Wat heten goede kinderboeken? Opvattingen over kinderliteratuur in Nederland sinds 1880

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Summary

This thesis contains a study of the views on children's literature in The Netherlands after 1880. My aim was to examine what views were formulated in theoretical essays on the subject, what approaches one can distinguish and by what factors these were determined. In addition I examined to what extent the various approaches can be found in reviews. This part is meant only as a supplement to the above: it is used to determine what the views boil down to in practice and which approach had the greatest impact. I did not aim at a comprehensive description of the practice of evaluation.

I limited myself to the period after 1880 because before then only a few theoretical essays on children's literature were published, which I discuss in the introduction. During the Enlightenment children's literature was seen as an instrument in moral or religious education. Because it was assumed that children would immediately imitate the characters, people wanted to give them stories about model children. The demands made on children's books were of a moral kind: the characters had to judge and act the way children were expected to do; they were allowed to make a mistake once in a while, but then the reader had to be shown ‘the sad consequences which every false step has for the culprit’. Gradually, in the nineteenth century more demands were made on the literary value and the childlike qualities. In 1838, for instance, the critic E. J. Potgieter observed in a review that ‘a noble goal is no license for poor art’. Others demanded that a children's author be able to enter into a child's feelings and ‘reflect what is going on in their minds’.

Ironically enough, this means that the most important antithesis has already been described in the introduction. During the whole period which I investigated one finds two approaches to children's literature, the exponents of which repeatedly reacted against each other: a pedagogical approach - in which the children's book is seen as a means of passing on moral, political or religious values - and an aesthetic approach. In the latter some lay the emphasis on the children's book as a work of art, others start from the experience of the child. However, they have the same views on the function of children's literature and in other respects as well their views hardly differ. After 1960 one also finds a ‘purely literary’ approach, based on an autonomous conception of literature.

The first theoretical essays on children's literature after 1880 came from teachers, who started setting up school libraries and wondered what

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books they ought to include in them. In 1899 Nellie van Kol (1851-1930) published an article in a literary journal, ‘Wat zullen de kinderen lezen?’ (What should children read?), which brought the subject to the attention of a wider audience. In the next decade many theoretical essays on children's literature appeared, in a number of which one again finds a pedagogical approach. A significant part was played by people who thought that children's literature could contribute to the creation of a better world. Because, like the educationalists of the Enlightenment, they assumed that reading had a direct moral impact, they emphasized moral standards when evaluating children's books. They paid much attention to combatting unsuitable books, seeing the main danger in adventure novels, which contained too much violence ‘to cultivate sound concepts of tolerance and love of one's fellow-man’, and stories about naughty children.

The exponents of the aesthetic approach reacted strongly against any form of moralism. According to the author Theo Thijssen (1879-1943) there was only one demand which children's books must fulfil: ‘A children's writer must be a writer.’ In other words, only literary standards should apply in evaluation. He saw no reason for concern about ‘dangerous’ books, but could fully understand the preference many children showed for Indian novels and other adventure stories. For the author and painter Cornelis Veth (1880-1962) this was the main starting point. He thought that we should not begrudge boys their ‘real boy's books’ and that we should not trouble them with moral strictures. We should realize that reading is only a form of play. The young reader is an art lover: ‘He does not read to learn. He reads not to learn.’

Although Thijssen started from the book as a work of art and Veth took up die cudgels for the enjoyment a boy gets out of his books, their views hardly differed. This also applied to the other exponents of the aesthetic approach: their literary demands were not there to serve an abstract literary value, but the experience of the reading child.

When it comes to the concrete demands which children's books should meet, the antithesis between the pedagogical and the aesthetic approach was concentrated on one point: the desirability or acceptability of an emphatic moral. The exponents of the pedagogical approach only made demands on the contents of the moral and paid no attention to the way in which it was incorporated in the story. The exponents of the aesthetic approach had exactly the opposite views. They rejected moral lessons and ethical considerations because these were at the expense of vitality: they claimed that the moral must remain ‘hidden in the story’, and placed high demands on characterisation and plot. Moreover, they did not ap-

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preciate explicit moral rules. They made a distinction between ethics and etiquette, and stated that good and evil could not be reduced to rules and prescriptions.

The most important development in the second period, from 1930 to 1960, was the increased interest in the emotional development of children, as a result of the research of Charlotte Bühler and others. However, the antithesis between the approaches remained the same. When the most important pedagogue of this period, D. L. Daalder (1887-1963), stated that books should fit in with the emotional needs of children, he added that we need not meet all their wishes: strict censorship was required to avoid bad influences. The need for adventure, for instance, should be met with stories about adventurers who have dedicated their lives to a just cause. Generally, he demanded from children's books that they provide children with a code: ‘this is proper and that is improper, this is decent and that is indecent, this is good and that is evil’. He rejected an explicit moral, however, and paid so much attention to literary aspects that one is justified in speaking of a pedagogical-aesthetic approach.

Alongside this we again find a purely aesthetic approach, for example with the children's librarian Louise Boerlage (1884-1968). Like Daalder, she thought that reading matter should fit in with the emotional needs of children, but she proved less worried and called censorship unnecessary, arguing that we can give children to read whatever we want, but they will only take in what fits in with their emotions, what satisfies a need or fulfils a desire. She was of the opinion that children used their reading to explore their feelings, thereby anticipating reality. And because they went their own way in this, she saw censorship as not only unnecessary but also pointless: children would read what they wanted to anyway.

After the Second World War there were clear developments in children's literature itself, but I did not find a caesura in the views on the subject: this did not appear until 1960, when even the exponents of the pedagogical approach no longer drew a sharp line between children and adults. Because children were taken more seriously, the pedagogical ideal changed: one did not want to provide them with a code of good and evil anymore, but sought to create the conditions for independent choice.

After 1970 a split occurred in the approach to children's literature. This was a result of the social developments in the sixties, which caused a remarkable change of attitude and gave new impulses to the pedagogical approach. Once again, some people completely concentrated on moral

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and social demands. Seminars were formed which demanded children's books in which the traditional division of roles between men and women was broken down, in which sex was no longer taboo, and in which discrimination was combatted by a positive attitude towards other races and cultures. Others elaborated a theory of committed children's literature, arguing that children's books should show social reality, in order to make children conscious of the balance of power in this world. None of them paid any attention to the emotional needs of children.

It was not long before the views of the committed educationalists were criticised. The author Annie M. G. Schmidt reacted strongly against this ‘new Calvinism’, which reduced reality to social problems. Her colleague Guus Kuijer supported Theo Thijssen's demand that ‘a children's writer must be a writer’. According to Kuijer, pursuing pedagogical goals would never produce an interesting story: we cannot explain life to children, ‘because we are all living for the first time and we do not know how it should be done’. And in reviews objections were raised to the fashionable commitment in children's books, with an accumulation of social problems which were hardly ever developed, so that children were unable to immerse themselves in these books.

For these reviewers, therefore, the literary arguments were there to serve the experience of the reading child. For the first time there also were critics who appealed to an ‘autonomous’ literary value. Some of them explicitly rejected the judgements of children, alleging that they were only emotionally involved in their reading and blind to literary quality. This has been rejected by someone who organised a children's jury for many years. She argues that children actually do have an eye for literary quality, providing that it is relevant to them, that is to say, providing it lies within their horizon. If one does not take their way of reading into account, she claims, one runs the risk of recommending books which are in fact no children's books at all.

The approaches to children's literature can be reduced to views on the function of children's literature, which in turn can be reduced to views on the child, on the impact of reading and sometimes views on literature in general. In all respects one can distinguish between an Enlightenment tradition (pedagogical approach) and a Romantic tradition (aesthetic approach).

The exponents of the pedagogical approach lay the emphasis on what the child should become. Initially, the child was seen virtually as a tabula rasa. But when, after 1960, the pedagogues no longer drew a sharp line between children and adults, their approach remained the same. Then it

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becomes clear that views on the child can be reduced to views on man in general. In the Enlightenment tradition man is seen primarily as a member of society. Because children are not yet ready for a role in society, the emphasis is laid on what they still have to learn. In the evaluation of children's books moral (political, religious) standards are applied; even from the characters not a single step out of line is accepted.

In the Romantic tradition, man is seen as an individual. And as an individual a child already is somebody: it has its own emotions and its own thoughts, and therefore has a right to books which fit in with these. Consequently, the exponents of the aesthetic approach put higher demands on the artistic value of children's books. Because they also dissociate themselves from the ‘etiquette’ of bourgeois society, they can identify very well with the preference for stories about naughty children and adventure novels (a pre-eminently Romantic genre, about solitary heroes who display their character far from the civilised world).

The approach to children's literature is also determined to a large extent by the views on the impact of reading. The exponents of the pedagogical approach assume that reading has a direct moral impact. In other words, according to them the impact of reading is determined by the book. Their view can be represented in Jakobson's ‘communication model’:

author → text → reader

Reading is seen as a linear process: just as one projects a film on the screen, so the book is projected at the reader. The exponents of the aesthetic approach reject this view, arguing that the impact of reading is determined by the reader. In their view, therefore, the communication model would look like this:

author → text ← reader

Reading is seen here as a creative process: every reader creates his own book, from his own experiences and his own emotions, and draws his own moral conclusions. These can, of course, be similar to the ideas of the author, but even then we cannot speak of a direct moral impact. Louise Boerlage claims that children only take in what they recognise. This means that books can only make them conscious of what they already know or feel unconsciously.

It will be clear that such views on the impact of reading are of a hypotheti-

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cal nature. Therefore I attempted to test them against empirical data, using articles which give a survey of research in this field. This research has not yielded any unequivocal conclusion: the researchers contradict each other and they do not always seem to mean the same thing by ‘impact’. But if we limit ourselves to the question whether reading has a direct moral impact, a provisional conclusion proves possible.

On the basis of empirical data there is no reason to assume that such an impact does occur. In statistical research one has never been able to prove a direct link between reading and attitudes or behaviour. On the contrary, there are grounds for assuming that a preference for particular reading matter derives from the emotional state of the reader, and not the other way around. Moreover, attitudes turn out not to be taken over easily: the impact of the surroundings is much greater than that of reading, in addition to which there appears to be selective perception in the reading process (which seems to confirm the view that the impact of reading is determined by the reader). This is confirmed by autobiographical data about reading experiences as well as by Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development.

Of course, this leaves the possibility open that reading has an educational value, also in a moral sense. However, this will only be possible with the right book at the right moment, for the right reader. This also applies to literary education. One can stimulate children to widen their literary horizon by providing them with books, but this too will only be possible if one takes account of their demands.