Astrology might be amusing and entertaining, but it has nothing to do with rational thought. Astronomy is a science where you get ideas and hypotheses, you test them, you try to shoot them down and, at the end of that rational process, you have reliable knowledge. Learning to make that distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge is really important in education.

They [eventyrene] nurture moral behaviour and show young people the strengths and weaknesses inherent in human nature, by contrasting good and evil, rich and poor and vanity and valour, she says.

In a new book, The Genius of Natural Childhood, she argues that while fairy tales may tackle difficult issues such as the death of a parent in Cinderella, they prepare them for life in the real world.

They also enlist "children’s innate wish for good to triumph."

"Fairy tales help to teach children an understanding of right and wrong, not through direct teaching, but through implication.

"They help to develop imagination and creativity and they help children to understand their own emotional dilemmas in an imaginative way rather than through direct instruction.

"When you don’t give children these stereotypes of good and bad, you don’t give them a moral code on which to start to develop their own lives."

"These stories are not cruel and discriminatory; rather they help children to understand, firstly, the quirks and weaknesses of human behaviour in general, and secondly, to accept many of their own fears and emotions."

• De befordrer utviklingen av barns kreativitet og forestillingsevne.

• De gir barna en tydelig moral å støtte seg til - kanskje overtydelig og fortegnet, men det er ikke så farlig, virkelighetens mange nyanser kan komme inn på et senere tidspunkt. Barna lærer det grunnleggende skillet mellom godt og ondt.

• De hjelper dem til innsikt i menneskesinnets irrganger og almene menneskelige svakheter.

• De hjelper barna til å akseptere sine egne emosjoner.

I don't read my children fairy tales because they are bollocks. Worse, they set children up to see things in the real world as frightening when they are not and to judge others by superficial appearances. They are not even native to this country: they were imported in the Victorian era. Britain was a great nation before fairy tales, and has decline in direct proportion with how much nonsense has been put into children's heads since. Following on from the Fairy Tales is Walt Disney, who would have children believe that animals have the same emotions, social structure and conscience as humans and that if you only believe in your dream it will come true! Not so: this just encourages people to persue unrealistic dreams instead of achieving things in the real world grounded in reality. We have created a culture of escapism which carries on into the adult world with X Factor, Celebrity gossip and plastic surgery which just makes everyone unhappier with themselves.

Fairies do not exist. Magic does not exist. Step-mothers are usually very kind. Beautiful people are often very ugly inside. Woods are not frightening places where you will almost certainly be killed. Why should boys rescue girls? People don't just live 'happily ever after' - relationships need on-going maintenance and change with time. The list of reasons not to read fairy tales is endless. The opportunity to instill morals in children is endless: usually over dinner whilst dissecting what has happened during the day, or in their school assembly or by common example is a good place to start.

I feel bad enough lying about Father Christmas: how can we expect children to respect us if we make them believe in a magical world full of nonsense and then suddenly, when they start getting body-hair and turning self-conscious, we announce ha-ha-ha: it was all a lie!

• Barnets århundre

• Apokalypse nå

• De gode handlinger redder ikke lenger verden

• Offerets århundre?

• Håpløse helter

• Fortelling og identitet

• 'Viser' litteraturen en identitet, eller ’skaper’ litteraturen en identitet?

• Hvem er barn, og hvem eier barnelitteraturen?

• Barnelitteratur for voksne

• All-alder-litteraturen

• Fra didaktisk litteratur til terapeutisk litteratur for barn

• Noen eksempler

• Hva vet vi om brukerne?

• Barn i lek og handling

• Både "det barnlige og det poetiske"

• Å skrive sin egen slutt

• "Barns behov for trøst"

However many times one swears not to leave matters to the last possible moment, one’s resolution is never kept; the lecture that one has agreed to give next Tuesday remains unwritten until Monday evening. There is nothing like a little panic to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Deadlines are not called deadlines for nothing. The term hints at the suspicion that without the prospect of death we should never get anything done. Everything could wait for another few centuries; nothing would be urgent.

Uansett hvor mange ganger man lover seg selv ikke å utsette ting til siste øyeblikk, holder man aldri sitt eget løfte; foredraget som man har gått med på å holde neste tirsdag forblir uskrevet inntil mandag kveld. Det er lite som bidrar mer til å skjerpe sinnet på en vidunderlig måte enn en smule panikk. Deadlines heter ikke deadlines for ingenting. Ordet peker hen mot mistanken om at uten med døden som utsikt skulle vi aldri fått gjort noen verdens ting. Alt kunne vente i enda noen århundrer; ingenting ville haste.

If to philosophize is learning to die, learning how to die, it cannot be done except than by practicing dying. Thus our proposal is that to philosophize is actually dying, in order to acquire a real experience of death.

Hvis det å filosofere er å lære seg å dø, å lære hvordan å dø, kan dette ikke gjøres uten å praktisere det å dø. Således er det vårt forslag at det å filosofere faktisk vil si å dø, slik at man oppnår en reell erfaring av døden.

Whenever I am in Amsterdam, I stay in a small, elegant and well-run hotel. The excellent and obliging staff are all Dutch.

Whenever I am in London, I stay at a small, elegant and well-run hotel. The excellent and obliging staff are all foreign—which is just as well, for if they were English the hotel would not be well-run for long. When the English try to run a good hotel, they combine pomposity with slovenliness.

Perhaps this would not be so serious a matter if the British economy were not a so-called service economy. It has been such ever since Margaret Thatcher solved our chronic industrial relations problem by the simple expedient of getting rid of industry. This certainly worked, and perhaps was inevitable in the circumstances, but it was necessary to find some other way of making our way in the world. This we have not done.

Incompetence and incapacity are everywhere. Despite ever-rising local taxes, town and city councils are either unable or unwilling to clear the streets of litter, with the result that Britain is by far the dirtiest country in Europe.

Although we spend four times as much on education per head as in 1950, the illiteracy rate has not gone down. I used to try to plumb the depths (or shallows) of youthful British ignorance by asking my patients a few simple questions. Fifty percent responded to the question "What is arithmetic?" by answering "What is arithmetic?" It is not that they were good at doing something that they could not name: When I asked one young man, not mentally deficient, to multiply three by four, he replied "We didn't get that far."

This is the result of 11 years of state-funded compulsory education, or rather attendance at school, at a cost of between $100,000 and $200,000. The government's response has been to raise the school-leaving age to 18, thus making total ignorance even more expensive.

This is at the bottom rung of society, but incompetence starts at the very top. It is doubtful whether any major country has had a more incompetent leader than Gordon Brown for many years. The product of a pleasure-hating Scottish Presbyterian tradition, he behaves as if taxation were a moral good in itself, regardless of the uses to which it is put; he is widely believed to have taken lessons in how to smile, though he has not been an apt pupil, for he now makes disconcertingly odd grimaces at inappropriate moments. He is the only leader known to me who combines dourness with frivolity.

Early in his disastrous career in government he sold the country's gold reserves at a derisory price, against all advice, driving the price lower by the manner in which he arranged the sale. A convenience-store owner couldn't, and almost certainly wouldn't, have done worse.

After 12 years of ceaseless Brownian motion, British public finances have gone from being comparatively healthy to being catastrophically bad. In order to expand vastly the public sector in which he is a true believer, Mr. Brown has raised taxes by stealth, undertaken government obligations that appear nowhere in the accounts and that will weigh on future generations, and eased credit to encourage asset inflation and give people the illusion of prosperity. For the duration of his time in government, Britain has been like a consumptive patient, with an excess of bogus well-being shortly before expiry. If the world is an opera stage, Britain has been playing Violetta or Mimi in the last act.

What, then, of the opposition? Surely it has managed to hit a few of the easy targets with which the government has so thoughtfully supplied it?

No words of mine can adequately convey the contempt in which the Conservatives are now, rightly, held by almost everyone. I do not recall meeting anyone who thinks that David Cameron, their leader, is anything other than a careerist in the mold of Tony Blair. The most that anyone allows himself to hope is that, beneath the thin veneer of opportunism, there beats a heart of oak.

But the auguries are not good: Not only was Mr. Cameron's only pre-political job in public relations, hardly a school for intellectual and moral probity, but he has subscribed to every fashionable policy nostrum from environmentalism to large, indeed profligate, government expenditure. Not truth, but the latest poll, has guided him—at a time when only truth will serve. However, he will be truly representative as prime minister. Like his country, he is quite without substance.

En flyktning Aden tolket for, fikk penger til TV av sosialkontoret. Da flyktningen ba om ny TV kort tid senere, og fikk avslag, ba hun om å få ny saksbehandler. Et år senere, fikk hun dekket enda en TV.

- Jeg opplever ofte at saksbehandlere i NAV betaler seg ut av situasjoner med innvandrere, fordi de vil unngå trusler og bråk, sier Aden.

Asylmottak leier inn folk utenfra til å klippe plen, vaske og måke snø, istedenfor å la asylsøkere gjøre jobben selv.

UDI har ikke tatt DNA-prøve eller fingeravtrykk av asylsøkere som kommer til Norge. Derfor oppdager de ikke at mange søsken hentes til Norge som «ektefeller».

Norske leger melder ikke fra til barnevernet når unge innvandrerjenter ber om å få skjeden «åpnet» på norske sykehus, etter at de har blitt gjensydd i forbindelse med omskjæring. Når 14 år gamle jenter blir åpnet, mener Aden at legene bør melde fra for å avverge barneekteskap.

«Vi vil forsvare enhvers rett til å arrangere tilstelninger som dette så lenge de unge deltagerne er glade for å være med. Men i sin imitering av en type aktiviteter for ungdom, som religiøse grupper har arrangert i en årrekke, får Dawkins ateismen til å ligne enda mer på det han forsøker å bekjempe.»

Hei Øyvind Olsholt

Først: Takk for en fin side, informativ og lett tilgang på materiale for den som er interessert.

Jeg har hatt mye glede av artikkelen din Er barn mennesker? Jeg arbeider som [...] og trenger gode forståelser og perspektiver på barn, ungdom, oppvekst, maktrelasjon voksne barn etc.

Jeg ser at en god del av det som er på siden kan være nyttig for meg. Nå henvender jeg meg til deg for å be om anbefaling på artikler og litteratur som for en voksen målgruppe beskriver vår tids holdninger til barn, oppvekst, oppdragelse etc. Materiale som i likhet med din artikkel undersøker, spør eller drøfter maktrelasjon (utøvelse) voksne barn, "det autonome barnet", "det kompetente barnet" – grunnleggende etterlyser jeg sikkert også materiale som kritisk drøfter vestlig dannelsespraksis.

På forhånd takk.

Hei. Mitt beste tips videre er å ta for seg essayene til Oscar Brenifier som du finner på artikkel-siden vår. Begynn med «Caring thinking about caring thinking»]. Deretter vil jeg anbefale bøkene til legen og forfatteren Theodore Dalrymple. Spesielt «In praise of prejudice» og «Life at the bottom». Disse bøkene handler ikke om filosofi med barn direkte, men tar så avgjort et oppgjør med vestlig dannelsespraksis, et oppgjør, som dersom det følges opp i praksis, vil få enorm innvirkning på forholdet mellom voksen og barn.

Kom gjerne med kommentarer etterat du har kikket på denne litteraturen, og da helst på forumet vårt: http://www.buf.no/forum (Hvis du ikke har noe imot det, vil jeg også gjerne få legge ut denne korrespondansen som en egen (anonymisert) tråd på forumet.)

Jeg innser, min kjære Theaetetus, at Theodorus la sann innsikt om din natur for dagen når han sa at du var en filosof, for undringen er den stemning som ledsager filosofen, og filosofi begynner med undring. (155d, min oversettelse)

Det var deres undring som først ledet menneskene til å filosofere. Og den leder dem fremdeles. (982b12, min oversettelse)

• The growing expectation placed on schools and parents to boost pupils' self-esteem is breeding a generation of narcissists.

• Children are being over-praised and are developing an "all about me" mentality. An obsession with boosting children's self-esteem is encouraging a narcissistic generation who focus on themselves and feel "entitled".

• Schools need to reclaim their role as educators, not psychologists. Schools are not surrogate psychologists or mental health professionals.

• The self-esteem agenda, imported from the United States, is a "a big fashionable idea" that has gone too far.

• Narcissists make terrible relationship partners, parents and employees. It's not a positive characteristic. We are in danger of encouraging this.

• We are kidding ourselves if we think that we aren't going to undermine learning if we restrict criticism.

[...] Finally the pilgrim reaches her destination. For the Christian pilgrim Jesus is, not only the way, but the destination too. So, metaphorically, reaching the destination is reaching and receiving Jesus. Physically the pilgrim has now reached her sacred place, lays down her staff, pauses and reflects on her life, prays for forgiveness and rejoices with the other pilgrims in the praise of God. [...]

Does philosophical enquiry have a goal, like pilgrimage has Christ as the ultimate destination? The enquiry has an ultimate goal, but not an ultimate destination: it has truth. However, while believers have a chance to reach their destination, the philosophers have not. Truth is an ideal not to be attained but to give guidance to the on-going practice—cf. Socrates’ “daimon”, his inner voice, warning him of erroneous or inappropriate actions and judgements. There is of course coherence between the two practices on a smaller scale. Just as the pilgrims rejoice at the journey’s end the philosophical enquirers rejoice every time they lucidly expose an invalid argument, give a striking counter-example to a particularly stubborn hypothesis, produce a reason that shifts the enquiry into another perspective etc. (possibly except the ones whose arguments and hypotheses are being effectively challenged). [...]

[...] Moreover, the main concern in the latter text is not how to mould children into preconfigured shapes. The main concern is how to make the boys stay in the church. One could of course argue that the reason why the boys leave in the first place is exactly the church’s inclination to mould them into religious forms. But I do not think this is the reason, or at least not the whole reason. In modern church societies you are accepted whether you consider yourself a believer or not. No one forces you to believe anything. You may be an agnostic or even an atheist—and proclaim it—still you would not be denied access to the church. As an example, I would like to remind the reader that the author of these lines—a proclaimed non-believer/agnostic—has been received with open arms in this very project—a project, on top of everything, where the author is the “moulder” rather than the “moulded”! Anyway, how can one tell whether a person is a “real” believer or not?

In my view, a more likely reason for the drop-out is the church’s ideological, aesthetic, moral and social alterity with the rest of society. The church actually believes in the incarnation and reincarnation of a God who lives in Heaven, congregates in medieval-looking buildings singing angelic hymns, suggesting a pious and virtuous way of life and interacting with each other in an air of humorous (never ironic) solemnity. Such an orientation deviate radically from the traits of modern society which can be described as ideologically dissolved, aesthetically fragmented, morally individualised and socially alienated. At a certain point in life the discrepancy between these two cultures simply becomes unbearable for young people who seek wholeness and identity; they can no longer exist in both worlds. So there has to be a sacrifice, and as it happens modernity usually draws the longest straw. Which should come as no surprise. After all, it is outside of church that they spend most of their lives: going to school, being with friends, partaking in leisure activities etc.—modernity is the normality. From an adolescent’s point of view the church is simply not “cool” enough; it is too lenient, too good-hearted, too edifying, too holy, too feminine perhaps; it is too “warm”... Or so it may appear to a male teenager. Boys still look for challenges and dangers in an attempt to reach for an ancient ideal of manhood still widely accepted and promoted in our “advanced” culture. In comparison, there is very little danger to be found in the church, ultimately “only” a safe haven for the soul.

In order to bridge the gap between the two cultures the church looks to philosophy—a discipline nearly as old as religion itself. And in so doing, it discovers that philosophical practice is not just a modern and trendy supplement to the old adaptation-and-moulding practice, but represents a new approach to the whole religious educational ideology. The new and radical item that philosophy brings on-board is a series of 180 degree changes of directions: it shifts the focus from learning to unlearning, from adult teaches child to child teaches adult, from eternal possession of truth to never-ending quest for truth, from learning by gradual adaptation to circumstance to learning by instant adoption (i.e. understanding, recognition) of circumstance, from herd mentality to individualism, from the security of knowledge to the perils of doubt and deliberation. The question is: how can such a revolutionary practice further the church’s core belief: the faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour, the belief in “the way, the truth and the life”? [...]