My nine-year old daughter is still nine but she's celebrating her tenth birthday a day early with a sleepover for five of her closest friends. And they're watching the 1995 movie "A Little Princess."
This line spoken by the evil Mrs. Minchen to the heroine Sarah is particularly compelling:
"It's a cruel, nasty world out there, and it's our duty to make the best of it. Not to indulge in ridiculous dreams, but to be productive and useful. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Mean-spirited people like the Mrs. Minchen character used to get special joy out of crushing the spirits of little children like Sarah because their dreams did not correlate with the harshness of the real world.
Unfortunately, those were the good old days. The "productive apparatus" of American society can no longer afford to leave dreams alone. The idle dreams of children have to become productive if Americans are to have either the new computer programs, new medicines, new movies, and new novels or the profits that derive from American creativity.
In many ways, that's what American education is about--turning innocent dreaming into productive creativity.
It really is a cruel world.
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