{"id":1073,"date":"2011-11-22T12:34:50","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T12:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=1073"},"modified":"2011-11-22T12:34:50","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T12:34:50","slug":"rachel-carson-a-childs-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/11\/22\/rachel-carson-a-childs-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Carson: a child's world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now and then, I come across fragments of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.projectabc-la.org\/dl\/sense_of_wonder.pdf\">text<\/a> which resonate. \u00a0Maybe it's the thought of my grandchildren that provokes this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A child\u2019s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. \u00a0It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. \u00a0If I had influence with the good fairy, who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a <em>sense of wonder <\/em>so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from sources of our strength.<\/p>\n<p>If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at east one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the <em>joy, <\/em>excitement and mystery of the world we live in. \u00a0Parents often have a sense of inadequacy when confronted on the one hand with the eager, sensitive mind of a child and on the other with a world of complex physical nature, inhabited by a life so various and unfamiliar that it seems hopeless to reduce it to order and knowledge. \u00a0In a mood of self-defeat, they exclaim, \u201cHow can I possibly teach my child about nature \u2014 why, I don\u2019t even know one bird from another!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to <em>know<\/em> as to <em>feel<\/em>. \u00a0If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. \u00a0The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused \u2013 a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love \u2013 then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. \u00a0Once found, it has lasting meaning. \u00a0It is more important to pave the way for a child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts that he is not ready to assimilate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just so \u2013 and thanks to the beautiful writing of Bronwen Hayward for this reminder. \u00a0I'm looking forward to reading more ...<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;font: 10.0px Arial\">Carson, R. (1965). <em>The sense of wonder. <\/em>New York; Harper &amp; Row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now and then, I come across fragments of text which resonate. \u00a0Maybe it's the thought of my grandchildren that provokes this: A child\u2019s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. \u00a0It is our misfortune that...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}