ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to gain insight into:
educator and storyteller approaches to oral storytelling
how storytellers craft and tell oral mathematical story
challenges of oral mathematical storytelling.
‘The Man Who Moved a Mountain'In China there was a range of mountains that stretched all the way from one side of the country to the other. At the foot of one mountain was a house where a man and his wife and children lived. This family grew vegetables to sell at the market on the other side of the mountain. They had to walk a long way to get to the market and by the time they got there the vegetables would be bruised. The old man thought hard and decided that the best solution would be to move the mountain. Every day he filled a bucket with soil from the mountain and threw it into the sea. He did this day after day after day after day. A neighbour was puzzled and asked the man, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I am moving the mountain’, the man replied. ‘You will never move the mountain’, the neighbour laughed. ‘Maybe not in my lifetime, but in my children’s, children’s, children’s, children’s, lifetime’, replied the man. And now if you go to China you will see a range of mountains stretching all the way from one side to the other but at one place there is a gap where a mountain might have been.
Adapted by Cassandra Wye (original story from The Book of Lieh-Tzu: A classic of Tao, 1990, translated by A.C. Graham)