Posted on 11/23/2013 6:04:44 AM PST by Sherman Logan
Great children’s literature does more than the most cutting-edge program for “character education.”
Last July, the Coupland family spent a weekend in Canada. On our return trip, we entered the U.S. by means of the bridge that spans the Detroit River. The 15 minutes of waiting on the immigration line gave plenty of opportunity for my three children to ask a variety of unwelcome questions, such as, “Dad, why we can’t we bring fruit into our own country?”
Our middle child got to ask the final question before we pulled up to the border-security booth. “Dad,” she asked, “are you nervous?”
I had just enough time to provide — flawlessly, I might add — the standard parent answer: “Honey,” I said confidently, “we don’t need to be nervous, because we haven’t done anything wrong.”
But oddly, I was a little nervous, as I pulled up to the booth and delivered the most sincere “Hello” that I could muster. I suppose I was hoping that my sincerity would work as well as a Star Wars Jedi mind trick: “We are not the terrorists you are looking for.” In retrospect, I realize that it just sounded creepy.
“Where are you from?” the border agent asked.
“Hillsdale,” I replied and quietly hoped that he was one of the 2.6 million Imprimis readers. “What do you do?” he quickly added as he typed away on his computer and flipped through our paperwork.
“I am a college professor,” I said. He raised his eyebrows and gave an ever-so-slight nod of the head, a sign that I interpreted to mean he was impressed.
I was thrilled by this sign of affirmation, and I sat up a little straighter in my seat basking in my newfound credibility. Assuming the interrogation was over, I even allowed myself to guess what the agent was thinking. He might be thinking that he was talking to a future winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry or economics. My brief daydream was punctured when he asked his next question. Anyone not consumed with pride would have anticipated it: “So, what do you teach?”
Desperately grasping onto my perceived credibility, my first thought was to say, “Um, are we done here?” I wisely did not deliver this line, realizing that this would have been the quickest route to the longest border crossing in Coupland family history.
“English grammar,” I said sheepishly. He looked a little puzzled, as if to say, “Wait — I thought you said you were a college professor.” Desperately seeking to regain the credibility that I had lost so suddenly, I blurted out, “Oh, and children’s literature.” My voice trailed a little as I realized that this additional bit of evidence would not restore the Nobel Prize that had been mine only moments before.
“Thank you,” he said without an ounce of sincerity. “You can go,” he added — most likely because he believed that any grown man who readily admits to specializing in — or even reading — children’s literature cannot possibly be a threat to these United States.
If I had had more time at the border crossing (a thought that I admit sounds quite ridiculous), I would have brought up great men who recognized the importance and beauty of well-written children’s stories. Men like Russell Kirk, who read great works of children’s fiction throughout his life and, at the end of that life, requested that his family read to him the fairy tales of George MacDonald, Hans Christian Andersen, and others. Or G. K. Chesterton, who referred to the stories of the Brothers Grimm as both “splendid” and “satisfying.” Or C. S. Lewis, who not only wrote children’s stories, but also read these stories as an adult. In his essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” Lewis says, “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am 50 I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
These men of letters also recognized the power of children’s literature to be much more than great stories. These tales of fantasy and adventure are an inheritance that provides concrete images of goodness and evil — often in vivid blacks and whites — to the still receptive minds of the young. Over time, these images become patterns, and the patterns become habits, and the habits become our way of looking at reality. Children need these sharp distinctions to navigate in a morally confusing world.
Many modern educators see character education as something very different from what I have just described. Early in my tenure at Hillsdale, a group of educators approached our department about a partnership to develop a “character education” program for students and future teachers. The group’s presentation was polished and professional. These educators had compiled the latest techniques supported by the latest research and had developed a cutting-edge program.
For a variety of reasons, we decided not to partner with this group. Most importantly, it was obvious to us that we did not share a common understanding about cultivating “character.” For us the issue of “character education” goes much deeper than the latest “techniques.” Character education is really about cultivating the moral imagination, a process that takes time, patience, and the right kinds of experiences.
In his book Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian describes the moral imagination this way:
The moral imagination is not a thing, not even so much a faculty, as the very process by which the self makes metaphors out of images given by experience and then employs these metaphors to find and suppose moral correspondences in experience. . . . The richness or the poverty of the moral imagination depends on the richness or the poverty of experience.
But can’t we just explain virtuous behavior? Guroian says no.
Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture its virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil’s will is coerced. Instead, a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination. A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions of human nature.
Guroian then makes a compelling case for cultivating the moral imagination through children’s literature.
The great fairy tales and fantasy stories capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, where characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds.
The best way to begin the cultivation of moral character is to immerse children in great stories where virtues are rendered attractive — not in a sticky-sweet or preachy sort of way, but in a way that captures and feeds their imagination.
Because this cultivation takes both time and patience, we rarely get to see this played out in obvious ways. But sometimes we do. My son likes to tease his two younger sisters. Often this teasing is quite harmless, but sometimes it goes too far. After one such incident, I had to deal with my son and his lack of kindness toward his sisters. Trying to be a good parent, I talked with him about the importance of being kind. After presenting my airtight argument on the Christian virtue of charity, I looked into my son’s eyes and recognized that — although he had heard every word — he wasn’t buying it. I sat there for a moment reviewing my closing remarks in my mind, looking for a misplaced modifier or something else that could have weakened the logic of my case. And then, in a rare moment of inspiration, I looked at him and said, “Son, you’re being an Edmund.”
Almost immediately, his shoulders slouched, and he let out a long breath. He had recognized the name of the youngest Pevensie boy from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. My son didn’t like being told that he was acting like the pesky and traitorous Edmund. He would have preferred to be compared to older brother Peter. Sir Peter, the wolf slayer. High King Peter, the Magnificent.
The reference to Edmund hit my son in a very deep place in his heart, which only stories can reach. The foundation for that moment — and many others that are still to come — was laid over countless hours and countless pages, a foundation that is still being laid today.
If you have a well-developed moral imagination, then most likely you had parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and teachers who filled your early life with images and experiences that established the right kinds of patterns in your life. These images turned into habits, and the habits into desires, and these desires now dictate the way that you perceive the world around you.
One day, many of you will become parents. Do not forget to cultivate and guard your children’s moral imagination. Read them great stories of princesses and pirates, of dragons and dwarfs, of monsters and mermaids. Give them the experiences they need to navigate the moral pitfalls of their lives. Or as Lewis says, “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”
— Daniel B. Coupland is an associate professor of education at Hillsdale College.
While facts, figures and numbers can be taught by other means, only stories can make a person want to change his behavior.
And for 5 decades we have allowed the stories told in our society to be produced almost exclusively by those who hate the traditional values of America. That it has taken so long for them to have their effect just shows how powerful those values were, and probably how easily they could have been defended had a sustained effort to do so been mounted.
I was certainly influenced by the “juvenile” novels of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein.
That’s a great essay.
Not to mention the stories “told on TV” and at the movies 24/7 — tales of depravity, violence, etc.
bkmk
‘It takes an idiot to raze a village.’
Barack Husain Obama Hmmm Hmmmm Hmmmm
I wish the author had added a Top Ten list. I hope readers of this thread would add their favorites.
Those were the stories to which I was primarily referring.
Which brings up an interesting point...is children's literature even relevant for the vast majority of kids today? How many children read novels for pleasure these days?
10%? Less?
When children read books, they can understand things and learn complex concepts. Morality and virtue would be good example. But, if children only watch TV, they seem to mostly grasp the concept that "the bad guy dresses in black, has a scary soundtrack, and is mean to the pretty lady". Recognizing such simple hallmarks does not well prepare children for a world in which the bad guys hide their badness.
Liberals who live their lives based on knee-jerk emotional responses seem to be the products of TV.
Conservatives who appreciate the importance and basis for morality seem to be the products of reading.
And as the world reads less, we seem to have an increasing supply of Liberals.
When I went to the American consulate to regularize my passports, I was capable of expecting the American consulate to be American...The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearances like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called "Confessions" which my friends and I invented in our youth...
One of the questions on the paper was, "Are you an anarchist?" To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, "What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist" along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes atheist. Then there was the question, "Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?" Against this I should write, "I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning." The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, "Are you a polygamist?" The answer to this is, "No such luck" or "Not such a fool," according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, "Shall I slay my brother Boer"--the answer that ran, "Never interfere in family matters." But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, "I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you." Or, "I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into your President at the earliest opportunity." Or again, "Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries." There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies."
The layers of social constructs, bad influences, personal prejudice, and just plain stubbornness make it difficult to teach general concepts like honor, duty, loyalty, piety etc. in a bald factual way. Lewis thought of all those frustrating influences as dragons by the wayside.
"Fairy stories" or fantasy or adventure stories of the best kind (I'm thinking "Treasure Island") smuggle those concepts "past the watchful dragons."
Of course Lewis' Narnia books and (for older kids) "The Great Divorce" and "Til We Have Faces" and the Space Trilogy. George MacDonald's wonderful fairy stories. Robert Lewis Stevenson's adventure stories ("Kidnapped" and "David Balfour" are two more - the latter has a great deal to say about maintaining ones honor in the face of evil politics). And I'll put in a plug for the mildly off-center (but always beautiful) worlds of Lafcadio Hearn and Donn Byrne.
Thanks for posting.
Similar to the people who want loyalty oaths and compulsory pledges of allegiance.
No true enemy of the US would scruple to take either, so what is the point of enforcing them? All they can do is entrap those with genuine conscientious objections, the vast majority of whom are no threat to the rest of us.
The relevant stories of today are those on TV and in the movies.
And they are for the most part teaching exactly the wrong things.
Songs and music also tell stories in this sense, BTW.
I forgot Howard Pyle - great books, especially “Otto of the Silver Hand”, his “Robin Hood” and “Pepper and Salt”.
My personal vote goes for Tolkien. No overt preaching like Lewis, but IMO much more effective for that very reason.
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