I am not a eavesdropper, nor do I like
listening to other people’s conversations, but, unfortunately I heard every single word of their argument. The girl was about 11 years or whereabouts
and the mother a harassed thirty something. The girl had selected a pile of
books ( my heart swelled with pride). I just love to see children buying books
(not necessarily mine, but any book) rather than frittering their pocket money
on silly things.
My bubble of happiness was burst by the mother. “You have chosen all
fiction books,” she scowled. The books were rudely removed from her daughter’s hands and
dumped back on the shelf. “I am not wasting money on fiction,” she grumbled. A
small pile of non- fiction books that was
guaranteed to put a child to sleep
was dumped into the girl’s hands.
“Fiction does not teach anything,” she said. Her words shocked me.
Where
fiction is concerned, I confess I do
have a vested interest, as I am a fiction writer. But labelling fiction as something
that just doesn’t teach is completely wrong. Infact, I
feel kids are definitely more likely to learn a lot from fiction because fiction teaches, but in a fun way, unlike non-fiction which is in
your face teaching while fiction is
gentler and kind on a child’s mind.
“All
that non-fiction can do is answer questions. Its fiction’s business to ask
them,” Richard Hughes. I completely agree with it. Fiction questions like
nothing else does, and the questions make one sit up, take notice and ponder for a long time. The questions are asked by characters the children have
fallen in love with and protagonists they have befriended. Somewhere along the reading journey the questions become the child’s own
questions, one he or she is eager to find
the answers to.
Its
extremely important that for parents there has to be a willingness to accept that everything does not
have to be fed into a school curriculum or any curriculum
for that matter. Stories help children
all over the world develop in many
different ways which are often more important than the school
syllabus. Fiction helps children explore the amazing possibilities of
imagination, the finer nuances of human
emotions, the sheer joy of words and
language, fiction transports children to
countries and worlds they have never been to, acquaints them with creatures
they have never seen and many, many other things. And the icing on the cake
is that it entertains the child like nothing
else does.
What do you
all think, was the woman right in nudging, or, rather pushing her daughter
towards non- fiction books? Do you feel that fiction just does not teach
anything? I would love to get everyone’s opinion.