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Exploring Education and Children's Literature

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 CHAPTER TWO

EXPLORING EDUCATION
AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

XAVIER MÍNGUEZ

Introduction
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.
Let us start by reflecting on the concept itself of children’s literature.
As I have highlighted in previous articles:

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. (Mínguez, 2012, p.102)

This definition implies that many books that have been studied in the field
of children’s literature before need to be excluded. In this way, it is
important to differentiate the so-called literature for children and its study
areas in which we could include some border literary genres such as oral
tradition (folktales, nursery rhymes, etc.) or the paraliterature addressed to
young readers. Likewise, other products that should be included under the
area of study of children’s literature should be those that share many
literary features with it and where methodological analysis is especially
fruitful, such as comics, animation and picture books.
 Exploring Education and Children’s Literature 27

Such explanation helps to understand the nature of this literary

education discipline. According to many authors, it is mainly defined by
its target reader (the child) and by the consequences that this model reader
implies. These are, also, the two components of children’s literature: its
literary and educational aspect. However, in this chapter I will only focus
on the educational factor.

Children’s literature and education

The Spanish scholar Sánchez Corral (1995) asserted that, when
speaking about children’s literature, the educational component is always
present. It appears constantly, following a moral approach or with a
didactic aim, and sometimes even imposing some kind of doctrine. In fact,
many authors have located the birth of children’s literature in the old-
fashion didactic model and/or the predominance of entertainment over the
educational goal, as it developed during the eighteenth century (Bottigheimer
2003; Rudd 2005; Ewers 2009).
From this perspective, there are two trends that conceive children’s
literature as a discipline that would not be related with education. On the
one hand, there are writers who are more concerned about entertainment
than about moral issues. On the other hand, there are also scholars that
select children’s books without taking into consideration the educational
(or moral) aspect. However, if we look at contemporary works, we will be
able to check how wrong this premise is. Titles such as Who collects dog
poops? (Alcántara, 2003) or What about the trash? (Palacín & Verdaguer,
2002) are quite aware of the bias found in children’s books. Also, the name
of series such as “Values portfolio” or “For all types of families” indicates
the weight of the educational component. Finally, it is common practice to
hear writers complain about censorship and there is even an influential
journal called Children’s literature in education, which is a key resource
for the many facets of incorporating children’s literature into education.
Taking all this into account, we must remember that the target audience of
this kind of literature is in a process of formation. Children’s literature is
mostly read at school (at least in Spain) and it needs a series of filters
and/or educational agents before reaching the final recipient, the children
(Bassa i Martín, 1995; Ewers, 2009).
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
28 Chapter Two

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. For these authors, the need for socialisation processes based
on the mainstream values of society is placed against the concern for
children’s educational and life experiences. As Cross (2004) asserts:

I do not seek to criticise didacticism as such, particularly for this age group
[pre-scholar]. It is inevitable and necessary. There cannot fail to be, and
indeed has to be, some deliberate instruction. However positively children
are viewed, they are lacking in knowledge and experience compared with
most adults, if simply by the fact that they have not lived so long […].
There is no way of facilitating progressive reading strategies, critical
awareness and thinking skills without somehow guiding young readers of
this age. (pp. 67-68)
This guidance occurs during the years of compulsory education and, if
students acquire a reading habit when they are young children, it will
continue for the rest of their lives. Moreover it is necessary to add, as
Mendoza (1999) highlights:

works of Children’s and Young Adult Literature […] have its own value
and weight. They are semiotic entities with an aesthetic quality, and their
function is not necessarily to offer a secondary access to the ‘great
literature’; rather, we must emphasize that they are useful to train
individuals as readers […]. Precisely in these works, the semiotic qualities
that inhere in (great) literature are already present. (p. 12)

The educational component of children’s literature cannot be divorced

from its own essence. This does not mean that we should support so-called
instrumentalised literature.1 The latter is subjected to an objective, and this
does not coincide with the intention of an artistic work. Sánchez Corral
(1995) asserts that

1
This term is very common in Spanish bibliography and appeals to the books
created with a clear didactic intention Cervera (1992, p.15).
 Exploring Education and Children’s Literature 29

The priority of a thesis (moral or didactic) forces the way facts develop
and, consequently, it also forces the reader’s interpretation. He must
confront a representation of reality which is narratively manipulated […]
this interventionist (or paternalist) behaviour implies a repression of
creativity as much as a cancellation of the power of imagination. (p. 103)

The works created with the goal of transmitting knowledge fall very often
beyond the scope of children’s literature, since they are mainly
knowledge-based books. Accordingly, if a critical analysis reveals that
there is no balance kept between their educational content and their
literary quality, they will be considered alien to this field.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that if we look at the history
of literature, we will find that some kind of ideological literature has
always been approved by the system. This is the case of thesis novels of
the nineteenth century, the social literature of the 60’s, in the twentieth
century, or even still, the medieval religious literature and the Greek
tragedies. There is a sector of critics who forbid the entrance of ideology
in literary creation, but this does not mean that ideology is not an inherent
part of any literary work. Hollindale (1992), for example, considers:

[…] ideology is an inevitable, untameable and largely uncontrollable factor

in the transaction between books and children […]. Our priority in the
world of children’s books should not be to promote ideology but to
understand it, and find ways of helping others to understand it, including
the children themselves. (p. 27)

As I see it, inevitable does not mean omnipresent. Nor does it imply a
relation of dependence. There is an obvious danger when the presence of
ideology becomes excessive in children’s books. Very often, the
authoritarian discourse of a narrator makes children stop reading for
pleasure because they believe that reading simply dwells on and
reproduces the education that they receive in the classroom. Hunt (1991)
also shares this point of view when he asserts that “the wide acceptance of
restrictive text not only limits what readers think about, but also their
ability to think at all” (p. 117). It consists, in his opinion, of a violation of
the narrative agreement, which reduces the possibilities of interaction and,
ultimately, impedes the natural process and development of thinking.

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
30 Chapter Two

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 non-
commercial 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 (1994) considers that the educational message of
Catalan children’s books focuses on ten main points:

The familiar world.

The vision of the child and the role man/woman.
The personal relationships, the feelings and the ethical and social values.
The world of school as an institution.
The imaginary world and the mythological and religious world.
The world of work.
The ecological thinking: nature.
The Cultural world (science, technique, art)
The country concept and
The outside world. (pp. 25-6)

Bassa i Martín's view is very related to the social and personal learning
 Exploring Education and Children’s Literature 31

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.
A clear example of this educational message of literature can be found
in historical literature. The reader usually looks for a well-constructed plot,
solid characters, some knowledge about the social setting portrayed, and
the historical facts. When s/he does not know anything about the period,
the reader will learn numerous details. By contrast, in those cases when
s/he does know about it, the reader will enjoy the re-creation and portrayal
of a world about which s/he has some scattered knowledge. In any case,
the educational content of these books—considered as content that
illustrates and teaches the reader—is obvious.
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
32 Chapter Two

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 best-
sellers. 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.
Consequently, there are agencies that try to lead children’s books
towards a pedagogical approach but also agencies that try to emphasize the
literary education. In addition, it is possible to distinguish between
influential areas according to the culture of researchers. The United States
and Great Britain have a long tradition of studying children’s literature
from an aesthetic point of view, whereas other countries, such as Italy,
have a long tradition of pedagogical studies (Frongia, 1995). It is easy to
check this circumstance taking into consideration the origin of researchers.
In Anglo-Saxon countries, researchers usually belong to Literature
Departments; however, in other countries they belong to Pedagogy or
Education Departments. In Spain, with some exceptions, children’s
literature scholars are part of Language and Literature Didactics
Departments. In my opinion, this allows a balance between the two
because departments such as the aforementioned demonstrate a meeting
point of multiple disciplines, such as General Didactics, Sociology,
Education and, of course, Language and Literature. Both perspectives are
linked by the role of this kind of literature in the literary education of
children.

Literary education
Colomer (1996) titled an emblematic article about children’s literature,
“La literatura infantil i juvenil una escala amb passamà” (Children’s
Literature: A stair with a handrail). Later, she developed this idea in
another book, also emblematic for Catalan and Spanish Critique, La
formació del lector literari (The training of literary reader, 1998).
Therefore, for Colomer, this training function of children’s literature has to
lead the critique in its analysis, but it must be a training function from the
point of view of literary education of children and young people. It is done
through an itinerary of growing complexity that it is easily seen in the
gradual increase and diversification of literary genre models, the
 Exploring Education and Children’s Literature 33

conditions of discourse enunciation and the diversification of the type of

ending. However, similar to any other artistic product, children’s literature
is not free of hesitations, unsuccessful experiments and diversity of
approaches. Thus, this author in her study stated the substitution of the
omnipotent narrator who used to guide every reading step in traditional
literature for basic, paratextual help that includes “reading instructions,
action suggestion, abstract-titles, etc.” (p. 57). Colomer (1996) explains
that, somehow, Children’s Literature was aware that it made text more
difficult to read.
In contrast, Cross (2004) sees this complication or, rather, the tendency
toward metafiction, as a new didacticism. In her opinion, it intensifies
instead of decreases the didactic content of texts for children and young
people. Cross (2004) distinguishes new didacticism from traditional
didacticism. New didacticism is composed of three main characteristics.
The first one is the enabling and facilitating of children’s own
interpretation. This feature “goes further than speaking for children in
literature[…] than merely showing children the right societal values […] It
is related in part to the laudable ideas […] to resist and read against any
unifying, monologic, ideologically weighted text “ (pp. 58-59). The
second characteristic is the “appreciation and lauding of more challenging
complex narrative strategies that can facilitate child readers’ own
interpretation”, that is, above all, metafiction (p. 59). Metafiction, in fact,
is recognised by many authors (Colomer, Nikolajeva or Hunt) as a
children’s liberating system because it "pose[s] questions about the
relationship between fiction and reality (Waugh, 1984, as cited in Cross,
2004, p. 59). The third characteristic mentioned by Cross (2004) is the
“new embrace”, namely, the affective wrapping that is incorporated, “no
longer a comforting (possibly patronising) arm-round-the-shoulder […]
much more a ‘tug up’ to join adults on their higher vantage point, so
children can see their own path” (p.60).
New didacticism, in Cross's (2004) opinion, has a negative side since it
is also ideological and didactic, despite the implicit refusal that it contains.
It tries to train and guide the reader about the need to be aware of
significant messages in fiction. However, the books that she analyses to
illustrate that didacticism is emphasized through metafiction are in fact
quite didactic themselves. One of them tells the tragedy of chicken battery
farms and the other tells the story about a girl who shows her teacher that a
commercial book is good because she learned things anyway. It is difficult
to understand why metafiction should increase the didactic message of
these books if they are, in essence, didactic. Of course, any well-employed
literary resource intensifies the final message that should be received by
34 Chapter Two

the reader, but I cannot see why, if these messages are more subtle and
more integrated in the plot, there is a higher degree of didacticism. If we
take into consideration, as I said before, that every text has an ideological
message, the debate, really, does not exist.
In any case, an important conclusion of Cross (2004) is that “we
should not assume that, just because something is metafictive, it is
naturally freeing and liberating” (p. 68). This is because in young people
literature the educational component contains different nuances. Secondary
and high school are periods of higher formalisation of contents, including
literary contents, and this circumstance implies the generalised use of
classical literature in the classroom (at least in Southern Europe). This
approach has been contested very often from the literature didactic area.
The main reason is the desertion of teenagers from leisure reading.
Montesinos (2011) points out:

[…] we are aware that with the traditional corpus of classical works it is
not possible to promote the reading habit in secondary studies, but on the
contrary, the interest for reading decreases considerably. Students associate
classical works with the imposition of a teacher concerned with
transmitting, by training inertia, the theoretical knowledge that feeds the
whole of classical works. (p. 2)

The problem of assimilating young people literature with educational

literature happens more often than with children’s literature in part because
of the different perspectives and ideas of what young people must read in
order for them to be considered literary competent. Additionally, Coats
(2010) considers young people literature more appropriate and more
malleable for studying basic concepts of literature than classical works:

As a body of literature, YA fiction is organized around the same sorts of

tensions that preoccupy the physical bodies and emotional lives of its
intended audience: tensions between growth and stasis, between an ideal
world we can imagine and the one we really inhabit, between an impulsive
individualism and a generative ethics of interconnectedness. (p. 316)

Furthermore, Jover (2007) adds “they offer, therefore, a very useful

information to educators because [of] the double field they intend to cover:
personal training of teenagers and their literary competence” (p. 92). But,
as an educator, Jover also denounces the interesting use of young people
literature as the transmitter of values that society wants to establish upon
new generations. Unfortunately, these values have more to do with the
educational interests of teachers or with the economical interest of
publishers than with children's actual interests.
 Exploring Education and Children’s Literature 35

Peter Hunt (1991) shows a similar idea when he states “if we want to
influence others, it must be with education and with consent. The book and
especially the children’s book cannot be used as a weapon” (p. 171).
Mínguez (2011) also defends the need to find a balance in teaching
literature in primary and high school between the promoting of reading
habit and literary education, (especially about the teaching of literary
tradition). If we agree with the goals of literary education, the use of
young people literature in the classroom is absolutely essential and
undeniable in order to create a reading habit in students. Classical works
stay far from the concerns of this audience and they represent a higher
decoding difficulty for any student audience linguistically (we can always
use adaptations), ideologically, culturally, and even morally. In the Catalan
case, for instance, it is important to remember that most classical works of
Catalan literature were written during the Medieval Age and authors
employed referents that are frankly complicated nowadays. Even being
fascinating, Ramon Llull mysticism is a hieroglyphic for contemporary,
young and adult readers alike. It is important to know the classics, but the
question to ask may be, is it essential to read, analyze and dissect just the
classics exhaustively in order to accomplish the goal of keeping the
memory of our history alive and current?
In order to define children’s literature we have to keep in mind that the
educational component does not imply an explicit morality. The morality
will depend on the intention (and even the value system) of the author.
What is generally present in children’s books is a didactic intention
regarding the literary training of its audience, especially because of the
adaptation of language and comprehension capacity to the model reader.
Only then will children’s literature contribute to the development of
literary competence, the main goal of literary education.

The development of literary competence

Literary competence is a dynamic concept. By definition, everybody is
in a process of the development of his own literary competence until the
end of his life. However it is possible to approximate the necessary
minimum for the compulsory school. Dutch authors Witte, Janssen and
Rijlaarsdam (2006) quoted Coenen as one of the first authors who tried to
define this concept more systematically. Coenen (1992) said:

A reader who is literary competent is able to communicate with and about

literature. The content of this communication may be varied, but at least
shows that the reader is able to construct coherence. This might regard
coherence within a text to enhance comprehension and interpretation,
36 Chapter Two

describing similarity and variation between texts, relating text and world,
relating personal judgement about the literary work to that of other readers.

The literary competent reader’s attitude to literature is defined by a certain

willingness to invest in reading and a certain open mind regarding to
deviant perspectives and frames of reference. (p. 73)

Similarly, this interesting approach is completed, in my opinion, with the

contribution of Mendoza (1998). This author enumerates the characteristics
of a competent reader:

S/he looks for logical correlations in order to link together the different
textual components. In addition s/he tries to establish coherence norms for
finding meaning in the text.
S/he arranges the reading towards a repragmatisation of text. S/he
identifies keys, stimuli, orientation, etc., which are offered by the text for
reconstructing the enunciative situation. S/he adopts a settled behaviour to
the kind and intention of text and s/he activates his/her own knowledge to
read it.
S/he recognises superimposed macrostructures and structures.
S/he activates the content of his/her own intertexts, repertoire and
reading strategies.
S/he has a metacognition of the reading activity and it is present during
all the reading process. Using this metacognition, the reader organises and
identifies the different steps of reading to apply the strategies suggested by
the text. (p.45)

Some years later, Mendoza (2004) insisted in the idea of trying to

individualise the components of Literary Competence: linguistic, textual
and discursive knowledge for decoding, pragmatic knowledge for the
reconstruction of the enunciative situation present in the text, the literary
uses knowledge, the rhetoric and metaliterary knowledge of structures, and
the intertextual and semiotic knowledge.
As it can be seen, all authors make reference to the same strategies,
knowledge and strategies (that would lead to abilities) included in literary
competence. In such a case, the abilities connected with the decoding of
text through the reading, the abilities related with one text corresponding
with a concrete cultural code (the literary) and the abilities to refer these
texts to other texts already read or heard (audio-visual, artistic, etc.). The
competent reader uses his intertext to relate previous contents with new
information. Finally, the encyclopaedic knowledge is necessary to
understand the text, but the encyclopaedic knowledge is also related with
specific literature that allows to locate works in a particular context and
particular conventions. We must also add the relevance of the reader’s
 Exploring Education and Children’s Literature 37

attitude because, as Daniel Pennac (1994) asserts, “the verb ‘to read’ is
averse to being put in the imperative, an intolerance it shares with certain
other verbs, such as ‘to love’ and ‘to dream’” (p. 11). An active behaviour
is essential to develop literary competence. I complete the triangle with
attitude, such as the predisposition for reading, but also the interests for
new languages, new subjects, new kind of texts, a critical position towards
literature, etc.

Figure 1. Components of Literary Competence

The role of children’s literature in this progress is completely

indispensable. Witte, Janssen and Rijlaardsdam (2006) consider the
historical contextualisation as part of the very wide realm of literary
competence. Instead, in countries like Spain, it is a central part of the
language and literature syllabus. Before reaching a very high level of
knowledge of literature, it is possible and necessary to work with materials
closer to students’ interests.
From this perspective, children’s literature has a central role in the
literary education. Mendoza (2005) emphasises the virtues of children’s
literature because it is linked directly with the reception skills' level of
students. It is important also to consider that any children’s literature book
has its potential model readers facilitating not only the comprehension, but
also the identification with the reader. Every child’s book helps to train, to
orient and to increase literary competence, just like every other literary
work. The reception of every work is always a promoter of cognitive and
aesthetic capacities of a reader in training.
38 Chapter Two

Mendoza (2005) also adds that children’s literature makes possible an

approach to the literature cultural system and acquaints students with
discursive and cultural conventionalisms. Moreover, this approach is
implicit in its own discursive and semiotic-literary attributes and helps the
individual access the group culture. Consequently, children’s literature has
a central role in the literary education of children and teenagers as it
clearly helps to develop literary competence.

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.

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