Ethics and Education in

Children’s Literature
Literature does not necessarily mean education. Literature
is, above all, a cultural and artistic product made for readers to
enjoy. Consequently, children’s literature should also be
considered a cultural and artistic product that can appeal to
young readers. However, as the title of this chapter suggests,
is it also possible to use literature as an educational tool? The
aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between
children’s literature and education and how both disciplines
can be linked through the development of literary competence
at a young age.

Children’s literature is the branch of literature addressed

explicitly to children and young people. It is an addressee
in a process of training that needs language adaptation
and the adaptation of other literary resources to
facilitate comprehension. This kind of literature
contributes to the literary education of children and
young people.

Children’s literature and education

 While children‘s Literature undeniably includes an
educational component, this may not be necessarily moralistic
or didactic. However, even those works that clearly refuse this
model and try to promote equal communication between
receivers (Roal Dahl’s books, for instance) cannot deny their
intrinsic condition as children books; they are part of the
literary education of children. Obviously, every literary work
participates in the literary education of audiences, but in this
case, the target audience, by definition, has an undeveloped
literary competence. Children’s ability to read is still too basic
to acquire complex concepts such as the narrative pact,
polyphony, paradoxes, or the breaking of literary conventions
(Hunt, 1991, p. 87). In Mendoza's (1999) words, children’s
books “are initiation works to the world of literary culture and
to other kind of cultural values” (p. 11). Mills and Webb (2004)
also state that any selection of books entails the resolution of
the tension between entertainment and didacticism.

General education of children through literature

I will now discuss how literature for young readers is related
to education at two different levels: the general education of
children through literature, on the one hand, and literary
education, on the other. Ramon Bassa i Martín (1994), an
educator from the Balearic Islands, studied the link between
Catalan children’s literature and education, and placed
children’s literature in the middle of a net of so-called
educational agencies, which includes libraries, editors,
bookshops, authors (writers and illustrators), public cultural
institutions, literary awards, and critics. If we take a look at this
long list, we understand how reluctant Rose (1984) or Lesnik-
Oberstein (2000) were to consider that children’s literature
belongs to children. But we must consider that not all the
agents agree with the books’ messages. We probably need
deeper research in this field, but it is also easy to find an
example in the public institutions that are used to changing
their ideological position regularly. This change of political
colour leads to different preferences and curricular goals. In
this case, librarians focus, more likely, on disclosure than on
training while teachers, generally speaking, try to link the
reading with literary education and the language and the
literature syllabus. Every publisher has its own editorial policy
and, for instance, many publishing houses in Europe belong to
the Catholic Church. Therefore, because of this connection, we
can expect a different educational language and topics
between independent publishers and those connected with
the Church. Publishers tend to differ in the goals of books, as
well. There are specialists and critics who ask for
noncommercial books, however, many publishers are
ultimately concerned with the economic benefit. In other
words, the fact that children’s literature contains an
educational message does not mean this message is
homogeneous. The multiplicity of messages should
correspond with certain heterogeneity already present in our
society and it is linked with the controversy of children’s
education in general.

Bassa i Martín's view is very related to the social and

personal learning
of the child together with formal education that comes from
the school world, especially through the subjects taught in
classrooms. In his analysis, education transmitted by children’s
books should pertain to a global education because literature
should contain the knowledge of mankind. From this point of
view, these items could be easily applied to adult literature in
order to get some conclusions about the educational message
of books, generally speaking. We must leave aside the school
as a subject since it is normal that children's books very often
use the institution as a background. If we applied this
methodology to both types of books (adult and children) we
should get different data, as the audience also differs. The
educational message would be different, but it would not
disappear in any of the cases: neither in the adult one nor the
children one.

Following this pedagogical approach, it becomes evident

how the educational contents are adapted to the period and
also to the culture in which they are produced. Two
paradigmatic examples could be, on the one hand, the concern
about Catalan language in Catalan children’s literature. This
example is easily understood because of the historical context
and significance of this language. In addition, the strong
moralistic, political and religious censorship imposed by
Franco’s dictatorship could also be included. The educational
content does not mean exclusively a training character in a
scholarly sense. It is defined by the production circumstances
and the content will change with its circumstances. I could still
express it in another way: not everything taught in books is
part of a syllabus; or as Garcia Padrino (1998) comments,
children and young adult literature is educational, but to the
same extent that general literature is educational, as well.
Here I do not want to deny the presence of an educational
component in children’s literature, but I do intend to relativize
it and to include it in an educational discourse belonging to this
literature genre as a way to educate citizens. Moreover, I also
would like to include it not only in an interventionist and
probably moralistic line, but in the crossing of synergies of
educational agencies. Allison Lurie (1990) affirms that
children’s literature has a subversive power and she gives
some examples about how authors have escaped the morality
of their time and called children’s literature into question. The
history of children’s literature shows many embarrassing
books and authors who have been contested by educational
agencies that finally reached children and even became
bestsellers. This is the case of Roald Dahl’s books, but also
Astrid Lindgren’s works or, for other reasons, R.L. Stine. As the
publication and production of children’s literature is a sensible
sector from a social point of view, everybody feels willing to
take part in the defence and advocacy of children’s books.
 Conclusion
Children’s literature contains an undeniable educational
component as any other kind of literature does. The more
specific educational component is the development of literary
competence that it involves, as children and young people are
citizens in training and they have to acquire the necessary skills
to decode and understand literature in a deeper sense. For
that reason, when teaching literature, teachers should focus
on these kinds of values (literary values) rather than on moral
or social ones that usually arise in normal conversation about
literature or other subjects.
Nevertheless, as a text that is created within a particular
culture, it also provides rich, cultural feedback related to
traditions and ways of life helping to build bridges between
different cultures. To that end, children’s literature gives
valuable information about moral issues that can be beneficial
for children's education. However, I would like to prevent, as
Hunt (1991) asserts, educational systems from using children’s
literature as a weapon. The educational aspect of this kind of
literature must not be used only as a tool to educate children.
The most important function of children’s literature is the
same of general literature: the enjoyment of reading.