A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down!

While recently watching Mary Poppins, I was struck by the deeper meaning of the movie: “Allow kids to be kids.”  Prior to this “revelation” I viewed Mary Poppins as an odd, yet cheerful movie!, not one of the greatest cultural critiques of the 20^th century.  Yet, after reading Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child  by ISI author Anthony Esolen, I am seeing things in a whole new light.

Reading Esolen’s book really made me reflect upon my childhood.  Were we allowed to be “just kids?”  Were we permitted to run around, scrape our knees, to develop our imaginations?  Both the book and movie get straight to the heart of the issue:  children are growing up too fast and they’re tethered to electronics.

Are children free to be children?  Is it even possible to foster a moral imagination?  First and foremost, we must delve into what a moral imagination would be.  Edmund Burke says, “The moral imagination aspires to the apprehending of right order in the soul…”  That’s simple enough.  But the obvious question is this: have we created a culture in which this can be achieved?  Do we even know what “the right order of our souls” is and are we able to aspire to it in our society?  I side with Poppins and Esolen and believe our culture does not allow children to be children – whether in America or in the Banks household in London.

This is part one of four in the series on children and their imagination – or lack of.