An unstoried and memoryless generation??

[LaRochelle]

There was an interesting article in the Telegraph today about Generation Y's attitude to Christiantity.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8042110/Young-people-have-faded-memory-of-Christianity-says-Church-book.html

One phrase really stuck out for me "Generation Y are a largely unstoried and memoryless generation?.

I would love to know if this applies, not just to Christianity, but to the wider Western canon of stories and song - nursery rhymes, fairy tales, etc.

I know I have read many articles about children arriving at school without knowing nursery rhymes and the detrimental impact that has on their speech development.

Also my whole schooling saw daily singing and daily stories read aloud but that doesn't seem to happen at my children's school. I think that if they didn't hear fairy tales at home they would not have heard many at school by now.

What do people think? Does it matter?

My dc have had a fairly high-octane (in terms of RE, not poshness!) catholic education, and have all gone through a lot of the Greek and Roman myths as well.

I do like the fact that you can take them into somewhere like the National Gallery, and they can 'decode' a lot of the paintings, because the stories and symbolism are all familiar to them.

Coming to a major western art gallery, or even to a writer like Shakespeare without some kind of familiarity with the western cultural canon, of which Christianity and classical mythology form the major part of the underlying structure, would surely be a very different experience.

Solidgoldbrass, I am not sure what buckethead means but the original article was about the Christian stories. It was a piece of research so any whining I would guess was the newspaper's spin.

It was me that widened it and asked whether the same applied to more than just the Christian stories.

LR: I didn't mean you, specifically. It's just that a common argument in favour of forcing Christian crap down DC's throats is always that they 'won't understand their culture' without it. Now in terms of needing to know the stories I sort of agree, but they need to know the Greek/Roman/Norse and probably a few Celtic myths as well to get al the wider cultural references.
I am all in favour of kids learning mythology in school as long as none of it's presented as fact.

SGB, think we are coming from at least some of the same viewpoint then. I would have been much more interested if the research had looked wider but can see why the CofE didn't commission it that way.

My own childhood was devoid of Greek/Roman/Norse mythology. I felt the gaps in my knowledge very keenly when I went on to study some literature papers at university (necessary for a modern languages degree).

Yes to Celtic myths too. I think the Mabinogion should be on GCSE syllabus!

LR: Have read the link now and it's exactly what I mean by buckethead Christian whining - what's he's basically saying is that younger people are keeping the vaguely useful bits from the Christian myth system and ditching all the nonsense, only he says that like it's a bad thing.
I also think every generation reinvents myths, to an extent or at least reworks them. Stories are stories (not 'just' stories); the same themes come up again and again in new formats. If you (generic 'you') think of any of the really lasting films/novels of the past 35-50 years, the themes will be, if stripped down to basics, the same things over and over again; learning who you are, doing the right thing even when it's difficult, making a place for yourself in the world, facing and overcoming dangers, being kind, fair and loyal to your friends.
(This, incidentally, is why the one thing I would worry about in terms of stories/culture is cunting Twilight - there's a magnificent quote from Stephen King along the lines of 'The Harry Potter stories are about doing the right thing, being loyal to your friends, growing up etc, Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend')

All my enriched experience of culture came from home, my kids does too.. School supplements most of the time and occasionally in fantastically brilliant off-curriculum ways that I am always extremely grateful for.

FWIW we are a secular household but I take dd's to carol services at x-mas (they love it and it is cultural), ds won't set foot in a church, so he and dh go off and do boys stuff (last year they got in an extra ice skating trip). He's not stroyless btw, he just hates ceremony and ritual.

I think these things have always come from home - schools surely just reflect the culture that creates them...

I agree with SGB, culture evolves. Stories are re-told: there are stories in x-box games; there are stories from ancient Greece. I try to expose my kids to a fair variety of them (and work hard to protect them from a few others )

Tories always fear change - it's their job.

What is a buckethead

I have seen references to christian bucketheads on other threads

Can there be Zoroastrian bucketheads? Is it a multifaith position? Can atheists be bucketheads?

I don't think I've ever heard this term in daily life

Bucketheads are basically stupid people who should stick their head in a bucket and STFU.
Buckethead Christians are the sort of Christians who are forever making a bloody nuisance of themselves, demanding attention and special privileges for their silly little superstition and trying to insist that others take it seriously.