Overcoming stereotypes and prejudice through multiculturality in folk tales

In this thesis, we investigated how the use of folk tales encourages the overcoming of stereotypes and prejudices, how to raise awareness and teach pupils about multiculturality, how to recognize the importance of their own culture and specificities, which in their diversity represent the crossroads of cultures. The theoretical part presents the concept of folk tale, features, memetics, route expansion fairy tales, motifs, the history of the exploration of fairy tales, and multiculturality as part of the literature curricula and reading books. The empirical part presents the case study, a project Gradimo mostove (Building bridges), which took place at Vodmat Primary school and Vide Pregarc Primary school in Ljubljana. The basic model of teaching was based on the findings of Jack Zipes’ project in the United States of America, Neighborhood Bridges. We were interested in the compatibility of the two models and researched whether it is possible to gain knowledge about different cultures through fairy tales, what the ways are to make this possible, if students easily accept diversity and themselves, develop empathy, and consequently, overcome stereotypes and prejudices. Slovenia's entry into the European Union took the directive to multiculturality, intercultural integration, but in school practice deviations are found from the general principles and commitments. When analyzing the curricula of 1984, 1998 and 2011 for the Slovene language, we found that there are differences between all three documents in both, the goals and the quantity of folk tales and opportunities for intercultural teaching. In comparison with the number of prescribed literary units from 1984 to 2011, the amount of folk tales decreased. The Curriculum of 2011 is a summary of the curriculum of 1998, there is no upgrade in the integration of folk tales; folk tales are even downgraded, and the proposed tales in the Program of 1984 are deliberately forgotten. The list of folk tales from 1984 is richer and more varied while the tales in the curricula of 1998 and 2011 are identical. The analysis of books showed some variations between individual publishers (DZS, IZOLIT, Mladinska knjiga, Modrijan and Rokus), but the problem is in the whole curriculum because there is a lack of folk tales, especially foreign ones. For five years (from 2007 to 2012), the project Building bridges at Vodmat Primary school has triggered positive changes in the students’ field of knowledge of their own and foreign cultures as well as the acceptance of self, others, diversity and tolerance evolved through empathy. Since the survey was conducted on a small sample, it is not possible to generalize, but it raises the question of whether it would be possible to develop a more widespread project, on a large sample of pupils or whether it may even be incorporated into regular educational practice