Talent requires sacrifice

Overloading your kids may harm growth in childhood

By Kwok Kar Bo

“Through self-determination and clever marketing, all women lived happier ever after. . . .”

A brand-new ending for the classics? Women no longer envy Cinderella’s beauty, but her peasant rags.

This is a rewritten “Cinderella”, taken from James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, published by Macmillan Publishing Co. Although such books have shown up in English in the West, they have yet to make an appearance in Chinese.

To be “politically correct”, or “PC”, means to be unbiased and discrimination free. The term first originated at colleges in the United States in the late 1980s.

The PCers, mainly scholars and critics, commented that some of the traditional standards sketched in the classics are inherently racist, sexist and oppressive.

In many fairy tales, much emphasis is put on the male role. Women are usually symbolized as weak, foolish and subjected to exploitation.

“The prince is always the saviour of the princess. There has never been a story about a princess saving herself or even saving a prince,” said Dr. Chan Kin Man, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“The portrayal may mean nothing discriminatory according to the social norms of the past,” said Dr. Chan. “But in today’s world, changes must be made, as society’s attitudes and expectations towards gender have altered.”

He mentioned the importance of these reading materials to children.

“Adults usually underestimate the influence of reading on children. Reading acts as a socialization process which is crucial, especially to the future development in children’s ways of thinking.”

Children are easily affected by the existing stereotypes, as they are not mature enough to judge things independently.

In Western countries, people introduced politically correct story books to children in order to help them build up more positive and fair minds.

In Garner’s “Cinderella”, attending a ball in the palace was a great inconvenience for the young women.

They had to squeeze themselves into tightly fitting dresses, jam their feet into high-heeled shoes and paint their faces with make-up that had been tested on animals.

As for the men who were planning to date them, they showed only aggression towards Cinderella.

The idea behind rewriting the stories is to let the readers realize the “insensitivity” of the writers of those tales concerning women’s issues, minority cultures and the environment.

However, in Hong Kong, there are few books introducing the idea of “political correctness”. Few people write about the topic — and it is even difficult to find somebody aware of the subject.

“Schools in Hong Kong seldom introduce the concept of ‘political correctness’ to the students,” said Miss Kimmy Wai, marketing manager of Sun Ya Publication Hong Kong Limited.

“Besides, what parents choose for their children to read is mainly related to their studies,” she said.

Also, it is difficult to write or to translate books on such topics.

“It’s hard to write stories addressing the ‘politically correct’ message which the writers intended, while at the same time being simple enough for children to understand.

“Some stories may lose their essential message when translated into Chinese. The cultural differences will hinder local readers to understand the stories fully,” Miss Wai said.

However, Dr. Chan said he didn’t think that Hong Kong people ignore the subject completely. “I would rather say we are at an infant stage,” he said.

April 1996