Re: Intrusions of Real Life


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Posted by Peter H on August 08, 2003 at 12:52:26 from 213.122.23.236 user Peter_H.

In Reply to: Re: Intrusions of Real Life posted by Katharine Edgar on August 08, 2003 at 10:03:24:

I think Katharine Edgar has got to the heart of it. Whether or not a child will have read Ransome surely depends, not so much on the parents’ ‘class’, but on whether there are books in the house and whether the reading habit is not discouraged. And yes, there were more libraries in the 1940s and 1950s in the UK – some of them were privately owned, like the ‘Boots Libraries’, and there were others. All of them had ‘Children’s Sections’.

We must beware of seeing ‘class’ topics always through adult eyes, ie in a mainly economic sense. When children read Ransome, they are not concerned with the inference that the Swallows and Amazons’ parents had the money to hire boats for them etc. What children are concerned with is whether the characters appearing in the story are soppy or boring, or lively and up-to-something like themselves (they like to think).

Of course children are not all the same, and may have different approaches to AR. I’d like to say a word for those many children (I know because I have asked around!) who gratefully seized on the Ransome books as a magical escape into a better children’s world. We talk about grammar schools being a ‘mechanism for class improvement’ or whatever. Let’s see it through the child’s eyes. I went to a rough type of boys-only ‘infant school’ (as they were then called). ‘Playtime’ (break) was a nightmare – all the boys did was fight and swear. For someone who didn’t want to fight (like myself), every minute was spent in self-preservation. To my intense relief my parents switched me to a grammar. I couldn’t have cared less whether my parents were ‘improving my class’, all I wanted was not to be mocked and/or beaten all the time. This school had boys from all backgrounds who had passed an entrance examination, and therefore had proved that they were willing and capable of learning. We now call this ‘elitist’, which makes me very angry. I call it ‘self-preservationist’.


Anyway, at the first ‘break’ at the new school, I saw a boy sitting on a wall reading a book, in peace! Nirvana! At about the same time I discovered Ransome. His children never fought (albeit it was once a close thing) and never indulged in that wretched horseplay. John never scragged Roger, just for the hell of it. They did things together, in peace, and were allowed to imagine things. The girls were just as much part of it as the boys. Dear God, this was a haven from the storm! It still is.



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