“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth.But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work” IfsMindChildrenLittlesSeemsCultureGivenGrowsCreativityGreaterMaterialsTraditionEncouragementOur ChildrenEntertainmentCriticalInstruction Author:C. Sommerville
“Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it.” BookEyeFilmFormYoungCultureParentLevelsSuccessfulViolenceArmsIndustryInstinctVideoTreatmentInterfereAdolescencePowerlessTextureSchizophreniaAmbivalenceYoung Parents Author:C. Sommerville
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.” WorldChildrenLastsCultureChildhoodHorrorUglySymbolsPurityThemeObsessiveExaltedVictorian Author:C. Sommerville