Text 3
A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as rule, to have it retold in identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual circumstances of the time and the individual child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.
A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or arousing his sadistic impulses. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often guilty of cruelty than those who had not. Aggressive, destructive, sadistic impulses every child has and, on the whole, their symbolic verbal discharge seems to be rather a safety valve than an incitement to overt action. As to fears, there are, I think, well?authenticated cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy stories. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.
There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two?headed dragons, magic carpets, etc., do not exist; and that, instead of indulging his fantasies in fairy tales, the child should be taught how to adapt to reality by studying history and mechanics. I find such people, I must confess, so unsympathetic and peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of madmen attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a broomstick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their enchanted girl friend.
No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child had ever believed that it was.
56. In the writer's opinion, a fairy tale .
[A] cannot be read to children without variation because they find no pleasure in it
[B] will be more effective if it is adapted by parents
[C] must be made easy so that children can read it on their own
[D] is no longer needed in developing children's power of memory?
57. According to the passage, some people who are openly against fairy tales argue that .
[A] fairy tales are harmful to children in that they show the primitive cruelty in children
[B] fairy tales are harmful to children unless they have been adapted by their parent
[C] fairy tales increase a tendency to sadism in children
[D] children who have read fairy stories pay little attention to the study of history and mechanics
58. In the writer's opinion to rid children of fears, fairy stories should be.
[A] told only once
[B] repeated many times
[C] told in a realistic setting
[D] presented vividly?
59. In the writer's opinion, fairy stories .
[A] have a very bad effect on children
[B] have advantages in cultivating children's imagniativity
[C] help children to come to terms with fears
[D] harm children greatly?
60. According to the passage, which of the following statement is not true about fairy stories?
[A] If children indulged his fantasies in fairy tales instead of being
taught how to adapt to reality by studying history and mechanics the world should be full of madman.
[B] Children can often be greatly terrified when the fairy story is heard for the first time.
[C] Fairy tales may beneficially direct children's aggressive, destructive and sadistic impulses.
[D] Fairy tales are no more than stories about imaginary figures with magical powers which has nothing to do with external world.
