“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” -Albert Einstein

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We need to talk about this quote. By all accounts, Einstein was a smart dude (so much so that his name has become synonymous with the word) but I’m not sure I agree with this statement as is, especially since whether he actually ever said it at all is up for debate. For the moment, let’s just look at the words themselves at face value and not worry about who actually said them.

I’m someone who studies fairy and folk tales both for fun (because I am, admittedly, a weirdo) and also because sometimes I adapt them into plays and I always take pause when I see anyone online espousing that children should be exposed to the original versions of fairy tales. These comments get weird looks from me because I find it very hard to believe you could actually believe that unless you’re either a) not actually familiar with the original fairy tales outside of five minutes on Wikipedia b) a sort of oblivious dinosaur merrily unaware of the other humans around you.

I think this because

1. anyone who’s done even a little bit of study into the original fairy tales knows that, even back then, they weren’t really intended for children
2. that the issue with the original fairy tales isn’t the gore, like the pearl clutchers always assume, it’s the racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc

I’ll could do a couple of standalone thoughts on fairy tale gore but, for now, I’ll distill my thoughts on it down to this: I don’t have a problem with it. It’s all so over the top that most of it is too comical to cause much lasting harm.

Fairy tales are an excellent window into the mindset at the time they were written and that mindset is often absolutely appalling to anyone reading them today. Fairy tales don’t sugar coat the awful like “normal” fiction does. There are fairy tales where the hatred and vilification of anyone with dark skin is so deeply ingrained into the very story itself that I can’t imagine the modern reader who wouldn’t just absolutely squirm as they read them. And as much as I enjoy the study of fairy tales, I have trouble reading more than a few at a sitting because of the treatment of women. (If you’re wondering why I still read them then, that’s a topic for another post.) The disabled, poor and gay don’t fair much better. (The original Three Oranges is actually one of the worst offenders of this on a multitude of levels which is a topic for yet another post…)

The point I’m making here is that I’m an educated grown adult with an above average historical context for the original fairy tales and even I walk away from reading them feeling pretty darn crappy  both about myself and humans as a species. A kid going through that same emotional process while reading them without the benefit of my adult vision isn’t going to just walk away feeling awful about themselves or their peers, it could do some serious psychological damage on a variety of subconscious levels.

Stories have a lot of power. They tell you how to feel about yourself. They tell you how to feel about others.

Which is not to say that I’m against kids being exposed to the original fairy tales at all. Far from it! I am all for having kids study the stories in their original context. Dissecting them in an educational setting is exactly what a younger reader needs to help distance themselves from the sociological ick and be able to appreciate the fairy tale itself for what it is and why they are so important to our cultural history.

But they’re sure as shootin’ not something you can just throw at a kid with no context to read and expect them to become intelligent just be reading it and that bothers me every single time I see that quote shared around.