This is an edited extract from The Stories We Tell by Matt Bromley, which is published by Routledge. It is available now. For more details, please click here.
We only remember something once. Every subsequent memory is a memory of a memory and each time we ‘remember’ a memory, we change it, reshape it, polish it …
As such, when we tell our stories, we are not simply recounting objective facts, but rather we are constructing a narrative that gives meaning to our experiences and helps us make sense of our past. We discern logic where none existed, and we find order in the chaos of our lives.
We process new information within the context of what we already know – making sense of the abstract and new by connecting it to the concrete and familiar. We call these connections ‘schema’, which is the name we give to the ever more complex web of information we spin spider-like in our long-term memories. The more connections we make, the more sense we assign to our life story.
What’s more, the way we choose to tell our stories can have an impact on how we view ourselves and our lives. For example, if we focus on the positive aspects of our experiences, we may feel more optimistic and confident about our future, whereas if we focus on the negative aspects, we may feel more discouraged or pessimistic.
At the same time, it is important to recognise that our personal histories are not just a product of our individual narratives but are also shaped by the social and cultural contexts in which we live. In other words, the stories we tell are influenced by the expectations, social norms, and shared values of the communities we belong to, and they can both reflect and reinforce these broader cultural narratives.
Stories allow us to make sense out of otherwise puzzling or random events. Stories help us smooth out some of the decisions we make and create meaning and sense out of the tangles and complexities of our lives.
The stories we tell ourselves, also known as self-narratives, are the internal tales we create about our lives. These narratives are shaped by our experiences, beliefs, and values, and they play a significant role in shaping our identity and how we view ourselves.
The stories we tell ourselves can be positive or negative, and they can influence our emotions, behaviours, and self-perception. For example, if we tell ourselves a positive story about our abilities, we may feel more confident and motivated to pursue our goals. Conversely, if we tell ourselves a negative story about our abilities, we may feel discouraged and avoid taking on new challenges.
The stories we tell ourselves can also be influenced by external factors such as social norms, cultural expectations, and media messages. For example, if we are surrounded by messages that reinforce negative stereotypes about certain groups of people, we may internalise those beliefs and tell ourselves a negative story about our own abilities or worth.
In sum, it is important to recognise that the stories we tell ourselves are not fixed or unchanging. We have the power to rewrite and reinterpret our self-narratives, and in so doing we can change how we view ourselves and our lives. This process of re-storying can involve challenging and reframing negative beliefs, focusing on our strengths and accomplishments, and seeking out new experiences that help us create a more positive self-narrative.
To explore this notion of self-narrative further, let’s consider the school of structuralism…
Story and structuralism
Structuralism was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s on the foundations of Gestalt psychology, which maintained that all human conscious experience is patterned. Gestalt psychology posits that the human mind functions by recognising structures or, if none are present, by imposing structure on the random.
Claude Lévi-Strauss is widely regarded as the father of structural anthropology. In his 1972 book, Structuralism and Ecology, he proposed that culture is composed of hidden rules that govern the behaviour of its practitioners. It is these hidden rules that make cultures different from each other. Lévi-Strauss proposed a methodological means of discovering these rules through the identification of binary oppositions. Some of these oppositions include hot/cold, male/female, culture/nature, and raw/cooked. Structuralists argue that binary oppositions are reflected in various cultural institutions and that we may discover underlying thought processes by examining such things as kinship, myth, and language.
Before the invention of writing, people told each other stories as a means of passing important information from branch to branch down the family tree. The earliest forms of storytelling were likely oral traditions, whereby stories were shared through the spoken word and memorisation. Even today, in oral cultures the lore of the social group is preserved in living memories, which place a high value on storytelling techniques that aid memorisation. As such, techniques such as rhyme and rhythm are important in communicating a society’s traditions. Formulae also play a crucial role. If important values, beliefs, and traditions can be encoded into a narrative which is formulaic and makes use of rhyme and rhythm then that lore can be more successfully preserved. This is why myths exist. They provide vivid and dramatic representations of important messages.
Rhyme, rhythm, and meter, formulae, analogy, metaphor, and simile are narrative techniques of considerable social importance for the preservation of memories.
Myths and fairy tales are often built on simple yet powerful abstract concepts presented in binary oppositions such as good/bad, safety/fear, courage/cowardice, and so on. Although the characters and plots of fairy tales are often far removed from our everyday lives, the messages contained within them are made accessible and meaningful because they are articulated through abstract concepts which are familiar to us.
Even very young children – four- and five-year-olds – can grasp the most powerful and abstract concepts we ever learn such as the binary oppositions I mentioned a moment ago. The first binary opposition young children tend to grasp is that of hot/cold because hot is the sensation of something hotter than body temperature and cold is colder than body temperature. Once these oppositions are grasped, children begin to mediate between them – in the case of hot/cold, children mediate ‘warm’ and ‘cool’. By so doing, children can grasp a large range of phenomena in the world.
Thus, stories provide structure and meaning to our lives; stories order the arbitrary and impose logic on the haphazard.
An escape and an education
I remember stories from my own childhood and these memories are much more than vague recollections of plot and character. These memories take me back, sensorily, to a particular time and place. They evoke strong reminiscences of wonderment and discovery. Aged seven, for example, I lost a rainy Saturday to Enid Blyton. (I can still feel the thrill of it now.) I left a grey and drizzly northern town for a sun-streaked world of haunted castles, exciting adventures, and derring-do. After Blyton came Roald Dahl, who gifted me the keys to a magical factory wherein rivers flowed with chocolate and then took me into space in a great glass elevator.
Stories held a special place for me because they were my escape and my education.
They were my escape because, despite my humble circumstances, they afforded me infinite opportunities. I didn’t need money or privilege to see the world or indeed explore the wider universe; stories were my means of transport; stories could take me anywhere I wanted to go.
Stories were my education because my love of reading fed my love of learning. I was schooled at a time when grammar wasn’t explicitly taught and so learned to spell, punctuate, and understand grammar through reading well-written stories; stories were the best teachers I had.
Reading was my superpower, but sadly for today’s children its powers are waning.
According to the National Literacy Trust’s report on children and young people’s reading in 2023, levels of reading enjoyment are at a record low. In fact, they found that just 2 in 5 (43.4%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 enjoyed reading in their free time, which is the lowest level since the National Literacy Trust first asked the question in 2005. Fewer children and young people who receive free school meals said they enjoyed reading compared with their peers who do not receive free school meals (39.5% vs. 43.8%). Fewer boys than girls said they enjoyed reading (40.5% vs. 45.3%) and, while the gender gap in reading enjoyment has halved for those aged 8 to 18 between 2005 and 2023 (decreasing from a 10.7 to a 4.8 percentage-point difference in favour of girls), the National Literacy Trust claim this drop is largely because of a greater drop in reading enjoyment in girls.
Children are reading less frequently, too. The survey found that fewer than 3 in 10 (28.0%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they read daily in 2023, matching levels seen in 2022. There has been a 26% decrease in the number of children and young people aged 8 to 18 who read daily in their free time since 2005 (decreasing from 38.1% to 28.0%).
Fewer children and young people who receive free school meals said they read daily compared with those who don’t (24.1% vs. 28.9%). More girls than boys aged 8 to 18 said they read daily (30.4% vs 24.9%).
The decline is, in part, down to the home environment. Nearly three times as many children and young people who perceived their reading environment to be supportive said they enjoyed reading compared with those who perceived it to be less supportive (63.9% vs. 25.4%), while twice as many read daily in their free time (41.7% vs. 17.7%).
We must do more, therefore, to buck the trend and get children reading again in order to rediscover this superpower. One way to do this is by using story and storytelling in our teaching, making great stories an everyday part of school life.
And this is why I have written The Stories We Tell. It’s published by Routledge and is available now. Click here for more details.
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