals of storytelling in conversation to aim more for building connection than for sharing information. Information is definitely shared, but usually only in the service of creating the kind of interpersonal impact that comes from shared experience.
B. Method
The second aspect of conversational storytelling—it’s “method”—happens when the teller:
a] Re-imagines some prior experience (whether it was originally conveyed to the teller via direct experience or via some form of story-experience); then
b] Expresses that experience using oral language (words, facial expression, posture, gesture, and lots more).
But that isn’t the full conversational method. In fact, after the first sentence or two of your story, you will likely pause just a little to notice the responses of your listeners:
Do they seem interested? Are they distracted by something?
Do you need to “up the ante” to gain their attention?
Or, on the other hand, can you soften your tone a bit, because you already have their full attention?
Then you continue the cycle of telling, of noticing (often unconsciously) your listeners’ responses, of adjusting your telling to increase the responses you hope for—and to decrease those you didn’t intend to provoke.
In short, conversational storytelling is a cooperative dance between teller and listener: a long series of interactions, driven by the search for overlapping goals.
C. Result
The result of successful storytelling is that, after the dance is over, both parties are left with a new level or quality of connection. The shared experience may be as sweet as a tender childhood memory or as powerful as a story of “why I don’t let people take advantage of me anymore.” But successful stories create, adjust, or sometimes even end relationships between people.
You can certainly notice and comment on the effects of such stories.
But can you evaluate them objectively? Perhaps, but only if you accept that much of the storytelling interaction happens below the level of awareness for one or both parties, and only if you’re willing to accept qualitative rather than quantitative evaluation.
Meanwhile, Back at the School
If a teacher is forced to give “objective evaluation” of something subjective and largely unconscious—like storytelling—then the evaluation will necessarily leave out much of what really happened during the storytelling event.
This is sometimes acceptable, as when adults get together in a club (perhaps Toastmasters) and agree to (in a way) “gamify” a storytelling event that’s held for the benefit of the tellers. To be sure, this may create some confusion about the workings of storytelling, but it is founded on the key belief that anyone can learn. Further, it provides people with progressively more challenging things to try. On balance, then, it supports the learning of storytelling.
Five Dangerous Effects on Young Students
The largest damage from “objective evaluation” of storytelling, though, comes when young students are expected to “tell a story” and are graded on things like following a memorized script, doing certain types of gestures, etc. There are five key problems with such tasks:
These tasks use intentions and methods that differ from informal, conversational storytelling—the kind of storytelling nearly every student has already begun learning to do with family and friends. Instead of building on natural strengths, then, these tasks cause students to discard the effective techniques they’ve already begun to learn.
Because these expectations emphasize memorization, they distract students from what enables the best storytelling: imagining a story and then using complex oral language techniques to stimulate listeners to imagine it in their own ways.
Further, these expectations draw the student’s attention away from moment-by-moment listener responses—and toward “telling the story right.” This teaches students to aim, not for communication, but for recitation.
These mechanical, memorization-based tasks are likely to leave the majority of students feeling that “storytelling is something I can’t do!” Storytelling, then, instead of evoking a pleasurable sense of growing confidence, begins to evoke failure and humiliation.
Finally (and most tragically), once we form the belief that we “just aren’t good” at something, we may stop trying to do it. Such feelings make it ever less likely that students will try storytelling in front of more than a small handful of friends. As a result, they will never learn of their own, inborn, potential to tell stories naturally and effectively to whatever size audience they choose.
Knowledge is Power
If you teach storytelling in a situation where you are required to use “objective grading,” then, you’ll need to:
a) Realize that you’re being expected to do the impossible; and
b) Find ingenious ways to give the appearance of objectivity while still encouraging students to engage meaningfully with their listeners.
That’s a hard task!
But knowing the pitfalls of expecting objective responses to subjective interactions, you’ll avoid doing what can only hinder you and your students—as you seek out creative ways to help them experience the kinds of joyful interactions that are always at the heart of storytelling.