ABSTRACT
This book has been written with the underlying conviction that stories and the telling of them, both oral and written, with the ability to ‘think in story’, need to be given a role much less on the margins of educational effort. Perhaps one day we will be automatically weaving all our educational plans around story. Perhaps we’ll be teaching many and most subjects as much through memorable narrative and imagination as through logical, sequential exposition. Perhaps we will regard school leavers unable to tell or to make up at least a tale or two in their own style and language as being
as disadvantaged as those who remain illiterate and unable to calculate. Perhaps, too, we will understand that anyone unable to listen and imagine long enough to take in a yarn or two is dangerously undeveloped, however clever they may seem. Perhaps we will be directing the attention of pupils as much to the work of great oral storytellers who communicate directly with their imaginations as we now direct them towards great novelists, painters, musicians or film makers. Perhaps, but that is all a long way off.
