Thursday, April 21, 2011

Educate kids on reality vs. fantasy distinction

In the 1970s in the Kinta Valley, children liked to watch Superman and Ultraman movies and there were news reports that, occasionally, one or two tried to emulate the actions of their 'heroes' and jumped from highrise buildings to death. There were also stories in Ipoh town that a boy 'addicted' to kungfu movies from Hong Kong went missing for a week in Bukit Keledang near Mengelembu because he wanted to try to search for the Hidden Master' like what his 'heroes' did in the movies. So, even at that times when there was no personal computer and not many folks in town could afford to install television sets for their own families, many good teachers, parents and grandparents were always conscious of the need to educate their young ones to fully understand the basic differences between reality on earth and fantasy in movies. Girls, especially those in their 15-19 years of age who were 'addicted' to romance stories, either in the forms of English -language books or films from Taiwan, were also frequently educated with real-life news.