Children’s Fiction Promotes Gullability
Agoraphilia has a great post on children’s fiction:
Children’s fiction often promotes credulity as a virtue. Consider, for instance, the admonitions in Disney’s Peter Pan, in Elf, or in The Neverending Story. These and many other works teach our children, “Just believe!”
He then proceeds to examine why authors think that “Kids are supposed to believe whatever some elf, or sprite, or cute fuzzy guy ardently insists they believe.”
This is one of the many clichés of children’s literature that grinds against me like sandpaper against my teeth. Another is the idea tha tyou should “believe in yourself,” as though doing so magically infuses you with the ability to shoot basketball, skate, or spell “triskaidekaphobia.”
There are probably dozens of these; what are your story-telling pet peeves?
January 16th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
My pet peeve in children’s stories is the whole “follow-your-heart” and “trust your heart” philosophy. (Ack! Those words make me shudder!) So many stories have characters doing things that are against the norms and expectations of the society they live in, but they “follow their heart” and do what they feel is right, and in the end they become a hero for daring to do what no one else would do. But what ever happened to stories about doing what’s right and honorable even when you don’t want to, and finding out in the end that if you had done whatever you felt like, you would have hurt someone, or even ended up dead? It seems you never see that in modern kids’ stories!
January 16th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I would disagree that children’s fiction often tells kids to “just believe”. Perhaps the not worth reading children’s fiction. Even if the phrase “just believe” is used in the book, the actual meaning is more complex than Agoraphilia would make you believe. For example, The Neverending Story is about using your imagination and the joys of reading and discovery. Those are all worthwhile.
All this to say, there are definitely children’s fiction that is dangerous. Perhaps the most dangerous children’s fiction I have read is the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. It’s a brilliant piece of humanistic progaganda.
January 16th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
I enjoyed the “His Dark Materials” books, but I didn’t think they were for children.
What I hate about children’s literature is the silly notion that children are good, wise and pure. Children are evil.
January 16th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
David: That’s true; the full article I linked to concludes with:
Gordo: I agree; “All we like sheep have gone astray….“
January 16th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Children aren’t evil. Children are human. Now, some children are evil- I think most of the best childrens’ books recognize that. The first books that come to mind are Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. In the former, Draco Malfoy and his friends are about as nasty as your average kids get, and even Ron and Hermione, two of the heroes, have their moments of treating others badly. Likewise, the Narnia books all have children who aren’t model, nice, well-behaved kids (Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, to name two).
Personally, I think it’s difficult and a bit fallacious to try and pigeonhole all childrens’ literature, because it’s just too broad a genre. Good luck comparing, say, Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy and the Bobbsey Twins in any really meaningful way. They’re just too different- it’s apples and oranges, really.
January 16th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
The whole “believe in yourself” motive bears dangerous consequences when it comes time to share the gospel with children. The gospel truth is that we are inadequate without Christ and we have to admit that and turn to Christ for help. The new gospel I’m hearing preached in many Charismatic circles is exactly that “believe in yourself… inside, you’re beautiful.”
January 16th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Faustus - the complexity of the children in the Harry Potter books is one of the best things about that great series. And yes, Draco is the most evil of the children, but I think I see redemption in his future.
We would never tolerate in the workplace the kind of harassment and cruelty that goes on everyday in elementary schools in this country.
January 17th, 2006 at 2:33 am
I have to say that growing up, my elementary school years were mostly bully-free (aside from a year living in England, where both my brother and I were physically attacked at one time or another). Middle school, in my experience, was where people got really nasty and cutthroat. High school was crummy, but by then most people have found some kind of a peer group and are focused on college and stuff- I just remember middle school as being this horrible, zit- and hormone-infested purgatory. Ugh. And now I work at one. Somewhere, someone is laughing very, very hard at me.
I don’t put up with any bullying in my classes or when I’m around (which is more than can be said for a lot of teachers/schools here in Japan, which turn a very blind eye to that stuff), but I’m not with the kids twenty-four hours a day, and I shudder to think of what goes on behind closed doors. You’re right that kids can be very cruel to one another- they seem very adept at finding just the right (wrong) way to twist the knife sometimes. On the other hand, I know some really good, hard-working, sweet-tempered kids, too. You get all kinds.
January 17th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I don’t like the ones where the child is the only one who knows the right thing to do and saves the day.
I don’t like modern tales for kids that seem to urge them to defy authority (because the child knows the right thing to do and needs to save the day.) I think, even without a Biblical background, why would people want to urge children to be disobedient??
January 17th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Yet the Bible is full of just these stories - off hand I can think of Jesus at 14 teaching in the Temple and worrying is parents, Samuel, David and Goliath.
January 18th, 2006 at 12:47 am
Jesus is pretty obviously a special case.
And exactly when did Samuel and David, as children, defy their authorities?
January 19th, 2006 at 9:36 am
David wasn’t defiant. He was obedient and full of faith and willing to do something where the adults were not, and God used him. Sure, that can happen — a child of faith can put adults to shame. Samuel never defied authorities either — his parents or Eli. Jesus wasn’t defiant — he was going about His Father’s business. After the incident at the temple, the Bible says he went with Mary and Joseph and was subject to them. That was a verse that had a major impact on me as a teen-ager — the fact that the perfect sinless Son of God was subject to and obedient to human, fallible parents who didn’t always understand Him, and if He did that in obedience to His heavenly Father, then I should and could as well.
So, no, I’m not saying God can never use children or that children’s faith and obedience aren’t sometimes an example and a rebuke to adults. There are even ways Jesus said we are to be like children.
But that’s not the spirit in some of the books I was talking about. You see a lot of it in made-for-TV films. One children’s book we checked out in Greenville without really examing it first turned out to be a new age book for kids (complete with an afterword by a spirit guide — it was scary, actually). But even before getting to that part, there were red flags — portraying it as ok for the child to throw a book at his teacher, someone telling the kids to drop everything they had ever believed before. In a lot of kid’s books it isn’t that blatant and obvious, but that kind of underlying spirit is there.
OTOH, one of my all-time favorite children’s books is Keep the Lights Burning, Abby, in which a girl has to do something she doesn’t think she can do, yet takes the responsibility and finds the strength to do it. She “saves the day” but in submission to authority, not in defiance, and matures ands grows in the process.