A Short Note On Dawkins And Anti-Fantasy Reading For Children Sentiments At #TAM8

From Dr Pamela Gay, via a Facebook comment:

“Dawkins expressed concern that if kids read fantasy it would encourage false belief and advocated that we need sci fiction, pitched a book he is writing over and over, and argued kids probably shouldn’t read fantasy. It was surreal. Search on tam8 on twitter to see others comments. It totally caught me off guard.”

From my own experience as an English teacher, the first thing that came to mind were the reading lessons devised by the English Department for over ten years – that revolved around just plain reading.

We would devote, in the lower years of high-school, one entire lesson to reading. Students, in regular consultation with the librarians as head-teachers, sought out books, discussed books, read magazines, listened to ‘books on CD’, wrote reviews and just generally read independently, with partners, with guests or teachers reading aloud. To have a dedicated lesson of just one hour a week may have seemed a waste of school time to some – but more often than not, I’d have people ask whether it could be extended in some fashion. It is this that leads to after-school bookclubs and even cafes being created – and certainly many adults now attend such gatherings.

Is it indulgent or is it important to dedicate yourself to enjoying or working on reading? I could go into the research that I’ve done for various reasons, but it may be best at this point to direct you to the blog-posts that I’ve written over the years about ‘Skeptical Books for Children‘, the works of manga-artist Sara Mayhew, Michael Stackpole, Chris Wisnia and Jim Ottaviani (all interviewed by Skepticality) – and this interview with Parenting Beyond Belief author, Dale McGowan:

We do this in part by exposing kids to the widest possible range of ideas and opinions, including, but not limited to, humanistic, secular texts. If we have nourished a ravenous curiosity to understand the world, they will do the rest…

…It is something of a challenge to find resources that are Guaranteed 100% Hoohah-Free. You do your best, but rather than fret too much about this or that departure from the party line, I recommend raising kids who can encounter the occasional bit of hoohah and know what to do with it. If we keep them hermetically sealed away from nonsense, how will they respond when they meet it on the road—as they inevitably will?

I’m also reminded of something a friend said to me about creating resources for children too – how one ‘behaviourist’ approach is to say ‘don’t do something a dead guy can do’. Rather than take a negative approach, by giving avoidance-tactics (‘a dead guy can avoid making stereotypical characters, a dead guy can prevent themselves from making this mistake’) start proposing ‘can-dos’.

Should the censorship of fantasy be a goal, in order to promote critical thinking? I’d say no. And I’d say that for those who rubbish the genre fantasy, to come up with any kind of justification based upon research that will back that up, beyond ‘Oh, but I HEARD that Harry Potter has set back literacy levels!‘ As Dr Gay herself alluded to on Twitter… isn’t the removal of Harry Potter what the extremist fundamentalist religions do?

Is there any evidence that being fantasy-fiction readers – as opposed to the condition of ‘fantasy-prone’, which is something different – damages the ability to reason? What base-line research for the start of a literature review (no pun intended) could Dawkins use? If this was a study – what kind of survey would he use that would ascertain that it is through the reading of fantasy books first and foremost – that led to consolidating belief in… what, fairies? Would imaginative play and imaginary friends be seen as pathological? Where would you draw the eventual line?

Overall, considering the students’ different life histories, and their cultural and social affiliations; even the very notion of ‘intervention’ or ‘treatment’ via curtailing education is the imposition of particular conditions by the researcher on the subjects of the experiment – will it allow an opportunity for dialogue or allow them to participate in defining their own conditions as ‘a reader’? An experimental methodology that presumes the goals of education in general (and of the experiment in general) that are already known, since the outcome variables are pre-defined without consultation with the participating subjects – is that open to a spirit of inquiry or social justice?

I would say that is a great disservice to call paranormal believers socially marginal, subjectively oriented, cognitively deficient or psychologically dysfunctional, based upon previous research done on such beliefs. I would add the same if they’re being based upon the notion that it ‘begins in childhood and the fantasy-genre is a likely culprit that will start you on such a path’. To censor the the development of literacy skills on those kinds of grounds – is anti-education. I sincerely hope that was not Professor Dawkins’ intention.

…oh, and here’s Naontiotami’s take on it all. Enjoy!

Tagged as: Dr Pamela Gay, Education, fantasy, Links Elsewhere, literacy, news, Parenting, reading, Richard Dawkins, Science, Science fiction, skeptical books for children reading, Skepticism, TAM8