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LITERARY FOLKTALES PROMOTING CHILDREN’S
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
KARYA SASTRA YANG MENINGKATKAN KECERDASAN MULTIPEL ANAK-ANAK
Berhanu Asaye Agajie
Departement of Language Studies, Injibara College of Teacher Education
P.O. Box 44 Injibara, Ethiopia
E-mail: berehanuas@gmail.com
Article accepted: May 2nd 2020; revised: November 21st 2020; approved: December 6th 2020
Permalink/DOI: 10.29255/aksara.v33i2.577.hlm.
Abstract
The objective of this study was to investigate how literary folktale narrations promoting children’s multiple
intelligences. In this study qualitative design was adopted. The target populations of this study were found
in Awi zone. In this case, expert sampling was used to capture multiple intelligences entrenched in a
meticulous manifestation of knowledge in folktales. Through purposive sampling 20 folktale narrators (10
females and 10 male) were interviewed and two group discussions were conducted. The result of the study
showed that engagement of children within literary narrations enables them to promote their linguistic,
logical, spatial, musical, natural, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and bodily kinesthetic intelligences. Result
and discussion showed that literary folktale narrations promote social cohesion regardless of age and gender.
The children at any talent stage were acquainted with how to use their multiple intelligent through
learning and their life experiences. This hypothesis is signifi cant to elementary education because teachers
able to observe more recurrently that students learn in diff erent ways. Therefore, there is close relationship
between literacy and folklore in infl uencing naturalist intelligence children to make a distinction among
animals, categorize, and use features of the environment.
Keywords: children, folktale, intelligences, literary
Abstrak
Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk meneliti bagaimana narasi folktale yang meningkatkan kecerdasan
multipel anak-anak. Dalam penelitian ini, digunakan desain kualitatif. Target populasi penelitian ini
ditemukan di wilayah Awi. Dalam kasus ini, expert sampling digunakan untuk mengkaji kecerdasan
multipel yang berakar dalam manifestasi pengetahuan folktale. Melalui purposive sampling (penyampelan
berdasarkan tujuan), 20 pencerita folktale (10 perempuan dan 10 laki-laki) diwawancarai dan dua
diskusi kelompok dilakukan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pelibatan anak-anak dalam narasi
sastra memungkinkan mereka untuk meningkatkan kecerdasan linguistik, logis, spasial, musik, alami,
interpersonal, dan kinestetik tubuh mereka. Hasil dan pembahasan ini menunjukkan bahwa narasi folktale
meningkatkan hubungan sosial tanpa memandang usia dan jenis kelamin. Anak-anak pada setiap tahap
bakat berkenalan dengan bagaimana menggunakan kecerdasan multipel mereka melalui pembelajaran
dan pengalaman hidup mereka. Hipotesis ini sangat penting bagi pendidikan dasar guru dapat mengamati
secara berulang-ulang bahwa siswa belajar dengan cara yang berbeda. Oleh karena itu, ada kaitan
erat antara literasi dan cerita rakyat dalam memengaruhi kecerdasan alami anak-anak untuk membuat
perbedaan di antara hewan, mengategorikannya, dan menggunakan karakteristik lingkungan.
Kata Kunci: anak-anak, dongeng, kecerdasan, literasi
How to Cite: Agajie, B.A. (2021). Literary Folktales Promoting Children’s Multiple Intelligences. Aksara,
33(2), hlm. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29255/aksara. v33i2.577.hlm.
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
INTRODUCTION
The developmental multiple intelligence
changes might benefi t students, teachers, and
their parents. Educational methods ought to be
shaping and accustomed to be more fl exible
for students who have diff erent intelligence
capacities. However, Ethiopian school
curriculums traditionally focused on the logical-
mathematical and linguistic intelligences at large.
Focusing only on these styles has seemed to fade
away (Heming, 2008).
The problem in present study springs
from parents, children and elementary school
teachers who are not familiarizing themselves
with multiple intelligences at large. It was
initiated to show how folktales ought to be
brightening up and rearranged to use multiple
intelligences successfully. Therefore, the
goal of current research is to create parents’,
children’s and teachers’ awareness, and
systems to enhance students’ multiple
intelligences through literary folktale
narration enjoyments.
The aim of this study is to examine
the type of multiple intelligences found
in selected folktale texts. The study also
investigates how literary folktales promoting
multiple intelligences of the children.
Folktale as Literary genre is a type of oral
literature that tries to explain or understand the
world. It is told to children, just for fun. In literary
folktale, kindness is always pleased (Meder,
2010; Okpewho, 2014). Teller expects his folktale
to be amusing, entertaining and interesting to
audience. The audience is usually a group of
people drawn from the neighbourhood for
Instance School, classroom, village and its
environs. The audience may include people of
all ages (Finnegan, 2012).
Literary Folktale story telling mirrors the
values and culture of the society from which
they originated (Abello, Broadwell, and Timothy,
2012; Alterio, 2002; Kimani, 2010; Mireku-
Gyimah, 2010). In the course of educating and
playing teachers, parents and children were
narrating folktales for their audiences (Furner,
2018). Literary folktales can fl ash children’s
awareness, assisting the fl ow of lectures,
making material memorable, overcoming student
resistance, or anxiety, and building relationship
between the teacher, parent and the students, or
among students themselves (La Barre and Tilley,
2012).
The crocodile, elephant, giraff e, monkey,
ape, baboon, lion, jackal, ostrich, hyena,
cheetah and tortoise are characters in the
folktales. Animals and birds take on human
characteristics of greed, jealousy, honesty,
loneliness, etc. and through their behavior
valuable lessons are learned (Kuehnel &
Lencek, 2012; Okpewho, 1992; Uther, 2011).
Participation in a successful storytelling
event involves a diff erent sensory experience
from reading or listening to the live recitation.
Each story telling is uniquely recreated for
every fresh audience (Lobo and Matos, 2010.
Students become aware that their communal
and individual listening has a direct eff ect on
the way the story and its protagonists develop
and take shape (Sims and Stephens, 2011).
Stories passed from lips to ears, changing as
eac h te ll er fo rgo t th ings , or deliberately
left them out, and replaced them with their
own inventions. Storytelling in any context
is central to how children, parents and
teachers express themselves (Derderian,
2011; Jones, 1994).
Literary folktale stories tend to have
supplementary moral depth than a simple
example given by parents at home and
teachers in the classroom. Stories tell moral
issues; good must be rewarded while evil
does not and cannot go undetected and
unpunished (Islam & Banda, 2011). Moreover,
tales have their main theme the exhibition of
some wickedness such as treachery, theft, greed,
cruelty, ingratitude, envy, lust and drunkenness.
The purpose of the tale in each case is to show a
character guilty of this vice (Sone, 2011). Moral
lessons through stories engage students thinking,
emotions, and can even lead to the creation of
mental imagery (Sefa Dei, 2011).
Children listening and narrating to stories
react to them almost automatically, participating,
in a sense, in the action of the narrative (Furner,
2017b;Polichak & Gerrig, 2002; Weinstein,
2017). Rather than demonstration through
the material, fact by fact, teachers can add
storytelling accompaniments. Morals in the
stories can furthermore be a natural way to
introduce humor into their lecture (Green &
Brock, 2000).
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
Intelligence is a skill to resolve troubles
for problem solving the real daily life
confrontations, and was the capacity to
generate innovative solutions for expected
problems (Winarti, Yuanita & Nur, 2019).
Gardner (1999) supposed that all people have
at least eight intelligences: linguistic, logical-
mathematical, musical, bodily kinesthetic,
spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal, and
naturalist which are working unequally. However,
these are not uniformly developing (Larsen-
Freeman, 2000). During learning episodes what
Gardner (2000) further suggested is that, it was
normal for a number of intelligences to be acting
together.
Linguistic intelligence involved sensitivity
to spoken and written language, the aptitude to
learn languages, and the capacity to use language
to accomplish certain goals (Chapman, 1996;
Gardner, 1999). Students who have linguistic
intelligence show shining acoustic abilities,
they usually engaged with and loved reading,
writing, playing word games, developed
vocabulary, speak fl uently, and accurately
(Teele, 2000).
Gardner (1999) emphasized that logical-
mathematical intelligence was the talent to use
numbers and rationales well, look at relationships,
such as cause and eff ect, create associations, and
use experiments to inspect things. By the same
token, children with musical intelligence were
skillful at learning sounds, singing, composing
and performing music. They were also
skilled at identifying rhyming, intonations
and pitches (Christison and Kennedy, 2001;
Darling-Hammond, 2010).
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence was
one’s child to use body language skillfully
(engagement of using hands, fi ngers, mouth,
and facial expression), communicate with
others, express ideas, feelings, emotions, and
process information (Gardner, 1999). Spatial-
visual intelligence was the ability to sense and
enjoy art activities, maps, pictures, and charts.
With this intelligence, individuals notice colors,
shapes and patterns, and how light falls on the
objects (Teele, 2000).
Interpersonal intelligence points out one’s
ability to cooperate skillfully and eff ectively
with others (Gardner, 1999). Children with this
type of intelligence might develop capacities
to diff erentiate and react appropriately to
the moods, temperaments, motivations, and
desires of other people. They can understand
others’ feelings, intentions, interests, and
motivations. Children involvements were
excellent when learning by them; they were
self or independent learners.
Alternatively, intrapersonal intelligence
refers to one’s capability to understand his
inner thoughts, feelings, desires, strengths, and
weaknesses. This helps such people know how
they were diff erent from or similar to others. They
were excellent when learning by themselves;
they can evolve self or independent learners.
They do not like noisy places (Gardner, 2006).
Naturalist intelligence points out the ability
to recognize and classify living and nonliving
things such as clouds, mountains, rivers, trees,
animals, birds, and so on so forth (Christison
and Kennedy, 2001; Gardner, 1995).
Children engage individually, work in pairs
and in groups choosing the corner that deals
with their dominant intelligence domain (Hattie,
2011; Richards and Rodger, 2001). This strategy
promises the engagement of all children in the
target literary folktale narration and off ers
successful teaching (Nolen, 2003).
METHOD
The descriptive research design was
used to examine multiple intelligences
found within literary folktales. The target
populations of this study were elem entar y
school teachers, parents and children who
live in Awi zone. Through purposive
sampling 20 folktale narrators (10 females
and 10) were interviewed and two group
discussions were conducted. Moreover,
expert sampling was used to examine
multiple intelligences de ep-rooted in a
systematic e xpression of knowledge in
literary folktales. First hand data collection
on this study began during December to
March 2019 through observation and
interview from the field and classroom
settings in Awi.
Archival data from internet and other
important documents were also used to
enrich the study. Based on multiple intelligence
contentment 4 anticipated literary folktales were
chosen for analysis. The method of data analysis
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
employed was collection, systematic classifi cation
and description supported by Gardner’s multiple
intelligence theory (1999, 2000, 2006).
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Folktales were analyzed in terms of multiple
intelligence containments and their functions in
the context of the children (Tomlinson, 2014). In
the course of analysis, folktale texts come into
view fi rst and their analysis result follows.
Folktale One: Animal Court
In the ancient time, all animals were living
together. One day, the monkey took a loan from
the lion. When the lion asked him to return his
money, he never gave it. One day the lion went
to the chief fox to accuse the monkey. He said
“Please, fox, I have money owing. The monkey
took my money. He refused to pay it to me until
now. Therefore, you should have to see our case.”
Due to this, animals like the cow, the sheep, the
goat, the rat, the hyena, the buff alo, and others
were calling for assembly. Consequently, they
gathered under the big tree near to farm lands
to distinguish the case occurred between the
monkey and the lion. Accordingly, during the
long run of the case being heard by the chief, the
monkey was convicted that, unless he paid, there
was no any other way; he had to be eaten by the
lion. Of course, the lion was very strong and none
of these animals would be able to fi ght him. As a
result, every animal was afraid.
Accordingly, the cow said, “unless you
pay the money to the lion, you must be eaten.”
Each one of those animals said the same thing.
Thus, the monkey was sentenced to be eaten by
the lion. Finally, the fox saw the case, the monkey
was convicted that he was sentenced to death by
all the animals. Unfortunately, the fox did not
like the event that the lion would eat the monkey.
Due to this, the fox was transferring important
messages to the monkey through the following
melody:
“Monkey, for death you are sentenced
Therefore, you will be killed
But before something happened
Would you look at the tree?
It is behind you”
Then immediately, the monkey understood
what the fox was saying. He jumped up and
climbed on the tree. Instantly, every animal was
isolated. Due to this, the lion was unable to eat
the monkey, and thus, he saved himself by the tree.
In this folktale, children engagement in
linguistic intelligence is realized through ideal
word, verbal communication, verbal narrative
sounds, and defi nitions. An attempt was made
to have children choose and intend with their
preferred reading, after that perform a written
or oral presentation on why they desire that
circumstances. Children could bear in mind
about the dictions being used by the cow, the
monkey, and the chief fox. As a result, children
could develop the linguistic expression of their
sensitivity to the state of diff erent scio-cultural
aff airs.
Apparently, in terms of logical thinking,
children understand that borrowed possessions
must be payed back to the intended individuals.
The monkey understood what the fox was
saying and he jumped up and climbed on the
tree. Then, every animal was isolated. As a
result, children could able to understand how
the existing problems are being solved. Teachers
at school and parents at home for instance can
create events and characters found in folktale to
calculate diff erent numerical items in line with
current lesson. These types of exercise aimed to
develop the students’ engagement in calculation
skills and color conversion abilities.
The projected literary folktale narration
and reading encourages bodily kinesthetic
intelligence. As narrated through the above
folktale, monkey understood what the fox was
saying and he jumped up and climbed on the tree.
Then every animal was dispersed. In this case
students understand that how diff erent animals
were used, their body.
Parts to perform diff erent activities. Children
might aware of that how the monkey used his
whole body or parts of his body to climb up
the tree. Thus, children could understand how
the monkey was able to solve the sentenced
decisions by coordinating legs and hands. As a
result, children learn best through engagement
of touching, moving, processing knowledge
through their body sensations.
Natural and Visual-spatial intelligence were
overlapping in the previous folktale. Children
could call attention to the space where the
cow, the sheep, the goat, the rat, the hyena,
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
the buff alo, and many others were called for
assembly and they were gathered under the big
tree near to farmlands. This circumstance leads
children to create the ability to form a mental
representation of the spatial animal world and
able to manipulate them to create the overall
mental images. Thus, in this case, children can
develop the ability to comprehend, discover
and appreciate the world of animal nature.
The fox, being the chief was sitting with the
weaker animal (monkey) rather than strong
(lion).
Regarding interpersonal intelligence,
children could call attention to animal’s
feelings, intentions, interests, and motivations.
It was a democratic vote, a decision by all the
animals that the monkey should be eaten. The
monkey would suff er all his life in hiding.
For that reason, in interpersonal intelligence,
children were trying to be strong in accepting
the people, leading organizing, and resolving
the existing confl ict.
Through engagement of intrapersonal
intelligence, children could be capable to
understand each animal’s inner thoughts,
feelings, desires, strengths, and weaknesses. On
the other hand, musical intelligence was all
about music and rhythm. Thus, the fox was
transmitting the message to the monkey all the
way through the poetic melody to save his life
from death. Similarly, narration has its sounds,
pitches and rhymes in prose fashion.
Thus, children would like to engage in role-
play by nominating diff erent animal sound and
able to listen and narrate. Therefore, children
could learn best through listening, reading,
narrating, singing, and writing to the folktale,
poetic and prose melodies.
An important moral lesson that students
learn from “animal court” were that true justice
can be able to conquer anything in its path. In
terms of logical thinking, students understand
that if they borrow someone’s possessions they
must pay back to the intended individuals.
In group discussion session (for example)
grade four mathematics teacher assured that
he was a musical, kinesthetic, and visual
learner; and the teacher tries to incorporate
these intelligences fond of his classroom. As
musical intelligent, he attempts to incorporate
music into his classroom. By the same token,
fi fth grade Awgni teacher stated that she
was a visual learner. She gave her students a
survey on learning styles at the beginning of
the year. At time she was addressing learning
styles in the thoughtful education curriculum.
Conversely, all respondents were not aware of
multiple intelligences.
Folktale Two: the Leopard’s and Goat’s Kid
Before very longtime, the leopards and a goat’s
kid were, not knowing each other. Due to that,
they were playing together in the grass and the
forestland escape of once a village. Diff erent
species of plant and grass types create the area
very attractive. One day, after play scene the
leopard’s kid, returned to her home. In the
evening, she told her mother in this tone, “I was
playing with a fi ne looking creature of God. She
was very smart, elegant, attractive, gorgeous,
and humorous. I have been passing an excellent
time with her.” Owing to this event, the mother
leopard was become pleased. Her face, mouth
and eyes have been drastically changed. Then,
she caught her kid with her fi ngers and shouted
loudly. She said by strong tonal speech “Isn’t
that our favorite food since ages? I have feed
you ever since. Why didn’t you catch her and
bring her?” The kid was crying. After that, she
took a few minutes to suppose about the event
that has been happening. Thus she replied,
“Oh, excuse mammy, we have a meeting
tomorrow. I’ll bring her here.” On the other
hand, the goat’s kid also told her mother, “I was
playing with a striking animal which had spots.
She had colorfully decorated body.” However,
the goat’s mother muscularly shouted at her
kid. She pushed down her kid by her horn. She
was an able to control her feeling and said,
“You were extremely foolish child, don’t you be
familiar with! This kid and her relatives were
our hazard enemy since we created, chasing us
everywhere. If they cached without any pretext
they killed and ate us. You must always run
away and keep not hearing from her.”
After this event, goat kids went to the
intended village to obtain food. When the goat’s
kid saw the child’s of leopard, she provided the
impression of being wiliness, said in a false,
sweet voice, “Hello, how are you please?” The
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
leopard’s kid in a little while was nearing her
with intelligence pace. The goat’s kid became
very frustrated. Gradually, she was going
back… back… back and back, fearing to be
caught. The kid of leopard tried to express her
feelings in the subsequently musical melody to
divert the intent of the goat is as in:
“Let’s engage in recreation
I will give you certifi cation
For today, I have excellent amusement
Let us engage in enrollment
Let us create entertainment”
“Thank you for your song. No, I will not do
that today. What has been designed in your
home has also been proposed in our house.
What your mother told you was even advised
by my mother to me. You and your relatives
were our cruel enemies.” After saying this,
she ran away and the kid of the leopard went
back to her mother.
In the itinerary of narration, students
engagement as leopard and her kid, goat and
her kid were able to developed into diff erent
multiple intelligences. Thus, children were
expected to develop linguistic intelligence
to use language productively, whether in
words as a storyteller or in writing. Children
engagement through folktale narration enables
them to develop the capability to operate the
grammar or confi guration, the semantics, and
the realistic practical uses of the given language.
For instance, the kid of the leopard was using
language to convince the goat to take a specifi c
course of action. The goat’s kid was using
language to remember information what her
mother was told clarifi cation using language to
inform her kid.
Musical poetic and narrative, rhythmic
intelligence in the above folktale includes
receptiveness to pitch, character sounds, and
promptness and thoughtful to the narrative
constituency of the play. It also includes such
abilities as the cognizance of tonal patterns and
narrative rhythm, awareness of sounds such as
leopard and its kid, goat and her child. Students’
teachers, parents and friends are playing leopards
or their friend’s sound eff ects and they listen
to music while studying or reading. Thus,
children were able to appreciate the area of
play, beat, and character. They also can generate
music and take pleasure in singing songs.
Mathematical intelligence emerged through
this folktale enable students to emanate from
the manipulating of leopard and goat’s child,
cultivates into the aptitude to think concretely
about those animals. Then it builds up into the
ability to imagine legitimating of animal family
members without them. Children through
intended folktale dialogue might require
logical and rational information to be taught
in excellence. This group of students enjoys
working with rational, logical thinking.
By the same token, spatial intelligence found
in the premeditated folktale refers to children
competence to imagine visually, orient oneself
spatially. For example, the mother of the leopard
was very sensitive to goat while her child was
visualizing the event. Thus, children imagine
the physical appearance of the goat including
the capacity to visualize ideas, and to familiarize
oneself properly in a spatial prevailing condition.
Furthermore, bodily kinesthetic intelligence
in this literary folktale requires the profi ciency
to understand the leopard’s and the goat’s
world through body skill in order to articulate
thoughts and feelings, and be in touch with others
physically. Children can recognize the way the
goat pushed down her kid by her horn and leopard
caught her kid with her fi ngers and the occasion
she shouted loudly. Therefore, students were
using one’s whole body or parts of body to resolve
troubles. They might also develop the aptitude to
make use of mental capabilities to synchronize
physical movements. In line with interpersonal
intelligence, children acquire individual leopards
and goats’ capability to appreciate, distinguish,
and diff erentiate between the wild animal’s frame
of mind, conduct, objective, and intentions.
This enables students to be sensitive to facial
language, right to be heard, and gestures.
Interpersonal intelligence in this context
depicts children to introspect one’s self. For
instance, the mother of the leopard laid down
the goal to slaughter the kid of a goat. The
mother of the goat was also cognizant that
her kid could be killed. Therefore, events
talked between leopard and goat’s kids might
help children to become skilled at how to set
goals. To build up this intelligence, teachers
and parents had better to encourage them
to formulate a schedule of eff ects that they
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
would like to do if they were either goat or
leopard.
In naturalist intelligence, children could
point out the capability to be familiar with
and categorize grassy and forestry land escape
of once a village, diff erent species of plant,
grassland types, domestic and wild animals.
Therefore, children who like to be involved
with nature would understand the diff erence.
The moral of this folktale deals with the
assessment of leopard’s own conscious thoughts
and feelings. In the psychology of the goat
and leopard, the process of introspection relies
solely on the inspection of one’s mental state.
Thus, this introspection closely related to
children’s self-suggestion and contrasted with
external observation. Moreover, the moral of
introspection provides a privileged access to
students’ own mental state, not mediated by
other sources of knowledge, so that personal
experience of the mind is unique. Moral lessons
raised through folktale determine any number
of student’s mental states like sensory, bodily,
cognitive, emotional etc.
Folktale three: hyena’s indulgence
Once upon a time, the hyena’s child was
deceased. Due to this, the hyena was down in the
dumps and sat in his home. Thus, the donkeys
were talking about the journey to the hyena’s
house to indulge him from his sorrow. After the
long talked, one donkey said, “Well, the hyenas
have forever and a day being our opponents.
Perhaps if we go, he will be happy and make us
his friends.” Then the donkeys agreed to mourner
the hyena. One donkey called the hyena by next
melodic fashion as:
“You are always heard.
From whatever distance
you are heard everywhere.
However, you defecate;
your dung has been always white.
What fate did your son meet?
From you, such a great creature,
how could your son be dead?”
Everyone cried and was in tears. One
hyena also answered in a poetic song as
“Oh, it was wonderful that you said
it was such a wonderful poem
you made for the death of our son.
But, however good your poem was
Look, these mourners didn’t have anything to
eat.”
A donkey said “Let God give you comfort.
Now we must go.” Consequently, they started to
leave. However, a hyena stood at the door, closed
the pathway, and said, “The mourner hyenas didn’t
have something to eat. Therefore, all of you must
give your upper lips.” In this case, donkeys entreat
the hyena to off er excuses. The hyena strongly wary
them and said, “without any pretext I had to cut off
your lips.” Finally, the hyena cuts off the donkey’s
lips for mourners. Since the donkey lips were cut off ,
they seemed to be laughing. On the other day, one
hyena saw those donkeys that did not have lips. To
him the donkeys seem to laugh at hyena’s child death.
Therefore, the same hyena went to his hyena friends
and said, “You were letting them go peacefully,
but they were laughing at the death of your son.”
Finally, the hyenas became annoyed. By taking this
as pretext, they killed all donkeys and ate them.
Through literary folktale narration children
in linguistic intelligence can able to exchange a
few words, make the wisdom of both hyenas and
donkeys world through their own language. When
children were role-playing the scene of hyenas
and donkeys’ character, they could demonstrate
this intelligence in their prime form. Children
who engaged and took pleasure in playing with
rhymes, clever remarks, and perpetuity might
have a story to tell, and show signs of linguistic
intelligence. The logical intelligence enabled
students to be conscious of cause and eff ect
relations. According to folktale three, the cause
is the hyena’s sorrow and the fi rst eff ect is the
donkeys’ choice to make the journey. Likewise,
journey of mourner was designing for creating
friendship in between hyenas and donkeys. In
view of the fact that the hyenas were starving,
and thus, they forcefully cut donkeys lips.
Consequently, this was the product. On the
other hand, another donkey went to the hyena’s
home was the cause that he aimed to report as if
donkeys were laughing at the death of hyena’s
son. Then, this eff ect resulted that the hyenas
were imposed to kill all donkeys.
Children engagement in musical intelligence
allows them to produce, be in touch with,
and appreciate themes made out of sounds
between donkey and hyena. Thus, students were
expected to develop the capacity to recognize,
diff erentiate, alter, and articulate funeral musical
forms that were chanted by hyena and donkey.
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
This intelligence enabled them to be sensitive
to the tempo, melody, and tone color of funeral
musical pieces.
Spatial intelligence through this folktale
makes it possible for students to make out
visual or spatial information about the notion of
the hyenas and the donkeys. This intelligence
facilitates children’s ability to restructure visual
imagery from memory. It also enabled students to
imagine visually, become conversant with them
spatially, and see the visual images about the
hyenas’ and the donkeys’ world noticeably.
In this regard, students were initiated to
carry out transformations on their initial
perceptions. This intelligence engaged them
in sensitivity to color, shape, form, space,
and the relationships that existed in between
hyenas and donkeys’ contexts.
Bodily kinesthetic intelligence throughout
this folktale makes possible children to realize the
donkeys and hyenas’ world all the way through
body experiences, to communicate thoughts and
emotions, and be in touch with other opponents
through bodily actions. Therefore, both domestic
and wild animals were used, and their whole
body could be used to express ideas, feelings,
and actions that were taken. For instance, hyenas
were using their legs, teeth, lips and other parts of
body by coordinating, balancing, and strengthen
physical skills as fl exibility, and speed to cut the
lips, to kill all donkeys and to eat meat. Thus,
children’s engagement in bodily kinesthetic
intelligence allows them to use part of the body
to create products or solve problems.
In the preceding folktale, diff erent donkeys
and hyenas were expressing their own thoughts,
outlooks, objectives and the premeditated
goals. As a result, intrapersonal intelligence
helps children to diff erentiate amongst their
own manner, to construct precise psychological
models of themselves and lead them to make
decisions about their lives. In the same way,
donkeys were able to interpret hyenas’ behaviors,
understand the relation between donkeys and
hyenas, and their situations in the future. For
instance, one donkey said, “Well, the hyenas
have forever and a day being our opponents.
Perhaps if we go, he will be happy and make
us his friends.” Then the donkeys were agreed
to mourner the hyena. On the other hand, one
hyena saw those donkeys that did not have lips.
To him the donkeys seem to laugh at hyena’s
child death. Thus, he went to his hyena friends
and said, “You are letting them go peacefully,
but they were laughing at the death of your
son.” Therefore, interpersonal intelligence in
this context permits children to be acquainted
with and create distinctions about others’
thoughts and purposes. Children show signs of
this intelligence while they prosper in small
group work, when they become aware of and
act in response to the moods of their associates
and age group. Through engagement of folktale,
children can distinguish wild and domestic
animals. Therefore, naturalist intelligence allows
children to make a distinction among animals,
categorize, and use features of the environment.
The moral of this folktale deals with the
cause of the journey of mourner, which was
premeditated to generate companionship
between the hyenas and the donkeys. Since the
hyenas were starving, they forcefully cut donkeys
lips. Thus, donkeys indulged the hyena from his
sorrow, resulting in the hyenas choosing to kill
all the donkeys. Commencing this event Children
understand that hazard enemies always chasing
their adversary are everywhere. If they cached
without any pretext they killed and ate them.
Folktale 4: The Man and The Snake
Long ago, a snake was started his trip in the early
morning. While he was going on a journey, he
got the river, which he could not cross. Due to this
reason, he was sitting at the edge of the big river.
Immediately, he saw the man who was coming into
the river. The snake said, “Good morning, sir”.
“Oh, how are you?” replied the man. The snake
said, “This River was very fl ooded. Therefore,
I cannot cross it. So please help me.” The man
replied, “How can I help you?” The snake in his
turn said, “I can sit on your head.” The man was
very kind, and he let him cross on his head. The
man supposed, “Now you have crossed, come
down from my head.” Snake replied that “no,
you are too late. How can you ask me?” He was
too full of confi dence. “I can’t come down. I’m
going to eat you.” The man said, “Is this the
reward you give me for helping you?” The snake
said, “I will not come down.” Finally, the snake
replied, “Let’s go to a judge.” The judges they
selected were a man and an animal. According
to their choice, fi rstly, they went to the man. Both
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
of them intended to raise their ideas for judge.
The man said, “I helped the snake in order to
cross the river, but he wouldn’t come down off my
head.”The main judge said, “You did it willingly.
You told him to sit on your head, so why should
he come down? This is my judgment.” The judge
was frightened of the snake.
The man said, “We must go to a higher animal
judge.” Therefore, they go to the animals for
judgment, the baboon, hyena, and two other men,
and so on, and they are all afraid of the snake and
say the same thing. All gave a verdict said, “If you
carried him willingly, he has the right to be there.
He can eat you.” The fi nal judge was the monkey.
The monkey said, “What is the problem?” The
man said, “The snake asked me to help him cross
the fl ooded river, but now he refuses to come
down.” “Oh, is that so?” said the monkey. “Well,
according to the traditional customs of my father
and mother to give the judgment, I must go up
the tree.” Then, he climbs up the tree and said, “I
can’t judge you like this. One must stand on the
left and one on the right, like the usual defendant
and prosecutor.” Therefore, when the monkey
said this, the snake came off the man’s head and
stood nearby, believing the monkey was also
afraid of him. The monkey chanted as:
“Don’t you have a stick in your hand?
Do not have courage in your heart.
Why don’t you do something about it?”
Therefore, the man said, “I never thought of it.
This is the best judgment. I ever heard.”
Consequently, he took the stick and beat the
snake to death.
In the context of logical intelligence, this
folktale addresses the consideration to rational
patterns that the cause of disagreement, which
occurred in between the snake and the man, was
the fl ooded river. In this case, the snake cannot
cross it. Thus, the snake has been begging the
man to carry him on his head. After the snake
crossed the river, he was unable to go down.
Because of fearing the snake, diff erent judges
were trouble to give right justices to the man.
Finally, the monkey gave justice and the problem
was solved. Therefore, this logical intelligence
enables children to develop the ability how to
associate, speak out, propose, identify cause and
eff ect, role-play, and other related thoughts.
As portrayed through folktale, the snake,
the man, and the monkey were used diff erent
languages to articulate, to propose, to adjudicate,
and to set the intended goals in a given context.
Therefore, linguistic intelligence can promote
students’ verbal language expressions. It was
implicit that students whose intelligence
points of view comprise a well constructed
linguistic component that would off er higher
ratings on education and please themselves
with vocabulary and verbal games.
Spatial intelligence through this folktale
measures students’ view on their capacities
to imagine and works with multidimensional
things. Students dealt with visual imaging
about the river fl ood, snake, man, and diff erent
journeys, those who participate in justice, and
other settings and characters being involved
in the folktale. Moreover, this tale promotes
students’ spatial perception in line with the
intended intelligence.
In the folktale, the man, snake, and
monkey used their parts of the body to perform
different activities in the given context.
Therefore, bodily kinesthetic intelligence
could be used to assess the children’s outlook
on their abilities associated to functioning
with hands and organizing their bodies.
Interpersonal intelligence in this
circumstance can measure children’s
perceptions of the capabilities of social
relations being performed by a snake, man,
and other judges. Students can develop items
like ways to make contact easily with other
learners, and build up methods how they get
along with no trouble by means of diff erent
types of people.
In line with intrapersonal intelligence,
self-reflections being expressed by a snake,
men and monkeys can determine children
imaginations on their talent to react to
signifi cant issues in life. Therefore, through
this folk narration, children were expected to
use time to frequently refl ect on the important
issues in their life. Moreover, children
might also uphold issues relating to snake’s,
men’s, and the monkey’s ability to examine
themselves and the initiated problem in order
to articulate their own feelings. Due to this,
children were expected to develop abilities to
examine their own reasons and behaviors of
action, either their opinions were agreeing or
Literary Folktales Promoting Children's Multiple Intelligences.
disagree with the other character’s view.
In naturalistic intelligence, children were
anticipated to confine their admiration of
being in an animal, human, land escape, and
plant matures. Thus, the intended folktale
facilitated the notice of understated variations
in the world of human, animal, plant and land
feature natures and observations of natural
settings, interconnections, and patterns.
While the monkey was trying to give
justice, he created the poem, and chanted
loudly to enhance the man to kill the snake.
Therefore, through musical intelligence,
students might understand how to generate
excitement, imagery, and methods to add a
power of putting into eff ect. Students through
the moral of folktale understand that a verdict
of quality in criminal case is normally go after
the decision of convocation rendered by judge
, which in turn be followed by sentencing.
Here children aware that fi rst, the jury fi nds
the facts, as pawed by the evidence, then it
applies the commandment as instructed by the
court, and fi nally it returns a verdict in one
conclusion that settle the case as the monkey
did.
Discussion summary remarks indicated
that Like Shearer (2004) and Gardner (2006)
research fi ndings, multiple intelligence hold
that children possessed several intelligences
which are used to carry out specifi c tasks.
This hypothesis is signifi cant to elementary
education because teachers able to observe
more recurrently that students learn in
diff erent ways. By the same token similar
to Gardner (2006), research result in current
study indicated that intelligences found in
literary folktale narratives include interpersonal,
intrapersonal, kinesthetic, linguistic, logical/
mathematical, musical, Spatial, and naturalistic.
It is supposed that every intelligence can either
work independently to complete a task or
several intelligences be able to function together
particularly to complete teaching learning tasks
accordingly. Similar to Viadero (2003) in order
to better understand every child teacher and
parent fi rst have got to be understand what each
intelligence means.
CONCLUSSION
Literary folktale narrations promote social
cohesion regardless of age and gender. The
narratives were powerful, convincing tool that
should be used by parents and teachers. Thus,
the fi nding of this research has been assured that
children engagement in folktale narrations can
develop their linguistic, logical, spatial, musical,
natural, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and bodily
kinesthetic intelligences. Furthermore, children
at any talent stage were acquainted with
how to use their multiple intelligent through
learning and their life experiences. Likewise,
moral lessons refl ected all the way through
literary folktales instruct the desired morals of
reality, discipline, truthfulness, responsibility,
compliance, and other social responsibilities
which are important to deliver the actual lesson.
Interview and group discussion sections assured
that teachers, students and parents were not aware
about multiple intelligences and signifi cance of
integrated application of folk tale narrations into
lesson presentations.
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