Outside Reading: On Juvenile Tastes

By: Amy Stello

Learning about Lewis, I have grown completely to appreciate his perspective about children. Since I wrote my term paper about this topic, I find myself wanting to write about my admiration of his work and how it affects me when I interact with children. I go to an elementary school to help out with kindergarten children and I have enjoyed applying the concepts that Lewis states in many of his essays. I especially enjoy the respect that Lewis gives to children and their constant questioning. When at the school, there was a particularly boring video being played and the children were restless. Now, the typical idea was simply that the children were being bad for the sake of being bored, yet I remembered one of the ideas Lewis had presented within his essay "On Juvenile Tastes." This idea is that if the story is not particularly interesting or entertaining to the adults, it does not change merely for the children. When authors are writing for children, they often try to put children into their own little race. Lewis's discourages this kind of thinking. For me, when I was watching the video, I was thinking about how education should understand that children are not a separate race and should attempt to interest children with the material that is being presented. I think all too often that public education is more concerned with presenting its own agenda than actually creating an interest in learning for the children. I think Lewis would agree that there is a reason for the restlessness.