Enriching Grade R Curriculum with IsiXhosa Folktales for Holistic Child Development
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6697/18501Keywords:
culture, character formation, folklore, folktalesAbstract
South Africa is a multicultural country with a rich history, culture, and Indigenous knowledge that is embedded in folklore. The Language in Education Policy (LiEP) encourages the use of children’s languages from Grade R to 3. Language carries people’s culture; however, if folklore is not integrated from the onset (Grade R) in the school curriculum, it indicates that children are deprived of the opportunity to preserve their culture, which carries their ancestors’ wisdom that was used informally to educate inexperienced youth about life. The objective of this article is to reveal that isiXhosa folktales have cultural and educational benefits for isiXhosa Home Language children. They should be integrated into the school curriculum from Grade R with an aim to use folktales for character formation and for developing their emergent literacy skills. In this article, I review existing literature. It is a desktop study based on a review and analysis of various literature sources regarding the role of folktales in developing literacy skills and character formation. I conducted a literature search using Google Scholar to find relevant articles. The reviewed literature revealed that folktales develop the child holistically. They equip children with life skills that are not context dependent and develop literacy skills such as listening and speaking, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing. This denotes that isiXhosa folktales offer both cultural and educational benefits for isiXhosa Home Language children. Therefore, I argue that folktales should be incorporated into the school curriculum from Grade R.
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