Comment by gameswithgo
5 years ago
Perhaps these kinds of magical ideas that we teach our kids makes them more susceptible to believing various religions/cults are real. That would be a downside.
5 years ago
Perhaps these kinds of magical ideas that we teach our kids makes them more susceptible to believing various religions/cults are real. That would be a downside.
unless, to quote the late Terry Pratchett[0], we _need_ to learn the little lies so we can believe the big ones. Justice, Mercy, Duty, that sort of thing. :)
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather
When you stigmatize suspension of disbelief (myths, stories), you setup the child to chronically suspend belief. You get a person who can only value what can be pointed to and measured. A gullible person is bad, but the other extreme is no better.
Do you have a citation for that last claim?
Not the OP, but in the book Impro, Keith Johnstone strongly lamented the suppression of imagination in and by grown-ups. He wrote: "Most children can operate in a creative way until they are eleven or twelve, when suddenly they lose their spontaneity, and produce imitations of 'adult art'." He cites schools suppressing imagination as a factor, saying that, "The research so far shows that imaginative children are disliked by their teachers."
I feel that suspension of disbelief and imagination are closely related, as a lack of suspension of disbelief will close you off to many avenues of imagination.
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