The Educative Method of Telling Stories: Capacities and Impairments

The present study has investigated the capacities and impairments of the educative method of story-telling. To achieve this goal, first we have defined and studied the concepts of "education" and "story"; then, we have explained the capacities of educative method of story-telling using the Quranic verses and traditions. And finally, we have investigated the impairments thereof. These impairments are divided into two groups: the impairments related to the content of the story and those related to the characters. In the section related to the capacities, items such as presenting role models to be followed and negative characters for getting lessons from, presenting pieces of advice, possibility of assimilating realities with stories and preparing the ground for accepting teachings have been mentioned. In the section regarding the impairments related to the content of the stories, the following impairments have been mentioned: telling meaningless and just-for-fun stories, superstitious and vain stories, telling false stories to teach lessons, not observing modesty, stories not suitable for the addressees, stories with no advice and lesson. In the section on impairments related to the characters, the following items have been mentioned: exaggeration and hyperbole in describing characters, not introducing good role models and introducing bad characters, introducing improper models, admiring negative models, an emphasis on depicting heroes, absolute approval of non-infallible models, expecting the addressee to follow the role models completely, and stating the story of bad models without analyzing their negative behaviors.