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4.0
The Children's Story
ByPublisher Description
It was a simple incident in the life of James Clavell—a talk with his young daughter just home from school—that inspired this chilling tale of what could happen in twenty-five quietly devastating minutes. He writes, "The Children's Story came into being that day. It was then that I really realized how vulnerable my child's mind was —any mind, for that matter—under controlled circumstances. Normally I write and rewrite and re-rewrite, but this story came quickly—almost by itself. Barely three words were changed. It pleases me greatly because I kept asking the questions…
Questions like, What's the use of 'I pledge allegiance' without understanding? Like Why is it so easy to divert thoughts? Like What is freedom? and Why is so hard to explain?
The Children's Story keeps asking me all sorts of questions I cannot answer. Perhaps you can—then your child will...."
Questions like, What's the use of 'I pledge allegiance' without understanding? Like Why is it so easy to divert thoughts? Like What is freedom? and Why is so hard to explain?
The Children's Story keeps asking me all sorts of questions I cannot answer. Perhaps you can—then your child will...."
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Children's Story Reviews
4.0
“As a teacher, my first reaction to this book was: A lot of the idiots worried about teachers indoctrinating their kids right now are going to misunderstand this book.
The introduction here was key. Clavell wrote this book after his six year old daughter came home and demanded a dime for correctly reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This was the early 1960s, amid the Cold War. So, what would this Pledge of Allegiance look like if a democracy had been conquered by a totalitarian regime? The Cold War demands a Communist state as the bad guy here, but Nazi Germany and others work just as well.
I remember being that age and wanting proud parents (I didn't have the idea of getting paid for such things) for my ability to count to a high number, correctly spell whatever word they threw at me, or correctly answer the rapid fire math questions (addition and subtraction and later the dreaded times tables). We learn a lot of things by rote, but should pledging allegiance be one of those things?
Clavell explores in a very simple way the dangers of trusting authority figures to teach ideals and values by rote. He implies a better option to push even young children to question what they are taught and why, but this seems lost on more people than I expected. Children don't actually have to learn by rote, and do react to how they are rewarded. For the 20-30 minutes to read this, it's a quite good thinking piece for the time investment.
Soapbox moment: The irony for our current age, of course, is that those railing against teachers "indoctrinating" children are really those people complaining that students are being taught the critical thinking and analysis skills that Clavell was so concerned about in the Pledge of Allegiance incident. We're reaping what Clavell predicted, just in a different form. And really, we just want your kid to stay awake, have a pencil or pen, and if we're super lucky, think for themselves.”
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