Blind Faith and Fairy Tales
Taken from Terry Pratchett's "Wee Free Men":
"A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs. Snapperly. Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that one and thought "Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what make children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beams have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wold and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family."
Fairy tales encourage blind faith. "This is so, simply because we say so". Children should be encouraged to THINK, rather than to merely accept.
"A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs. Snapperly. Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that one and thought "Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what make children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beams have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wold and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family."
Fairy tales encourage blind faith. "This is so, simply because we say so". Children should be encouraged to THINK, rather than to merely accept.