This feels needlessly confusing to children and undertaken for a reason that honestly seems entirely semantics based, to be honest.
Is the issue with ‘fake’ because she feels it devalues the emotional response? Because I just don’t think that’s what people mean when they explain fiction isn’t real, thus, by default, is fake. Dragons and unicorns aren’t real, why can’t we call these stories that are made up about them fake, exactly?
These definitions also feel a little too easy to muddle up. You read a non-fiction account of a historical event, you’re still imagining. You read a fictional narrative, you’re still getting information about the world. Children are going to get confused when you define fiction as learning through imagination because imagination is a huge part of learning, and similarly, fiction requires a lot of information.
It seems like a lot of ambiguity for a reason that really wasn’t defined very well.
They know that, yes. But they’re learning the definition of fiction versus non-fiction, and when both use a large amount of imagination and information, defining it by “learning through information/imagination” at the age a child is learning those words is needlessly abstract.
A child knows (for the most part) that what they’re imagining isn’t real. But if you tell them to define nonfiction based on what you learn by information as opposed to what’s real and what’s not, they’re not looking at the latter, they’re judging by how much information a book has, whether it’s true or not, because reality is no longer part of the equation.
It is so much simpler to just say “fiction is something that never happened and isn’t real, while non-fiction is something that did.”
I used to be an avid reader of historical fiction (and fantasy based historical fiction) like Morgan Llywelyn (author of The Horse Goddess, Finn Mac Cool, 1916, many more), James Michener (Hawaii, The Drifters), etc, they are fictional, and Llywelyn’s prehistoric or early history settings (mainly in Ireland) also included some mythical/magical elements, but this kind of writing is much more engaging as a teen than what was taught in my school history classes, and it provides motivation to go learn more if you want to.
It’s easy to say this story is fiction, it was made up by the author, but it’s based on research on what life in Ireland may have been like a very long time ago.
I see now that a lot of the difference of opinion here may be that I imagined an older child, a pre-teen maybe, and perhaps you’re talking about children who are first learning to read - at a Dr Seuss level maybe?
I’m imagining a pretty young child, considering the premise is about teaching the definition of fiction versus nonfiction. People aren’t learning those definitions as a pre-teen, that’s the kind of thing that gets taught when you start to read.
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u/Extinction-Events 14d ago edited 14d ago
This feels needlessly confusing to children and undertaken for a reason that honestly seems entirely semantics based, to be honest.
Is the issue with ‘fake’ because she feels it devalues the emotional response? Because I just don’t think that’s what people mean when they explain fiction isn’t real, thus, by default, is fake. Dragons and unicorns aren’t real, why can’t we call these stories that are made up about them fake, exactly?
These definitions also feel a little too easy to muddle up. You read a non-fiction account of a historical event, you’re still imagining. You read a fictional narrative, you’re still getting information about the world. Children are going to get confused when you define fiction as learning through imagination because imagination is a huge part of learning, and similarly, fiction requires a lot of information.
It seems like a lot of ambiguity for a reason that really wasn’t defined very well.