Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on November 01, 2006 at 20:01:23 from 81.144.214.226 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Taking another tack (was Contemporary Appeal) posted by Prue Eckett on October 29, 2006 at 03:58:21:
My own childhood was not espescially cheerful; I found that reading Ransome was a good way to cheer myself up. But the converse does not hold - I don't find that my children, in their suburban nuclear family, are much interested in the sort of "PC" story that is set in your concrete block with tagging on the door and five siblings to various fathers. There's no romance in that, which is why such books are read in class, but not otherwise.
Indeed, I do wonder about the effectiveness of the great wave of "PC" in state education. I suspect that children are unconvinced by it, and put more trust in the nasty racist and sexist stories that they hear in the street.