Old wives' tale
A wives' tale is a widespread, but only apparent, knowledge in the present day .
Historically, the term, which probably originated in the 18th century , goes back to the practice of wet nurses to tell incredible stories ( fairy tales ) to the children they care for.
In 1798 , Kant speaks of the “groaning with which old wives' tales chase the children to bed in the late evening” as a sublime feeling.
In addition to the educational and culture- preserving aspects of oral tradition (see also tradition ), the old wives' tales often had the function of entertaining children through sensations and raising them to obedience through fear . Such educational methods were a thorn in the side of the Enlighteners , and they always associated the term with the negative connotation of conveying a superstitious view of the world.
Christoph Martin Wieland uses the expression several times , for example “How? but not of the Menippus, of which the crazy Damis tells us in his travels of Apollonius the most absurd of all nurse fairies ”.
In a pedagogical lexicon from 1840 it says: “If the children are made superstitious and fearful by fictional stories, nurse tales and ghost stories, the teacher should make them familiar with the laws of nature; because then nothing can cure them more reliably than the knowledge of nature and its laws. "
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Individual evidence
- ^ Anthropology in pragmatic terms , AA VII, p. 154.
- ↑ Peregrinus Proteus. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .
- ↑ Universal lexicon of education and teaching for older and younger Christian primary school teachers at Google Books .