Facts Turned to Fiction

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 14, 1907

Facts Turned to Fiction

THE teaching of mythology and fiction to the young is being recognized by sound thinkers as a class of instruction that is both unnecessary and injurious. It goes on, however, from the public school kindergarten to the college. There is another method of instruction that is but little if any better, and that is the teaching of nature subjects in a setting of fiction. Concerning this, Mrs. P. L. MacClintock, of the University of Chicago, says:—

They (the teachers) endow a little dandelion seed with a papa and a mama, with a cradle, with a vocabulary, with a system of morals (there are even “naughty” dandelion seeds), and with many feelings. They tell about his “home,” his infancy, his training, his departure, his setting in a new home— all the while with the intention of teaching children facts, but all the while covering them up under a trivial and unnecessary myth.

In thus endowing the plants and flowers with personality and human emotions, Mrs. MacClintock holds that the teachers “err grossly.” The impression given the child is wholly misleading. True teaching deals with facts; but when impossible fiction is substituted for fact, and the child learns with increasing years that he was misled in what he then learned, he is apt to clothe all he learns in a garb of fiction, and will come to look at even the principles of divine truth through a nebulous haze of doubt.