Reference no: EM133556497
Essay #1
A girl breaks into a house and steals whatever she wants. Another girl is kidnapped by a cruel king and forced to work as his slave; her only means of escape is to make a deal with a devilish imp. Two children are fattened up by a cannibalistic witch who is later burned to death by the heat of her own oven.
These terrifying stories, known to you as "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Rumpelstiltskin," and "Hansel and Gretel," have been inflicted on small children for generations. Some enlightened parents, however, have now realized there's little value in classic fairy tales and are wisely opting
for better bedtime stories.
A 2012 study reported in The Telegraph, a noted British newspaper, supports this idea. Nearly 20 percent of 2,000 parents surveyed said they have scrapped classics such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Rapunzel" in favor of more modern stories. One third of parents in the report said their children have been left in tears after hearing the gruesome details of "Little Red Riding Hood." And nearly half of the parents said they refuse to read "Rumplestiltskin" to their kids because of the story's focus on kidnapping and execution.
"Bedtime stories are supposed to soothe children and send them off to sleep soundly," Steve Hornsey, general manager of Britain's Watch-TV channel, told The Telegraph, "but...fairy tales can be dark and dramatic, so it's understandable that parents worry about reading them to young children."
"As adults, we can see the innocence in fairy tales, but a five year old with an over active imagination could take things too literally," he added.
The change in the marketplace has been noted by booksellers. "There has been a move toward seeing fairy tales as an adult or, at any rate, a young adult dark sort of genre," children's author Diane Purkiss told BBC News in 2012. "In the past, fairy tales were told by adults to adults, as in William Shakespeare's time. It's only in the Victorian era that they've become moral children's tales and it looks
like we're going back to the inception of fairy stories now with a more adult take on them."
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins agrees that parents are making the right move by limiting their children's exposure to classic fairy tales. "I think it's rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism - we get enough of that anyway," he told the audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2014, adding that he saw through the Santa Claus sham when he was just 21 months old. "Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princes turning into frogs or whatever it was. There's a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog - it's
statistically too improbable."
Instead, Dawkins suggests that children should be taught scientific rigor rather than magical thinking. Other critics have added that fairy tales promote outdated gender stereotypes along with an irrational belief that
life will always be lived "happily ever after."
Even a pop icon recently weighed in on the issue. "When I was a little girl, I used to read fairy tales," said entertainer Taylor Swift, as reported by E! News Online. "In fairy tales, you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales, the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is, but then you grow up and you realize that Prince
Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not so easy to spot."
From unrealistic romantic expectations to a frightening reliance on fantasy over fact, the variety of ills created by fairy tales are cause for concern. Clearly, the time has arrived for parents to close the book on the likes of Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the Gingerbread Man.
How could author of this essay have improved its effectiveness?