Fairy tales extend and intensify the child's social relations. They
appeal to the child by presenting aspects of family life. Through them
he realizes his relations to his own parents: their care, their
guardianship, and their love. Through this he realizes different
situations and social relations, and gains clear, simple notions of
right and wrong. His sympathies are active for kindness and fairness,
especially for the defenseless, and he feels deeply the calamity of
the poor or the suffering and hardship of the ill-treated. He is in
sympathy with that poetic justice which desires immediate punishment
of wrong, unfairness, injustice, cruelty, or deceit. Through fairy
tales he gains a many-sided view of life. Through his dramas, with a
power of sympathy which has seemed universal, Shakespeare has given
the adult world many types of character and conduct that are noble.
But fairy tales place in the hands of childhood all that the thousands
and thousands of the universe for ages have found excellent in
character and conduct. They hold up for imitation all those cardinal
virtues of love and self-sacrifice,--which is the ultimate criterion
of character,--of courage, loyalty, kindness, gentleness, fairness,
pity, endurance, bravery, industry, perseverance, and thrift. Thus
fairy tales build up concepts of family life and of ethical standards,
broaden a child's social sense of duty, and teach him to reflect.
Besides developing his feelings and judgments, they also enlarge his
world of experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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