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TechnoratiWhat kids can learn from Harry Potter
Controversy has always surrounded Harry Potter's effect upon children. There's nothing to fear, says an American psychologist.
Harry Potter mania is on rise, again. Fans are already planning to camp out to buy their copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when book stores open on July 21. This is supposed to be the last of the seven books in the series, but it will not end debate about its effects upon children. Elizabeth Vozzola, a professor of psychology at Saint Joseph College, Connecticut, has conducted extensive research on what children learn from the novels. MercatorNet asked her what she had discovered.
MercatorNet: Is the incredible popularity of the series due only to the clever plots and rich imagination, or is it appealing to something deeper?
Vozzola: I need to address this question not only as a psychologist but also as a lifelong passionate reader and a former bookstore manager. I have always found that the best children's literature (eg, works by authors like Phillip Pullman or Madeline L'Engle) often addresses mythic themes of good and evil and employs archetypal characters such as the Wise Man, the Hero, the Maiden, the Trickster. Psychologists such as Jerome Bruner argue that humans are essentially hard-wired to be drawn to narrative as a way to make sense of their own lives and the world around them. In short, I believe the Harry Potter books appeal to the deep human need to make meaning through stories.
MercatorNet: What particular virtues can children take from the series?
Vozzola: We asked them that question specifically. Here's a line from our paper: "All groups [ages] identified courage and friendship as major themes. However, at the post-graduate educational level, participants were significantly more likely to identify loyalty and obedience as major themes than were less educated readers. Interestingly, it was elementary school participants (about ages 10-13) and post-graduate participants who were most likely to list kindness as a key theme (83.7% and 76.2% respectively) in contrast with our middle school/high school (57.9%) and college samples (58.8%)."
MercatorNet: Some critics claim that the books are subversive of authority. Conservative ones say this is bad; liberals say it is good. Which are right?
Vozzola: Well, everyone, from our youngest fourth graders to our adult PhDs had to agree that Harry Potter didn't always respect the rules. But, especially in Amie Senland's current study of perceptions of Biblical and liberal Christian families, we asked a lot of specific questions about whether participants (kids and parents) thought it was okay for the headmaster Dumbledore to sometimes let Harry and his friends break the rules. What children seemed to understand very clearly was that he was allowing them to break rules to do things that saved lives.
Again from our paper: "All groups perceived that Harry kept trying when faced with obstacles (all groups 100%), had courage (all groups 100%), and helped others (elementary 98%, all others 100%)."
MercatorNet: Does the Harry Potter series send confusing messages to children about the occult and magic? Why do a lot of adults think so?
Vozzola: Again, we asked that question specifically. Children told us No. Their body language was terrific. We'd ask them: "Do you think people can really do the sort of magic in the Harry Potter books?" and they would roll their eyes a bit as if to say "And these people have PhDs????"
Amie's research suggests that more liberal Christian parents interpret the magic in Harry Potter as fantasy but Biblical Christians parents (who believe the Bible is revealed truth) are much more likely to interpret it as occult. Biblical Christians point to specific Bible passages forbidding sorcery and quote them frequently when they argue against the book.
What our work shows, however, is that the messages in the book are overwhelmingly pro-social and that the readers we sampled had a clear grasp of the fact that the books were fantasy. (Of course some of the younger ones certainly thought it would be very cool if people could actually do these things!)
MercatorNet: But don't kids need a certain maturity and discrimination to handle the increasingly darker tone of the books?
Vozzola: I would agree. Ideally, parents have a good sense of their child's emotional and intellectual maturity and use that knowledge to guide them to appropriate media. For example, I didn't let my younger son watch the TV show The Simpsons until I could see that he understood irony. I wanted to be sure that he saw Bart Simpson as providing ironic commentary on American life, not as providing a role model!
As a develomentalist, I would generally see the final books as more appropriate for children of 9 or 10 and up not because they have a dark tone (read any book of fairy tales) but because younger children are not going to understand fully some of the important emotional themes. However any child who has been reading the series is going to want to read this final book. The best solution seems to me to be to read the book aloud to younger readers so you can stop and talk about things with them.
MercatorNet: Any inside tips on who is going to die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?
Vozzola: Would that we did! Our research team is as curious as the rest of the world. My own personal guess is that Neville and Snape will not make it to the end. I've had a theory for a long time that Neville is the person the prophecy refers to and that everyone from Voldemort to Ron and Herminone have been fooled into focusing on Harry. I think Neville, who has increasingly shown courage and unique abilities, will sacrifice himself for the forces of good. In myth, the hero has many trials to overcome before prevailing and coming into his/her own. Harry's certainly had his share of trials. I for one wish him a "lived happily ever after" ending.
Elizabeth Vozzola is a professor of psychology at Saint Joseph College, West Hartford CT.
By the way people.. its just a bunch of words on a lot of pages!
What they mean to you is your business.
No need praying for my soul, I choose to read the books because I love them. Satan or no Satan, I’ll keep reading!
I Loved this article Professor! I wish we could talk about it in class! Harry Potter has always fascinated me! I was and still am a fanatic! I not only love the books for their rich words and descriptions that just seem to draw me into a world f fantasy, but I loved to read about the characters, even Draco, and see as they progress in life, like me! I guess I was lucky in that I was able to read the series along the years of my adolescence from fourth grade all the way until recently. Even as a freshman in college I have the urge to curl up with not one but the whole Harry Potter series and reread it again for the fifth time! You wouldn’t believe how many girls in the class haven’t fallen in love with Harry Potter! A lot haven’t even read the books! Their loss I guess!
Dear MercatorNet
My name is Etienne Marais and I am 17 years
old. I am a born-again Christian and I keep
on praying for the salvation of Jk Rowling
and all the actors in the Harry Potter movies.
I would like to tell you all how much God
loves you and I will keep on praying for
your salvations.
Etienne Marais
Whilst I am enchanted by the observations of Donal O’Sullivan-Latchford, I am wondering if the putative elephant isn’t still at the zoo.
By this I mean that the asserted threat annunciated by Donal has never materialized, not at least in my experience of raising seven children. They all, from the eldest of 22 to the youngest of 10, see that HP is a cleverly wrought tale with a variety of human ‘messages’ - charity, mateship, loyalty, tolerance, courage and self-crticism - which do not clash with a Catholic theistic philosophy. That is, the positives in HP are good for our humanity without diluting or diminishing a belief in the God of the Bible.
There just is no clash.
In fact, I consider that, notwithstanding the humanistic virtues of these books, there are also some clear Christian icons and themes. Most obviously there is the icon of the House of Slytherin, from when came Voldemort, and the plague of evil that is his currency - a snake, which is of course the Genesis image of Satan.
And recall that in HP and Order of the Phoenix, Sirius Black tells Harry that we are all composed of both good and evil; it is what we choose that determines the type of person we become.
So perhaps just a modicum of lightheartedness and not too much over analysis, then we might see what is actually in the room - just us and a good book in a world that seeks to alter a world that is too full of evil, destruction, malice and hatred. Just like Voldemort
Donal O’Sullivan-Latchford’s first two sentences are sound.
The next 3 sentences are a problem. Harry does not feed children a lie--this is a nonsense written by someone with limited understanding of the conventions and complexities of modern fantasy. Tolkien (Roman Catholic) and C.S. Lewis (Anglican) are obvious Christians who wrote in an earlier day. They knew one another, unless memory serves me ill. Lord of the Rings is a highly sophisticated work--as sophiscated, in the best sense of that word, as Christian novels written by Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, Henry James, Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Sigrid Undset, and others. The Narnia books were written for children, just as Rowling’s books are--but Rowling’s are for adolescents as well as for younger children (8 up, roughly). Lewis
once wrote that children’s classics are for everyone. True. God bless. Susan Moore
I’m concerned here that we could be in danger of missing ‘the elephant in the room.’ As has been suggested already, speculative fiction can work only if the reader is aware that the story takes place in a world that is different from the real world. However, if speculative fiction is to REALLY work, it also has to have SOME parallels with that real world. The problem with Harry, however, is that its points of analogy are, only, with a ‘real’ world which does not, in fact, exist—one where Good and evil are two sides of the same coin and the ‘good’ advance by the use of esoteric knowledge (gnosis) in a cosmos which is, ultimately, not fair. Because of this, Harry feeds children with an ugly and ultimately hopeless lie about the nature of Life. And this lie is incompatible with Christian Faith. Contrast Harry Potter with the likes of The Lord of The Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, both of which point ultimately to The Truth.
Dear Kartik--Dumbledore is not JK Rowling. Rowling speaks through all of her characters: some, of course (the more virtuous ones), more than others.
Vol 5 is followed by Vol 6, which sheds light on aspects of Vol 5 that cannot be seen in isolation. Dumbledore makes errors. Note especially those he acknowledges in Vol 6.
I’m a literary critic, and I’ve been one for many years.
My expertise is in World Lit in English (including, of course, many translated great works)for adults and for children. I’ve taught and written for most of my life.
At the moment I’m re-reading, again, key chapters in Vol 5 and Vol 6. Each time I re-read, I see more.
If I’d taught the Harry Potter series, the process of reading and remembering would have been much swifter--since Socratic discussion (my mode) is always very illuminating when a class has read as carefully as this teacher always instructed her students to do. Most of my students, over MANY years of whole-class teaching, obeyed.
I’m a wife, mother, and grandmother. So far, I have 3 grandsons.
Thanks for writing. Commenting like this on the Net is a first for me. Warm regards to you and yours---Dr Susan
Thank you for your valuable work. I especially appreciated your point when you state that children are keenly aware of the fact that Harry Potter’s magic doesn’t work in real world. I never heard of one of them actually riding a magic brom. Speculative fiction can work only if the reader is aware that the story takes place in a world that is different from real world.
hi
J K Rowling has very explicitly stated… if only thru Dumbledore that the prophecy no doubt refers to harry potter instead of neville when harry pops the question at the end of order of phoenix!
warm regards
kartik rao
Dr, Moore,
I think you mean the 5th movie.
1) Sorcerer’s Stone
2) Chamber of Secrets
3) Prisoner of Azkaban
4) Goblet of Fire
5) Order of the Phoenix
Michael
A further comment following conversation about probabilities in Book 7 with a dear friend in her 20s who is a very gifted student of literature--professorial potential, I’d say. We both think that at least one Weasley is likely to die. Today she said to me on the telephone that the most devastating death would be Mrs W half-way through the final novel. I agree; but of course we don’t yet know.
We agree that it is highly probable that Snape will die near the end, and that he will choose good over evil.
The 4th movie, which I saw yesterday, is the best yet. I would give it 20 marks out of 10 in a 1-10 scale.
Brilliant, wonderfully generous and astute, comments from Elizabeth Vozzola on her research ("What Children Learn from Harry Potter"), on problems in rigid adult readers who ‘don’t get it’ in response to fantasy (I suspect because they are almost totally unfamiliar with its usual structures), and on what is likely to happen in Book 7.
As it happens, she and I agree about the characters most likely to die: Snape and Neville. I’ve also long thought that Hermione and Harry would be together in some way in the end. The Weasley twins will be very important, as will Prof. Minerva, Luna, Ginny, and Seamus. How it will all pan out, who knows? Only that genius, JK Rowling.
I don’t share EV’s view of Pullman. No doubt I’ll re-read Vol 3. The first time, I was appalled by his concept of Heaven because of my knowledge of Dante.
Congratulations, Michael Cook and Carolyn Moynihan, for finding and printing EV.
For me, perhaps the main problem in the Harry Potter books is that they present good and evil as two roughly equivalent sides of the same coin.
In contrast, Christianity understands evil to be an absence --a mere lack of good and not some ‘thing’ substantial in itself. This is brought out excellently in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce, where Hell is far too small and nebulous even to be seen in Heaven.
for me harrry potter is a mixed of good and bad because it reveals magics and spells...but also we learn new things that we can get as a value to us..
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