Fairy tales: series of lessons

According to the traditional Dutch curriculum, in the second stage of secondary education there is an introduction at home with the fairytale as a literary genre. In this series of lessons, the students themselves go to work in groups with folk tales.

After an introductory, classical lesson, in which they receive the necessary background information, the pupils in group always compare two versions of the same folk tale. The first version is the text that the Brothers Grimm have included in their collection. The second version can be found in the book Beast in Bed , in which Marita de Sterck has collected a number of older and not yet mutilated versions of these fairy tales. This comparison clearly shows that the folk tales were disguised, infiltrated and romanticized by Grimm and that the older versions possess an emotional and literary primal force, which enables them to appeal to contemporary young people on the threshold of adulthood.

After the group work, the students present their findings and follow a classroom discussion or discussion.