In my Editorial on the CUC power outage last Friday I mentioned “Bill & Ben The Flower Pot Men”. I didn’t think anyone would have heard of them but I was wrong.

I was surprised to learn that the children’s programme was resurrected by the BBC in 2000 with a completely new adaptation using “stop motion animation” and currently airs on in Ireland on RTEjr. The black and white series I knew was string puppetry. It was all so innocent.

Looking at some of the children’s programmes being aired on television now, especially on Disney, there is nothing innocent there at all. The children, called kids, are more intelligent than their parents, self-opinionated, and answer back at their elders with derision.

And literature is the same. I loved books by Enid Blyton who English teachers hated and librarians pulled from their shelves because she called one of her beloved characters who the young children loved best “Golly”. Yes, he or she was black, and looked like a singing minstrel. There was no racial overtones or undertones in the children’s minds, just love, until we adults pulled their innocence.

Writer Anne Scott MacLeod notes, “Children’s innocence, emotionality, and imagination became qualities to be preserved rather than overcome; a child’s sojourn in childhood was to be protected, not hastened. By implication, romantic literature made childhood the high point of life.”

There is no piece of literature that is more indicative of this romantic view of childhood than Barrie’s Peter Pan. Peter’s Neverland is a child’s dream. Though it is not without its dangers (the nefarious Captain James Hook) or complications (the jealous Tinkerbell), it is ultimately a land of imaginative adventure, of limited responsibility and of eternal childhood.

Peter’s stance on growing up is clear: “‘I don’t want ever to be a man,’ he said with passion. ‘I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.'”

In those days windows could always be left open. Now there’s a scary thought isn’t it?

Isaac Gilman wrote an interesting article called “Shutting the Window: the Loss of Innocence in Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature”

The author writes:

“By the latter half of the twentieth century, this notion of childhood was beginning to change, as was its portrayal in children’s literature. Though the romantic ideal of childhood had originally been posited and cultivated in Britain (as seen in the work of Barrie, Nesbit, Ransome, et al.), it had also greatly influenced the tone of children’s literature in Canada and the United States. Somewhat fittingly, when the “revolution” against such romanticism began, it was not initiated by the British, but by American authors. Obviously, it is difficult to say with certainty that any one book changed the portrayal of childhood in children’s literature, but it is a sure bet that Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, published in 1964, had as immediate an impact as any other work. The character of Harriet M. Welsch stands in sharp contrast to Edith Nesbit’s apple-cheeked innocents or Arthur Ransome’s healthily respectful youngsters. As Gail Schmunk Murray remarks, “Neither Harriet nor her classmates are childlike or innocent in the traditional sense.” (190) Nor is childhood, for Harriet, a time of traditional play which she wishes could last forever. Her childhood is, if anything, a time of preparation for adulthood, when she can become a real spy:

“She picked up her notebook:
WHEN I AM BIG I WILL BE A SPY. I WILL GO TO ONE COUNTRY AND I WILL FIND OUT ITS SECRETS AND THEN I WILL GO TO ANOTHER COUNTRY AND TELL THEM AND THEN FIND OUT THEIR SECRETS AND I WILL GO BACK TO THE FIRST ONE AND RAT ON THE SECOND AND I WILL GO TO THE SECOND AND RAT ON THE FIRST. I WILL BE THE BEST SPY THERE EVER WAS AND I WILL KNOW EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING.
As she began to fall asleep she thought, And then they’ll all be petrified of me.

“Harriet’s quest for revenge, her disregard of acts of betrayal, her blatant disobedience, and, finally, her decision that lying is necessary all mark her as a historically significant figure in the timeline of children’s literature. For Harriet, childhood is not a time of innocence.

“The reality of Harriet’s childhood is typical of what critics have termed the “new problem novel” that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Though the term “problem novel” was coined to describe books for slightly older readers, the attributes of this new portrayal of childhood hold true for Harriet and similar works. Sheila Egoff, as quoted in Gail Schmunk Murray’s American Children’s Literature and the Construction of Childhood, characterizes the problem novel as having, among other things, a protagonist who “is alienated from the adult world, and often from peers as well,” a first-person narrative, an urban setting, and parents who are absent—”either physically or emotionally.” Harriet is indeed a solitary figure, setting herself apart from her peers and those around her through her spying activities. Her parents are largely absent, more concerned with their work than with their daughter’s life, trusting her upbringing to their household staff. It is only when Harriet’s activities warrant the attention of school officials and other community members that her parents are drawn, albeit briefly, into a sustained interaction with Harriet. Their presence in Harriet’s life is not in support of a free childhood, but a means of controlling and restraining what they see as threatening behavior and willful independence. This stands in direct opposition to earlier romantic portrayals of childhood, which figured parents in supportive roles dedicated to maintaining their children’s freedom and innocence (and ultimately, joy in childhood). It is unlikely that windows would ever be left open for Harriet.

“Without the parental understanding necessary for a carefree childhood, Harriet the Spy and other “problem novels” introduced childhood as being an undesirably restrictive space. In an urban environment, and without parental support, children have less freedom for imaginative play and creative fantasy—the hallmarks of happy childhoods in romantic literature. In place of these freedoms, children often find themselves with greater responsibilities: Gail Murray notes that in most problem novels “adults do not make the world better or safer for children; children themselves shoulder the responsibility for learning how the world works and then finding a way to adapt to it. The child has become parent to herself.”’

SOURCE: http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/article/view/32/36

I still cherish children’s innocence and I firmly believe children should be protected by those who love them so that they grow up as naturally unaffected by preventable unwanted inputs as possible and as long as possible.

I well remember my wife’s granddaughter, who was 5 at the time of this incident. She was sitting in the back of the car and we were talking about a wall in the Eastern Districts that people hid behind to “play” and it was now called Lovers Wall to our disgust.

She piped up to our surprise because we thought she was busy playing with some toys and colouring a book.

“I know why it’s called Lovers Wall,” she said. “It’s because people love it.”

And I loved that innocence.

PS: I have even found an image of that original TV series “The Flower Pot Men” Bill and Ben with Weed.