Jehovaphobia sounds cool.
Regards,
Shodan
Proverbs 31:6
Did you get your first real six string?
I am always amazed at the number of Dopers who appear to be ignorant of Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment with its explanation of the development of children’s minds and the need for fairy tales and stories of figures such as Santa.
The number of fundies maintaining that fairy tales are “lies” is more than a bit frightening.
Our kids picked up Santa Claus from their peers. I never tried to insist that he was “real” and they had fun “discovering” that he was imaginary and feeling that they had joined the grown-ups in a certain level of knowledge and experience. It was part of growing up.
Without knowing all the details, I do not know whether the teacher in the OP was justly or unjustly punished, but I would certainly have been upset if my kids came home crying because “the teacher said” that Santa was not real. Had the teacher declared that Santa was a lie, particularly to first graders where the teacher could not know the current understanding of all the students, I would have gone along with firing.
My daughter told me when she found out Santa and the Easter bunny weren’t real that she couldn’t trust us to tell her the truth.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
That’s so interesting. How old was she when she found out? How did you regain her trust? Also, since the whole Santa myth is reenforced all over the place, did it affect her willingness to trust society or adults in general?
My adult daughter was over last night. I asked her if she felt lied to when she discovered the truth about Santa. She said no, when she was little, Santa was part of the magic of childhood, and growing up involved learning the realities of all kinds of thing, including fairy tales aren’t real, and all fiction is lies, as they say.
She went on to get an MFA in creative writing, so I guess she wasn’t too disillusioned. I’ll have to ask my son, who’s more practical.
Teachers aren’t supposed to be super-parents, who step in at all times to correct the record.
If Timmy’s mom wants to tell him that his father didn’t run out on him and her a no-good bum, but instead tell him that his father is a member of the A-Team on a special mission to clear his name while righting wrongs in a tricked-out cargo van, then teachers should just shut the fuck up if the topic of Timmy’s dad happens to come up.
Similarly, I can see no educational value in deciding to “set right” whatever holiday traditions a family may have. The only value to be derived from such arrogance is to move one notch further up on the ladder of assholes.
I taught for 12 years before moving on to my tech career, and most of my teaching was with primary children. Nary a one ever asked me about Santa Claus, and I never broached the subject. I’m thinking that, in this day and age of information, there weren’t any left that still believed in that charming myth.
Any parent who still has their kid believing in Santa Claus at 8 years of age should expect that, inevitably, someone is going to tell them otherwise.
Santa Claus scared the hell out of me when I was 5. It was Christmas eve, dark and snowing outside. I was looking out the window, entranced by the gently falling snow, thinking of good ol’ Santa Claus and his reindeer landing on our rooftop later that night. Just then, Santa’s big head popped up into view on the other side of the glass. He had a hideous grimace on his ugly, pimply face and he yelled, Merry Christmas, jerk! I screamed and ran like a bat out of hell to my room. According to my parents, it was some hoodlum teenager with a red hat and Santa beard going around scaring kids (one of my big brother or sister’s friends, no doubt).
Other than that, my experiences with childhood fantasy beings was positive and I’m glad I believed in them when I did. I felt smart when I figured out they weren’t real and never felt deceived by my parents.
There were, of course older kids telling us younger kids that Santa wasn’t real, but being bratty kids, we could brush them off as being liars. I’d be pissed if an adult burst the fantasy before I figured it out on my own.
I was ~6 when I started having doubts and ~7 when I stopped believing in all the fantasy beings—all but one. For some reason, I believed leprechauns were real embarrassingly longer than I should have. I’m not going to tell you how old I was when it hit me, but, I was driving to the gas station for a pack of smokes…
I kept the Santa myth alive for my daughters when they were young. I’d be angry if their Kindergarten teacher burst their fantasy; college professor, not so much.