UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING OF TRADITIONAL FAIRY TALES IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT -- TEACHING FOR CRITICAL THINKING.

The aim of this paper is to develop a model for critical reading of traditional fairy tales, which will enable the understanding of their meanings in contemporary educational context from a gender perspective. We have posed the following research questions: Why is the fairy tale so important in education and how does it influence the reader? What kind of ideology do fairy tales present? Which fairy tales (traditional or non-traditional) should one read during education, and how should their critical reading be arranged? We have used the method of theoretical analysis, followed by the historical method, and finally, the morphological analysis of the selected fairy tale. The model of critical reading has been developed using the fairy tale titled Baš-čelik, published in Vuk Karadžić's collection in 1870, as a case study. It has been shown that texts tend to hyperbolically affirm the cult of heroism. Research indicates that such stories could be read in schools with the aim of understanding their semantic structure from a feminist perspective, while accentuating the construction of characters reduced to very few qualities that ideally conform to the heterosexual pattern. The model for critical reading of such stories, based on reader-response theory, has been developed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]