Children deserve better books

Why we should challenge young readers – and trust them to rise to it.

Towards the end of Mrs Doubtfire, Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) makes his pitch for a new children’s show to television producer Mr Lundy. ‘Don’t patronise kids, you know. They’re little people. You’ve got to personalise it. Make it fun and entertaining. If it’s something you’d enjoy, they’d enjoy’.

In my former life as a schoolteacher, I was often frustrated by the core texts on the syllabus, many of which struck me as overly simplistic. It was a form of intellectual coddling, precisely the kind of thing that Mrs Doubtfire was warning us against. I was told that I could not teach Dickens to my Year 7 class (age 11-12) because they would struggle to comprehend the language and the deeper themes. But isn’t helping them to do so precisely what teaching is all about?

I am not suggesting that we make James Joyce’s Ulysses a core feature of primary school curricula, but I am convinced that we are misjudging the capacity for children to engage with advanced texts. I recall one Year 8 class in which I was obliged to teach a play about bullying that was so lacking in subtext, so maddeningly two-dimensional, that I was tempted to present it as an example of how not to write drama. It might have worked well for a group of eight-year-olds, but these young teenagers found it tedious.

Children are neuroplastic little creatures, eager to prove that they are capable of rising above expectations. The fear that they will be bored by demanding texts is really a symptom of weak pedagogical instincts in adults. While reading for pleasure ought to be encouraged, children should also be expected to engage with novels, plays and poems that are only accessible after some intellectual effort.

Let’s take the example of Shakespeare. We wouldn’t task an eleven-year-old with reading Titus Andronicus, because stories involving dismemberment and cannibalism are hardly age-appropriate. But we might opt for a play such as Julius Caesar, whose themes and characterisations are by no means beyond their grasp. How, for instance, might a child react to the opening of Mark Antony’s famous speech?

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar.’

At first, confusion. A young reader may not understand that Antony does not mean exactly what he says, and that his rhetoric disguises an unstated agenda. More superficially, he or she may be bewildered at the rhythmic cadence and the heightened language. ‘Nobody speaks like that’ will be the inevitable objection. But we underestimate children if we believe that they cannot find their way to the meaning in this passage with the proper guidance. And we also underestimate the extent of a child’s delight when he or she has successfully done so. Learning how to read Shakespeare takes time, but once we lock in to the language and style, the rewards are endless.

This is not simply a matter of degraded educational standards. Critics of our current system are not wrong to point to decades of grade inflation, or the relative lack of rigour in GCSE examination papers as compared with the O-levels of my parent’s generation. But perhaps more significant is the growing insistence that children must be insulated from challenges at all costs.

I am aware that in making this argument I open myself up to the accusation of stuffy traditionalism, a kind of ‘weren’t things so much better in the good old days?’ mentality. Perhaps this is so. And yet it can hardly be said that I am imagining the generalised dumbing-down of our times.

Why shouldn’t a book for children seek to tackle deeper themes? Why must we assume that younger people have no interest in the metaphysical and the sublime? Some of my most formative experiences as a child resulted from books and films that both challenged and moved me. While I very much enjoyed wasting time by rewatching the same martial arts movies and sentimental musicals - Enter the Dragon and Annie were my favourites - it was the works of genuine literary merit that had a lasting impact.

As an example, consider the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen starring Danny Kaye in the title role. Ostensibly aimed at very young children, the movie touches on serious emotional and philosophical themes such as alienation, unrequited love and the power of the imagination. Here is Kaye singing ‘Inchworm’:

The profundity of the song lies in its simplicity. The arithmetical refrain is gently melancholic, complementing Kaye’s musings on the inchworm and the need to balance industry with an appreciation of the world’s beauty. Young children might enjoy the sweetness of the melody, but might they not also grasp the resonance between the rote-learning of the classroom and the quiet determination of the inchworm? Might they not also see that, while hard work is noble and necessary, it should not prevent us from taking a moment every now and then to revel in the miracle of existence?

Even in this wholesome and uncomplicated family film, there is an ambition in the writing to exceed the perfunctory. In other words, it is far better than it needs to be. The filmmakers have high expectations of their young audience, and do not belittle them by explaining the connotations. A child who has absorbed and understood the simple yet poignant message of ‘Inchworm’ is now primed to read more advanced poetry. Perhaps there are more recent children’s movies that have achieved a similar feat, but I’m not aware of them.

And so I am convinced that Mrs Doubtfire’s advice is more relevant than ever. If we patronise children in the classroom, we constrict their intellectual development. We should trust pupils to understand that the best experiences of reading are to be discovered when we are tested and pushed in unexpected directions. Texts that are immediately accessible are rarely life-changing, and this principle applies to adults as much as it does to the young. Learning is meant to be hard. We don’t expect to build muscles by lifting pillows instead of dumbbells.

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