From My Little Pony to QAnon: a journey in legitimising fantasy

We told — and tell — our children they could do and be anything. We gave them My Little Pony and Pokemon. We encouraged them to think that if they liked playing the violin or singing or playing football or prancing around the living room that they could grow up to be musicians, footballers and dancers. We encouraged them to read Rainbow Fairies and let them watch In The Night Garden, and if they preferred a book about space or cars, we rolled our eyes because they 'weren't reading' and looked for stories they would prefer, even though they clearly preferred not-stories. We said they wouldn't develop imagination or empathy because they didn't share our enthusiasm for made-up things over true things to the exclusion of the latter. And then they grew up and found that hardly anyone can be a footballer or musician. They did degrees they didn't really like or couldn't really use, running up large bills that will have to be paid back, and they still ended up working in call centres. Those few that did do what they wanted and made a career putting on make-up on YouTube or dancing in their underwear on TikTok, we sneered at for not having a 'proper' job. We told or implied to them that reading Harry Potter was 'better' than reading the Guinness Book of Records. We relentlessly promoted fantasy over fact. And now we act all surprised when they ignore the mainstream news media, believe conspiracy theories and get sick of staying indoors in a pandemic. What happened to believing you can change the world and be a dancer and see no evil? What indeed.

This is the shortlist for the Carnegie this year:

What do you notice about this list? You're probably primed to look at gender balance, ethnic mix, any representation of disability. You probably didn't notice that they are all fiction (again). This is not because the Carnegie is not open to non-fiction (it is), it's because the literary world is not really open to non-fiction, at least in children's publishing. There are a few prizes for non-fiction books. But when did you ever see media coverage of the ALCS prize for an information book? Or the the Royal Society Young People's Book Award? Prizes are not — or should not be — a method of celebrating writers. They should be a means of celebrating books and their readers, of endorsing and validating the choices of readers. But around half of young people prefer to read non-fiction; their choice is not validated. Until a few years ago, even teachers and school librarians often derided children's choice of a non-fiction title when they were allowed free choice of a book. Many parents still do, and I suspect some teachers still do. 

I have nothing against fiction. I did a degree in it. I sometimes write it and even make money from it. But it's not all there is, and we are unbalancing children's lives in dangerous ways by treating it as the 'better' choice. By over-validating fantasy and under-valuing fact, we do young readers and ultimately ourselves, our whole society, a disservice. We have biased a generation or two against truth. Why put the work into learning about statistics or epidemiology when you can jump on a happy bandwagon and declare covid a hoax, then still go out and have a party? After all, when you wanted to read about the plague, they gave you a story book, and when you wanted to know about the Holocaust they gave you The Boy in Striped Pyjamas. Many adults associate fact and truth with their work, and fantasy with blobbing on the sofa watching Netflix. They prefer the second. We should not be modelling and nurturing a dislike of facts, though. It's fine to prefer fiction yourself in your leisure time, but pushing fantasy like a drug to youngsters has turned out to be a costly error.

Good fiction teaches us a lot. It shows us people confronting and dealing with the vicisitudes of life, developing the psychological tools to weather misfortune and press on with a challenging endeavour. It raises important ethical debates and metaphysical issues. Even not-very-good fiction has its uses in modelling relationships and behaviour that children can learn from. All those saccharine stories about fairies and ponies who are super-best friends and are sorry when they do something wrong are trying to sneak in lessons on being a Good Friend. They are the Water Babies disguised in shiny hooves and gossamer wings. I would not be rid of them.

Fiction can help children to develop empathy and imagination. But so can non-fiction. Do you develop more empathy reading about an imaginary character facing obstacles than a real person who has faced obstacles? If so, why? 

 

Pick a pirate: Is the life of the pirate on the right less interesting because she existed?

Do you become more imaginative reading about a Pokemon or a superhero than a Dunkleosteus, a lamprey or a parasitic wasp? Why? All fiction is rooted in fact. Take the fact away, and the fiction of the future becomes parasitic itself, feeding only on previous fiction. Perhaps that's why so many young writers start with writing fan-fiction, the ultimate parasitic genre. It requires no hard research and not even much experience of real life.

All 'fantasy' monsters are rooted in nature — so why is nature boring?

 

We now have the strange position where a government which benefits from people having a complete disregard for facts and the truth is promoting (for supposed economic reasons) a secondary curriculum denuded of arts and imagination. Of course young people should learn about and practise the arts — not so that they can be promised a career as a dancer, musician, painter or writer, but because it will enrich their entire lives and will be a lasting source of pleasure. We educate people to live, not only to work; work is part of life, not all of it. We need balance, equal promotion of and respect for humanities and scientific and technical subjects. At the moment we seem to teach the youngest children that their interest in fact marks them as unimaginative, unexciting, dull. A passion for fictional flying ponies and monsters is somehow more child-like, more normal, more endearing than an interest in spacecraft or trees. Then they get to secondary school and are told that music GCSE is a waste of time and why don't they like engineering? Well, why do you think? Because when they wanted to read a book of monster trucks, you rolled your eyes and gave them a story instead. Now you've a bunch of disillusioned kids who were told stories were 'better' than encyclopaedias who are being told facts are king and of course they can't earn a living as a musician. They have to spend their time doing the very thing you discouraged them from reading about and enjoying before. Of course they are disillusioned.

More importantly, the process instills early on the notion that facts don't matter as much as being imaginative. Truth becomes not a thing of joy and wonder but associated with hoop-jumping and becoming fit for the workforce. That's not very joyful. Couple that with the well-documented psychology of how people make choices and are attracted to easy and optimistic options, and you have a large number of people ready to believe conspiracy theories (which offer easy explanations and someone to blame) and vote for serial liars who make attractive promises. People are taken in by these ideas because they never been taught critical thinking, the bedrock of which is respect for the truth. They have never been told to respect facts or how to handle them. If you don't know how to handle information, you can't tell when others use it to manipulate you. So, yes, it's a long road from My Little Pony to QAnon. And not everyone who reads My Little Pony books will end up believing we are ruled by elite lizard people and Bill Gates is trying to put a microchip in you. But perhaps if we nurtured an interest in facts — in the truth — alongside a love of creativity, people wouldn't be so willing to accept all the fantasies they're peddled.

Anne Rooney (being deliberately provocative)

Out now: Our Extreme Earth, Lonely Planet, 2020