Character education is an umbrella term loosely used to describe the teaching of children in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good, mannered, behaved, non-bullying, healthy, critical, successful, traditional, compliant or socially acceptable beings. Concepts that now and in the past have fallen under this term include social and emotional learning, moral reasoning and cognitive development, life skills education, health education, violence prevention, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and conflict resolution and mediation. Many of these are now considered failed programs, i.e. "religious education", "moral education", "values clarification".
Today, there are dozens of character education programs in, and vying for adoption by, schools and businesses. Some are commercial, some non-profit and many are uniquely devised by states, districts and schools, themselves. A common approach of these programs is to provide a list of principles, pillars, values or virtues, which are memorized or around which themed activities are planned. It is commonly claimed that the values included in any particular list are universally recognized. However, there is no agreement among the competing programs on core values (e.g., honesty, stewardship, kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, justice, equality, and respect) or even how many to list. There is also no common or standard means for assessing, implementing or evaluating programs.
- 1 Terminology
- 2 In-school programs
- 3 History
- 3.1 Understanding character
- 3.2 Developing character
- 3.3 History of character education in U.S. schools
- 3.4 Modern scientific approaches
- 4 Issues and controversies
- 5 See also
- 6 References
- 7 External links and Bibliography
Character as it relates to character education most often refers to how 'good' a person is. In other words, a person who exhibits personal qualities like those a society considers desirable might be considered to have good character—and developing such personal qualities is often seen as a purpose of education. However, the various proponents of character education are far from agreement as to what "good" is, or what qualities are desirable. Compounding this problem is that there is no scientific definition of character. Because such a concept blends personality and behavioral components, scientists have long since abandoned use of the term "character" and, instead, use the term psychological motivators to measure the behavioral predispositions of individuals. With no clinically defined meaning, there is virtually no way to measure if an individual has a deficit of character, or if a school program can improve it.
The various terms in the lists of values that character education programs propose—even those few found in common among some programs—suffer from vague definitions. This makes the need and effectiveness of character education problematic to measure.
There is no common practice in schools in relation to the formation of pupils' character or values education. This is partly due to the many competing programs and the lack of standards in character education, but also because of how and by whom the programs are executed.
Programs are generally of four varieties: cheerleading, praise and reward, define and drill, and forced formality. They may be used alone or in combination.
1) Cheerleading involves multicolored posters, banners, and bulletin boards featuring a value or virtue of the month; lively morning public-address announcements; occasional motivational assemblies; and possibly a high-profile event such as a fund-raiser for a good cause.
2) Praise-and-reward approach seeks to make virtue into habit using "positive reinforcement". Elements include "catching students being good" and praising them or giving them chits that can be exchanged for privileges or prizes. In this approach, all too often, the real significance of the students' actions is lost, as the reward or award becomes the primary focus.
3) Define-and-drill calls on students to memorize a list of values and the definition of each. Students' simple memorization of definitions seems to be equated with their development of the far more complex capacity for making moral decisions.
4) Forced-formality focuses on strict, uniform compliance with specific rules of conduct, (i.e., walking in lines, arms at one's sides), or formal forms of address ("yes sir," "no ma'am"), or other procedures deemed to promote order or respect of adults.
"These four approaches aim for quick behavioral results, rather than helping students better understand and commit to the values that are core to our society, or helping them develop the skills for putting those values into action in life's complex situations."
Generally, the most common practitioners of character education in the United States are school counselors, although there is a growing tendency to include other professionals in schools and the wider community. Depending on the program, the means of implementation may be by teachers and/or any other adults (faculty, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, maintenance staff, etc.); by storytelling, which can be through books and media; or by embedding into the classroom curriculum. There are many theories about means, but no comparative data and no consensus in the industry as to what, if any, approach may be effective.
It has been said that, "character education is as old as education itself". Indeed, the attempt to understand and develop character extends into prehistory.
Since very early times, people have tried to access or "read" the pre-disposition (character) of self and others. Being able to predict and even manipulate human behavior, motivations, and reactions would bestow obvious advantages. Pre-scientific character assessment techniques have included, among others: anthropometry, astrology, palmistry, metoposcopy, and chiromancy. These approaches have been scientifically discredited although they continue to be widely practiced.
The concept of inherited "race character" has long been used to characterize desirable versus undesirable qualities in members of groups as a whole along national, tribal, ethnic, religious and even class lines. Race character is predominantly used as a justification for the denigration and subsequent persecution of minority groups, most infamously, justifying European persecution of native Americans, the concept of slavery, and the Nazis' persecution of Jews. Though race character continues to be used as a justification for persecution of minorities worldwide, it has been scientifically discredited and is not overtly a component of modern character education in western societies.
Particularly in modern liberal republics, social and economic change is rapid and can result in cognitive stress to older generations when each succeeding generation expands on and exhibits their own modes of expressing the freedoms such societies enjoy.
America is a prime example. With few traditions, each generation exhibites attitudes and behaviors that conservative segments of preceding generations uneasily assimilate. Individual incidents can also produce a moral panic. Cries about loss of morals in the succeeding generation, overwhelmingly unsubstantiated, and calls for remediation have been constant in America since before its founding. (It should be expected that—in a free country that supports children's rights—this trend will continue apace.)
Eastern philosophy views the nature of man as initially quiet and calm, but when affected by the external world, it develops desires. When the desires are not properly controlled and the conscious mind is distracted by the material world, we lose our true selves and the principle of reason in Nature is destroyed. From this arise rebellion, disobedience, cunning and deceit, and general immorality. This is the way of chaos. Confucianism stands with Taoism as two of the great religious/philosophical systems of China.
A hallmark of the philosophy of Confucius is his emphasis on tradition and study. He disparages those who have faith in natural understanding or intuition and argues for long and careful study. Study, for Confucius, means finding a good teacher, who is familiar with the ways of the past and the practices of the ancients, imitating his words and deeds. The result is a heavy scheme of obligations and intricate duties throughout all of one's many social roles. Confucius is said to have sung his sayings and accompanied himself on a 'qin' (a kind of zither). According to Confucius, musical training is the most effective method for molding the moral character of man and keeping society in order. He said: "Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, perfected by music."
The theme of Taoism is one of harmony with nature. Zhuangzi was a central figure in Taoist philosophy. He wrote that people develop different moral attitudes from different natural upbringings, each feeling that his own views are obvious and natural, yet all are blinded by this socialization to their true nature. To Zhuangzi, pre-social desires are relatively few and easy to satisfy, but socialization creates a plethora of desires for "social goods" such as status, reputation, and pride. These conventional values, because of their comparative nature create attitudes of resentment and anger inciting competition and then violence. The way to social order is for people to eliminate these socialized ambitions through open-minded receptivity to all kinds of voices - particularly those who have run afoul of human authority or seem least authoritative. Each has insights. Indeed, in Taoist moral philosophy, perfection may well look like its opposite to us. One theme of Zhuangzi's that links Taoism to the Zen branch of Buddhism is the concept of flow, of losing oneself in activity, particularly the absorption in skilled execution of a highly cultivated way. His most famous example concerns a butcher who carves beef with the focus and absorption of a virtuoso dancer in an elegantly choreographed performance. The height of human satisfaction comes in achieving and exercising such skills with the focus and commitment that gets us "outside ourselves" and into such an intimate connection with our inborn nature.
The early Greek philosophers felt that happiness requires virtue and hence that a happy person must have virtuous traits of character.
Socrates identifies happiness with pleasure and explains the various virtues as instrumental means to pleasure. He teaches, however, that pleasure is to be understood in an overarching sense wherein fleeing battle is a momentary pleasure that detracts from the greater pleasure of acting bravely.
Plato wrote that to be virtuous, we must both understand what contributes to our overall good and have our spirited and appetitive desires educated properly and guided by the rational part of the soul. The path he prescribes is that a potentially virtuous person should learn when young to love and take pleasure in virtuous actions, but he must wait until late in life to develop the understanding of why what he loves is good. An obvious problem is that this reasoning is circular.
Aristotle is perhaps, even today, the most influential of all the early Western philosophers. His view is often summarized as 'moderation in all things'. For example, courage is worthy, for too little of it makes one defenseless. But too much courage can result in foolhardiness in the face of danger. To be clear, Aristotle emphasizes that the moderate state is not an arithmetic mean, but one relative to the situation: sometimes the mean course is to be angry at, say, injustice or mistreatment, at other times anger is wholly inappropriate. Additionally, because people are different, the mean for one person may be bravery, but for another it is recklessness.
For Aristotle, the key to finding this balance is to enjoy and recognize the value of developing one’s rational powers, and then using this recognition to determine which actions are appropriate in which circumstances.
The views of nineteenth-century philosophers were heavily indebted to these early Greeks. Two of them, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, had a major influence on approaches to developing character.
Karl Marx applies Aristotle's conclusions in his understanding of work as a place where workers should be able to express their rational powers. But workers subject to capitalist values are characterized primarily by material self-interest. This makes them distrustful of others, viewing them primarily as competitors. Given these attitudes, workers become prone to a number of vices, including selfishness, cowardice, and intemperance.
To correct these conditions, he proposes that workers perform tasks that are interesting and mentally challenging—and that each worker help decide how, and to what ends, their work should be directed. Marx believes that this, coupled with democratic conditions in the workplace, reduces competitive feelings among workers so they want to exhibit traditional virtues like generosity and trustfulness, and avoid the more traditional vices such as cowardice, stinginess, and self-indulgence.
John Stuart Mill, like Marx, also highly regarded development of the rational mind. He argued that seriously unequal societies, by preventing individuals from developing their deliberative powers, affect individuals' character in unhealthy ways and impede their ability to live virtuous lives. In particular, Mill argued that societies that have systematically subordinated women have harmed men and women, and advised that the place of women in families and in societies be reconsidered.
Because women and men today may not be well-positioned to fully develop the capacities Aristotle and others considered central to virtuous character, it continues to be a central issue not only in ethics, but also in feminist philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of education, and philosophy of literature. Because moral character requires communities where citizens can fully realize their human powers and ties of friendship, there are hard questions of how educational, economic, political, and social institutions should be structured to make that development possible.
Impressed by scientific experiments in social psychology, "situationist" philosophers argue that character traits are not stable or consistent and cannot be used to explain why people act as they do. Experimental data shows that much of human behavior is attributable to seemingly trivial features of the situations in which people find themselves. In a typical experiment, seminary students agreed to give a talk on the importance of helping those in need. On the way to the building where their talks were to be given, they encountered a confederate slumped over and groaning. Ironically, those who were told they were already late were much less likely to help than those who were told they had time to spare.
Perhaps most damning to the traditional view of character are the results of the experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s and Philip G. Zimbardo in 1971. In the first of these experiments, the great majority of subjects, when politely though firmly requested by an experimenter, were willing to administer what they thought were increasingly severe electric shocks to a screaming "victim." In the second, the infamous Stanford prison experiment, the planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because the college students who were assigned to act as guards became sadistic and those who were the "prisoners" became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. These and other experiments are taken to show that if humans do have noble tendencies, they are narrow, "local" traits that are not unified with other traits into a wider behavioral pattern of being.
History of character education in U.S. schools
The colonial period
As common schools spread throughout the colonies, the moral education of children was taken for granted. Formal education had a distinctly moral and religion emphasis. In the Christian tradition, it is believed that humans are flawed at birth (original sin), requiring salvation through religious means: teaching, guidance and supernatural rituals. This belief in America, originally heavily populated by Protestant immigrants, creates a situation of a-priori assumption that humans are morally deficient by nature and that preemptive measures are needed to develop children into acceptable members of society: home, church and school.
Character education in school in the United States began with the circulation of the New England Primer. Besides rudimentary instruction in reading, it was filled with Biblical quotes, prayers, catechisms and religiously charged moral exhortations. Typical is this short verse from the 1777 edition:
Good children must,
Fear God all day, Love Christ alway,
Parents obey, In secret pray,
No false thing say, Mind little play,
By no sin stray, Make no delay,
In doing good.
As the young republic took shape, schooling was promoted for both secular and moral reasons. By the time of the nineteenth century, however, religion became a problem in the schools. In the United States, the overwhelming dominant religion was Protestantism. While not as prominent as during the Puritan era, the King James Bible was, nevertheless, a staple of U.S. public schools. Yet, as waves of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy came to the country from the mid-nineteenth century forward, they reacted to the Protestant tone and orthodoxy of the schools. Concerned that their children would be weaned from their faith, Catholics developed their own school system. Later in the twentieth century, other religious groups, such as Jews, Muslims, and even various Protestant denominations, formed their own schools. Each group desired, and continues to desire, that its moral education be rooted in its respective faith or code.
Horace Mann, the nineteenth-century champion of the common schools, strongly advocated for moral education. He and his followers were worried by the widespread drunkenness, crime, and poverty during the Jacksonian period they lived in. No less troubling were the waves of immigrants flooding into cities, unprepared for urban life and particularly unprepared to participate in democratic civic life.
The most successful textbooks during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the famed McGuffey Readers, fostering virtues such as thrift honesty, piety, punctuality and industry. McGuffey was a theological and conservative teacher and attempted to give schools a curriculum that would instill Presbyterian Calvinist beliefs and manners in their students.
During the late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century period, intellectual leaders and writers were deeply influenced by the ideas of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, the German political philosopher Karl Marx, the Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and by a growing strict interpretation of the separation of church and state doctrine. This trend increased after World War II and was further intensified by what appeared to be changes in the nation's moral consensus in the late 1960s. Educators and others became wary of using the schools for moral education. More and more this was seen to be the province of the family and the church.
Still, due to a perceived view of academic and moral decline, educators continued to receive mandates to address the moral concerns of students, which they did using primarily two approaches: values clarification and cognitive developmental moral education.
Values clarification. Values change over time in response to changing life experiences. Recognizing these changes and understanding how they affect one's actions and behaviors is the goal of the values clarification process. Values clarification does not tell you what you should have, it simply provides the means to discover what your values are. This approach, although widely practiced, came under strong criticism for, among other things, promoting moral relativism among students.
Cognitive-developmental theory of moral education and development sprang from the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and was further developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg rejected the focus on values and virtues, not only due to the lack of consensus on what virtues are to be taught, but also because of the complex nature of practicing such virtues. For example, people often make different decisions yet hold the same basic moral values. Kohlberg believed a better approach to affecting moral behavior should focus on stages of moral development. These stages are critical, as they consider the way a person organizes their understanding of virtues, rules, and norms, and integrates these into a moral choice.
Character education movement of the 1980s
The impetus and energy behind the return of a more didactic character education to American schools did not come from within the educational community. It has been fueled by desire from conservative and religious segments of the population for traditionally orderly schools where conformity to "standards" of behavior and good habits are stressed. State and national politicians, as well as local school districts, lobbied by character education organizations, have responded by supporting this sentiment. During his presidency, Bill Clinton hosted five conferences on character education. President George W. Bush expanded on the programs of the previous administration and made character education a major focus of his educational reform agenda.
Modern scientific approaches
Personality and social psychology is a scientific method used by health professionals for researching personal and social motivators in and between the individual and society, as well as applying them to the problems people have in the context of society. Personality and social psychologists study how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. By exploring forces within the person (such as traits, attitudes, and goals) as well as forces within the situation (such as social norms and incentives), they seek to provide insight into issues as wide-ranging as prejudice, romantic attraction, persuasion, friendship, helping, aggression, conformity, and group interaction.
Neuropsychology addresses how brain regions associated with emotional processing are involved in moral cognition by studying the biological mechanisms that underlie human choices and behavior. Like social psychology, it seeks to determine, not how we should, but how we do behave - though neurologically. For instance, what happens in the brain when we favor one response over another, or when it is difficult to make any decision? Studies of clinical populations, including patients with VMPC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) damage, reveal an association between impairments in emotional processing and impairments in moral judgement and behavior. These and other studies conclude that not only are emotions engaged during moral cognition, but that emotions, particularly those mediated by VMPC, are in fact critical for morality.
Other neurological research is documenting how much the unconscious mind is involved in decision making. According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness. These studies show that actions come from preconscious brain activity patterns and not from people consciously thinking about what they are going to do.
Evolutionary psychology, a new science, emerged in the 1990s to focus on explaining human behavior against the backdrop of Darwinian processes. This science considers how the biological forces of genetics and neurotransmissions in the brain influence unconscious strategies and conscious and proposes that these features of biology have developed through evolution processes. In this view, the cognitive programs of the human brain are adaptations. They exist because this behavior in our ancestors enabled them to survive and reproduce these same traits in their descendants, thereby equipping us with solutions to problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history. Ethical topics addressed include altruistic behaviors, deceptive or harmful behaviors, an innate sense of fairness or unfairness, feelings of kindness or love, self-sacrifice, feelings related to competitiveness and moral punishment or retribution, and moral "cheating" or hypocrisy.
Issues and controversies
October 2010, the largest federal study yet found that schoolwide Character Education programs don’t produce any improvements in student behavior or academic performance.
A 2010 report released under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education also found that the vast majority of character education programs have failed to prove their effectiveness. Previous and current research on the subject fails to find one peer-reviewed study demonstrating any scientifically validated need for or result from character education programs. Typically, support is attested to by referring to "correlations" (e.g., grades, number of disciplinary referrals, subjective opinion, etc.).
Functional and ideological problems
1) An assumption that "character" is deficient in some or all children
2) Lack of agreement on what constitutes effectiveness
5) Differing standards in methods and objectives. Differing standards for assessing need and evaluating results. Some attempts have been made.
9) There are few if any common goals among character education programs. The dissensions in the list of values among character education programs, itself, constitutes a major criticism that there is anything to character education that is either fundamental or universally relevant to students or society.
10) It might be said that there is agreement in as much as what values do not find inclusion on lists of core values. Not found, even though they are fundamental to the success of modern democratic societies, are such noted values as independence, inventiveness, curiosity, critical thinking, skepticism, and even moderation. "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" the famous saying by Ms. Frizzle on the much celebrated TV show, The Magic School Bus, embodies values that would be antithetical to those found on today’s character education lists.
- "Character Education: An Historical Overview".
- Wanda Robinson-Lee (2008). A Framework for Understanding Character Education in Middle Schools. ProQuest. pp. 32–. ISBN 978-0-549-51817-4.
- "Character Education: Organizations and Initiatives".
- "What's Right and Wrong In Character Education Today (" ...too many programs that say they are developing character and call themselves "character education" are aimed mostly at promoting good manners and compliance with rules, not at developing students of strong, independent character.")".
- "Leading Children Beyond Good and Evil (Includes a list of conflicting "pillars" among competing character education programs.)".
- "Character Education in Schools and the Education of Teachers ("There is no common practice in relation to the formation of pupils' character or values education in schools in relation to teacher training.")".
- "What Work's Clearing House: Character Education" (PDF).
- Howard Adelman (Editor), Astri Suhrke (Editor) (2000). The Path of Genocide. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0768-8.
- "Character Education After the Bandwagon has Gone?" (PDF).
- Confucius (473–373 BCE). Analects. pp. chapter 8, verse 8. Check date values in:
- "Moral Character: Some ancient Greek views".
- "Moral Character: Marx and Mill".
- Thomas Blass (2004). The man who shocked the world: the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram. Basic Books. ISBN 0-7382-0399-8.
- "Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University".
- "Moral Education - A Brief History of Moral Education, The Return of Character Education, Current Approaches to Moral Education("Evaluation and assessment in character and moral education is best described as a work in progress. The field is held back by the lack of an accepted battery of reliable instruments, a lack of wide agreement on individual or schoolwide outcomes, and by the short-term nature of most of the existent studies. Complicating these limitations is a larger one: the lack of theoretical agreement of what character is.")".
- "The New England Primer: 1777 edition".
- "Moral Development and Moral Education: An Overview".
- Alfie Kohn ("Character education rests on three ideological legs: behaviorism, conservatism, and religion"). "How Not to Teach Values".
- "CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition (US) ("The focus on political lobbying has created state and national government imprimaturs that make the program look like a government initiative. The presidential declaration of a National CHARACTER COUNTS! Week is a triumph of marketing")" (PDF).
- "George W, Bush, National Character Counts Week Proclamation, 2001 (A chilling document wherein the conservative ideologies and politics of militarism, retributive war, churches, patriotism, faith, morality and virtue - as opposed to evil- are all conflated with character education for Character Counts! week)".
- "What is a Social/Personality Psychology?".
- "Investigating emotion in moral cognition: a review of evidence from functional neuroimaging and neuropsychology".
- "Unconscious Decisions: Scientific American".
- "Evolutionary Psychology".
- "Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children" (PDF). The Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. October 2010.
- Davis, Michael (2003). "What's Wrong with Character Education?". American Journal of Education. 110: 32. doi:10.1086/377672.
- Fabes, Richard A.; et al. (1989). Effects of Rewards on Children's Prosocial Motivation: A Socialization Study ("In a troubling study conducted by Joan Grusec at the University of Toronto, young children who were frequently praised for displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis than other children were. Generosity became a means to an end."). 25. Developmental Psychology.
- "Evaluating character education programs and missing the target: A critique of existing research". doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2006.08.001.
- "An Exploratory Study of the Impact of the Character Education Program within the Dade County Public School System ("There was no measurable differences in character building between those students in the program and those not in it.")".
- "A Critique of Character Counts! as a Curriculum Model for Explicit Moral Instruction in Public Schools" (PDF).
- "Character Education Quality Standards" (PDF).
- "Character Education (A 2007 report released under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education found that the vast majority of character education programs have failed to prove their effectiveness.)".
- "Evaluation: How It's Done".
- "Review: In the Name of Morality: Character Education and Political Control. Yu, Tianlong. (2004) ("Yu finds unfavorable similarities between the current character education movement in America with his own experience of Chinese cultural education and re-education.")".
- "Cult of Character: How the 'secular' Character Training Institute is working to build evangelist Bill Gothard's vision of a First-Century Kingdom of God—one city, one state, one school board, one police force and one mind at a time.".
- "A Critique of Research Evaluating Moral Education Interventions ("The problem of confusing morality with social conformity cannot be ignored. Students in times of slavery, pogroms, or other prejudice would be emulating community values by participating in cruelty and social injustice. We can never assume that our society is free from such injustices, because we may be blinded ourselves by social acceptability. Therefore, true moral education must empower students with the ability to deconstruct social norms in terms of universal values of social justice -- in this way moral education can also gain a powerful ally in the multicultural education movement.")". Archived from the original on 2000-01-09.
- "The Character Education Dilemma ("...the culture also inculcated a great variety of contrary values, norms, and customs in the young, such as hatred and intolerance for different ethnicities, faiths, and sexual orientations; it sanctioned - not to say glorified - murder, slavery, torture, and oppression. The social ethos in fact instilled and promoted a two-sided moral code whereby values could be readily converted into antivalues: the virtues of the individual, family, clan, group, or nation - the insiders - were seen as the vices of the other, the one or ones outside it. The same act as performed by me showed courage; by my enemy, cowardice. And so down the line, creating a jungle of contradictions.")".
- "Reversing the Perceived Moral Decline in American Schools: A Critical Literature Review of America's Attempt at Character Education (Covers the range of critiques from lack of pre-assessment and no evidence of effectiveness, to the damages of rewarding behavior and flaws in implementation. "The entire character education movement is a knee-jerk reaction of conservatives in America to the economic situation of poor students in school")" (PDF).
- The Discourse of Character Education ("...the movement lacks either a theoretical perspective or a common core of practice.").
- "Magic School Bus Wins NEA Award".
Arthur, J., (2003), Education with Character, New York: Routledge Falmer


History of Christian missions
According to the documents of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, the Biblical authority for missions begins quite early in Genesis 12:1-3, in which Abraham is blessed so that through him and his descendants, all the “peoples” of the world would be blessed. Others point to God’s wish, often expressed in the Bible, that all peoples of the earth would worship Him. Therefore, Christian missions go where worship is not, in order to bring worship to God.
In this view, the early historical Jewish mission is that of being a people placed in the midst of the other nations, situated so that they could proclaim the Creator God that blessed them. This view is confirmed in many OT scriptures, (cf. Exodus 19:4-6, Psalm 67) as well as the nature of the temple (its outer court was “the court of the gentiles”).
Several teachers including John R. W. Stott believe that a prominent prophecy in the Old Testament often unfolds continually and is certainly manifested in three situations, an immediate historical situation following the prophecy, a church-based intermediate situation, and an eschatological, end-of-time situation. Of course, Gen. 12:1-3 is such a prominent passage.
In the early Christian era, most missions were by monks. Monasteries followed disciplines and supported missions, libraries and practical research, all of which were perceived as works to reduce human misery and suffering, thus enhancing the reputation of God. For example, Nestorian communities evangelized much of N. Africa before Muhammad. Cistercians evangelized much of Northern Europe, as well as developing most of European agriculture’s classic techniques.
In the 16th century the proselyization of Asia was linked to the Portuguese colonial policy. With the Papal bull Romanus Pontifex the patronage for the propagation of the Christian faith in Asia was given to the Portuguese, who were rewarded with the right of conquest. The Portuguese trade with Asia was profitable and as Jesuits came to India around 1540, the colonial government in Goa supported the mission with incentives for baptized Christians. Later, Jesuits were sent to China and further countries in Asia. With the decline of the Portuguese power other colonial powers and Christian organisations gain influence.
After the Reformation, for nearly a hundred years, occupied by their struggle with the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant churches were not missionary-sending churches. But in the centuries that followed, the Protestant churches began sending missionaries in increasing numbers, spreading the proclamation of the Christian message to previously unreached people. In North America, missionaries to the native Americans included Jonathan Edwards, the well known preacher of the Great Awakening, who in his later years retired from the very public life of his early career. He became a missionary to the Housatonic Native Americans and a staunch advocate for them against cultural imperialism.
As European culture has been established in the midst of indigenous peoples, the cultural distance between Christians of differing cultures has been difficult to overcome. One early solution was the creation of segregated “praying towns” of Christian natives. This pattern of grudging acceptance of converts was repeated in Hawaii later when missionaries from that same New England culture went there. In Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Catholic missionaries selected and learned among the languages of the Amerindians and devised writing systems for them. Then they preached to them in those languages (Quechua, Guarani, Nahuatl) instead of Spanish, to keep Indians away from “sinful” whites. An extreme case were the Guarani Reductions, a theocratic semiindependent region established by the Jesuits.
Around 1780, an indigent Baptist cobbler named William Carey began reading about James Cook‘s Polynesian journeys. His interest grew to a furious sort of “backwards homesickness,” inspiring him to obtain Baptist orders, and eventually write his famous 1792 pamphlet, “An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of Heathen.” Far from a dry book of theology, Carey’s work used the best available geographic and ethnographic data to map and count the number of people who had never heard the Gospel. It formed a movement that has grown with increasing speed from his day to ours.
Carey’s example was followed by a number of missions to sea-side and port cities. The China Overseas Missionaries and Moravian Church are two of the more famous.
Thomas Coke, the first bishop of the American Methodists, has been called “the Father of Methodist Missions”. After spending time in the young American republic strengthening the infant Methodist Church alongside episcopal colleague Francis Asbury, the British-born Coke left for mission work. During his time in America, Coke worked vigorously to increase Methodist support of Christian missions and raising up mission workers. Coke died while on a mission trip to India, but his legacy among Methodists – his passion for missions – continues.
The next wave of missions, starting in the early 1850s, was to inland areas, led by Hudson Taylor with his China Inland Mission. Taylor was later supported by Henry Grattan Guinness who founded Cliff College which exists today for the purpose of training and equipping local and global mission.
The new wave of missions inspired by Taylor and Guinness have collectively been called “faith missions” and owe much to the ideas and example of Anthony Norris Groves. Taylor was a thorough-going nativist, offending the missionaries of his era by wearing Chinese clothing and speaking Chinese at home. His books, speaking and examples led to the formation of numerous inland missions, and the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), which from 1850 to about 1950 sent nearly 10,000 missionaries to inland areas, often at great personal sacrifice. Many early SVM missionaries to areas with endemic tropical diseases left with their belongings packed in a coffin, aware that 80% of them would die within two years.
In 1910, the Edinburgh Missionary Conference was held in Scotland. Presided over by active SVM leader (and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient) John R. Mott, an American Methodist layperson, the conference reviewed the state of evangelism, Bible translation, mobilization of church support, and the training of indigenous leadership. Looking to the future, conferees worked on strategies for worldwide evangelism and cooperation. The conference not only established greater ecumenical cooperation in missions, but also essentially launched the modern ecumenical movement.
The next wave of missions was started by two missionaries, Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran, around 1935. These men realized that although earlier missionaries had reached geographic areas, there were numerous ethnographic groups that were isolated by language, or class from the groups that missionaries had reached. Cameron formed Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate the Bible into native languages. McGavran concentrated on finding bridges to cross the class and cultural barriers in places like India, which has upwards of 4,600 peoples, separated by a combination of language, culture and caste. Despite democratic reforms, caste and class differences are still fundamental in many cultures.
An equally important dimension of missions strategy is the indigenous method of nationals reaching their own people. In Asia this wave of missions was pioneered by men like Dr G D James of Singapore, Rev Theodore Williams of India and Dr David Cho of Korea. The “two thirds Missions Movement” as it is referred to, is today a major force in missions.
Most modern missionaries and missionary societies have repudiated cultural imperialism, and elected to focus on spreading the Gospel and translating the Bible. Sometimes, missionaries have been vital in preserving and documenting the culture of the peoples among whom they live.
Often, missionaries provide welfare and health services, as a good deed or to make friends with the locals. Thousands of schools, orphanages, and hospitals have been established by missions. One of the quietest, yet most far-reaching services provided by missionaries started with the Each one, teach one literacy program begun by Dr. Frank Laubach in the Philippines in 1935. The program has since spread around the world and brought literacy to the least enabled members of many societies.
The word “mission” was historically often applied to the building, the “mission station” in which the missionary lives or works. In some colonies, these mission stations became a focus of settlement of displaced or formerly nomadic people. Particularly in rural Australia, missions have become localities or ghettoes on the edges of towns which are home to many Indigenous Australians. The word may be seen as derogatory when used in this context in a derogatory or racist way.
 Modern missionary methods and doctrines
A Christian missionary’s objective is to give an understandable presentation of their beliefs with the hope that people will choose to convert from other faiths to Christianity. As a matter of strategy, many evangelical Christians in Europe and North America now focus on what they call the “10/40 window,” a band of countries between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude and reaching from western Africa through Asia. Christian missions strategist Luis Bush pinpointed the need for a major focus of evangelism in the “10/40 Window,” a phrase he coined in his presentation at the missionary conference Lausanne 1989 in Manila. Sometimes referred to as the “Resistant Belt,” it is an area that includes 35% of the world’s land mass, 90% of the world’s poorest peoples and 95% of those who have yet to hear anything about Christianity.
In modern missionary strategy, mission stations are deprecated, because they were historically ineffective. Mission stations normally created disaffected individual converts, often seen as an outcast by their family and culture. In many cases, the only source of converts to a mission station were the orphans raised in the station’s orphanage. Also, many mission station’s converts were so alienated from surrounding cultures that they were unable to get work outside the mission station, let alone act as cultural ambassadors for Christianity. In some cases, these paid “rice bowl Christians” actively impeded Christian conversion in the mission’s schools and orphanages so that their own incomes would not be reduced as more Christians came to depend on the mission station.
Modern pioneering missionary doctrines now focus on inserting a culturally adapted seed of Christian doctrines into a self-selected, self-motivated group of native believers, without removing the natives from their culture in any way.
Modern mission techniques are sufficiently refined that within ten to fifteen years, most native churches are natively pastored, managed, taught, self-supporting and evangelizing. The process can be substantially faster if a preexisting translation of the Bible and higher pastoral education are already available, perhaps left-over from earlier, less effective missions.
A key approach is to let native cultural groups decide to adopt Christian doctrines and benefits, when (as in most cultures) such major decisions are normally made by groups. In this way, opinion leaders in the groups can persuade much or most of the groups to convert. When combined with training in church planting and other modern missionary doctrine, the result is an accelerating, self-propelled conversion of large portions of the culture.
A typical modern mission is a co-operative effort by many different ministries, often including several coordinating ministries, often with separate funding sources. One typical effort proceeded as follows:
- A missionary radio group recruits, trains and broadcasts in the main dialect of the target culture’s language. Broadcast content is carefully adapted to avoid syncretism yet help the Christian Gospel seem like a native, normal part of the target culture. Broadcast content often includes news, music, entertainment and education in the language, as well as purely Christian items.
- Broadcasts might advertise programs, inexpensive radios (possibly spring-wound), and a literature ministry that sells a Christian mail-order correspondence course at nominal costs. The literature ministry is key, and is normally a separate organization from the radio ministry. Modern literature missions are shifting to web-based content where it makes sense (as in Western Europe and Japan).
- When a person or group completes a correspondence course, they are invited to contact a church-planting missionary group from (if possible) a related cultural group. The church-planting ministry is usually a different ministry from either the literature or radio ministries. The church-planting ministry usually requires its missionaries to be fluent in the target language, and trained in modern church-planting techniques.
- The missionary then leads the group to start a church. Churches planted by these groups are usually a group that meets in a house. The object is the minimum organization that can perform the required character development and spiritual growth. Buildings, complex ministries and other expensive items are mentioned, but deprecated until the group naturally achieves the size and budget to afford them. The crucial training is how to set up a church (meet to study the Bible, and perform communion and worship), and how to become a Christian (the finer points of obeying God), usually in that order.
- A new generation of churches is created, and the growth begins to accelerate geometrically. Frequently, daughter churches are created only a few months after a church’s creation. In the fastest-growing Christian movements, the pastoral education is “pipelined”, flowing in a just-in-time fashion from the central churches to daughter churches. That is, planting of churches does not wait for the complete training of pastors.
The most crucial part of church planting is selection and training of leadership. Classically, leadership training required an expensive stay at a seminary, a Bible college. Modern church planters deprecate this because it substantially slows the growth of the church without much immediate benefit. Modern mission doctrines replace the seminary with programmed curricula or (even less expensive) books of discussion questions, and access to real theological books. The materials are usually made available in a major trading language in which most native leaders are likely to be fluent. In some cases, the materials can be adapted for oral use.
It turns out that new pastors’ practical needs for theology are well addressed by a combination of practical procedures for church planting, discussion in small groups, and motivated Bible-based study from diverse theological texts. As a culture’s church’s wealth increases, it will naturally form classic seminaries on its own.
Another related mission is Bible translation. The above-mentioned literature has to be translated. Missionaries actively experiment with advanced linguistic techniques to speed translation and literacy. Bible translation not only speeds a church’s growth by aiding self-training, but it also assures that Christian information becomes a permanent part of the native culture and literature. Some ministries also use modern recording techniques to reach groups with audio that could not be soon reached with literature.
Recently, there has been a movement in the United States called home school mission in which a Christian is encouraged to train their children in the faith. This has arisen in the development of secular education that has increasingly excluded the Christian message. As a result many groups have focused missionary effort within the home to ensure that the children remain Christian rather than becoming secular as a result of daily training in secular schools.
 Controversy and Christian missionaries
Some governments (such as Islamic nations, Communist China and Russia), secular anthropologists and sociologists object to missionary work among isolated indigenous populations. Some consequences are claimed to have been apostasy from Islam, disloyalty to the Communist Party, cultural assimulation, reduction of native language speakers, and loss of native culture. In fact, Christian missionaries have been criticised for having a general lack of respect for native cultures throughout history, even actively working to undermine the religious customs and beliefs of many non-Christian countries. This has been called Ethnocide and Cultural genocide and Cultural Imperialism.
The Christian missionary mindset is generally depicted as that of simple religious folk with a pure desire to peacefully spread their gospel and message of love. In reality, their methods of propagation are often anything but peaceful and usually leave behind a native population stripped of their culture and often decimated…. In the words of one resident of Thailand, “They [Christian missionaries] seemed that they did not show any interest for our culture. Why? They are just eager to build big churches in every village. It seems that they are having two faces; under the title of help they suppress us. To the world, they gained their reputations as benefactors of disappearing tribes. They built their reputations on us for many years. The way they behaved with us seemed as if we did not know about god before they arrived here. Why do missionaries think they are the only ones who can perceive God?”
In India, it is charged by some that publicized persecution of Christians is, in fact, incited by the exclusivity and exceptionalism of Christian missionaries. These tensions have boiled over into violence. The governments of the affected states assert that most conversions undertaken by zealous evangelicals occur due to compulsion, inducement or fraud. In the Indian state of Tripura, the government has alleged financial and weapons-smuggling connections between Baptist missionaries and Christian terrorist groups like the Nagaland Rebels and the National Liberation Front of Tripura. Hindus have claimed that these organizations persecute and slaughter Hindus by the thousands. See also National Liberation Front of Tripura and .
You are probably wondering what is the aggression caused by Christians in India. You may wonder how can a minority religion that is only 3% of the population cause aggression in a nation of over 1,000,000,000 people. In the press, the aggression and “persecution” of Christians is often publicized. However, it is never publicized how Christian Fundamentalists often incite this cycle of violence and aggression…. Christians believe that they have been commanded by Christ to go and “save” (convert) the people of this world. This is also supposed to give them special merit when it comes to the day of final judgment. While there are many Christians who today do not believe in this exclusivity, there are a still large number of misguided Christians who still believe in the exclusivity of Christianity and the concept of saving souls. It is this misguided belief that breeds a hatred and intolerance for other religions. and from this hatred, these Christian Fundamentalists begin their aggression to convert. And often they will go to any means to convert even if it means violence. This website seeks to educate the world about the atrocities that conversions bring and to bring this aggressive nature of Christianity to an end.
Often, some assert, coercion comes in the form of a pressure to convert through the injecting of fear of dire consequences if they don’t. “Missionaries are actually in essence terrorists. Why? They come to us and say, ‘If you don’t do as we say, you are going to hell! You will die! You will be judged! You are not part of us! You are children of the Satan!’ etc.etc. Aren’t these sentences terrorising?”
The Vatican, of late, is taking a somewhat different view toward proselytizing.
“In mid-May, the Vatican was also co-sponsoring a meeting about how some religious groups abuse liberties by proselytizing, or by evangelizing in aggressive or deceptive ways. Iraq … has become an open field for foreigners looking for fresh converts. Some Catholic Church leaders and aid organizations have expressed concern about new Christian groups coming in and luring Iraqis to their churches with offers of cash, clothing, food or jobs…. Reports of aggressive proselytism and reportedly forced conversions in mostly Hindu India have fueled religious tensions and violence there and have prompted some regional governments to pass laws banning proselytism or religious conversion…. Sadhvi Vrnda Chaitanya, a Hindu monk from southern India, told CNS that India’s poor and uneducated are especially vulnerable to coercive or deceptive methods of evangelization…. Aid work must not hide any ulterior motives and avoid exploiting vulnerable people like children and the disabled, she said.”
In an interview with Outlook Magazine, Sadhvi Vrnda Chaitanya said “If the Vatican could understand that every religious and spiritual tradition is as sacred as Christianity, and that they have a right to exist without being denigrated or extinguished, it will greatly serve the interests of dialogue, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence.”
The meeting of religious leaders from the Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Judaism and Yoruba faiths resulted in an agreement on ten points about proseltyzation, notably that if done, it be with respect for other cultures
The fictional movie The Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford depicts this missionary mindset and the damage some feel it can wreak upon native peoples. Another movie, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which is factually based, tells of similar destruction brought upon the Inuit culture by missionaries. See also Siqqitiq and these reference works on the subject.
 Aid and Evangelism
Another source of conflict regarding missionaries in the third world is the charge that the aid that comes in response to various world disasters comes with a condition: that assistance requires conversion. While there is a general agreement among most major aid organizations not to mix aid with proseltyzing, others see disasters as a means to spread the word. Innovative Minds, a Muslim software company “specialising in the application of internet and multimedia technology for promoting a better understanding of Islam in the west” has written a report about just such an occurrence, the tidal wave (tsunami) that devastated parts of Asia on December 26, 2004.
- “This (disaster) is one of the greatest opportunities God has given us to share his love with people,” said K.P. Yohannan, president of the Texas-based Gospel for Asia. In an interview, Yohannan said his 14,500 “native missionaries” in India, Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands are giving survivors Bibles and booklets about “how to find hope in this time through the word of God.” In Krabi, Thailand, a Southern Baptist church had been “praying for a way to make inroads” with a particular ethnic group of fishermen, according to Southern Baptist relief coordinator Pat Julian. Then came the tsunami, “a phenomenal opportunity” to provide ministry and care, Julian told the Baptist Press news service…. Not all evangelicals agree with these tactics. “It’s not appropriate in a crisis like this to take advantage of people who are hurting and suffering,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, head of Samaritan’s Purse and son of evangelist Billy Graham.”.
The Christian Science Monitor echoes these concerns… “‘I think evangelists do this out of the best intentions, but there is a responsibility to try to understand other faith groups and their culture,’ says Vince Isner, director of FaithfulAmerica.org, a program of the National Council of Churches USA”.
The Bush administration has in fact recently made it easier for U.S. faith based groups and missionary societies to tie aid and church together.
- For decades, US policy has sought to avoid intermingling government programs and religious proselytizing. The aim is both to abide by the Constitution’s prohibition against a state religion and to ensure that aid recipients don’t forgo assistance because they don’t share the religion of the provider…. But many of those restrictions were removed by Bush in a little-noticed series of executive orders — a policy change that cleared the way for religious groups to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in additional government funding. It also helped change the message American aid workers bring to many corners of the world, from emphasizing religious neutrality to touting the healing powers of the Christian God.
 Christian counter-claims
One Christian organization, Voice of the Martyrs, in contrast to reports of Christian aggression in India, claims that Christians are also recipients of violent aggression in India from “radical Hindus” (presumably Hindu Nationalists). One example is the brutal murder of Australian Graham Staines and his family who had been evangelizing and conducting aid work since 1965. The perpetrators say that it was the disrespect of Hindu religious tradition following such conversions, such as the eating of beef (cows are considered sacred to Hindus) which set them off.
Missionaries, however, say that “false reports” of forced conversion are a key weapon in the Hindu Nationalist fight against both Christian missionaries and native-born Christian Indians (this despite the fact that Hindu Nationalists such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh frequently cooperate with Christian groups in times of natural disaster and have a good relationship with many Catholic organizations overall). The government in India has passed anti-conversion laws in several states that are supposedly meant to prevent conversions from “force or allurement”, but are primarily used, they say, to persecute and criminalize voluntary conversion due to the government’s broad definition of “force and allurement.” Any gift received from a Christian in exchange for, or with the intention of, conversion is considered allurement. V.O.M. reports that aid-workers claim that they are being hindered from reaching people with much needed services as a result of this persecution. Alan de Lastic, Roman Catholic archbishop of New Delhi states that claims of forced conversion are false
“‘There are attacks practically every week, maybe not resulting in death, but still, violent attacks,’ Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India tells The Christian Science Monitor today. ‘They [India’s controlling BJP party] have created an atmosphere where minorities do feel insecure.'” According to Prakash Louis, director of the secular Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, “We are seeing a broad attempt to stifle religious minorities and their constitutional rights…Today, they say you have no right to convert, Tomorrow you have no right to worship in certain places.” Existing congregations, often during times of worship, are being persecuted. Properties are sometimes destroyed and burnt to the ground, while native pastors are sometimes beaten and left for dead.
- ^ Daus, Ronald (1983). Die Erfindung des Kolonialismus. Wuppertal/Germany: Peter Hammer Verlag, p.33, 61-66. ISBN 3-87294-202-6.
- ^ The Burning Cross.
- ^ India: Concerns over more anti-conversion bills
- ^ Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities, Government of Madhya Pradesh 1956
- ^ Subir Bhaumik. Church backing Tripura rebels. BBC News date=18 April, 2000. Retrieved on August 9, 2007.
- ^ N.Krishna (April 10, 2005). Conversions with foreign fund. Retrieved on August 9, 2007.
- ^ Thirteen Years of Killings in Tripura by the NLFT. Retrieved on August 9, 2007.
- ^ christianaggression.org ChristianAggression.org.
- ^ Christian Missionaries in West Papua.
- ^ Carol Glatz (May 19, 2006). Legislating conversions: Weighing the message vs. the person. Catholic Online. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Seema Sirohi (October 2, 2006). Father Complex. OutlookIndia.com. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Report from inter-religious consultation on “Conversion – assessing the reality”. World Council of Churches (May 12-16, 2006). Retrieved on August 9, 2007.
- ^ Missionaries Preying on Tsunami Survivors (January 24,2005). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ In Asia, some Christian groups spread supplies – and the word. Knight-Ridder Newspapers (January 12, 2005). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Jane Lampman (January 31, 2005). Disaster Aid Furthers Fears of Proselytizing. Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Bush brings faith to foreign aid. The Boston Globe (October 8, 2006). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Relief missions from Delhi. The Hindu (December 27, 2004). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Country Map – India. Persecution.com. Retrieved on August 7, 2007. (website requires anonymous creation of a username and password account to be able to view)
- ^ Hindus allege forced conversion. HinduNet.org. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Ted Olsen (September 1, 2003). Weblog: Missionaries in India Concerned as Hindu Activists Break Up Prayer Meeting. Christianity Today. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Ted Olsen. Weblog: Missionaries in India Concerned as Hindu Activists Break Up Prayer Meeting date=September 1, 2003. Christianity Today. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Christian murdered in Kerala. Christian Today – India Edition (February 14, 2007). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Two Nuns accused and held for trying to “convert” students. Evangelical Fellowship of India. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Five arrested for assaulting trainee priests in Panvel. Evangelical Fellowship of India (March 7, 2007). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Christians attacked in Jalampur, Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh. Evangelical Fellowship of India (January 10, 2006). Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Jacob Chaterjee (February 12, 2007). Hindu radicals attack believers in Karnataka. Christian Today – India Edition. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Jacob Chaterjee (February 20, 2007). Hindu radicals attack Bible college students during outreach; two in critical condition. Christian Today – India Edition. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Jacob Chaterjee (February 6, 2007). Hindu radicals attack Christian prayer meeting in Bihar. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.
- ^ Jacob Chaterjee (February 18, 2007). Hindu fanatics oppose Christian-run orphanage and Bible center in Himachal Pradesh. Christian Today – India Edition. Retrieved on August 7, 2007.


Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785-1863) Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859)
German philologists and collectors of folk tales.
Renowned for their collection of European fairy tales, entitled Kinder-und Hausmärchen (1812-1815; Grimms' Fairy Tales), the brothers Grimm are additionally celebrated for their study of the Germanic literary tradition. Distinguished philologists, they are credited with rediscovering the richness of Germany's medieval language, literature, and culture in the early nineteenth century. While both brothers individually produced significant works of scholarship, their most enduring literary efforts were produced in collaboration. These include the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a German dictionary, which is recognized as comparable in importance to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Grimms 'Fairy Tales, their world famous collection of folk tales. Transcribed from stories purportedly recounted by peasants in the German countryside, Grimms' Fairy Tales reflects the brothers' effort to preserve the oral tradition of folklore.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in Hanau, Germany. The death of their father in 1788 and consequent lack of family income required that they be placed in the care of an aunt in Kassel, where they were educated at the Lyceum Fridericianum. Throughout their lives the Grimms shared a close intellectual and emotional relationship. Both studied law at Marburg University in Kassel and both were distracted from their studies by their interest in medieval German literature. Beginning in about 1806 the brothers began collecting oral folklore, which they revised and published as Kinder-und Hausmärchen, a work that Wilhelm considered of minor importance but which proved to be among their finest contributions to literature. In 1816 Wilhelm and Jacob accepted positions in the Library of King Jerome in Kassel. Their duties as librarians allowed them significant time to devote to scholarship and to complete their early collection of essays on folklore, published as Deutsche Sagen (German Legends) in 1816. Both men further established their academic reputations in the ensuing years with the publication of individual works, including Jacob's Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37) and Wilhelm's Die deutschen Heldensage (1829). In 1930 Jacob was offered a position as professor of law and linguistics at the University of Göttingen, while Wilhelm became a lecturer in medieval literature at Göttingen in 1831, acceding to a full professorship in 1835. The brothers' formal protest of the restrictive civil policies imposed by Ernest August of Cumberland, the new King of Hanover, led to their discharge and exile in 1837. Their subsequent financial difficulties following a return to Kassel were ended in 1840, when the Grimms were offered posts at the Berlin Academy of Sciences by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. Both lectured on German politics, literature, and folklore, but their principal duty was the compilation of a German entymological dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a sixteen-volume set that would not be completed until the mid-twentieth century. Jacob published the first volume of the Wörterbuch in 1854. Wilhelm's death in 1859 prevented him from completing his portion of the dictionary, though Jacob produced two more volumes before dying in 1863.
The Grimms' two-volume Fairy Tales contains more than 200 folk stories transcribed from the oral tradition of the German peasantry. Among the best known of these tales are such recognizable stories as "The Frog Prince," "Hansel and Gretel," "Rumpelstiltskin," and "Snow-White." The stories generally feature medieval settings and concern a variety of characters easily familiar to any schoolchild—beautiful princesses, fools, tricksters, witches, naïve heroes, talking beasts, bumbling craftsmen, fearless boys, and clever girls. Their principal technique is one of exaggeration and dramatic contrast between representations of good and evil, though the tales generally lack the harsh tone of moral didacticism. In large part, these stories preserve the simple, unadorned style of the peasant storyteller. While the core of the works come from Germany, specifically the region of Hesse, many of the tales derive from geographically broader sources and others are literary rather than oral in origin.
Upon publication, Grimms' Fairy Tales became immediately popular with children. First intended for the student of folklore rather than as entertainment, the tales reflect the brothers' efforts to define their literary heritage. Critics have acknowledged that the Grimms' statements regarding the Fairy Tales indicate their belief that these were authentic expressions of peasant speech. However, modern analysis of Grimms' Fairy Tales has questioned some of the Grimms' methods in collecting and recording these stories. Several critics, including Jack Zipes and John M. Ellis, have contended that Wilhelm's extensive revisions fundamentally contradicted the stated purpose of literary preservation by overlaying the peasant tales with a bourgeois sensibility. Other folklorists have countered that the Grimms' embellishments simply indicate the process of evolutionary change that is fundamental to the oral tradition. While scholars continue to study the appropriate literary and oral significance of the tales, others have sought to formally analyze the individual stories using the techniques of psychoanalysis and cultural criticism. Such interpretations have attributed an assortment of psychosexual and socio-historical themes to the works. Overall, the Grimms' Fairy Tales have provided folklore scholars with valuable information regarding the art of storytelling, and children of every age with fantasy and delight.
Kinder-und Hausmärchen [Grimms' Fairy Tales', also published as Children's and Household Tales, Fairy Tales, and German Popular Stories] (fairy tales) 1812-15
Other Major Works
Altdänische Heldenlieder [by Wilhelm Grimm] (songs) 1811
Über den altdeutschen Meistergesang [by Jacob Grimm] (essay) 1811
Deutsche Sagen [German Legends] (literary history) 1816
Deutsche Grammatik [by Jacob Grimm] (grammar) 1819-37
Über deutsche Runen [by Wilhelm Grimm] (folklore) 1821
Die deutschen Heldensage [by Wilhelm Grimm] (folklore) 1829
Deutsche Mythologie [Teutonic Mythology; by Jacob Grimm] (folklore) 1835-54
Geschichte der deutschen Sprache [by Jacob Grimm] (history) 1848
* Deutsches Wörterbuch [editors] (dictionary) 1854-1961
*This work was completed by Hildebrand, Wiegand, and others.
SOURCE: "Sleeping Beauty: The Meaning and Form of Fairy Tales," in Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1970, pp. 21-34.
[In the following essay, Lüthi analyzes the Grimms' version of "Sleeping Beauty" and considers other variants of the tale.]
Our attitude toward fairy tales (Märchen) is ambivalent. "Don't tell me any fairy tales," we say, in the derogatory sense. Here, the term is only a politer expression for cleverly contrived lies. On the other hand, when we admire something especially beautiful, the word märchenhaft (i.e., like a fairy tale) almost spontaneously comes to mind. Here, it does not mean unreal in the sense of untrue, but in the sense of unearthy or divine. Thus, even in everyday usage, our language suggests both rejection of, and fascination by, the fairy tale.
For centuries, educated people have looked down on popular fairy tales as stories properly belonging in the nursery and the servants' quarters; yet great writers have repeatedly drawn inspiration from them. Great literature of all ages has borrowed from fairy-tale motifs and often exhibited an imaginativeness not unlike that of the fairy tale. In the life of the individual, there are periods when one is fascinated by fairy tales and periods of indifference. After the actual fairy-tale age (between five and ten), there follows a realistic stage during which one is ill-disposed toward fairy tales. Some people persist in this attitude all their lives. But in others, understanding and love for these once-coveted stories returns later in life, not only because now as mothers or grandfathers they themselves are called upon to tell fairy tales, but just as much because they again feel moved by their peculiar charm.
When something has the ability both to attract and repel one so forcefully, one may assume that it deals with fundamentals. One is challenged to take sides, explicitly or implicitly. The role fairy tales play in the lives of children, and the role they played in the lives of adults in the millennia prior to the coming of the printed word, strengthens us in the belief that we are dealing with a peculiar form of literature, one which concerns man directly.
When we speak of fairy tales today, we cannot help thinking of the collection by the Grimm brothers—and this applies not only to the region where German is spoken. Grimm's Fairy Tales, which first appeared in 1812 and 1815, is in many countries the most popular, the most oft-reprinted German book. Even among primitive folk they show their great effect: the Grimm tales missionaries have told to natives in some cases have the power to supplant indigenous tales. In the following passage from "Sleeping Beauty," one of the best-known tales in the Grimm collection, certain basic features of the fairy tale can be discovered. The introductory section reads as follows:
Once upon a time there was a king and a queen and every day they said, "O, if we only had a child!" But they never had one. Now it happened one day while the queen was sitting in her bath that a frog came out of the water, crept ashore and said to the queen, "Your wish will be fulfilled; before a year goes by you will give birth to a daughter." This happened just as the frog had said it would and the queen gave birth to a girl so beautiful that the king was beside himself with joy and ordered a great feast. He invited not only his relatives, friends and acquaintances, but also the Wise Women, so that they would be well-disposed and feel kindly toward the child. There were in his realm thirteen of them, but because he had only twelve golden plates for them to eat from, one of them had to stay at home. The feast was celebrated with great splendor, and when it was over the Wise Women presented the child with their magic gifts. One gave virtue, the next beauty, the third wealth, and thus everything desirable that there is in the world. Just as the eleventh had announced her gift the thirteenth suddenly walked in. She wanted her revenge because she had not been invited, and without a greeting or even a glance at anyone she cried in a loud voice, "The princess shall in her fifteenth year be pricked by a spindle and fall down dead." And without saying another word she turned around and left the hall. Everyone was dismayed. Then the twelfth Wise Woman who still had her wish came forward, and because she could not break the spell but only modify it, she said, "But it will not be death. The princess will fall into a deep sleep that will last for one hundred years."
Everyone knows how the tale goes on from here. The king's decree "that all spindles in the entire kingdom be burned" cannot save the child. When she is fifteen years old, she pricks herself with a spindle (which arouses her interest for the very reason that she has never seen one before), and at once falls asleep under the magic spell, together with the king, the queen, and the whole royal household. All around the palace there grows a dense hedge of thorns. The princes who try to force their way through are caught and held in the thorns, where they suffer greatly. After exactly 100 years, another prince ventures forth. Now, instead of thorns, there are only big, beautiful flowers which separate by themselves, permitting him to pass through unharmed, and then they close again behind him. The prince's kiss brings the sleeping princess back to life again, the whole household awakens with her, and a splendid wedding is celebrated.
The Grimm brothers themselves wondered about the meaning of this fairy tale, which appears in a similar form among other peoples. What is its core, its essence? What does it stand for? Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm saw in fairy tales remnants of ancient myths, playful descendants of an ancient intuitive vision of life and the world. Sleeping Beauty, wonderously endowed and mysteriously threatened, suffers death or a sleep similar to death. But she is awakened again and begins to flourish—and with her, the world about her. Our fairy tale tells of death and resurrection. The flowering of the hedge of roses and the awakening of the sleeping maiden suggest the earth in lifeless repose which, touched by spring, begins to live anew and blossom as young and beautiful as ever. It suggests also the awakening of sleeping nature at the first glimmering of the new day. Processes which eternally recur have taken shape in "Sleeping Beauty"—processes in nature which surrounds man, but also processes in the human soul. Sleeping Beauty is fifteen years old when she comes under the spell: the time of transition from childhood to maidenhood. Every important turning point in development, every transition from one stage of life to another, is felt as a threat. At this age it is natural for the young man to be self-conscious and the young woman retiring, for both sexes to become for a period either shy and withdrawn or caustic, defiant, and unfriendly. A hedge of thorns seems to grow around young people and to shield them from the world. But in the protection such seclusion affords, the youth matures and will awaken to a new, larger, and brighter life.
The characters of the fairy tale are not personally delineated; the fairy tale is not concerned with individual destinies. Nor is it the unique process of maturation that is reflected in the fairy tale. The story of Sleeping Beauty is more than an imaginatively stylized love story portraying the withdrawal of the girl and the breaking of the spell through the young lover. One instinctively conceives of the princess as an image for the human spirit: the story portrays the endowment, peril, paralysis, and redemption not of just one girl, but of all mankind. The soul of man again and again suffers convulsions and paralysis and, each time—with luck—it can be revived, healed, redeemed. With luck! The abnormal individual, of course, can also remain in the paralyzed condition, unable to rediscover the fountainhead of life in himself and to reestablish contact with his surroundings. But the fairy tale does not portray the abnormal case, but natural development, and it fills its hearers with the confidence that a new, larger life is to come after the deathlike sleep—that, after the isolation, a new form of contact and community will follow.
This mercy and threat is depicted in a number of variations in the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. The fairies are both a blessing and a curse for the child; the royal palace is for Sleeping Beauty both paradise and prison; the deathlike sleep both a spell cast upon her and a refuge. The hedge of thorns, which can kill but which finally bursts into bloom with magnificent flowers, expresses most vividly this all-pervading polarity of death and resurrection.
In the dominant image just mentioned (palace and tower, thorns and roses, humans and fairies), there is revealed another peculiar capability of the fairy tale, not just in "Sleeping Beauty," but in the popular fairy tale in general. Despite its brevity, it embraces in its own way the world: nature both dead and living, man and the works of man, and the supernatural. In the beginning of "Sleeping Beauty," the world in its essential elements is already present: animal, man, and material objects all together. Only plants are missing. Not until the later episodes and the development of the tale will trees, thorns, and leaves also grow and flowers burst into bloom. Of the visible elements (the fairy tale clings to what is visible), water and earth are already mentioned in the introductory section. The third, fire, will flare up later on; and wind and breath will also be mentioned. The human world is represented by man, woman, and child. Objects of the workday and those of the festive day will appear: spindles and golden plates. The precious metal, the figures of the king and queen, and the festivities indicate that matters of significance are involved. Human feelings—like privation, longing, grief, joy, horror, hope, bitterness, irritability, vindictiveness, and compassion—are expressed. Loud talk and startled or threatening silence stand side by side, yet words of consolation are also not wanting. Sorrow, mistakes, and helplessness testify to the peril in which even royalty stands. In the figures of the prophetic frog and the fairies who give their blessings and imprecations, a supernatural world, again clearly visible, is joined to the world of man. The fairy tale is a universe in miniature; and since every good work of literature displays its peculiar characteristics even in its individual parts, the tendency of the fairy tale to embody the world is strongly evident even in this brief introduction to "Sleeping Beauty."
We love the fairy tale not only for its wisdom, but the manner in which it is told; its external appearance, which varies from people to people and from narrator to narrator, also delights us. The Grimm brothers' genius for storytelling is likewise evident in the very first part of the fairy tale. The entire first section is based on the motif of prophecy. Once stated, the theme is varied and intensified. The birth of the little girl is heralded by a frog and the Wise Women bestow on her virtue, beauty, wealth, and other miraculous gifts, that is to say, they proclaim all this. But the thirteenth fairy—and here one anxiously holds his breath—prophesies that the princess will die in her fifteenth year. Following this climax—which is strongly underlined by the sudden bursting upon the scene of the fairy who had been neglected, by her short, loud words and her silent departure—the tension in the story gradually subsides. A final variation on the prophecy motif, the conversion of the death pronouncement into the proclamation of the 100-year sleep, relieves the inner tension, but at once gives rise to the question of how and whether the proclamation will come true and what will happen during and after the enchanted sleep. A truly dramatic exposition!
A comparison of the Grimm brothers' original notations with the final version of "Sleeping Beauty" shows what their poetic imagination and genius for language has added. No one familiar with the tale can forget the humorous description of the palace as it sinks into sleep and reawakens. The passage reads:
This sleep spread throughout the palace. The king and queen, who had returned home and had just entered the hall, began to fall asleep along with their entire royal household. The horses, too, fell asleep in their stables, as did the dogs in the courtyard, the pigeons on the roof, and the flies on the wall. Even...
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SOURCE: "The Brothers Grimm and Their Collection of Kinder und Hausmärchen," in Theoria, Vol. XLV, October, 1975, pp. 41-54.
[In the following essay, Ihms details the lives of the Grimm brothers and investigates the political and social dimensions of their fairy tales]
The stories now known as Grimm's Fairy Tales appeared in English translation during the nineteenth century as Popular Stories1 or Household Tales.2 These titles correspond closely to the original German Kinder-und Hausmärchen. When nowadays we refer to the Fairy Tales, or in German to the Märchen, we use...
(The entire section is 6145 words.)
SOURCE: "Born Yesterday: Heroes in the Grimms' Fairy Tales," in Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm, edited by Ruth B. Bottigheimer, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986, pp. 95-114.
[In the following essay, Tatar discusses the common traits of the Grimms' fairy tale heroes: naiveté, compassion, fearlessness, and humility.]
There comes an old man with his three sons—
I could match this beginning with an old tale.
—Shakespeare, As You Like It
Identifying fairy tale heroes by name is no mean feat. In the Grimms' collection, only one in every ten...
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SOURCE: "Prohibitions, Transgressions, and Punishments," in Grimms' Bad Girls & Bold Boys: The Moral & Social Vision of the Tales,' Yale University Press, 1987, pp. 81-94.
[In the following excerpt, Bottigheimer probes gender distinctions related to transgression and punishment in Grimms' Tales.]
A general pattern of exculpating men and incriminating women permeates Grimms' Tales. This pattern is clearly evident in the post-1819 versions of "Hansel and Gretel" (no. 15), "Snow-White" (no. 53) and "Cinderella" (no. 21), each of which provides a stepmother who assumes the burden of blame while the father, virtually absent, shoulders no share of the...
(The entire section is 6463 words.)
SOURCE: "The Tales of the Brothers Grimm: In the Black Forest," in Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children's Literature. Volume Two: Fairy Tales, Fables, Myths, Legends, and Poetry, Children's Literature Association, 1987, pp. 104-17.
[In the following essay, Thomas examines the nature and significance of the Grimms' fairy tales.]
As the great-grandparent of children's literature, fairy tales occupy a privileged place as touchstones for that literature. Basic as the peasant's crusty black bread, they nourish us upon essential sustenance—the fare of elemental story. Especially do the volhmarchen or folk fairy tales—those stories that were once part...
(The entire section is 6128 words.)
SOURCE: "What Did the Grimm Brothers Give to and Take from the Folk?," in The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, edited by James M. McGlathery, University of Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 66-90.
[In the following essay, Dégh assesses the influence of the Grimms' Kinder-und Hausmärchen.]
Are oral and literary tradition two separate entities which can be studied independently from each other or must their interdependence be taken into consideration when looking at a folklore genre, the Märchen in particular, as it evolved and developed through the ages?
This question touches upon essentials about the nature of folklore and its study. In view of a...
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SOURCE: "New Misconceptions about Old Folktales: The Brothers Grimm," in The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, edited by James M. McGlathery, University of Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 91-100.
[In the following essay, Ward decries the lack of an objective scholarly evaluation of the Grimms' fairy tales.]
One occasionally encounters the contention that the Brothers Grimm were guilty of manipulative deception when they added elements of cruelty to the tale of Cinderella that were not in their sources. The reference is typically to the bloody scene of the stepsisters cutting off their heels and toes in the attempt to make the slipper fit. I find this contention to be somewhat...
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SOURCE: "Exploring Historical Paths," in The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1988, pp. 43-61.
[In the following essay, Zipes offers a socio-historical perspective on the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales, examining the ways in which these stories depict the social customs and classes of the German people.]
Inevitably [the characters of Grimm's tales] find their way into the forest. It is there that they lose and find themselves. It is there that they gain a sense of what is to be done. The forest is always large, immense, great, and mysterious. No one ever gains power over the forest, but the forest...
(The entire section is 9395 words.)
SOURCE: "Folktale Characters," in The Brothers Grimm and Their Critics: Folktales and the Quest for Meaning, Ohio University Press, 1992, pp. 81-97.
[In the following essay, Kamenetsky describes folktale character types in the Grimms' tales and presents Wilhelm Grimm's view of the significance of folk stories.]
MYTHICAL AND EPIC DIMENSIONS
Mythical and epic origins determined not only the deeper meaning of folktales but also the nature and dimensions of their characters, according to the Brothers Grimm. Folktale characters appeared in many forms, some human, some super-human, some in the shape of birds, fish, animals, plants, trees, or even...
(The entire section is 8087 words.)
Michaelis-Jena, Ruth. The Brothers Grimm. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, 212 p.
Critical biography including an assessment of the Children's and Household Tales and its influence.
Dundes, Alan. "The Psychoanalytic Study of the Grimms' Tales with Special Reference to 'The Maiden Without Hands' (AT 706)." The Germanic Review 62, No. 2 (Spring 1987): 50-65.
Emphasizes the critical value of psychoanalytic readings of the Grimms' tales and offers a principally Freudian interpretation of "The Maiden Without Hands."...
(The entire section is 660 words.)