Pages

Labels

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Do fantasy stories undermine rationality in children?

Richard Dawkins might want you kids to stop reading Harry Potter, fairy tales, and the like.
"I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know"...

"I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious [e]ffect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research."
And he doesn't think much of the "Judeo-Christian myth".
He went on: "I plan to look at mythical accounts of various things and also the scientific account of the same thing. And the mythical account that I look at will be several different myths, of which the Judeo-Christian one will just be one of many.

"And the scientific one will be substantiated, but appeal to children to think for themselves; to look at the evidence. Always look at the evidence."
The funny thing is, talking like that, Dawkins sounds like a villainous character in a children's book. But he's quite serious, especially about children and religion:
"Do not ever call a child a Muslim child or a Christian child – that is a form of child abuse because a young child is too young to know what its views are about the cosmos or morality.

"It is evil to describe a child as a Muslim child or a Christian child. I think labelling children is child abuse and I think there is a very heavy issue, for example, about teaching about hell and torturing their minds with hell.

"It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse. I wouldn't want to teach a young child, a terrifyingly young child, about hell when he dies, as it's as bad as many forms of physical abuse."

0 comments:

Post a Comment