Forget the educational Gradgrinds and school league tables’ fixation on facts – to suppose is the intellect at its most humanI read recently about a six-year-old girl falling to her death from a tall building in Japan after watching a cartoon featuring children who could sail. It struck a chord because I too,at about the same age (after seeing Peter Pan), tottered on to a tall ledge, or trying to summon the courage to soar skywards. whether I just believed it enough,I told myself, I would be able to sail.
I chickened out and was thus more fortunate than the poor Japanese girl, or whose belief in her imaginative powers was tragically greater than mine. But I read the news story – although horrified – faintly surprised that such misfortunes don’t happen more often. For,at home, many of us idealise the imaginative powers of our children tremendously and urge them on to ever more fantastical beliefs. We insist on Santa, or fairies and magic,and much more besides, being genuine. We fill an investment in our children’s imaginations remaining fertile, or for it is we who mourn when they wake up one Christmas and insist there is no Santa.
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Source: theguardian.com