Warm fuzzies have had a bit of a hammering lately. First we had the case of the teacher resigning after criticism of her penchant for strewing the classroom with fairy dust and wishing stones. Then we had a stern call for a ban on children's cuddly toys. Unimpeachably rational reasons were given both for the criticism and the proposed ban. The flight from reason mirrored in the growth of belief in magic, tarot reading, crystal rubbing and the like can be hard to take.
Similarly, the studies on bedraggled, if well-loved, teddy bears undoubtedly show high levels of bacteria from which unwell children have to be guarded. But, both physically and mentally, the desire to protect our children seems to be tending to turning them into clones of Paul Simon's Boy in the Bubble.
Without being in Linda Stubbing's schoolroom, it is hard to judge whether her use of fantasy was a useful and colourful incentive to learning but it seems unlikely that it was a full-blooded assault by the forces of superstition on reasoned thought processes.
Stimulating children to use their imaginations is a bedrock principle of education in all cultures. It is particularly important where the child's real environment is restricted.
There has been a school of thought that children relate best to stories within the limits of their experience; that inner-city children want to read about inner-city children and are turned off by, say, tales of rural life.
This view seemed to rest on a political assumption that it was somehow demeaning to ordinary children to read about the exceptional or the privileged. But it is a perniciously narrow vision. Escapism is a prime motive for most readers.
Children may need the familiar to entice them into the world of the imagination but once there the boundaries should be spun as far as possible. The worldwide success of the Harry Potter series, based on an apparently ordinary child transported to a private school environment of which few children have any knowledge, shows a dressing of magic can go a long way.
Paradoxically, many teachers believe that the biggest enemy of early childhood education is not old folk tales but modern technology. Television and video games present the child with a predigested package of immensely powerful images.
They don't have to think, and teachers find it difficult to get children to listen without providing immediate visual stimulus. They cannot imagine what the heroes look like. They have to see someone else's artwork. A bit more fantasy and imagination, not less, is what these teachers recommend.
Exposing children to a slightly less sterile world also appears to yield health benefits. Some British studies have related the increase in asthma to too much hygiene and a consequent failure to build up the body's defences. In the case of the contaminated soft toys, Dr Hugh Lees, a Tauranga Hospital paediatrician, made a similar point: that a totally sterile place was no place for children to build up immunity.
In one of those touches of serendipity which can make newspaper reading such a pleasure, on the day after the toxic Teddy story we reported a letter written by a Hokianga teacher in 1902. This worrier wrote of the health risks posed by the use of modelling clay which would become "charged with bacteria."
Medical literature is probably not replete with examples of plasticine infection nor, we suspect, is Teddy plague likely to become a major scourge. And in the same week we are told that more children are developing rickets (in ozone-depleted New Zealand, would you believe?) because they lack vitamin D derived from sunlight.
This follows from their not going outdoors enough to walk to the shops or to play in the park. It is a sad reflection that children are considered so under threat from criminals or traffic that their health is endangered. We cannot wallow in nostalgia for the days of the golden weather when children were allowed out from dawn to dusk.
But perhaps we do need to take the chance of allowing them to be children, sprinkled with a bit of fairy dust, risking a bit of dirt and stretching their own imagination.
<i>Editorial:</i> Let's let children just be children
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