rant about reading

Reading has always been a part of my life, a facet in my personality. When people think of me it is hard for them to think of my with out thinking of books and of reading. There have been books that have made a huge impact on my life. Ishmael, The Fountainhead, The Naked Lunch, The Naked and the Dead, The Bell Jar,and the vast amounts of pulp novels I have read. But no other book has been more influential than the first actual book I ever read, A Little Princess. I never realized how much my personality in childhood was derived from the book. I am interested in looking at the book a little deeper. Psychologically the little girl in the book is separated from her society though out the book for different reasons, but yet her personality stays the same though out. The book also pushed the agenda of empathy for others. This started me wondering about other things in childhood that influence us. There has been much written the idea of child psychology, Peck, Spock, and Erickson all gave us ideas of what the psychological make up of a child is. But I have yet to find a study that looks at how ingrained culture identities make up how a child perceives the world. One of these ingrained culture identities are fairy tales and other childhood stories. Fables like Aesop Fables teach morals and values, but what about something more everyday. Stories that adults tell children to make them sleep at night, oral stories that have been passed down. What can anthropologists learn from children stories? Children’s stories are the very epicenter of a society’s culture. The moral and values we teach our children when they are under the age of five are the ones we expect them to carry for a lifetime. Take a look at the simple rule of teaching a child not to hit or bite someone. Having a children’s’ story that teaching an emotion something as complex as empathy is invaluable to society.
When looking at societies that don’t have books for children, oral stories are a large part of the child’s emotional and cultural heritage. Are we at risk for losing this piece of our heritage by regurgitating an already prepackaged one?