[Avodah] RSRH on Fairy Tales

[Professor L. Levine via Avodah]

The following is from RSRH's essay On the Collaboration Between Home and School that appears in Volume VII of the Collected Writings of RSRH.


The mother should be a Chava ["She who speaks," or "Giver of thoughts"]

to her child; she should find her greatest delight in talking with him.

After all, children thoroughly enjoy talking and listening!

Their ears literally "thirst" after words of entertainment
and instruction (Shema "hearing" is simply a spiritual tzama
"thirsting"). The mother should not attempt to satisfy that thirst by
telling her child fairy tales that are insults to the human intelligence
and which, for the most part, have nothing to teach the young. (At the
risk of being accused of pedagogical heresy, let us add here that we
consider fairy tales the worst possible nourishment for a child's mind
and imagination. We must admit we are not clever enough to understand
what good it does to fill the minds of our children with notions
about the world and the things in it that are so completely at odds with
reality, such as the story of the wolf that eats up an old grandmother

and then, sporting the grandmother's nightcap on his head, awaits the
arrival of her granddaughter so that he may devour her also, or the tale
of the mountain of cake through which one must eat his way, and all
the other storybook themes.) Mothers certainly should have no trouble
finding topics fit for their talks with their children. They truly need
no artificiality for this purpose; the whole real world in which their little
ones live, the nursery, the house, the garden, the city and everything
else the children can see actually existing and happening around them,
everything they themselves or their companions do in their everyday
lives should supply ample material which mothers can utilize to help
develop the potential of their children. In this manner, mothers can
play a decisive role in the education of their offspring.

All the skills with which our children are endowed are capable of
further development and are in need of intelligent, encouraging
guidance. You cannot imagine how many children are turned over to
the school with skills that have remained dormant and undeveloped,
or that have already taken a wrong turn due to parental neglect. The
teacher can quickly notice if the right Chava has been missing from the
child's.life, if the child has been left to dream and vegetate on his on his own,
if he spent the most important years of his development under the
influence of what he learned in the servants' quarters.
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