During childhood, ignorance is bliss
What is it about a child that makes truth a fluid, flexible thing?
When I was a kid, I was lied to. A lot. I was gullible, impressionable and, in all honesty, my mind was like Play-Doh — easily molded by whoever got their hands on it. Was I weak in character? Was I an introvert passively living a life of deceit? Maybe — but that’s beside the point.
I did this, you did this, and I’m sure that random person you almost hit with your bike today did this. We ate it up. Teachers, parents, the fifth-graders who conquered the back of the bus — these were all sources of authority that we never thought to question.
Why yes, there were monsters in our closets. Christopher Columbus was an adventuresome, completely wholesome man who had the cahones to discover a new world. And Santa Claus, he was a jolly man with a white beard filled with secrets and magic.
I once asked my first-grade teacher why she taught us lies — particularly about colonialism. Until I hit puberty, I was taught — no, I fervently believed — that Columbus was a hero, a role model. He might have worn strange pants that ballooned like a skirt, but at the end of the day, he crossed an ocean with a mere three ships and opened the door to another half of the world.
I thought the same of the pilgrims, those brave, compassionate victims of religious tyranny who made friends with the Native Americans and built a civilization with these peoples at their sides.
Then, puberty hit — and with the horrifying, newfound revelations I had to endure about my changing body, I was also hit with another dramatic truth: History is violent.
She confessed to me that all first-grade teachers glorify the past to their students because the realities of history would demolish the innocence of adolescence. I feel like this method is, however, largely counterproductive. The false sense of security and pride in these historical figures undoubtedly causes more shock when one realizes the lies inherent in these projections — or was that just me?
In any case, kids are dismissed as naïve and silly. And we certainly were, to a very large extent. I believed that double dog dares were law, that smooching conceived babies and that a mother’s kiss could actually relieve pain. I even had a childhood friend who tried to convince me that little elves play pranks on you as you sleep, which is why you could never find matching pairs of socks and your colored pencils were always misplaced.
These mistaken notions were the result of an overactive imagination — but these ideas also persisted because of aforementioned authority figures. My parents never tried to teach me trivial life lessons by having a friend with one arm provide numerous traumatic experiences (is it true that an Arrested Development movie is, cross my fingers, one step closer to fruition?), but they did encourage my beliefs in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and the photogenic arena of Santa’s lap.
Yes, we have proven that children are naïve and silly. But the crazy thing about children is that they can see beauty like no one else can; they can see brilliant flashes of art and the resounding echoes of rapture in completely unassuming situations. Case in point: The Wall Street Journal performed a study about the perception of art in unsuspecting places. They hired Joshua Bell, one of the most beloved contemporary violinists of our time, to play his violin in a dingy metro stop. During the entire afternoon, he made $32 — but the only people to stop and stare and listen, even for a few moments, were children being urgently pushed and pulled by their parents.
It is a careful line, admiring a child’s pure innocence and beating the naïveté out of him or her. Purposefully shredding the truth of reality only creates ignorance in a mind already gullible to apparent, misleading “truths” constantly bombarding it. But I say that, at the end of the day, children are the ones who are unashamed to open themselves to new possibilities. They are the ones who might see the world through fantastical, ridiculous lenses — but they can also see the world as it truly is: a space infested with malicious intent and dark corners but, despite all the shadows, as a space also filled with wonder.
When we were kids, we were awed by the shapes we saw in the clouds and the sheer exhilaration we felt when cruising on a speeding bicycle. Don’t you think life is better when clouds and bikes are awe-inspiring to you, too?
Tiffany Yang is a junior majoring in comparative literature. Her column, “Alphabet Soup,” runs Wednesdays.