PART 2 – EXPLORE THE CHARACTERS
​
Chapter 4 - PORTRAIT vs. LANDSCAPE
A few years ago, my wife and I shared a holiday in Scotland with a very good friend. Despite the proverbial midges, we had a very enjoyable holiday and took dozens of holiday snaps. We each shared each other’s photos, and after the holidays were over, I started to sort through our shared collection and discard the duplicates. But amazingly, I found hardly any duplicates to discard! Why? Simply because we had completely opposite attitudes towards including people in the frame. For myself, if I see a good scenic view I prefer to appreciate the scenery uncluttered by people. If there happen to be a couple of back-packers hiking across the landscape, I will wait for them to disappear from the frame before taking the scenic view.
​
On the other hand, our friend doesn’t consider a photo worth taking unless there are people in the frame to complement the scenery. “Just come over here and lean against the tree, so I can include you in the foreground!”
​
The difference between our photo collections really does reflect a difference in our personalities. I’m naturally introvert, prefer to interact with a laptop that doesn’t argue or talk back, and like to chill out in isolation with a good book or a Sudoku puzzle. On the other hand, our friend is much more of a social animal and enjoys people and personal interaction.
​
And that’s one of the distinctive characteristics of an oral learner.
A relational learning environment
​
I was running a story-telling workshop for national translators who came from highly oral rural communities. One of the translators told me that in his village, all the children of a given age would learn the same set of stories from the village elders, or from their own grandparents, and share exactly the same store of communal knowledge. There was a traditional learning process which all village children followed as they progressed from one age level to another, so the traditions and social norms of the community remained solid and intact.
​
So what happened when children from the village started attending school? I expected to hear that a child’s relationship with the community would change once they became literate, but I was quite taken aback by the answer. Just a few months away as school, whether or not they learned to read, would be enough to ensure that they never fitted back in. Why? Because they had learned to think independently, to have ideas and opinions that differed from the rest of the children in the village, and it was the ability to think separately and independently that set them apart. This, from my own experience, is an extreme example, but it does illustrate a major difference between literate and oral cultures. Oral cultures value conformity, and the focus is on maintaining cultural values and traditions intact from one generation to the next. However in western cultures the focus is on independent thought and originality – the ability to make reasoned decisions based on personal study and research.
​​
In our western education system discussing your homework assignment with other pupils is discouraged, and if your homework essay has too much in common with your class-mate you’ll find yourself in trouble! But in an oral community learning is a communal event, conducted in a relational environment, and everyone is expected to come up with the same solution.​
When I was studying for my MA at University College London, there was a young Ghanaian student on the same course. Once she found out that I already had some experience in linguistics, she would ring me frequently to discuss assignments and any questions that she had problems with. I found this rather off-putting at first, as I have a tendency to hide away with my books and computer and shut myself off from the outside world (and I have to say that my wife wondered what was going on!), but I eventually realised she just needed a relational component to her study program which was lacking in our westernised study ethic.
​
A relational message
​​
For oral learners, the lessons learned from their narrative tradition are also highly relational. Oral traditions are largely constructed to answer such questions as:​
​
-
Where did our people originate from? How do we come to be where we are today? Where do I fit in relation to the wider world?
-
How do I relate to different people in my society? What are good and bad components of behaviour towards my elders, my peers?
-
How do I know which people are higher in status than me, and how do I show appropriate honour and respect? How should I relate to those who are lower in status than I am?
-
From where am I expected to find appropriate marriage partners?
-
Who do I regard as my friends? Who are my enemies?
So for oral learners, with their high value on relationships, the characters and relations that surface in the stories of the Bible are paramount. For them, the characters of the Bible are not simply constructs of Biblical mythology, but real flesh and blood people who lived in a specific geographical and historical context, and who display the same physical, mental and psychological (not to mention spiritual) weaknesses and hang-ups that we do today. I’ve learned that getting inside the characters and empathising with their joys and struggles can be a very enlightening and enervating experience.
__________________________________________________
​Some questions for thought or discussion
​
-
Are you a people person, or a loner? Do you prefer to chill out in company, over a cup of tea or a pint of beer? Or do you relax on your own, with a good book, a crossword puzzle, or maybe just walking in the countryside?
-
Do you make friends easily and keep them for years? How many of your school chums are you still friends with?
-
Do you get involved with and empathise with the characters in the books you read or the films/TV soaps that you watch?
Research suggests that learning to empathise with characters in the stories that we read can help us learn to empathise with people that we know in real life, one way in which stories can help enormously to prepare children for social interactions in adulthood.
​
-
Who would you say is your favourite character in the Bible (apart from Jesus!)?
-
What attracts you to them?
-
How has their example helped you in your own life and walk with the Lord?
​
​
​
​
