—From the editorial “Doped Fiction” in the December 4, 1915, issue of The Saturday Evening Post
They [children’s books] describe how a 14-year-old boy, with a leaky washtub and two dollars in cash, built a submarine that destroyed the enemy’s fleet, or circumvented a gang of desperate criminals and became president of a railroad at 16.
These tales of preposterous juvenile achievement are depraved because they are monstrous lies. They do not stimulate a boy’s imagination; they drug it. They do not set his imagination usefully at work, but send it off in a weird opium dream. They do not brace and enlarge a boy’s mind. They are a sort of psychological whisky that makes the victim unresponsive to wholesome, natural tonics and begets a flabby craving for the artificial kick.
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Comments
What a great editorial this is. Not just what is said, but the wonderful WAY it’s said here. Still and all, that aside, the core message here is for parents to be aware (to the best extent possible) what their son or daughter is reading or today, watching online. Ideally, it should be mind expansion in the best sense of the word. Sometimes though, speaking for myself, a weird opium dream every so often may be just what the doctor ordered.