Quote for the day: On what children don't need to be taught

"When I was in the States ten years ago I saw a series of children's books which just recounted very simply a child's visit to the supermarket, the post office and the station and so on and they read like primers for men from outer space, men who didn't know how to put one foot in front of another. And these books reflected it seemed to me very sharply what I encountered of neurosis in the students that I was teaching. " ~~ Ted Hughes, 1976

Quote for the day: Sounds like twaddle to me

"Entirely pleased with themselves, they offered the child books that represented themselves, with all their attributes thrown in, their practical sense, their science, their hypocrisy,and their ankylosis. They offered him books that oozed boredom, that were likely to make him detest wisdom forever; silly books and empty books, pedantic books and heavy books; books that paralyzed the spontaneous forces of his soul; absurd books by tens and by hundreds, falling like hail on the springtime. The sooner they stifled a young heart, the sooner they effaced from a young spirit the sense of freedom and pleasure in play; the sooner they imposed limits, rules, and constraints, the more men were pleased with themselves for having raised childhood without delay to their own state of supreme perfection." ~~ Paul Hazard, Books, Children & Men, translated by Marguerite Mitchell

'I am affronted,' said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit (on toddler book apps)

"At the age of 2, Calvin Wang’s son seems to have learned a truism that is already ricocheting around the Internet: A book is an iPad that doesn’t work.

"Wang designs interactive storybooks for the iPad. He was inspired, he says, by watching his daughter interact with a movable cardboard book. Since then, Loud Crow, his Vancouver-based firm, has turned an array of children’s picture books that take the pop-up concept into the digital age. Books such as Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit now respond to touch by moving, twirling, speaking and noise-making.

"Having experienced the app, he says, his son is puzzled by the fact that creatures in the original cardboard books don’t move. “When he opens the book, the first thing he does is start tapping the creature in the book.”"--"For some kids, a book is just an iPad that doesn’t work," by Ivor Tossell, Globe and Mail

I just hope that this generation can eventually forgive us for what we're doing to them.