FOUNDATIONS OF THE
DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING
The Old Testament has nothing to say about the origin of writing,
which seems to have been invented early in the fourth millennium B.C.
but it does assume writing on the part of Moses, who wrote the
Law not earlier than about 1450 B.C. Many earlier records of
writing have been discovered in various places. But, what was
the character of those records? Were they drawings? Symbols?
If so, what did they symbolize?
Three stages in the development of writing may be discerned:
pictograms, ideograms, and phonograms.
These were representations that long antedated the origin of
writing and played a role in the development of it. They were
actually crude pictures that represented objects such as the sun,
an old man, an eagle, an ox, a lion. As long as
pictograms represented nothing other than the objects themselves,
there was no difficulty in using them. However, as time passed
the use of pictures to depict ideas appeared, and
pictograms lost their dominant position in recorded communication.
Ideograms superseded pictograms.
They were pictures that actually represented ideas rather than
The Picture of
||an old man
Thus, a long stride toward writing was taken, although writing in
the modern sense was still a long way off. But ideograms,
actually a particular use of pictograms, were not the only
extension of pictograms.
Still another extension of pictograms, phonograms was
really representations of sounds rather than objects or
ideas. Thus, a representation of the sun might speak of a son
rather than the sun; a picture of a bear might be used to express
the verb 'to bear'; the picture of a bee to express the verb
'to be.' As a result, another step was taken in the direction
of written languages, but there was still a long succession of
events necessary before writing in the modern sense was achieved.
Ideographic and phonographic writings were later intermingled with
simple syllabic writing, and that with a more sophisticated system
wedge-shaped signs was used by the Sumerians.
Merrill F. Unger adequately summarizes the situation:
"Those who first attempted to reduce human speech to writing did not at
once perceive the chasm that separates the spoken words from the
characters in which they are symbolized. They wrote as they spoke in
unbroken succession, inscribing the letters in closest proximity to
each other, without separating them into words, much less into
sentences, paragraphs and chapters.
Although letters were used in writing by the time of Moses, they
were consonants only, as
vowels were added
much later. Hence, an unbroken succession of consonants
covering an entire tablet, later a scroll, and still later a
codex (sheets of papyrus bound into a book form) would appear
before the reader of a given text. Needless to say, even that
was still far from the modern concept of writing.
Although the witnesses to writing in antiquity are far from abundant,
there is sufficient evidence available to indicate that it was the
hallmark of cultural achievement. During the second millennium B.C.
there were several experiments that led to the development of the
alphabet and written documents. In Palestine itself there have been
very few documents that have survived from the pre-exilic period,
but the evidence from surrounding territories makes it reasonable to
assume that the Israelites shared in the act of writing even earlier than
the beginning of the Davidic kingdom.
Several lines of evidence may be called upon to witness to the fact
that writing was most certainly practiced by the Israelites prior to the
time of the Moabite Stone of Mesha, king of Moab, which dates from about
It was this item that was used by the late-nineteenth-century
higher critical writers, for example, Graf and Wellhausen, as the earliest
example of writing in Palestine.
Evidence from Mesopotamia
This dates from about 3500 B.C. and includes
cuneiform tablets of the Sumerians.
The successors to the Sumerians used
the latter's cuneiform script in developing their own individual
|From 3500 B.C.
||The above are antedated by many other
tablets, including some dating to about 3500 B.C. found in
Erech of Gen. 10:10) and Kish.
|From 2100 B.C
||Leonard Woolley discovered many temple
tablets in the ruins of ancient Ur of the Chaldees that date from
about 2100 B.C.
narrative found at Nippur dates from about 2100 B.C.
These confirm those found in Mesopotamia, and they
are dated about 3100 B.C.
|From 3100 B.C.
||The hieroglyphic script first appeared in Egypt
just prior to the founding of Dynasty I (c. 3100 B.C.), whereas its
successors, the hieratic and demotic scripts, both appeared prior to the
exilic period in Israel's history.
|From 2700 B.C.
||Among the early Egyptian writings are
The Teachings for Kagemni and The Teaching of Ptah-Hetep, which date from
about 2700 B.C.
There are, in addition to those witnesses, other
testimonies that illustrate the use of writing in Egypt prior to the time
of Moses, Joseph, and even Abraham, regardless of the dates ascribed to
each of those individuals.
Furthermore, the Israelites must have been aware of writing techniques
prior to their exodus from Egypt, for Moses was raised as a child with
great position in the household of the pharaoh during the New Kingdom
period. The New Testament record indicates the Hebrew traditional
position, as Stephen bears witness in his famous sermon when he relates
that "Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was
a man of power in words and deeds" (Acts 7:22).
That learning most likely
included writing on papyrus, as papyrus was used in writing earlier than
(c. 2500 B.C.).
East Mediterranean testimony
|From 3100 B.C.
||As early as
about 3100 B.C. there was writing used on cylinder seal impressions in Byblos.
|From 2500 B.C.
||Evidence from about 2500 B.C., shows that
pictographic signs were used in Byblos (Gebal) and Syria.
Leonard Woolley's discoveries at Atchana (in northern Syria)
appear to have been contemporaneous to the records found by Sir Arthur
Evans at Knossos, Crete. These records date into the mid-second millennium
B.C. and they indicate that connection between the mainland of Asia and
the island bridge of Europe, namely, Crete.
Early Palestinian and Syrian contributions
|From 2300 B.C.
||From 1947 to 1976, excavations
at Tell-Mardikh (ancient Elba) south of Aleppo in northern Syrian
uncovered over 15,000 clay tablets inscribed in the cuneiform script with
an early northwest Semitic dialect of 2300 B.C.
The tablets are from the
time of the Babylonian king Naram-Sin (equated by some with
Nimrod of Gen.
10:9) who campaigned in the area.
||Included among the tablets are portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh and other
kinds of literature from later Syria (Ugarit). Thus they attest to an
early literary tradition, as already well known from Babylonia.
addition, they have caused Old Testament scholars to reevaluate the
accuracy of the Bible patriarchs as well as names and events recorded in
Mitchell Dahood provides specific examples of clarification of
the Hebrew text from Eblaic evidence in his article "Ebla, Ugarit, and the
|From 1800 to
|A pottery fragment from Gezer is dated
from about 1800 to 1500 B.C.
The Lachish dagger inscription is
contemporary, as are inscriptions from Shechem, Beth-Shemesh, Razor, and
|From 1500 to
|Alphabetic inscriptions from the turquoise mines in southern
Sinai date from about
The Ras Shamra tablets, from the coastal site in northwest
Syria identified as Ugarit, date from about 1500 to 1300 B.C.
employed the same diplomatic language as the Tel el-Amarna tablets (c.
1380 B.C.) from the ancient Egyptian capital of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton).
At Ras Shamra were also found specimens of the Canaanite language written
in alphabetic form. Those writings were made by inscribing unique
cuneiform signs on clay tablets, known as the Ugaritic tablets.
All of the above evidence is extant from the period prior to the Moabite
Stone of Mesha, king of Moab.
The event recorded on the Moabite Stone is
that revolt against Israel recorded in 2 Kings 1:1 and 3:4-27.
the preceding evidence is not direct, it is overwhelming in its
denunciation of the negative higher critical position. It is also
overwhelming in its demarcation of the history of writing before the time
As a result, the more than 450 biblical references to writing
may be seen as reflective of the cultural diffusion between Israel and her
Activity of Biblical writers within literate history
The foregoing discussion makes the assertion that "Moses and the other
biblical writers wrote during the literate age of man" almost redundant.
Nevertheless, the biblical record itself asserts that its writers wrote. Several of the more 450 biblical references may be called upon to indicate
The Torah (Law) makes reference to several kinds of writing done
by Moses and his predecessors:
This is the book (the written record, the history) of
the generations of the offspring of Adam. When God created man, He
made him in the likeness of God.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write this
for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of
Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek
from under heaven."
And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write
these words, for according to the tenor of these words I
have made a covenant with you and with Israel." So he was
there with the LORD forty days and forty
nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water.
And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
"... Write each man's name on his rod. And you shall
write Aaron's name on the rod of Levi."
So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests
And the LORD said to Moses: "... Now
therefore, write down this song for yourselves"
Therefore Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it
to the children of Israel.
So it was, when Moses had completed writing the words of
this law in a book...
The Prophets (Nevi'im) indicate that writing was
employed by several individuals even prior to the time of the Moabite
as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded
the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law
Then the men arose to go away; and Joshua charged those who went to
survey the land, saying, "Go, walk through the land, survey
it, and come back to me, that I may cast lots for you here before
the LORD in Shiloh." So the men went,
passed through the land, and wrote the survey in a book in
seven parts by cities...
Then Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God.
These Kethuvi'im (Writings) also relate that individuals were
writing before the time of the Moabite insurrection recorded in 2 Kings
1:1 (2 Kings 1:1 - "Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of
Have I not written to you excellent things
Of counsels and knowledge.
|2 Chronicles 35:4
Prepare yourselves according to your fathers' houses,
according to your divisions, following the written
instruction of David king of Israel and the
written instruction of Solomon his son.
The materials upon which the ancients wrote were also used by the writers
Clay was not only used in ancient Sumer as early as about 3500 B.C.,
but it was used by Ezekiel (4:1 - "You also, son of man, take a clay
tablet and lay it before you, and portray on it a city, Jerusalem.).
This material would
be inscribed while it was still damp or soft.
It would then be either dried in the sun or baked in a kiln to make a
The clause "this is the account of" or "the book of the generations of"
occurs twelve times in Genesis and probably indicates the divisions of
early family records of the patriarchs:
||"This is the history of the heavens and the earth"
||"This is the book of the genealogy of Adam"
||"This is the genealogy of Noah"
||"Now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah"
||"These were the sons of Shem, according to their
||"This is the genealogy of Shem"
||"This is the genealogy of Terah"
||"Now this is the genealogy of
||"This is the genealogy of Isaac"
||"Now this is the genealogy of
Esau, who is Edom."
||"And this is the genealogy of
Esau the father of the Edomites in Mount Seir"
||"This is the history of Jacob"
This was used in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Palestine, as is evidenced
biblical writers also made use of stone as a writing material
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Come up to Me on
the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone,
and the law and commandments which I have written, that you
may teach them." (NKJV)
Now Joshua built an altar to the LORD God of
Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD
had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written
in the Book of the Law of Moses: "an altar of whole stones
over which no man has wielded an iron tool." And they offered
on it burnt offerings to the LORD, and
sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence
of the children of Israel, he wrote on the stones a
copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. (NKJV)
Also, at the Dog River in Lebanon and at Behistun in Iran royal
inscriptions were carved on cliff faces.
Papyrus was used in ancient Gebal (Byblos) and Egypt from about
It was made by pressing and gluing two layers of split papyrus
reeds together in order to form a sheet.
A series of papyrus sheets were
joined together to form a scroll.
It is that type of papyrus "scroll" that is mentioned in Revelation 5:1 (though it is translated "book" in
The apostle John used papyrus for his epistles (cf. 2 John 12).
And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll
written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.
|3 John 13
Having many things to write to you, I did not wish to do so with
paper and ink (NKJV)
Vellum - Parchment
These are various quality grades of writing
material made from animal skins of:
|calf or antelope
||The finest material - prepared for writing on both
sides, as in a codex
|sheep or goat
||Prepared for writing on both sides, as in a codex
|cow or bull
||Prepared for writing on only one side, as in a
Although these substances are not mentioned
directly as writing materials in the Bible, some kind of animal skin may
have been in mind in Jeremiah 36:23
It could hardly have been vellum, for
Frederic Kenyon has indicated that vellum was not known prior to about 200
B.C. Most likely it was leather, for the king used a knife on it.
And it happened, when Jehudi had read three or four columns, that
the king cut it with the scribe's knife and cast it into the fire that was
on the hearth, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that
was on the hearth. (NKJV)
Parchments are, on the other hand, clearly mentioned in Paul's request to
Timothy (2 Tim. 4:13).
|2 Timothy 4:13
Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come — and the
books, especially the parchments. (NKJV)
Writing also was done in the biblical narrative upon
such things as -
Metal - (Ex. 28:36; Job 19:24; Matt. 22:19-20)
writing board recessed to hold a wax writing surface - (cf. Isa. 8:1; 30:8; Hab. 2:2; Luke 1:63);
Precious stones - (Ex. 28:9, II, 21; 39:6-14)
Potsherds - (Job 2:8), better known as ostraca, as found in such locations
as Samaria and Lachish in Palestine.
They were broken bits and pieces of pottery.
Linen - Still another item used in ancient
writing in Egypt, Greece, Etruscan and Roman Italy, but not mentioned in
the Bible, was linen.
instruments were necessary in the production of written
records on the various materials mentioned above:
A three-sided instrument with a beveled head, the stylus was used
to make incursions into clay and wax tablets.
It was sometimes called a
"pen," as in Jeremiah 17:1.
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with the
point of a diamond it is engraved (NKJV)
A chisel was used in making inscriptions in stone, as in Joshua
8:31-32. Job wished that his words might be engraved with "an iron stylus"
in the rock forever.
"an altar of whole stones over which no man has wielded an iron
A pen was employed in writing on papyrus, vellum, leather, and
parchment, as indicated in 3 John 13 (above).
This was used in Jeremiah 36:23 to destroy a scroll (see
reference above), the
material of which was probably tougher than papyrus. It was also used to
sharpen the writer's pen after it had begun to wear down.
Inkhorn and Ink
These were necessary concomitants of the pen, and they
served as the container and fluid used for writing on papyrus, vellum,
leather, and parchment. Thus, just as writing and its materials were
available for the biblical writers, so were the instruments necessary for
their vital task.


Psychological curricula deals with the AFFECT, or emotions. The movement has been labeled Affective Education by educators, and includes a wide range of programs and curricula which attempt to change the values and behavior of students. Public schools, and even some private schools, spend valuable classroom time engaged in "cooperative" learning (group learning) encounter sessions and discussion groups that employ pop psychology. These programs are designed for a very specific purpose -- to change the attitudes, values and beliefs of children in order to prepare them to be proper environmental citizens in the "sustainable" global village. Such behavior-modification programs are the very root of the destruction of America's public education system.
With the rise of whole-brain research in the 1950s and 1960s, and with the concurrent development of humanistic education, affective education got its start with a program called Quest. Quest was first marketed as a "humanistic values education curriculum" in 1975. The Quest program has been revised considerably since the first 400-page curriculum was published. A second version was released in 1982, and six versions of the program have been published since.
Some programs are specifically targeted at resolving social problems such as drug abuse, the reduction of teen pregnancy, the reduction of school dropout rates, crime, and other social ills.
Even though described as "value-free," most of the programs do deal with values, or their clarification. Almost all claim positive outcomes such as:
- Enhancement of self-esteem
- Promotion of good decision-making
- Reduction of stress
- Improvement of academic performance
- Improvement of a student's sensitivity to others
Almost without exception, the psychological curricula use a foundation of moral relativism and self-interest as the primary motivation for character development or behavior modification.
A lucrative market has been developed since their inception in the mid-1970s. Estimates of the number of affective education programs range up to 300 now being marketed in U.S. public schools. They are often funded by civic groups such as Lions Club or Kiwanis, or large companies.
Most are identified as "living or coping skills development" programs. Collectively they are called Affective Education Programs, dealing with the emotional content of a child's learning processes, as opposed to cognitive education programs, which deal with academics such as reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Most importantly, they attempt to change values, therefore coming into conflict with parents, because they influence the value systems of students exposed to them.
Affective education employs a number of psychological and pedagogic principles as primary to their success. The most significant of these principles includes beliefs such as:
- The meaning of life lies in subjective experience.
- Self-Interest is and should be the foundation for all moral decisions.
- The teacher should be child advocate and therapist.
- Problem-solving through the application of moral relativism.
- Teaching by facilitation, giving no knowledge of opinions.
- Children are capable of making sophisticated judgments.
- Peer group pressure is more influential in establishing values than is home, school, or church.
- Commitment to a "clinical-therapeutic" education approach.
One of the founders of value-free education, Dr. W.R. Coulson, now admits that he made a costly mistake in pushing affective education programs on the American school system:
"Youthful experimentation with sex, alcohol, marijuana, and a variety of other drugs -- whatever's popular at the time -- has been shown to follow value-free education quite predictably. We now know that after these classes, students become more prone to give into temptation than if they'd never been enrolled."
The following are some of the more popular Affective Education Programs:
Project Self-Esteem is an elementary level program which purports to enhance self-esteem, improve memory, improve communication skills, stress individuality, increase sensitivity to others, and improve self responsibility.
Project Self-Esteem is based upon a form of moral relativism (situation ethics), which uses self- interest as the primary motivator for character development. One example from the section on stealing -- The objectives state that the child will:
- understand the difference between borrowing and stealing.
- State the reasons why people steal.
- Understand that stealing hurts himself and the victim.
- Understand it lowers his self-esteem.
No judgment is made concerning the wrongness of stealing, and teachers are instructed to refrain from making judgments about the rightness or wrongness of the act or injecting their own moral values. Self-interest, not society, is the norm of behavior.
The child is asked to assess the short-term and long-term benefits, his feelings and the feelings of the people affected by his actions, and then to decide a course of action based upon what is best for him.
This is a sophisticated and mature line of reasoning for a child, requiring him to assess long-term over short-term benefits. For a child, at what the learning theorist Piaget called the "pre-operational stage of development," such reasoning power is highly questionable.
A substantial part of the Project Self-Esteem program focuses on personal feelings, beliefs, and attitudes, with the object of changing them. Such activities could be identified as a form of psychological testing and treatment.
Quest was originally published as a Humanistic Values Curriculum in 1975. The Quest program is divided into two main curricula: Skills for Living -- High school level; and Skills for Adolescence for grades 6-8. The program has undergone substantial modification, and at least seven different producers have marketed the program.
The promotion of Skills for Adolescence is a special project of the Lions Club International. Local Lions Clubs promote and often finance the adoption of the Quest program at the local level.
Its most serious fault is the use of values clarification techniques. The program places "overwhelming emphasis on students feelings, emotions, and private family information, compared to the much lesser significance given to facts about the danger of drugs and alcohol."
The most common question concerning Quest is: "Is it a drug education program or isn't it?" The Skills for Adolescence program is composed of seven instructional units, only one of which is about the facts and dangers of drugs and alcohol. The other "dimensions" of the program deal with thinking, feeling, decision-making, communication and action.
Since 1982, when the second edition of the program was published, it has been "used in more than 8,000 communities and schools throughout the world." One of the co-authors described the program as "... a humanistic education curriculum ... a curriculum designed to enhance students self-esteem ... It has lots of values clarification in it ... lots of communication skills ... lots of self-talk ... It's, I think, you know, a really fine synthesis of a live humanistic education" (Howard Kirschenbaum, ASCD Convention, 1984).
The program has come under considerable fire in its long history. Parents have objected to the program's intrusive nature and seeming lack of emphasis on its purported purpose. Prominent psychologist Joseph Adelson, Ph.D. Professor of psychology at the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic in Ann Arbor, has stated that "Certain parts of the syllabus qualify as personality testing."
The author of this manual is California psychologist, Jack Canfield. He recommends a variety of techniques, which include Eastern religions precepts like guided imagery, meditation, relaxation exercises, and yoga exercises.
Canfield's theory of self-esteem is based on a distinction between the left and right brain. He claims the brain has two hemispheres. The left hemisphere controls the logical thinking while the right hemisphere controls feelings and impulses. Canfield asserts that working with guided imagery stimulates the right brain and will help students solve all their problems -- not just academic ones, but physical ones as well. Guided imagery will help them to be smarter and more creative, will increase their memory capacity, allow them to answer any troubling questions they have, will increase their athletic performance, and even help to relieve headaches!
Guided Imagery exercises are usually introduced by asking students to discuss their dreams, nightmares, recurring dreams, and the importance of dreams to our physical and mental health. A typical guided imagery exercise is preceded with a brief period of relaxation. Then, students are told to notice how their stomach and chest rise and expand.
Parents in Stockton, California learned that a Canfield curriculum was being used in a 10th grade English class. Students told their parents they were practicing mind-relaxing exercises in the class. When parents checked with the teacher to find out what the purpose of these exercises was, he said he was teaching students to learn how to relax to reduce tensions before bedtime or to minimize stress in their lives. (This was supposed to help them do better work in their English class.) The curriculum used in the class was Canfield's 18-page manual on Introduction to Guided Imagery, which the teacher had obtained at a workshop on "self-esteem."
Over 600 concerned citizens protested the use of this curriculum, which was eventually removed after a dialogue with the school board and administration.
This is supposedly a reading program for Grades 1-6. The emphasis, however, is on attitude changes and developing feelings of self-worth. Among the philosophical statements of Workshop Way are:
1) The foremost goal in Workshop Way is to protect each child's dignity.
2) Growing a positive self-concept is feasible for all students because the self-concept is never associated with knowledge, skills or right answers.
3) Obstacles to Workshop Way include report cards and morning recesses (which destroy any chance of developing concentration in most students) as well as parents demanding papers with work marked right or wrong.
Workshop Way uses a series of concentration tasks to develop self-esteem. There are ten motor coordination tasks that pupils perform daily. One exercise is called "Pouring." The pupil practices pouring water from one container into another without spilling it. He repeats this until he wishes to quit.
Parents in Jenks, Oklahoma describe Workshop Way as being anti-intellectual and anti-education, because academic skills are subordinated to the "self-actualization" of the child. The program clearly states that one of the major goals is to lead pupils toward "higher levels of consciousness and deepening awareness in students by leading them to self-discovery."
This program, produced by the Quest organization in Ohio, is very popular all over the country. It promises to improve communication skills and self-esteem by teaching students to make "responsible" decisions.
Students engage in rap sessions resembling group psychotherapy during which they discuss their private emotions and attitudes -- what makes them sad or happy, what worries them. They also participate in touchy-feely games which are supposed to make them feel good about themselves. Some of these games include: "Machine" (groups of students create machines using their bodies and sounds); "Open Fist Simulation" (attempt to open partner's fist); "Pretzel" (untwist body contortions); and imagination games like "Elevator" (pretend the floor is a certain year of your life and describe that year).
Six classroom sessions of the Skills for Adolescence curriculum are devoted to the topic of private emotions. In one assignment, students are supposed to fill in an "Emotional Clock" indicating what time of day they feel anger, happiness, frustration, nervousness, surprise, anxiety, or sadness, and then must write down the reason for the particular emotion.
This is a very popular self-esteem program written by Jill Anderson and published by Timberline Press in Eugene, Oregon. Pumsy is a girl dragon who has three parts to her mind. These include her Sparkler Mind, her Clear Mind, and her Mud Mind. The author defines the Sparkler Mind as a mind that runs and plays like tiny pieces of happy lightning. Pumsy wishes the Sparkler Mind would last forever. The Clear Mind is defined as a pond, still and quiet, in the middle of a spring meadow. When Pumsy is in her Clear Mind, she feels good about herself and at peace. The Mud mind is defined as a puddle of mud that does not allow her to think clearly. When she is in her Mud Mind, she doesn't feel good about herself. All 39 pages of Pumsy are devoted to the self-analysis of the three parts of the mind.
In a school district in Sonoma, California which uses Pumsy, the children in a second-grade class (8-year-olds) were told to get rid of their "mud" mind by writing down their "mud" (negative) thoughts to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." One little boy wrote the following illiterate ditty expressing self-hatred:
"I'v ben worken on my mud mind. I'v ben work en hard. I hate my self. I am no good. I wish I could kill my self."
When the boy brought this assignment home, his mother asked him whether he really felt this way. His answer was "No!" Then she asked why he wrote these things. His reply was, "Because I thought that's what the teacher wanted me to write."
The boy received the idea of hating himself directly from the "Pumsy Storybook." There are several pages about the Mud Mind. In one section, Pumsy lets her Mud Mind say, "I'm no good," 100 times. The phrase ,"I'm no good," written by the child came directly from the text. Because of the requirement that the children write their "mud" thoughts down on paper, this little boy was forced to write negative things about himself -- whether or not he really believed them.
An even more tragic event was reported in Beverly Eakman's book Educating for the New World Order. On March 24, 1990, an 8-year-old boy in Michigan, Stephen Nalepa, saw a film entitled "Nobody's Useless" as part of a self-esteem exercise in his second-grade class. One purpose was to encourage compassion for the physically handicapped. There was an explicit description in the film of how to hang oneself, showing how to apply a rope to the carotid artery and cut off air supply. Unlike the boy in the film, who was rescued from his suicide attempt, Stephen Nalepa was found dead in his bedroom, his feet a couple of inches off the ground.
This program, "DUSO--Developing Understanding of Self and Others," contains 42 guided imagery lessons in which children are ordered by teachers, the same way a hypnotist orders his subjects, to relax and close their eyes. Then the children are told to imagine they're traveling to strange planets, meeting friendly creatures. Former Las Vegas hypnotist Phil Potter (El Cajon, Calif.) reviewed DUSO and says that it is "exactly what we call hypnotism."
As a result of parental complaints about DUSO in New Mexico and other mind-altering programs, a resolution was passed in 1988 that the teaching of or counseling by certain mind-altering psychological techniques be entirely eliminated in New Mexico public schools.
Many parents have sought to protect their children from the behavior-modification programs (described above) that have taken the place of academic education in public schools. To escape the assault of Outcome-Based Education (OBE), multi-culturalism, and workforce training programs, parents in ever-increasing numbers are placing their children in private schools or are home-schooling. In spite of the "school wars," parents have felt safe taking their children to Sunday School to help build a solid moral foundation. But, your church's Sunday School curriculum may be as bad as that in the public schools -- tree-hugging, earth-worshipping paganism intermixed in the Christian lessons.
Many churches are now using a Sunday School curriculum created by an organization in Colorado called "Group." There is nothing in Group's publications that tells who they are, what they believe in, or anything about the backgrounds of the creators of the materials. Nevertheless, Group curriculum is now sold in most Christian bookstores. The Group material offers "Hands-on Bible curriculum" and advocates a "new approach to learning."
However, a close inspection of Group's materials and teaching methods shows it bears a close resemblance to the behavior-modification techniques of OBE. For example, under the sub-head "Successful Teaching: You can do it!," the teacher's manual asks the question: "What does active learning mean to you as a teacher? It takes a lot of pressure off because the spotlight shifts from you to the students. Instead of being the principle player, you become a guide and FACILITATOR." This is basic OBE classroom organization where students are not taught by a teacher, but are guided to learn on their own, as the class FACILITATOR simply suggests and gently directs toward a pre-programmed, psychology-driven lesson plan.
Just as in OBE behavior-modification exercises, the Group curriculum provides "Problem Cards" for student discussion of personal and family issues. Some examples from the Group workbook for fifth and sixth grade Sunday School classes:
1. PROBLEM CARD: "It seems like my parents fight all the time. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm afraid they're going to split up."
2. PROBLEM CARD: "The cool kids at school treat me like a total nothing. It's like I don't even exist."
3. PROBLEM CARD: "My dad is afraid he's going to lose his job, so we don't get to go anywhere on vacation this summer."
4. PROBLEM CARD: "I got in trouble for not cleaning up my room. Now I'm grounded for the weekend and can't go to my friend's birthday party. Doesn't that stink?"
Each of these examples are designed for group discussions in which the entire class takes on one child's personal problem. Personal family business is disclosed, parental authority is questioned, and student "self-esteem" becomes the central concern. This is Outcome-Based Education at work in the Sunday School class. Worse, all of it is done under the authority of the local church.
Then, there's pagan earth-worshipping. In a Group lesson entitled "Hug a Tree," students are led outside to an area with trees. A child is blindfolded and led to a tree where he/she is to hug it, and then feel the tree very carefully: "Try to learn everything about the tree that you can without looking at it." The student is led back to the group, spun around three times, and the blindfold is removed. The Group tree-hugging lesson goes on to instruct the facilitator: "After everyone has hugged a tree, been spun around and sat down, remove the blindfolds and find out how many kids can identify the trees they hugged. If it's a nice day, sit down on the grass and discuss the experience." Questions for the "facilitator" to ask: (1) How did it feel to hug a tree?; (2) How did you feel when you recognized the tree you hugged?; and (3) What do you like about trees?
Another part of the lesson is called "Life Applications." Children are to be taken on a walk around the outdoor area of the church. Once back inside, "Ask about the natural surroundings and human-made sounds. Talk about natural beauty and human-made pollution. If you want, have the kids go back outside and pick up any trash they saw on the walk." Question for the "facilitator to ask: “How do you think God feels when He sees how people have messed up the beautiful world he created?" Children are then given a game to play to simulate pollution.
In a Group Workbook entitled, "Sunday School Specials," a chapter tells students that "real conservation means remembering to turn off lights, hiking or biking instead of hitching a car ride, and cooling off in the shade instead of in the air conditioning. Kids are often tempted to do things the easy way instead of the 'green' way. They need lots of encouragement and affirmation to develop and stick to an environment-conscious lifestyle ..." That one line demonstrates an important key to the purpose of Group's Sunday School curriculum -- to promote a political agenda based on pagan earth worship rather than Christian values.
In many self-esteem classes, confidential questionnaires are given to students in order to determine how students feel about themselves and their family. One questionnaire called "The Doctor is In" lists 20 statements and asks students in all grade levels to "put a check next to each statement that applies to you." A few of these statements follow:
- I get very little support at home.
- I'm too shy.
- Many/things/people make me nervous.
- I fail at many things.
- I'm not physically attractive.
- I feel inferior to others.
- I'm unhappy a lot of the time.
- I don't get along with my family.
- I think I'm prejudiced (race, religion).
- I don't think I'll succeed in life.
- I argue a lot.
- I'm sometimes immature.
After completing the questionnaire, students are instructed to select three statements that are true for them personally, and to write an essay discussing at least three of their choices and why they feel that way.
There has been a barrage of criticism leveled against self-esteem programs:
1) They teach "New Age" and Eastern religious precepts which violate separation of church and state.
2) They violate the child's right of privacy by probing into private feelings and attitudes resembling group psychotherapy.
3) They have not been proven to be beneficial to the child either emotionally or academically. To the contrary, there are legitimate concerns that by probing into the child's psyche, there is a potential for emotional harm.
4) They waste valuable academic time.
A recent study published in the book entitled The Social Importance of Self-Esteem, and based on research by several University of California psychologists and sociologists, indicates that there is NO correlation between self-esteem and academic performance. In addition, these social "scientists" could find no conclusive evidence indicating a relationship between self-esteem and teen pregnancy rates; self-esteem and alcohol/drug use; and self-esteem and child abuse.
Edward Wynne, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle campus), and Kevin Ryan, Professor of Education at Boston University, question the benefits of the obsession with self-esteem in America's schools. In their recently published book Reclaiming Our Schools, they note:
"The self-esteem movement puts a false and infectious pressure on teachers. They are more and more expected to keep students feeling good about themselves. In other eras, teachers were expected to provide pupils with an environment and educational opportunity to grow and achieve."
A 1990 study contrasting the performance of American students in mathematics skills with five other countries revealed that the math scores of American 5th-graders were the lowest of the six countries. The Koreans were first. The test asked pupils to say whether they felt they would be "good at mathematics in high school." Of the Americans, 68% said "yes" while only 26% of the high-scoring Koreans gave that reply.
Commenting on Workshop Way, psychiatrist Twilah Fox (Tulsa, Oklahoma), says the methods used are definitely based on dangerous "New Age" ideas which are a prescription for mental chaos, rebellion, and degradation.
Dr. David Shaffer, M.D., Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School (New York City), thinks total self-esteem may reduce motivation. He says, "We know that anxiety in small doses is a powerful, motivating force, and that a lack of concern and indifference to the opinion of others can actually be quite handicapping."
1) Under the Freedom of Information Act, parents have the right to examine all school curricula.
2) Parents have the right to exempt their children from any portion of or all of any psychological programs. Many of these programs are an invasion of child and family privacy and violate the moral and religious freedom of the student and his family.
* Most of this material has been excerpted from a June 1990 Citizens for Excellence in Education special report (Report #18--"Psychological Curriculum: An Overview ... With a Special Emphasis on Quest and Project Self-Esteem") [NACE/CEE, Costa Mesa, CA] and from an August 1993 National Monitor of Education pamphlet ("The dangers of Self-Esteem Programs"). The section on "Group" was adapted from a 1/05 NewsWithViews.com article by Tom DeWeese: "Is Your Church Teaching Pagan Earth Worship in Sunday School?"


Identity designates the attempt to differentiate and integrate a sense of self along different social and personal dimensions such as gender, age, race, occupation, gangs, socio-economic status, ethnicity, class, nation states, or regional territory.
Any claim of identity faces three dilemmas: (a) sameness of a sense of self over time in the face of constant change; (b) uniqueness of the individual vis-à-vis others faced with being the same as everyone else; and (c) the construction of agency as constituted by self (with a self-to-world direction of fit) and world (with a world-to-self direction of fit). Claims to identity begin with the continuity/change dilemma and from there venture into issues of uniqueness and agency; self and sense of self begin by constructing agency and differentiating self from others and then go on to navigate the waters of continuity and change.
Engaging in any activity requires acts of self-identification by relying on repertoires that identify and contextualize speakers/writers along varying socio-cultural categories, often compared to mental or linguistic representations (Emmott & Alexander → Schemata) that are less fixed depending on context and function. Narrating, a speech activity that involves ordering characters in space and time, is a privileged genre for identity construction because it requires situating characters in time and space through gesture, posture, facial cues, and gaze in coordination with speech. In addition, narrating, whether in the form of fictional or factual narration (Schaeffer → Fictional vs. Factual Narration), tends toward “human life”—something more than what is reportable or tellable (Baroni → Tellability), something that is life- and live-worthy (Taylor 1989). Thus, narrating enables speakers/writers to disassociate the speaking/writing self from the act of speaking, to take a reflective position vis-à-vis self as character (Jannidis → Character).
Taking a reflective position on self as character has been elaborated in the narratological differentiation between author (Schönert → Author), narrator (Margolin → Narrator), and character. The reflective process takes place in the present but refers to past or fictitious time-space, making past (or imagined) events relevant for the act of telling, pointing toward the meaningfulness of relationships and worthwhile lives, and exemplifying “the human good” (Aristotle 1996: 1461a). It is against this backdrop that narrating in recent decades has established itself as a privileged site for identity analysis—a new territory for inquiry (cf. Ricœur  1992; Strawson 2004).
Designing characters in fictitious timespace has the potential of opening up territory for exploring identity, reaching beyond traditional boundaries, and testing out novel identities. Narratives rooted in factual past-time events, by contrast, are dominated by an opposite orientation. The delineation of what happened, whose agency was involved, and the potential transformation of characters from one state to another serve to demarcate the identity of the reflective self under investigation. If past-time narration is triggered by the question “Who am I?,” having the narrator’s quest for identity or sense of self as its goal, the leeway for ambiguity, transgression of boundaries, or exploration of novel identities is more restricted: the goal is rather to condense and unite, to resolve ambiguity, and to deliver answers that lay further inquiry into past and identity to rest.
However, the reduction of identity to the depiction of characters and their development in a story leaves out the communicative space within which identities are negotiated in interaction with others. Limiting narratives to what they are about restricts identity to the referential or cognitive level of speech activities and disregards real life, where identities are under construction, formed, performed, and change over time. It is within the space of everyday talk in interaction with others that narration plays its constitutive role in the formation and navigation of identities as part of everyday practices and that the potential for orientation toward human values takes form. When considering the emergence of identity, the narrating subject must be regarded: (a) as neither locked into stability nor drifting through constant change, but rather as something that is multiple, contradictory, and distributed over time and place, held together contextually and locally; (b) in terms of membership positions vis-à-vis others that help to trace the narrator’s identity within the context of social relationships, groups, and institutions; and (c) as the active and agentive locus of control, though simultaneously attributing agency to outside forces that are situated in a broader socio-historical context. Along these lines, identity is not confined by just one societal discourse but open to change. Identity is able to transform itself and adapt to the challenges of growing cultural multiplicities in increasingly globalizing environments.
Based on the assumption that narration at its origin was a verbal act performed locally in interactional contexts and from there evolved toward other, differently constituted and contextualized media (writing, electronic, and digital media, etc.; cf. Ryan 2006), the function of narration in identity formation processes cannot be reduced to the verbal means used or to the messages conveyed. Rather, the local interactional environments in which narrative units emerge form the foundation for inquiry into identity formation and the sense of self. While transformations from oral to written forms of expression have been studied (e.g. Ong 1982) and text-critical analysis has been undertaken from the perspective of the hermeneutic circle, work with transcripts from audio recordings is relatively new. More recent are concerted efforts to record narratives audio-visually and to analyze the way they emerge in interaction, including the sophisticated ways in which they are performed. Audio-visual material, of course, can be more fully (micro-analytically) scrutinized in terms of the contextualized coordination of narrative form, content, and performance features (Berns → Performativity) in the service of identity formation processes.
Recently, this type of micro-analytic analysis has been applied to identity as achieved in narration under the heading of “positioning analysis” (Bamberg 1997, 2003; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) in order to focus more effectively on the situated nature of identification processes that emerge from the three identity dilemmas mentioned above. Navigating and connecting temporal continuity and discontinuity, self and other differentiation, and the direction of fit between person and world, take place in the small stories told on everyday occasions in which tellers affirm a sense of who they are. It is precisely this sense of self and identity grounded in sequential, moment-by-moment interactive engagements, largely undertheorized and often dismissed in traditional identity inquiry, that operates on verbal texts or cognitive representations (Herman → Cognitive Narratology).
Self and identity are traditionally bound up with what is taken to be the essence of the individual person which continues over time and space in phylo- as well as in socio- and onto-genetic terms. However, this overlooks how conceptions of self and identity have evolved historically and culturally and also how each individual’s personal ontogenesis undergoes continuous change. In addition, essentialist views of self and identity camouflage the links between these concepts and their counterparts in narration and narrative practices. Section 3.1 will further explore the connection between self and identity dilemmas (b) and (c), while section 3.2 will be devoted to identity and dilemma (a).
Although self, like “I” and “me,” are highly specific morphological items of the English lexicon, they are commonly assumed to refer universally to corresponding concepts in other languages—an assumption that has been contested, however. A closer look reveals that these concepts most often have a history of their own that varies in illuminating ways (cf. Heelas & Lock eds. 1981; Triandis 1989). Modern notions of self and individuality (cf. Elias  1991; Gergen 1991) are taken to be closely intertwined with the emergence of local communities, nation states, new forms of knowledge and reflection (“rationalization”), feeling, and perception—all in conjunction with increasing interiorization and psychologization.
In this process of becoming individualized, self-narration (autobiography, life-writing, autofiction) springs to the fore as the basic practice-ground for marking the self off from “I” as speaker/agent and “me” as character/actor (cf. the narratological distinctions between “narrating self” and “narrated self” and between narrator and protagonist). Acts of thematizing and displacing the self as character in past time and space become the basis for other self-related actions such as self-disclosure, self-reflection and self-criticism, potentially leading to self-control, self-constraint, and self-discipline. What further comes to light in this process is an increasing differentiation between (and integration of) “I” and “me” (James  1989), and simultaneously between “I-we-us” and “them-other” (Elias  1991). Thus, self, apparently, is the product of an “I” that manages three processes of differentiation and integration: (a) it can posit a “me” (as distinct from “I”); (b) it can posit and balance this “I-me” distinction with “we”; and (c) it can differentiate this “we” as “us” from “them” as “other.” This process of differentiation must be taken into account when talking about “self” as different from “other” and viewing self “in relation to self” (as in self-reflection and self-control). Self, as differentiated from other by developing the ability to account for itself (as agent or as undergoer), to self-reflect, and to self-augment, can now begin to look for something like temporal continuity, unity, and coherence, i.e. identity across a life (cf. Ricœur  1992).
The ability to conceive of life as an integrated narrative forms the cornerstone for what Erikson ( 1963) called “ego identity.” The underlying assumption here is that life begins to co-jell into building blocks that, when placed in the right order, cohere: important moments tie into important events, events into episodes, and episodes into a life story.
It is this analogy between life and story—or better: the metaphoric process of seeing life as storied (in narratological terms: story and discourse) that has given substantive fuel to the narrative turn. The strength of how scholars (and laypeople) in the past have made use of this connection, though, varies: on the one hand, there is a relatively loose connection according to which we tell stories of lives by using particular narrative formats. Lives can be told as following an epic script or as if consisting of unconnected patches. Most often, though, lives are told by depicting characters and how they develop. Character, particularly in modern times, rests on an internal and an external form of organization. The former is typically a complex interiority, a set of traits organizing underlying actions and the course of events as outcomes of motives that spring from this interiority. The latter, an external condition of character development, takes plot as the overarching principle that lends order to human action in response to the threat of a discontinuous and seemingly meaningless life by a set of possible continuities (often referred to by cognitive narratologists as “schemata” or “scripts”; cf. Herman 2002: chap. 3). This interplay of human (and humane) interiority and culturally available models of continuity (plots) gives narrative a powerful role in the process of seeing life as narrative. It also should be noted that the arrangement of interiority as governed by the availability of plots gives answers—at least to a degree—to the “direction-of-fit” or “agency” identity dilemma. With narration thus defined, life transcends the animalistic and unruly body so that narration gains the power to organize “human temporality” (Punday 2003; see also Ricœur  1990): the answer to non-human, a-temporal, and discontinuous chaos.
Another, and probably stronger reason for employing the narrative metaphor for life starts with the assumption of a “narrative mode of thinking.” Bruner (1986) and Polkinghorne (1988) similarly vie for the argument that there is a particular cognitive mode of making sense of the (social) world which is organized “narratively” (an important theme in cognitive psychology; cf. Herman 2002, 2009). Freeman’s (1993) and Mishler’s (1986) work with autobiographical memories focuses particularly on the interrelationship between memory, autobiographical memory, and narrative. Mishler early on propagated the use of autobiographic narrative interview data in the form of a “contextual approach” which is not limited to recording data about human experience or to looking “behind” the author, but that focuses on interaction and relationships.
McAdams (1985), building on narrative theorists such as Bruner, Polkinghorne, and Sarbin, has turned the assumption of selves plotting themselves in and across time into a life-story model of identity. His model clearly states that life stories are more than recapitulations of past events and episodes, that they have a defining character: “our narrative identities are the stories we live by” (McAdams et al. 2006: 4). McAdams’ efforts to connect the study of lives to life stories is paralleled in a wider turn to biographic methods in the social sciences, leading to Lieblich & Josselson’s eleven-volume series titled The Narrative Study of Lives.
The origins of these efforts stretch across a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Goodson & Sikes (2001: 129) date the origins of life history methods in the form of autobiographies back to the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, life history methods have spread from the study of attitudes in social psychology to community studies in sociology, particularly within the Chicago School, and forty years later back into psychology. Retrospectively, it can be argued that the early studies by the members of the Chicago School, and in particular “oral history” popularized by the works of Studs Terkel, lacked the analytic component of modern day narrative inquiry. However, without these origins and the works of Bertaux (1981) and Plummer (1983), the foundation of the Research Committee on Biography and Society (within the International Sociological Association) would have been unthinkable. The methodological principles were laid out in the early work by Schütze (1977) and later picked up and refined in current narrative interview approaches by Fischer-Rosenthal & Rosenthal (1997).
Thanks to these developments, it is clearer how the relatively massive turn in the social sciences toward biography and life writing was able to gain ground as a new approach to identity research. It emerged as a concerted attempt to wed self-differentiation (self that can reflect upon itself) and narration (plotting a sense of characterhood across time)—in narratological terms: “narrating self” and “narrated self”—into an answer that addresses the three dilemmas of identity laid out earlier. A teller accounts for how s/he (a) has emerged (as character) over time, (b) as different from others (but same), and simultaneously (c) how s/he views her-/himself as a (responsible) agent. Managing these three dilemmas in concert is taken to establish what is essential to identity. Consequently, life-writing and biography, preferably as autobiography or life story, become privileged arenas for identity research.
The link between life and narration and the exploration of lives (including selves and identity) through the exploration of narratives have traditions going back to Freud ( 1913), Allport (1937), and Murray (1938). However, this close connection between life and narrative is said to require a particular retrospectiveness that values “life as reflected” and discredits “life as lived.” Sartwell (2000) has questioned (a) whether life really has the purpose and meaningfulness that narrative theorists metaphorically attempt to attribute to it and (b) whether narratives themselves have the kind of coherence (Toolan → Coherence) and telic quality that narrative theorists often assume. The problem Sartwell sees in this kind of approach is that the lived moment, the way it is “sensed” and experienced, is said to gain its life-worthy quality only in light of its surrounding moments. Rather than empowering the subject with meaning in life, Sartwell argues, narrative, conceived this way, drains and blocks him or her from finding pleasure and joy in the here-and-now. The subject is overpowered by narrative as a normalizing machine.
Another difficulty resulting from the close linkage between life, narration, and identity consists in what Lejeune ( 1989) termed “the autobiographical pact.” According to Lejeune, what counts as autobiography is somewhat blurry, since it is based on a “pact” between author and reader that is not directly traceable down into the textual qualities. Thus, while a life story can employ the first-person pronoun to feign the identity of author, narrator, and character, use of the third-person pronoun may serve to camouflage this identity (cf. narrative unreliability; Shen → Unreliability). Autobiographical fiction thrives on the blurring of these boundaries. Of interest here are “the perennial theoretical questions of authenticity and reference” (Porter 2008: 25) leading up to the larger issue of the connection between referentiality and narration (cf. Genette’s 1990 distinction between fictional narrative and factual narrative).
While most research on biography has been quite aware of the situated and locally occasioned nature of people’s accounts (often in institutional settings) and the problems this poses for claims with regard to the speaker/narrator’s sense of self or identity, a number of researchers have launched a large-scale critique of the biographic turn as reducing language to its referential and ideational functions and thereby overextending (and simplifying) narration as the root metaphor for the person, (sense of) self, and identity. At the core of these voices is the call for a much “needed antidote to the longstanding tradition of ‘big stories’ which, be they in the form of life stories or of stories of landmark events, have monopolized the inquiry into tellers’ representations of past events and themselves in light of these events” (Georgakopoulou 2007: 147; cf. Strawson 2004).
Attempts to transport interactional context and performance-oriented aspects of narration into the analysis of identities reach back to Burke (1945) and Goffman (1959) and have been reiterated repeatedly by others in the field of biography research (e.g. Mishler 1986; Riessman 2008). More recent attempts to integrate this acknowledgment into empirical analysis center around a number of key positions. First is the proposal to resituate narration as performative moves (cf. Langellier & Peterson 2004), calling for the analysis of embodied practices and material conditions of narrative productions. Similarly, Gubrium & Holstein (2008) argue for a narrative ethnography—one that is able to analyze the complex interplay between “experience, storying practices, descriptive resources, purposes at hand, audiences, and the environments that condition storytelling” (250).
Georgakopoulou (2006, 2007) and Bamberg (1997, 2003; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) have tried to develop an alternative approach to big story narrative research that takes “narratives-in-interaction,” i.e. the way stories surface in everyday conversation (small stories), as the locus where identities are continuously practiced and tested out. This approach allows for exploring self at the level of the talked-about and at the level of tellership in the here-and-now of a storytelling situation. Both of these levels feed into the larger project at work in the global situatedness within which selves are already positioned, i.e. with more or less implicit and indirect referencing and orientation to social positions and discourses above and beyond the here-and-now.
Placing emphasis on small stories allows for the study of how people as agentive actors position themselves—and in doing so become positioned. This model of positioning affords the possibility of viewing identity constructions as two-fold: analyzing the way the referential world is constructed, with characters (self and others) emerging in time and space as protagonists and antagonists. Simultaneously, it is possible to show how the referential world (what the story is about) is constructed as a function of interactive engagement, i.e. the way the referential world is put together points to how tellers “want to be understood,” how they index their sense of self. Consequently, it is the action orientation of the participants in small story events that forms the basic point of departure for this functionalist-informed approach to narration and, to a lesser degree, what is represented or reflected upon in the stories told. This seems to be what makes this type of work with small stories crucially different from work with big stories: the aim is to analyze how people use small stories in their interactive engagements to construct a sense of who they are, while big story research analyzes the stories as representations of world and identities within them.
Behind this way of approaching and working with stories is an action orientation that urges the analyst to look at constructions of self and identity as necessarily dialogical and relational, fashioned and refashioned in local interactive practices (cf. Antaki & Widdicombe eds. 1998; Shepherd → Dialogism). At the same time, it recognizes that small story participants generally attune their stories to various local, interpersonal purposes, sequentially gauging themselves to prior and upcoming talk, continuously challenging and confirming each others’ positions. It is in and through this type of relational activity that representations in the form of content, i.e. what the talk is intended to be about, are brought off and come into existence. By contrast, story analyses that remain fixated on the represented contents of the story in order to conclude from there how the teller reflects on him-/herself miss out on the very interactive and relational constructedness of content and reflection. Furthermore, this kind of analysis aims at scrutinizing the inconsistencies, ambiguities, contradictions, moments of trouble and tension, and the tellers’ constant navigation and finessing between different versions of selfhood and identity in local interactional contexts. However well-established the line of identities-in-interaction may be in the context of the analysis of conversational data, this emphasis still contrasts with the longstanding privileging of coherence by traditional approaches to narrative theory. Through the scrutiny of small stories in a variety of sites and contexts, the aim becomes to legitimize the management of different and often competing and contradictory positions as the mainstay of identity through narrative. A final aim is to advance a project of documenting identity as a process of constant change that, when practiced over and over again, has the potential to result in a sense of constancy and sameness, i.e. big stories that can be elicited under certain conditions.
(a) Whether narratives actually constitute a privileged territory for inquiry into life and identity requires further theoretical and empirical inquiry. Usually, this question is decided on the basis of a pre-theoretical, epistemological (if not ontological) stance. But the question itself may be open to different interpretations. (b) The use of narrative methods in the exploration of hybrid or hyphenated identities constitutes an interesting new development in recent trends of social science research in a turn to questions of citizenship, cultural exclusion, imagined communities, symbolic representations of belonging, and even general processes of globalization. (c) Illness and traumatic experiences are typically viewed as disruptions of continuity and coherence, posing challenges to the formation of a sense of self and (biographic) identity as well as to our sense of agency. Recent discussions about the plot-types employed in illness narratives and how patients’ narrative accounts can be made use of more productively in narrative medicine bring up interesting questions with regard to the construction of paths and trajectories of experiences, their inherent action potential, and the relationship to mapping out possible reconstructions from being re-active to becoming pro-active in the construction of patients’ “healing dramas.” (d) The increasing diversification into different narrative methods and approaches (content/thematic vs. structural/formal methods, now joined by discursive/performative approaches) has led to the question whether there is still a common core to the original “narrative approach” as an alternative to the study of subjectivity, self, and identity—the way, in retrospect, it seemed to have begun about thirty-five years ago.


Clue by Clues are fun mystery games I came up with to share my love of solving mysteries with my classes. They also are perfect critical thinking activities! Clue by Clues make great warm-up activities, fillers, or time killers for those last minutes of class and early finishers.
Students work in small groups to solve a puzzle or mystery The catch is that they are given each clue one at a time. This slows down the mystery solving process, meaning students spend more time discussing each clue and revising their theories. And that means more time using critical thinking skills. It also means more talk time as students discuss the importance of each clue and reevaluate their previous ideas. And of course, try to persuade others of their point of view.
Each Clue by Clue Activity is available to download and print. Inside you’ll find an introduction to the mystery for students to read, clue cards to distribute to students, hints to help them along, a full solution, and some follow-up discussion questions to extend the lesson. Each activity comes with complete teacher notes on how to use it.
Why Clue by Clues?
Research shows that a good critical thinking activity is one where students evaluate a range of facts and opinions (Moore and Parker, 1986), combine ideas in various ways (Smith, Ward and Finke, 1995), use complex thinking patterns (Feldman, 1997), and express or defend their opinions with evidence (Lipman, 1988).
Solving a mystery helps students practice all those critical thinking skills by noticing clues, evaluating evidence, synthesizing information from different clues, applying logic, and then explaining their solution. And to do that they have to use their close reading skills, as well.
Furthermore, students are solving the mysteries they are also developing their spoken language skills, such as:
Modal verbs of speculation: She must have forgotten her keys, It could have been the butler
Opinion language: I think…., I’m positive…, I’m not sure…
Hedging: It’s possible, probably, maybe, it’s not impossible.
Conclusions: That means that…
Emphasis: There’s no way that…
Hypotheticals: What if he didn’t do it, If he was at the movies, he couldn’t have done it.
And of course, students love mysteries! Reading and solving them are a lot of fun!
So check out the collection. Each one is low-prep and ready to use in class today. Click on the pictures below for more information and a preview before you download and buy them.
My Clue by Clue Mystery Critical Thinking Activities
Or save money! Get all 6 in one bundle for the price of 4!
Do-nows are one of my most important go-to teaching tools. They aren’t suitable for every lesson in every classroom in the world. But when they do work, they solve one of the biggest problems a teacher can face: How to get students to transition smoothly into class time.
When I first started teaching, I did a lot of one-to-one tutoring. So my first time teaching a big class took some adjusting. I got to class ten minutes early, and students started shuffling in shortly thereafter. As they came in, they threw down their bags on their desks and started congregating in the back to chat. Some students sat down, but leaned sideways in their desks to talk across the aisle. A few students would come in to cries of, “Hey, Peter. What’s going on?” A handful of students would come in, settle into their seats, getting out books and pencils. But as class hadn’t quite started yet, the quickly got bored and started playing on their cellphones or doodling.
When it came time to start class, no one was looking up at me and there was quite a bit of background noise. After trying to talk over it several times with no result, I ended up turning out the lights. That quieted them down, but it was hardly a permanent solution.
The Solution: Do-Nows
Instead of letting students get distracted in all that dead time before class, give them a focus as soon as they walk into class. That’s what a do-now (or bell ringer) is: an activity students do as they walk in the door. It sets the tone for the class–this is a place where we work. There’s a nice story here that suggests that do-nows are particularly effective on the first day of school because they set the tone for the whole school year.
What Makes a Good Do-Now?
They Do it on Their Own
In order for students to be able to do a do-now as they walk in, it needs to be a clear task that students can do with no input from the teacher. That means the directions should be available and obvious, whether it be on the board or on a handout. They shouldn’t need to check their answers with you from part one in order to go on to part two, either. A do-now is something they can do on their own, while you are getting ready for class. (I gather these are sometimes called teacherless tasks (And Rachel Roberts has a rather nice post up on what makes a good teacherless task).
One great way to make sure students grasp the task without teacher input is to have a limited set of kinds of Do-Now activities. In my classroom, if students walk into class and see a proverb on the board, they know that their job is to interpret the meaning and decide if they agree or disagree. If they see a word cloud, they know they must guess the connection or the theme of the class.
Being able to do it on their own also means that they shouldn’t need any additional materials. Everything they need should be readily available to them. A student can’t do something now, if they are waiting on something you give them, or even waiting for a partner to arrive. Ideally, they shouldn’t need anything more than a pen and perhaps a handout that you leave in a conspicious location. Since do-nows are a sort of warm-up activity, you don’t want students spending 10 minutes finding a book on the bookshelf or collecting objects around the room or looking up a lot of information on a website. You also don’t want to give students an excuse not to do the activity, so make sure they have everything they need.
Real Work, Just Faster
Doing it on their own also means that the activity is leveled to the students. It shouldn’t be too hard for the student to need assistance, but not too easy to be boring. And there should be a clear time limit. I like a good do-now that takes 10 minutes, with the possibility of an extension. My rule of thumb is 5 minutes before class time and 5 minutes into class.
A good do-now shouldn’t be busy work. It should relate to the theme of the class. Some teachers use class activities or test questions as do-nows. As an English teacher, I like using a do-now that is a bit more fun and engaging than a typical grammar activity, for example. But my do-nows always have students working with the English language. It shouldn’t be meaningless fun. Students shouldn’t feel that they have wasted their time.
In fact, some teachers argue that a do-now should result in written output which is assessed by the teacher. Otherwise, students will not take it seriously. I don’t necessarily agree that every time you start class, you need an activity that requires an output and a grade. But there should definitely be some result that is a t the very least discussed openly in class.
The Perfect Do-Now
My go-to do-now is a proverb or quotation on the board. As I mentioned, students can then figure out what it means and decide if they agree or not. Then we discuss it briefly. I then try to link the proverb to the theme of the class.
Other great follow-ups include:
Translate the proverb into your language
Think of a proverb from your culture that is similar.
Think of a story that proves or disproves the proverb
Since proverbs often contain an idiom or metaphor or some nonstandard grammar, we can talk about that language feature and try to use it elsewhere.
If you’re looking for a collection of quick and easy do-nows, check out my book, On the Board. It’s full of 200 proverbs, brain-teasers, riddles, puzzles, and jokes that make perfect fast, no-prep do-nows for your classroom!
This is a collection of proverbs, quotes, riddles, and brainteasers and other fun stuff I’ve curated over the years. Put one up on the board and get students thinking and working. It’s the perfect no-prep warmup, do-now, bell-ringer, filler, or fast-finisher activity.
The Make Your Own Icebreaker Chart outlines the four steps of most icebreakers and ways to go about implementing them to help you make original icebreakers. In this post, I walk through those four steps and how you can use the chart to make a new original icebreaker or adapt an old favorite.
When I was working on 50 Activities for the First Day of School, I was reading so many icebreakers and getting to know you activities that I started to wonder if there was a common framework to icebreakers. Was there a standard set of steps teachers could improvise around? How could you make make your own icebreaker, something original, but not unfamiliar to students?
I played with a lot of ideas before I came up with this Make Your Own Icebreaker Chart. The chart outlines the four major steps of an icebreaker activity, although you can usually skip or abbreviate one of those steps.
Students usually acquire information from each other or the classroom or teacher. From the other side of the coin, they are sharing or giving information
Then they usually have to record that information somewhere, and usually as they record it, they are manipulating it, doing something with it.
Then they share or distribute the information.
Finally, they use that information in someway. This step can be as simple as reporting back to the class or as complex as writing a biographical essay about a partner.
For each step, the chart has a number of examples of how that could be done. You can also think back on your favorite icebreaker and reverse engineer it to see how it accomplishes each of these steps.
You can find the Make Your Own Icebreaker Chart at Alphabet Publishing, along with other free downloadable worksheets for icebreakers and getting to know you activities. I probably shouldn’t be sharing this, as it might put me out of business! Who needs a book of activities when you can make your own? But I can’t resist sharing this, and maybe getting some feedback on it!
So how does the Make Your Own Icebreaker chart work?
I identified four steps that students go through in a typical icebreaker, or getting to know you activity. I’ll explain them below and illustrate them with a very simple interview-style icebreaker. I should not that not all icebreakers have these steps, or have them in this order. In fact, I’d say most icebreakers have three of the four steps here. And sometimes there’s a prep stage, where you make a worksheet or students think about what they are going to say.
I’d also note that the steps don’t always go in this order. In Find Someone Who, the teacher records information in a chart and then makes the students acquire it. Or sometimes the steps happen simultaneously. When students are asking and answering questions, they are acquiring and recording information at the same time.
Step 1: Acquire Information
So usually the first step of an icebreaker is to get some information from a partner. It might come from asking questions or reading a name tag or a worksheet the teacher has handed out. In some cases, the teacher or student does some prep work before, in creating the information. You might have students fill in a profile.
In a simple interview-style icebreaker, students acquire information by asking their partner questions such as “What’s your favorite color?” or “What did you do over summer break?”
Step 2: Record and Manipulate
Now that students have asked their questions of their partner, or read their teacher’s profile, they have to do something with the information. Having students manipulate information helps them to remember it and evaluate it. You want students to remember what they have learned from their friends and classmates beyond the first day. You also want them to make connections–“Hey, he likes baseball. I wonder if he likes other sports, too.” Otherwise, there’s point in doing a getting to know you activity at all.
In an interview, students would be taking notes on their partner, or perhaps filling out a class profile worksheet the teacher gave them.
Step 3: Distribute
This may be the step that is most often skipped. Usually students jump from recording information to telling someone about it. In our interview example, students would now jump to step 4, reporting the information to the class or another partner.
But adding a step where students leave the information somewhere–on a bulletin board, mixed up at random, thrown in a snowball, adds an extra element to the icebreaker. It allows you to have students find a new partner by chance, as in Who Wrote That? Or students can hang a fact they have collected about their partner on the wall, and every one in the class can read about everyone else. This opens up the icebreaker so that the whole class is learning about the whole class.
Step 4: Use the Information
Finally, you want students to do something with what they learned, whether it be report back to the class, report to another pair, or go home and write a paragraph about their new friend. In Two Truths and a Lie, students evaluate the truth of what they were told. As a wrap-up to Who Wrote That, students may expand on a simple fact to tell a whole story about themselves or their partner. Students can act, sing, dance, or do interpretive dance (although that might be a bit intimidating on the first day of class).
So there you go. You have all the tools you need to make amazing icebreakers. Let me know what you come up with!
Although, I freely admit that I’ve planned movie lessons upon occasion in order to get out of preparing a real less, students actually can get a lot out of videos and films. When students are watching a video, they’re listening and also absorbing body language. Videos are full of visual cues that students can pick up on. Finally, films are often fun and engaging, so students want to pay attention. But without a plan, a film-based lesson can turn into kids just watching a movie.
Now there are some great sites for using films in class, such as I’ll also Film English . But what if you have a film you love, and you want to use it in class. But no one’s done a lesson about it yet?
How to Use Films in Class
Here’s a basic framework for how I like to use videos in class, along with some examples of how it can be used with a video that I love: Mr Bean. It does require breaking the video into shorter sections. I recommend watching the video before class to get an idea of how it logically breaks down into sections. Note the times when each section begins and ends.
You’ll also need to prepare a few sets of questions. First you need questions that students can answer while watching the film. These questions should have clear and concrete answers. They should guide the student to understand the important parts of the film such as “Why did the man go into the building?”, “Who did he see in there?” Avoid questions about small details, like “What color was the man’s suit.”
On the other hand, if the film maker is using color or clothing to depict a theme, it’s good to direct students’ attention to that while they are watching.
The second set of questions should be more abstract and focus on the themes of the film or larger artistic issues. Ideally, these should be questions that require an understanding of various parts of the film, and be open to debate: “What kind of person do you think the hero is?” or “Do you agree with the mother that people are always cruel to each other?”
If the film is not one that lends itself to heavy themes, or it’s a non-fiction film, you can ask questions such as, “Have you ever been in that situation?” or “What do you think would happen if something was a bit different?”
1. Put students in pairs or small groups.
2. Play the video bit by bit. Have students watch and try to answer questions related to that section.
For the Mr. Bean video, I’d divide it into the parts where he makes the sandwich, eats the sandwich, and perhaps making tea/the ending. So I’d give students a worksheet with three sets of questions to answer as they are watching.
As for what would be good questions: I’d ask lots of questions about what he pulls out of his coat and why. Very concrete questions about what he does. Incidentally, this would be a good video for practicing vocabulary or verb tenses as students describe Mr. Bean’s actions.
3. Have them check their answers with another pair.
At the end of each section, stop the video and give them a chance to check their answers with another pair or group. This lets them help each other recap what happened, too. If you hear confused students, hopefully you’ll also hear other students explaining what happened to them.
4. If the whole class is completely lost, replay that section.
If 75% of the class, can’t figure it out, give them another chance or two, before stepping in to help.
5. Discuss the questions and any other questions students have to make sure they are following the video.
Before going on to the next section, give students a chance to ask any burning questions or quickly underline any key points. You might say something as simple as, “So, we’ve seen Mr. Bean make a sandwich in a very odd way. And his neighbor, well, his neighbor is pretty surprised. He probably thinks this is pretty gross.”
6. Have students predict what will happen next.
You may also want to give them any information they might need to interpret the next section.
7. For the next section of the video, repeat steps 2-6.
8. When the video is over, review the video as a whole. Discuss questions about the general theme or objective of the video.
You might do a quick summarizing activity, such as having students write a short summary or each tell one thing that happened. I sometimes do paragraph frames with key words missing and have students fill in the missing words.
Then move on to thematic questions. For Mr. Bean, questions about intercultural understanding often work well, as well as the theme of clowning. Clowns show us why we do things the way we do them, by showing what happens if you do them the wrong way. At the same time, clowns are very consistent in their own universe. You might ask students what is the normal way to make a sandwich? Why do you think Mr. Bean does it his way? Does Mr. Bean think we are strange? Can you think of different ways to do the same thing?
You could discuss the performance. Why doesn’t Mr. Bean talk? How does the actor use his face to make us laugh? What is the role of the straight man?
9. Move on to talking about how the video relates to something personal. This is a good time to do a writing or task where students apply something from the video to their lives. Students could also create their own scenes, or talk about a time they saw a clown or comedy performance.
I hope that framework works for you. I’d love to hear how it goes for your film-based lessons. Let me know in the comments.
The Clue by Clue Mystery Bundle contains 7 of my Clue by Clue Mystery Activities. What is a Clue by Clue Mystery? It’s a great warm-up, filler, or time killer for early finishers. Students are given a mystery to solve–whodunit or how did they do it or why. They have to figure it out by reading a series of clues, one at a time. As they receive each clue, they speculate on its significance and what it tells them about the situation.
Once they have received all the clues, they should have enough information to figure it out!
Clue by Clues make great warm-up activities, fillers, or time killers for those last minutes of class and early finishers. They can be critical reading activities that teach students to read closely for details, synthesize information from different sources, apply prior knowledge about the world, and to recognize the logic of a claim and evaluate its validity.
They are also a lot of fun!
While students are solving the mysteries they are also developing their spoken language skills, such as:
* Modal verbs of speculation: She must have forgotten her keys, It could have been the butler
* Opinion language: I think…., I’m positive…, I’m not sure…
* Hedging: It’s possible, probably, maybe, it’s not impossible.
* Conclusions: That means that…
* Emphasis: There’s no way that…
* Hypotheticals: What if he didn’t do it; If he was at the movies, he couldn’t have done it.
Teacher Notes are included with hints and the solution along with a students sheet that contains the clues for you to copy and cut-up.
The activities included (with previews for each one) are: The Break-In
This is a collection of riddles, puzzles, puns and jokes I’ve collected over the years. These are the world’s easiest, no-prep, ready-made class openers or do-nows. Pick a brain teaser or a funny headline, write it on the board, and get the students to solve the riddle or find the joke. Done.
I even use them as class fillers or time-killers for that last 5 minutes of class. Or put one on the board during a quiz or test for early finishers. You could even copy a bunch onto a worksheet and make an early finisher “brainteaser test”.
Besides the riddles, you’ll also find 42 funny headlines that I use in the same way. Each headline has a double-entendre it in. Students have to find the double meanings. These often get big laughs and draw attention to homophones and words with two meanings.
Finally, I have 64 proverbs students can try to figure out the meaning of. In my ESL or EFL class, thinking about proverbs is a great way to teach idioms, as well as similes and metaphors.
The preview includes just a handful of each category of do-now so you can get a taste of what this includes.
With Christmas just around the corner, many of us are looking for ways to bring a festive spirit into our classrooms. Have you got any suggestions for class activities that can help us to animate the last days of term?
Here are just a few quick and easy things you can do to bring the holidays into your classroom!
Presents. Buy the students small gifts like a pencil for the final exam
Bring in snacks like hot chocolate or Christmas cookies
Write Christmas cards to your students. Include one highlight and one thing they can do better.
Have students write Christmas cards to each other.
Have students write New Year’s resolutions.
Have students choose a local charity and collect money from the school for it–that could involve writing advertising flyers, going to other classrooms and giving persuasive speeches, or selling crafts.
Have students write a holiday memory. Turn it into a narrative essay.
Read to students. Every day for a week read them A Christmas Carol or some other Christmas book.
Right now I have a genre-based creative writing lesson plan where students analyze a short scary story and then write one of their own.
I also have a handout that introduces Halloween to students by asking them to decide which statements about Halloween are true and which are false.
If you have any requests or queries, do let me know.
This is one of my go-to activities for having students compare verb tenses. It’s really nice in that it allows for a lot of flexibility on which tenses you want to practice. You can limit it to the present and past simple or throw in the present perfect and continuous tenses. You could even work the future in.
The activity involves students sharing details of their lives from the present and another time period. This requires them to pay attention to meanings of various verb tenses as they relate to times of events, changes or lack of changes, and how verb tenses relate to each other.