On Answering Children's Questions

561 Words3 Pages
It’s child’s play! Or is it? One of the hurdles of maintaining a society is that its already adapted members have to introduce the ‘newcomers’ to the workings of our world. What newcomers? Children. Once they stop crawling around on all fours and assume the bipedal stance of the human being who is able to gaze at the stars in contemplation, they will certainly start doing the same; but chances are that the object of their contemplation will be one that is much, much closer: the world surrounding them and its less than blatant governing dynamics. One may state that introducing a child to the world we know so well should, indeed, be child’s play, at least on our part. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children have the advantage of being in a ‘tabula rasa’, or ‘blank state’. They do not know the first thing about the monetary system, government or democracy (or anything else, for that matter). They know near to nothing, therefore they inquire about everything. This is why their questions are particularly difficult to answer: they make us ponder the very things we take for granted, including the very mechanisms that enable us to peacefully inhabit this planet (for most of the time, at least). This is the true value of children’s questions – when attempting to answer them we inevitably question the values of the world we live in. Children’s questions are neither silly, nor naïve, they are scrutinising to the highest degree, and the object of their scrutiny is most frequently represented by the very things we never even pause to think about. Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga once stated that ‘to philosophise is to make use of super mature means in attempting to answer children’s questions’. These questions shouldn’t be taken lightly and, besides attempting to give the child a proper answer, adults should take them as ‘food for thought’. When attempting to
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