Lines from the Library
May 2008
Librarian: Theodore Clarke

The Brothers Grimm: How we learn from each other

In my opinion, one of the things students ought to learn is how to learn. There are lots of little hints teachers and parents can give that will help young people climb the learning ladder one step at a time.

But learning to learn — and learning to like learning — is not limited to young people. One of the best things about learning is that you can do it all your life. There's always something new to explore. There are always questions you can ask. There are ways to find the answers and ways to use the answers to make your life and those of other people better.

One way people learn is by watching what others do. As a small child, you probably watched your parents or older children do the things you wanted to learn to do. Then you copied them. Or maybe you learned to do things a little differently.

Groups of people can learn from one another. Let‘s say a sports team has come up with a new play. How long do you think it will be before other teams have copied it or come up with a better version of it? Not long. The same thing happens with products and companies. If one company makes athletic shoes that will help you run faster, a competitive company will soon make a pair that will help you run, jump, and score. That's why competition is good.

Countries around the world learn from each other, too. After Americans had a revolution and threw off the rule of the British king and parliament, it wasn't long before the French people had their own revolution and got rid of their king, too. The story that follows has something to do with that, and a lot to do with learning from other people:

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born and brought up in Germany at the time that America was fighting its revolution. They were the two oldest of six children. When they were still boys, their father died and the family had trouble making a living. Their mother and aunt were able to raise enough money to send the boys to a school called a lyseum.

The boys became librarians and then college professors. In order to earn a better living, they decided to write books. Some of these books would be collections of folk tales. These folk tales would help readers to understand what the peasants of Germany thought about. They hoped people from all the German states would see that they were a lot alike and should all belong to the same country. So, Jacob and William realized that people can get new ideas by reading what others have written.

At the time they were doing this, the United States had recently become a new country where the common people helped make the laws. Germany, where they lived, was not one country. It was a group of states with many small villages, a few large towns, and no cities. Roads were bad and communication was worse. Most of the land was owned by a few rich people. The ones who worked on their farms were called peasants. Even if they worked hard, the peasants could never get ahead because they didn‘t own land on any means of production.

The Grimm Brothers became famous as collectors of folk or fairy tales. They collected more than 200 old tales and wrote them down. Both Jacob and Wilhelm were trained as librarians, and they became interested in old stories. In those days most stories were told, not written down. In fact, many people could not read. So the Grimms traveled from town to town, or had others go from town to town, listening to people tell stories and then writing them down in diaries.

They tried to write the stories the way they were told. If the stories were told with a special dialect or local way of speaking, the brothers wrote the words down the way they heard them. But sometimes they were hearing the same story in different versions. In one story, for example, Hansel and Gretel were captured by a wolf. In another it was a witch. The Grimms chose the version they thought was better. You’ve probably never heard the wolf version because the wolf didn’t make the cut.

The people who told them these stories were peasants, woodcutters, shepherds, and toymakers — poor people with no hope of becoming rich. Many of the stories have magic in them. Most stories have things in them made of gold — which the peasants had probably never even seen.

Many of the stories the Grimms collected may be found in children’s libraries today. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rumpelstiltskin, and Rapunzel are some of the best known. Each of these has been made into videos, and Snow White was made into a Disney movie over 70 years ago. There are also collections of stories, usually known as Grimms‘ Fairy Tales. They are named for the brothers who devoted their lives to preserving these stories in the early 1800s.

By the way, Jacob and Wilhelm lived long enough to see Germany change. In the 1840s, many of those small states joined together and eventually became one country. They may have helped that happen.

What will you do to change the world?

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