Step Aside, Einstein.
November 1, 2009As many of my peers have already eloquently stated, conversely from adults, who trust only logic and evidence when deciding if something is fact or fiction, children are very susceptible to believing in the impossible.
My question is:
Is there such thing as the impossible?
For a child, no, and what makes people with a few more years under their belts so much smarter than children, “smart” enough to give themselves the authority to tell young children that their beliefs that they have cherished for their entire lives are falsehoods? What if they aren’t?
Consider the movie, “The Santa Claus”, and the idea that what children see is truly reality, and adults are simply too arrogant and consumed with their “intelligence” to believe in such immature, preposterous ideas such as Santa, the Tooth Fairy, a talking rabbit, and magic. We have been trained to believe that children are too innocent, immature, and naive to be able to distinguish between imagination and reality, but could it be that the opposite is true? That these incredible things do exist, we simply, through aging, become too “smart” to recognize it?
It reminds me somewhat of test-taking, oddly enough. Some incredibly intelligent people are terrible test-takers simply because they are too smart for their own good, in a way. They over-think an answer to the point where they end up choosing the wrong one because they have unnecessarily analyzed it dry, when in actuality the answer is quite simple.
Children see the simple world, the world in which if one can think of something, that something must exist. Adults, however, see the world in a more complicated way, in which if one can think of something, it may exist, however if it cannot be proven through methodical, mechanical experimentation, it obviously must not exist, unless proven otherwise at a later time. I don’t know about you, but I much prefer the simple, accepting reasoning of young children. After all, young children that have not yet been forced to conform to modern society’s rules of thought offer the most real, innately human reasoning and thought, so maybe we should just trust this logic that we were born with and stop trying to make advancements in society and technology that could, in theory, be lessening our intelligence.
In my opinion, life was much more fun and exciting when magical powers were still a possibility, becoming a fairy princess was all but guaranteed, and talking to habitually unpunctual rabbits seemed an unoriginal, mundane activity.
The "Liddell" Things 
I love the points you make. There may not be such a thing as the impossible. Imagination allows anything, and to some people their imagination is real. I also agree that overanalyzing could cause us to overlook a simple answer. In fact I find on test, like you said, the simplest answers are the hardest because you start to feel there is more to the question than is presented. This could also be why children can often find their own answers to questions adults can’t, but then disregard them when they grow up. This may also by why children notice more things than adults. A child will often point out this or that, which the adult would not have found otherwise. Your statement of advancements in technology possibly hindering us, leads to more pondering. Are these outer conditions consuming so much of our energy, that we have no time to work on ourselves within to find the answers? I also love the fact that you argue a simple child’s view with the logical reasoning of an “adult”. By the way, Emma’s post makes mine feel way too short!
The title alone is going to draw attention. Clever work.
And while my ‘logical’/’rational’ brain (or at least parts of it that pretend to be) want to believe otherwise, I love this from your post:
And as a father of 2 kiddos-in-diapers at the moment, I can’t love it enough. And I want both of them to believe that “magical powers [are] still a possibility” for as long as their hearts/minds will allow.
Nicely said.
First, I love the title of your blog entry. “Step Aside, Einstein” was the first blog entry that caught my eye because it is clever and catchy.
I do agree with your point that adults train their children to believe that “anything is possible” or “if you try hard enough, you can achieve anything.” This is true…to a point. Although so many dreams can be achieved in one lifetime. In many cases, the parents encourage their children to achieve the parent’s life long dream that was never fulfilled. In most cases, the children do not even like what their parents’ dream was or they believe they are being forced to be good at one skill. This is unfair to the children and, in the end, the adults are unhappy also.
Your point about test-taking is a very imperative observation. I know from experience that, especially on multiple choice, analyze the text and questions to a point where nothing makes sense. Yes, nerves do play a factor into this equation but the fact that smart people could not do as well on one test and could be judged on this test whether or not he/she would be admitted into a college is not right.
That’s why I hope the college board will either allow one’s GPA to have a heavier factor on their decision or at least change the 10% rule for entering Texas schools. Since public schools have so many children in each grade the top ten percent could be 30-60 students. At private schools, the top 10% could be 5-8 students, even though 25% or higher could have above a 4.0 GPA, a 3.5 GPA student at a public school will be admitted before a non 10% private student because of this rule.
It reminds me somewhat of test-taking, oddly enough. Some incredibly intelligent people are terrible test-takers simply because they are too smart for their own good, in a way. They over-think an answer to the point where they end up choosing the wrong one because they have unnecessarily analyzed it dry, when in actuality the answer is quite simple.
Perhaps one day dragons will swoop us off our feet and take us to Neverland or Wonderland. Of course, we would not be mature if we believed in dragons or magic. Maybe there minds will change.
First off, thanks for the praise on my title, I appreciate it.
Next, it is sadly true that parents often live vicariously through their children. It makes me very upset, actually, because the parent’s obsession with creating the “perfect child” that is a master at whatever said parent may choose ultimately ends up taking away the child’s precious youth and innocence (see my blog, https://aliceproject13.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/curiosity-killed-the-cat-or-did-it/ and its comments for an expansion on the importance of childhood).
For what it’s worth, most colleges thankfully do take the unfortunate reality of intelligent students sometimes being simply bad test-takers into account during the admissions process. GPA is always or almost always more important than test scores in admissions. If this were not the case, colleges would face a much more difficult task in trying to matriculate the most qualified students, because some are brilliant at test-taking but don’t put forth the effort to succeed in all classes throughout the school year, and vice-versa. As for the 10% rule, I have heard of some colleges that will thankfully rid of this regulation in the near future, and it is my hope as well that more of them do, for the same reasons as you stated.
And for the sake of creativity and sanity, I hope their minds do change. Everyone needs an escape from their version of reality, and if they wish for that escape to consist of dragons and magic, more power to them. You never know, that world could truly be reality, and we could just stuck in some sort of parallel universe, alternate reality, or maybe even a dream.