So Richard Dawkins would rather do without them:
Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Dawkins, a prominent atheist, said that it was ‘pernicious’ to teach children about facts that were ‘statistically improbable’ such as a frog turning into a prince. … Speaking about his early childhood he said: “Is it a good thing to go along with the fantasies of childhood, magical as they are? Or should we be fostering a spirit of skepticism?” “I think it’s rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism – we get enough of that anyway,” the 73-year-old said. “Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princesses turning into frogs or whatever it was. There’s a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog – it’s statistically too improbable.”
Nothing but Zola for the kiddies, then? Gracy Olmstead ripostes:
[T]his is the argument for fairy tales that I don’t think you’ll like – because the more you appreciate the pattern and beauty, the magic and charm of the empirical world, the less likely you are to chalk such things up to statistical probabilities. When you see the wonder of nature and people, the potency of words, the luminosity of our world, it’s very hard to return to a merely statistical, empirical vision. Things do become enchanted and mysterious. We begin to consider visions and miracles. These things are very dangerous, so I can understand why you’re alarmed by them.
Perhaps you’re right – perhaps it’s better for us to just abandon the tales and fantasies. After all, the more we dabble in “creating worlds,” the more likely we are to consider whether our own world had a Creator. The more we construct and tell stories, the more likely we are to ponder the possibility of our own Storyteller.
Update from a reader:
On one hand, I’m amenable to what Dawkins is saying. But the death of the fairy tale is the death of science. The actual practice of being a scientist who advances knowledge demands a kind of imagination, creativity, and questing that can’t be contained in a regression equation. The tools we use to prove hypotheses are profound in their own right, but inculcating a sense of magical possibility and hidden reality in children is the first necessary condition in preparing them to make the next generation of rigorously tested leaps forward.
The Dish 