David Wickes
17
July 21:07
Potter and Eduction
Having seen a twelve year old interviewing J.K. Rowling, witnessed the kerfuffle occuring on The Rundown whenever I turn up to gaze at my own reflection, and been approached by an Asda store greeter (emloyment never came at a higher price) I am now fully aware that the new Harry Potter book is in stores NOW!The Asda chap was the funniest. They're selling them for around £7.89 each at the front of the store, a huge stack of 'normal' covers mixed in with the 'adult' covers for people who for some reason attatch shame to reading a work of children's fiction (I look forward to being able to buy the 'adult' cover version of The Hungry Caterpillar). The greeter greeted (and grated with) me by using the salutation of 'Do you need a new Harry Potter?' while waving one around. Well, I guess my old one is getting a little tatty...
Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince is obviously and was inevitably a sales phenomenon, and has had a very good 'opening weekend'. In that respect it isn't so much a book as an 'event' on the same scale as a Hollywood blockbuster. For those reasons it no longer matters if J.K.R. has written a decent book: it was going to sell millions no matter what happened. This is why a lot of films today are a bit crap, and also why I went to see The Avengers in 1998, one of my all time great regrets. Avoid.
I'm not saying J.K.R. has written a bad book; I haven't read this on yet (the last one was over-long) and I'll probably get round to it in around two months when this firestorm of publicity we are all suffering has finally finished and I can pick it up for three quid in a second-hand book shop (sorry Ms. Rowling!)
The exciting news for good/bad Catholics like me is that il Papa has surreptitiously nodded against the earthly powers of the Potter. A couple of letters written when he was still a cardinal indicate that he feels that Potter has "subtle seductions" (subtle? has he seen the marketing of the books?) which "deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly."
Maybe the Pope's on to something here, at least to the point where he is raising a problematic: what is it that we are teaching our children in what they read? Potter is a good guy, nice chap. I'll buy him a pint when he turns eighteen. But is isn't good in an unproblematic way. Quite often he's an asshole — he has terrible anger management and fear of abandonment. But these are modern words, modern conditions, very novel to the form of the 'fairy tale'. Potter is a good guy, but he's not perfect, nor does he try to embody perfections of any kind.
Now this may not be a bad thing: it's more realistic, it's more exciting – we all like a bit of a rogue. But the "subtle seductions" Ratzinger mentions are the drift in the children's story from an ideal hero to a realistic hero – and what that does to children. We (or at least I) was brought up on a series of different sorts of stories - some fairy tales, Tolkein, Lewis, Sendak, Dahl, Hughes, etc. - most of which had some sort of moral message implicit. Some heroes were so squeeky clean and good that it jarred a little, but it was never revealed that they had skeletons (literal or metaphorical) in their cupboard later in the book. Sometimes people really were just good.
As marvellous as moral ambiguity is – as 'real' as it is – is it really what we should be exposing a child to? If the point of reproduction is to produce more things the same as us, then why don't we experiment with trying to maintain as similar developmental environment as we all had? That would be silly, obviously, but I'm trying to underline a point: children's fiction is not just a problematic for literature, but a problematic for child rearing and society as a whole. We are reminded of Book II/III of the Republic, where Socrates has argued that the some poets of comedies and tragedies will be left out of the ideal state, and even Homer himself will have to be edited, as stories where the Gods do wrong do not educate the children to be free – and cause them to have a low opinion of the supernatural. Thus:
And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our souls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers.
Republic III, 398a
No matter how realistic an authors work (as realistic as Gods fighting were to the Greeks) the 'real' was not what interested Plato. The 'real', this world of images, is not important in eduction. What is imoprtant is the ideal – the world of the forms. Thus art is being reserved in the republic for the sole purpose of education, with all 'unimproving' art expurged.
So maybe J.K.R.'s new book is fantastic, and maybe the cardinal only had his vestments in a twist because Potter is nothing more than the Satanic end of Christianity but with the Satan and the Christianity removed, thus leaving a morally neutral metaphysics of magic (obviously worrying for the new Pope – the subtle seduction revealed). But whatever we do we shouldn't regard children's fiction as unproblematic, either because it's for children or because we are resigned to telling ourselves the same old bedtime story about the inevitable decline and fall of our society. Children don't need to be protected or exposed at certain amounts in certain ways; there is no perfectly right way to raise children. We should not settle for easy answers and programs from either libertarians or conservatives. We should simply remain permanently installed in the problem, and constantly worried about the best way to raise children.
(but not too neurotic, eh Mum?)
D
NB. I've linked to J.K. Rowling's website above. It's really rather well done – brava!
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