With the immodest subtitle: Everything small bears and kids need to know about the wonderful world of Nature, this is a classic example of the still largely ignored truth that there is no neutral moral ground in education (and literature). Years ago, my friend Christian Overman tipped us off to the in-your-face religious claims of this colorful, supposedly harmless book. An example: "Nature is every person, thing, and place here on Earth and out in space. Nature's the sun, the moon, the stars. It's far away planets like Venus and Mars. It's the mountains, the valleys, the shore, the sea. Nature is you! Nature is me! It's all that IS or WAS or EVER WILL BE! (Capitalization is the author's, not mine!) That, my friends, is a big time religious claim, and one that every Christian parent should jump all over. Be careful with all of the Berenstain's books; some are more obnoxious than others, but many contain attitudes and values that do not build up.
1 comment:
One of the more obnoxious themes in the Berenstain Bears books is the attack upon the father as God's chosen leader of the family. The father in these books is shown as a buffoon whose foolishness is only kept in check by the mother. Attack upon the father and husband as head of the home is ultimately an attack upon the authority of God himself. As the Professor stated in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, "The male you can escape, for that is merely biological. But the masculine you can never escape; because that which is is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it."
Post a Comment