Empowering Young Children with Folktales and Storytelling: A Report from a Rural West Java Village

This article describes the results of visiting Choblong—a rural village near Bogor, one of the most dynamic cities in West Java, Indonesia. The purpose of our visit was to (re)introduce the concept of storytelling to parents and promote long-forgotten local folktales and character education. The hope was that the parents would enjoy this approach in the long run and use local stories and history to teach skills, develop a close relationship with their children, and support an oral storytelling tradition. The responses we received from homemakers in Choblong were varied, ranging from excitement to embrace storytelling to concern about the problems they encountered when dealing with their children’s addiction to television and smartphones. The problems they raised have great potential to help parents transform their concepts of storytelling and their children’s futures. The need for greater awareness about character education and greater parental engagement in the process is an urgent matter for the next decade.