Teaching stories is a term used by the writer Idries Shah to describe narratives that have been deliberately created as vehicles for the transmission of wisdom. Whilst it is a term that has been used in a number of religious and other traditions, Shah's use of it was in the context of Sufi teaching and learning, within which this body of material has been described as the "most valuable of the treasures in the human heritage". The range of teaching stories is enormous, including anecdotes, accounts of meetings between teachers and pupils, biographies, myths, fairy tales, fables and jokes. Such stories frequently have a long life beyond the initial teaching situation and (sometimes in deteriorated form) have contributed vastly to the world's store of folklore and literature.
Read more about Teaching Stories: Function, Folktales, Fables, Nasrudin Stories, Worldwide Dispersal and Diffusion, Some Examples of Teaching Stories
Famous quotes containing the words teaching and/or stories:
“May my teaching drop like the rain, my speech condense like the dew; like gentle rain on grass, like showers on new growth.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 32:2.
“A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.
Still, you can’t listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)