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[CCBC-Net] Children's Interpretations
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From: Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman>
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:28:39 -0500
On 24-Jul-09, at 9:27 AM, fran manushkin wrote:
> There's a wonderful, Web site that lists the amazing ways kids
> interpret the things they don't understand. It's fascinating. See
> below. Fran
>
> http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/
It's instructive, I think, that this website consists of reports from adults about what they used to believe as children--not actual reports by children themselves of what they do believe now. I'd read it more as evidence of how adults like to look back nostalgically on childhood than as evidence of what childhood thinking actually might be like. Most of what people report here seems less evidence of a specific and different kind of childlike thinking than the results of ignorance-- knowing less than one might and reaching inaccurate conclusions based on it. I have it admit it distresses me a little to see so many people enjoying this kind of error as being "cute" and childlike. As Daniel Harris provocatively suggests in his book Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism, cuteness is another tool we use to impose limited visions of themselves on children for our own not necessarily honorable ends.
Perry
_____________ Perry Nodelman http://pernodel.wordpress.com/
Book Trailers: The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k
Received on Sat 25 Jul 2009 11:28:39 AM CDT
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:28:39 -0500
On 24-Jul-09, at 9:27 AM, fran manushkin wrote:
> There's a wonderful, Web site that lists the amazing ways kids
> interpret the things they don't understand. It's fascinating. See
> below. Fran
>
> http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/
It's instructive, I think, that this website consists of reports from adults about what they used to believe as children--not actual reports by children themselves of what they do believe now. I'd read it more as evidence of how adults like to look back nostalgically on childhood than as evidence of what childhood thinking actually might be like. Most of what people report here seems less evidence of a specific and different kind of childlike thinking than the results of ignorance-- knowing less than one might and reaching inaccurate conclusions based on it. I have it admit it distresses me a little to see so many people enjoying this kind of error as being "cute" and childlike. As Daniel Harris provocatively suggests in his book Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism, cuteness is another tool we use to impose limited visions of themselves on children for our own not necessarily honorable ends.
Perry
_____________ Perry Nodelman http://pernodel.wordpress.com/
Book Trailers: The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k
Received on Sat 25 Jul 2009 11:28:39 AM CDT
