Monday, July 18, 2011

The Surprising Trouble With Harry

There is a very intriguing article about Harry Potter here:


Some quick quotes from the article -
1) Christians who take the idea of a cosmic struggle between good and evil seriously should see the Potter series as an ally because it reinforces a core Christian belief currently under attack.
2) Rowling provides something for students that American public schools do not. She illuminates why character education, values clarification, Kohlberg’s moral reasoning, or getting stricter about rules will never do what we wish.
3) What critics fail to realize about Harry’s moral world is that school rules are not tightly linked to the ultimate moral order, and obeying them can, at times, be pharisaical and even disobedient to the moral order.
 
4) Professor Dumbledore, tells Harry, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” 

5) J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis understood true fantasy literature as pointing to truths that we often miss in reality. 

6)  Children need more than a set of virtues to emulate, values to choose, rules to obey, or even some higher form of reasoning to attain. They long to be part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil. And that’s why children want to read Harry Potter.

No comments:

Blog Widget by LinkWithin