Beautiful Witches and Ugly Fairies: Surprising and daring socially critical twists on classic fairy tales

The socially critical and pedagogical significance that the classic fairy tales of Grimm and Andersen used to have for children and adults is outdated in our current society. The fairy tales told today are, due to the romanticized adaptations, saccharine and stripped of their original parodic or warning character. However, fairy tales can be dealt with differently. After all, it makes more sense to make children aware of the danger of being lured in by ruthless pedophiles through the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel than for the non-existent witch. In classic fairy tales, bad characters are almost always accentuated by unattractive physical features: the 'ugly' witch and the 'evil' stepmother, while the 'good' fairy, the princess or the prince on the white horse are both beautiful and morally good. This gives children the wrong message that only external beauty is good and ugly is ethically bad. Some classic fairy tales are pedagogically dangerous today in their original meaning. In the original fairy tale Bontepels, the king falls in love with his daughter and marries her at the end of the story: an excuse for incest? Traditional fairy tales confirm the classic male-female role patterns; homosexual relationships and racism do not appear in them, but are of this time.
In Gerard Gielen's new book, classic fairy tales are given surprising twists, so that they regain their original, pedagogically enlightening and socially critical function. Furthermore, the reader will find background information on working with fairy tales in education, teaching and care. A unique methodology, STORIES, is proposed to develop social skills and attitudes in children with the help of fairy tales.
Gerard Gielen, pedagogue-sexologist, teaches at the Catholic University College Limburg, Department of Social and Educational Work in Hasselt and at the Teacher Training College of the Higher Institute of Kempen in Geel.