Facing the Nuclear Age: Parents and Children Together
Description
Contains Illustrations, Bibliography
$3.95
ISBN 0-920303-29-3
Author
Publisher
Year
Contributor
Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.
Review
A joint effort by Toronto-based Parents for Peace, this book offers a few suggestions for discussing nuclear war with children and some advice on raising children to react peacefully/passively to conflict.
The book calls itself an “information kit” to put readers in touch with resources for bringing up children under the threat of nuclear war. A 17-page “Resources” chapter lists films and videocassettes (annotated and with addresses), an adult book list, books for children and young adults (most seem to stress personal strength and peaceful attitudes, some are on war in general, a few on nuclear war), and articles on the psychological aspects of the arms race. The articles included in this book are elementary, presumably to entice browsers and readers to pursue the subject further. The section “What Can We Do?” does not answer the question satisfactorily (indeed, is there an answer?). Teaching children cooperation, respect for others, and peaceful resolution of conflict has its place, but how this relates to the threat of nuclear war is not clear. Some of the things the authors recommend doing include making paper cranes, collecting songs about peace and disarmament, changing competitive games to cooperative ones: for example, musical laps instead of musical chairs (everyone gets a lap), volleyball with players rotating all positions (both sides), changing badminton rules to count the number of times the bird goes over the net without a break. What ever happened to the old adage: it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game?
An irritating tendency of the book is its assumption that its readers are all Toronto residents. Most phone numbers do not include area codes; the reader must assume they are Toronto numbers. The “Articles in Psychological Aspects” section even includes location information for each article at the Education Centre Library of the Toronto Board of Education.
The authors explain that children feel they have no future and react accordingly with a sort of hedonist life style. “I’m scared I won’t grow up” is a fear expressed by many children regarding nuclear war fears. The authors fail to expand their discussion to point out that this is a general fear of many children and teenagers — that their lives will be terminated before they get a chance, whether in a car accident, plane crash, mugging, nuclear war, etc. The authors’ viewpoint is too narrow and their information a little too slight for the book to be very useful.