Think about it

The first time I read this passage in John Stephens' "Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction" I was doumbfounded by the implications of what it meant. It made me think deeply about what children read (or listen to) and how that might have an impact on them. How about you?

“Writing for children is usually purposeful, its intention being to foster in the child reader a positive appreciation of some socio-cultural values which, it is assumed, are shared by author and audience. These values include contemporary morality and ethics, a sense of what is valuable in the culture’s past (what a particular contemporary social formation regards as the culture’s centrally important traditions), and aspirations about the present and the future. Since a culture’s future is, to put it crudely, invested in its children, children’s writers often take upon themselves the task of trying to mould audience attitudes into “desirable” forms, which can mean either an attempt to perpetuate certain values or to resist socially dominant values which particular writers oppose.” (Stephens, 1992)