By LIBBY PURVES, TIMES ONLINE
Added: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 UTC

Reposted from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article5019221.ece

When we are young we use our fantasy world of magic and myth to grapple with fears about life, death and danger

I had made a resolution not to type the words “Richard Dawkins” ever again. Last time I tried remonstrating, quite mildly, with that honest atheist, he went ape and accused me of acquiring my views “over canapés” in “Islington and Hampstead Garden Suburb”. As a peace-loving woman I told my computer to issue a siren alert if ever I got as far as “Dawk-”. It has failed. Here we go again: but this time in pure approbation.

We owe Professor Dawkins a debt of gratitude for the latest cultural can of worms he has prised open. Under the misleading headline in another newspaper of “Dawkins warns over ‘pernicious' fairy tales”, we learn that he is writing a book for children explaining how scientific thinking contrasts with myths, and that he plans to look at the effect of books and stories about spells and wizards. Look at the matter, please note: not condemn Harry Potter and Santa unheard. “I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales,” he says thoughtfully. “It is anti-scientific - whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know... many of the stories I read in childhood allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes. Whether that has a sort of insidious effect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research.”

Excellent. He wants children to “look at evidence”, but is willing to do the same himself, and accepts that reading about frog princes didn't ruin his career as a biologist by making him spend fruitless decades in the lab, pointing wands at frogs.

When he does start on the literature of fairytales, scanning Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, Otto Rank's study of hero myths, Buhler's analysis of the psychological connection between developing imagination and fairytales, Jockel on symbolism and the rest, he will look at their theories and case studies with scientific interest. Biologists and psychologists don't always get on all that well, but there is an intelligent literature on the subject, worth reading.

On the whole, serious students of child development conclude that far-fetched magical stories play an important part in the developing mental life of young children; and that normal children easily distinguish stories from reality. When, aged three, you talk to your teddybear, you do not really expect an answer. But it's still fun. When you tremble with fear at the wolf's approach, safe on your mother's lap, you are preparing yourself to face real fears and trials with calm. Healthy children enjoy sentences beginning “Let's pretend...”. Some of their pretences are bloodcurdling, but a normal child knows what's real. “Bang, you're dead,” said one of mine, adding “Not really dead, just bang dead.”

The questing scientist will learn still more by meeting actual children, parents, and children's authors such as Philip Pullman who - while famously tough on bossy clerics - values myth and fairytale highly and never hesitates to introduce an armoured polar-bear into his narrative. There are certainly a lot of cultural influences and interdicts tangled up in traditional myths and fairytales, and some are dated, sexist, cruelly moralistic or vengeful. But parents and societies can choose whichever magical tales suit their values. It is not the magic itself which does damage. And children - intensely attuned to the human need for comfort and fantasy - tend these things themselves. One boy of nine confided to his mother before Christmas that he had actually sussed Santa, “But I don't think Dad's quite ready to know that I know, so don't tell him.”

The reason I am delighted at Professor Dawkins' investigation, therefore, is that I am pretty sure his intelligence will bring him to the same conclusion as the psychologists: that a bit of magic and fantasy in childhood is useful and helps you to grapple with your fears about life, death, peril and chance. It may even (to be flippant for a moment) serve to keep future laymen's minds open to the more provable marvels of science. If you've played at invisible fairy-dust, you may have acquired the kind of counter-intuitive mental flexibility required to accept what goes on in the Large Hadron Collider.

The uses of enchantment and myth need to be reiterated and examined because there is a worrying modern tide of thought that says that children must be allowed only dull bald truth. One online essayist, typical of many, writes: “If I have children I shall spare them such nonsense. It's not just the happily ever after element that's damaging... we are civilised societies in a quest for advancements in science and technology. We need to eradicate superstitions. Children should learn that only through hard work, perseverance and patience do their dreams come true - not magic.”

I wouldn't hire her as a babysitter. Not if she can't understand that luck and chance exist as much as just deserts, and that the courage of the seventh son or the gentle powerlessness of Cinderella might inspire a child to effort and kindness rather more effectively than her dreary sermonising.

Others excoriate poor old Santa - ultimate symbol of a jokily benign universe - and worry that Harry Potter makes children believe in spells and hexes. Very patronising, that: especially when the same adults flock to films about James Bond, who never existed and whose faux-tech gadgets wouldn't work any better than a wand and broomstick. They probably also enjoy a rush of irrational pleasure when watching a really good close-up conjurer “doing” impossible things - pushing bottles through tables and cigarettes through coins. We know it's not real and yet we see it: thus we are temporarily released from the iron corset of reason, even as we laugh at ourselves for being fooled. Feels good.

Magic is useful. Myths are helpful, pointing at truths which are all the deeper for not being literal. Neither is a threat to scientific understanding. Let children cast off their clouds of glory at their own pace. In Christina Hardyment's history of childcare writing, Dream Babies, I found this marvellous line from a 1903 book on the nursery craze: “There are unhappy children who are studied all day long, who must perforce and in gangs shape something out of grey India rubber, and sit at a table to do it. What do they know, poor things, of the joys and terrors to be found in a dwarf-infested shrubbery, just at sunset, on a chill October day...?”

TAGGED: -, CHILDREN, IRRATIONALITY