10 Children’s
Folklore
Since the late 1970s, regulations for the protection
of human research subjects
have influenced folklorists’ work with their informants. The American Folklore
Society issued a “Statement on Ethics” in 1986 and has continued to debate is-
sues related to ethics. Currently, the American Folklore Society’s human subjects
position statement specifies that folklore research “is not quantitative but over-
whelmingly qualitative.” Research restrictions suitable for biomedical, clinical,
and experimental models are not appropriate for folklore fieldwork, which relies
on trust, involvement
in the local community, and protection of informants’
confidentiality. According to the American Folklore Society’s “Human Subjects
Position Statement,” folklore research that fits human subjects regulations should
be eligible for expedited review.
Children deserve special consideration, because they are not yet mature enough
to give informed consent to researchers. Although their parents and teachers can
speak for the children to some extent, it is difficult to know whether children
will, as adults, agree that they should have participated
in research to which they
agreed as children. Most folklore fieldworkers who have worked with children
have kept the children’s names confidential and changed identifying details.
Iona and Peter Opie, whose
Lore and Language of School Children
(1959) in-
spired many others to study children’s
folklore, visited playgrounds to observe
children at play and to talk with the children about their games, customs, beliefs,
and other forms of folklore. Identifying the children by age and gender only,
the Opies preserved their informants’ confidentiality. Similarly,
Mary and Her-
bert Knapp, authors of
One Potato, Two Potato: Th
e Secret Education of American
Children
(1976), collected folklore from many different groups of children and
refrained from identifying the children by name. Brian Sutton-Smith, author of
Th
e Folkgames of Children
(1972), visited many playgrounds and schools in New
Zealand and the United States. The fieldwork for Sutton-Smith’s important study
of children’s narrative patterns,
Th
e Folkstories of Children
(1981), took place in
schools, with graduate students assisting in the process of story collection. Like
the Opies and the Knapps, Sutton-Smith carefully preserved the confidentiality
of the children with whom he and his assistants worked.
Since the mid-1980s, heightened concern about children’s safety and well-
being has caused reconsideration of young people’s rights and needs. The United
Nations General Assembly adopted its Convention on the Rights of the Child
in 1989. Writers of books and articles on the subject of children’s rights have
explored why children need special consideration. Publications such as Philip
Alston, Stephen Parker, and John Seymour’s
Children, Rights, and the Law
(1992),
F. Paul Kurmay’s “Do Children Need a Bill of Rights?” (1996), and Lee E. Teitel-
baum’s “Children’s Rights and the Problem of Equal Respect” (1999) have asked
what new laws may be needed.
In this era of rapidly transmitted news, people learn very quickly about
transgressions against the young. Public awareness of criminals’ mistreatment of
Introduction 11
children has created a climate of fear. American school programs on “stranger
danger,” AMBER alerts for kidnapped children, and strict regulation of people
authorized to pick children up from day care and school remind us of children’s
vulnerability to danger. Although these reminders help to keep children safe, they
also make parents and teachers worry. Unstructured playtime outdoors, which
children took for granted in the 1950s and 1960s, has,
in many cases, been re-
placed by structured settings for supervised play.
At schools and in other structured environments such as summer camps, field-
workers can work effectively with children. It is important to ask officials at
schools or other places for permission before fieldwork begins. In any fieldwork
situation, researchers must give children time to get accustomed to their visitors
and ask children for their assent. Gary Alan Fine’s “Methodological Problems of
Collecting Folklore from Children” (1995) covers these issues in detail. Many
British and American researchers have recently collected folklore from children
on playgrounds and in other institutional settings. British folklorists’ play audits
have yielded important sources of information about children’s play patterns.
For collectors of children’s folklore, the Internet offers exciting potential for
gathering texts and information. Karen Ellis’s National Children’s Folksong Re -
pository Web site (http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/ NCFR2.html) encour-
ages people to submit folk songs, jump-rope chants, circle games, call-and-response
songs, and other materials by using their iPods, MP3 players, and Macintosh
computers or PCs. Ellis provides a toll-free telephone
number that contributors
can access from anywhere in the United States. Emphasizing the importance of
preserving traditional material, she asks each visitor to her Web site to “sing or
chant [a song]. Save it now!” Her efforts have resulted in an overflowing archive
of material that offers resources for future researchers.
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