It's a sometimes unacceptable and sometimes noble tradition with a long history.
I think you have to judge each case on its own merits, and decide whether it will cause lasting harm to the child's educational or psychological development. So if a particular statement causes the child to stop questioning the nature of reality (especially if it's accompanied by the sort of "this is absolutely true, and it's naughty to even question it" rider that a lot of religions tend to pepper their doctrine with) then that's bad. But if it sparks off discussions about the nature of truth, the place of stories within the world, and so forth, all the while helping the child to feel good about themselves, then I'd say that's probably a good thing. ("Does Santa Claus exist?" "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'exist' - what do you think?")
Then there's the educational "lies to children" that Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen discuss in their books The Collapse of Chaos and Figments of Reality (as well as the three Science of Discworld books). These are strictly untrue statements of the form "electrons, protons and neutrons are like tiny billiard balls" which act as a kind of educational scaffolding to enable the children/students to get from ignorance to understanding where the journey can't be done in a single step. This is essentially unavoidable in a lot of cases: if you start out by telling a 6-year-old kid about electron orbitals and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle then they're going to shut down pretty quickly. Whereas if you say "everything is made up of molecules, which are like clusters of little billiard balls called atoms" and then a bit later say "actually it's a bit more complicated than that: the atoms themselves are sort of made of smaller marbles called protons and neutrons, with even smaller things called electrons whizzing round them" then that works a lot better, and you can subsequently introduce them to quantum mechanics with a lower (but still nonzero) probability of them running away screaming in terror.
But if it sparks off discussions about the nature of truth, the place of stories within the world, and so forth, all the while helping the child to feel good about themselves, then I'd say that's probably a good thing. ("Does Santa Claus exist?" "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'exist' - what do you think?")
That's pretty much how I used to handle those questions with my kids - and continues to be how I handle questions about religion with them, which is probably how I come to be the proud Christian parent of two agnostics and one who doesn't like labels but mostly agrees with Buddhism ;-)
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andrewducker) wrote2010-12-20 01:51 pm
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I think you have to judge each case on its own merits, and decide whether it will cause lasting harm to the child's educational or psychological development. So if a particular statement causes the child to stop questioning the nature of reality (especially if it's accompanied by the sort of "this is absolutely true, and it's naughty to even question it" rider that a lot of religions tend to pepper their doctrine with) then that's bad. But if it sparks off discussions about the nature of truth, the place of stories within the world, and so forth, all the while helping the child to feel good about themselves, then I'd say that's probably a good thing. ("Does Santa Claus exist?" "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'exist' - what do you think?")
Then there's the educational "lies to children" that Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen discuss in their books The Collapse of Chaos and Figments of Reality (as well as the three Science of Discworld books). These are strictly untrue statements of the form "electrons, protons and neutrons are like tiny billiard balls" which act as a kind of educational scaffolding to enable the children/students to get from ignorance to understanding where the journey can't be done in a single step. This is essentially unavoidable in a lot of cases: if you start out by telling a 6-year-old kid about electron orbitals and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle then they're going to shut down pretty quickly. Whereas if you say "everything is made up of molecules, which are like clusters of little billiard balls called atoms" and then a bit later say "actually it's a bit more complicated than that: the atoms themselves are sort of made of smaller marbles called protons and neutrons, with even smaller things called electrons whizzing round them" then that works a lot better, and you can subsequently introduce them to quantum mechanics with a lower (but still nonzero) probability of them running away screaming in terror.
no subject
That's pretty much how I used to handle those questions with my kids - and continues to be how I handle questions about religion with them, which is probably how I come to be the proud Christian parent of two agnostics and one who doesn't like labels but mostly agrees with Buddhism ;-)