Funanya Uchemefuna

Dr. Lee

ENG 308

10 October 2017

The By Products of a Blank Slate

The insinuation that children are blank slates is a misconception built around the

ideological construct of what a child should be according to environmentalist, John Locke’s

“tabula rasa” theory. This implies that all children are born empty headed and that the

environment determines the outcome of the child. This normalized misconception is why society

treats children the way they do. Morals/lessons are taught and children’s literature; literature that

singles out people of young ages, are created to enforce what is considered “good” moral

judgment, what is considered “sensical”, and what is deemed as “normal” in society. Children’s

literature trains society to perceive children as empty vessels that need guidance into conforming

into society. The genre provides morals and lessons to manipulate the mind into “understanding”

why something is considered bad, good and/or nonsense. The novel, Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, brings evidence to the theory that children follow blindly rather it

be social norms or academic information. The “Tortoise and the Hare”, an AESOP fable, also

implies the same conception of how a child is perceived, but more so through morals rather than

using an example child in the story.

Alice tends to regurgitate the system of what is considered “sensical” without knowing

the reasons for her rationale. Her tunnel vision to not stray from the life she was conformed to

live impacts how she handles the different perspectives and norms of the new world in

Wonderland. She consistently tries to use her world’s form of logic and reason to reason out
Wonderland’s “nonsense” and “nonsensical ways” because she has been fed the concept that the

only way to live life is through a sensical point of view, which is also a social construct built

around her world’s perception of what is considered “nonsense”. The term “sense” in Alice’s

world can be construed as logical/practical, obvious, and usually placed in a narrative order.

Anything that goes against these rationales are to be considered as nonsense without question.

An example of Alice pushing her logic onto the world of Wonderland to better gather a sense of

understanding of it would be in the first chapter when she sees a bottle on the table that says

“drink me” and her first reaction is to check to see if the bottle is also labeled “poison”. Alice

remembered that in stories “children who had got...eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant

things, [were] because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them”

(6). Carroll is illustrating that a child is easily influenced by what has been taught to them

through books and that critical thinking of their own is not possible without regurgitating what

has been planted in their minds from birth. Since Alice, being the product of the environmentalist

theory, can not seem to think for herself, she relies on lessons; information taught to her in her

world, to guide her through life. In this case she used her world’s meaning of “sense” as being

obvious.

Alice is caught several times trying to push her logic onto the creatures of Wonderland in

order to make sense of it and if these acts or statements are not to what she has been manipulated

into thinking is the “normal” and can not find a “rational” explanation she simply states it as

“absurd” or something to that effect. This can be shown during the scene of the caucus-race

when Alice presents prices for everyone, herself included and states, “[She] thought the whole

thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh” (20). Her usage of

the word “absurd” is her way of dismissing information or events because she can not understand
or critically think on her own. The way of thinking in Wonderland strays from the information

society has fed her, so she is not able to cope or adapt to unscripted information. Alice’s teaching

of social norms do not relate at all to the social norms of Wonderland, so she does not know how

to interpret such actions. She tends to regurgitate the system of what is considered “sensical”

without knowing the reasons for her rationals. Her tunnel vision to not stray from the life she was

conformed to live impacts how she handles the different perspectives and norms of the new

world in Wonderland. Another social norm Alice was taught was to create light conversation, so

she kept insisting on bringing up the conversation of her cat, Dinah, which struck dismay with

every creature she brought it up too. Even though the creatures showed clear signs of

discomposure when Alice spoke of Dinah, she did not try and deter herself from speaking about

it. Alice continued to do this because it was the only way she could muster up conversation,

using the only tools she had been given by the British education system.

Children are seen as empty vessels making them purposeless and incapable of finding

themselves due to them not being able to conjure up any original thoughts, judgements, or

opinions of their own. Since all children are considered blank vessels , Alice being a perfect

example of such, her response to the caterpillar about her identity is not surprising. As the

caterpillar pesters her to reveal her identity by stating “Who are you?” several times (34), Alice

could not give him a straight answer. She does not have her own identity/purpose because a child

is born without one, they are born blank with only the environment to influence their thinking,

actions, and behavior. Just as Alice does, children do not think for themselves, yet expel

information they have been taught or observed, without actually knowing how to apply it to the

real world. Alice and children in general can memorize and regurgitate information, but do not

have the brain capacity to apply their lessons/information to real life situations. An example of
this is when Alice tried to apply longitude and latitude to the fact that she was falling down a

hole in the beginning of the story. Here she is regurgitating information, but does not understand

why or how it applies to real life. The same is true for when she gets excited about knowing the

court system. She may know who they are, but she still does not understand the concept of what

they do and why they are important.

Alice can be seen trying to implement her ways of the education system onto the

creatures of Wonderland when she begins to grow large during the court trial scene and speaks

out because she feels big like an adult. “‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of

having the sentence first!’” (102), displays that she feels that she can now dictate her ways onto

others as adults did to her without question, especially seeing as she was so obedient and quiet

when she was smaller just not too long before. This example shows how she was raised as a

child to learn things without reason just because she was told so, and to grow up means to do the

same to others in their youth, especially growing up in an imperialistic cultural way of thinking.

Carroll’s example of Alice as a “Tabula Rasa” ideology of a child was to point out the

fault in perceiving children in this manner. When an ideology about a child is created, society

begins to alter their interactions with them, which can cause either positive or negative outcomes.

In Alice’s case the outcome was negative. Carroll means to express that a child should not be

seen as a blank slate because then they will be taught as such without giving them the tools to

critically think for themselves, therefore altering their ability to think for themselves and become

knowledgeable.

The fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, on the other hand uses a different approach in

educating impressionable children. It simplifies the story and provides several lessons in order to

get the ball rolling in a child’s mind. The point of fables is to let children question what can be
considered a “good” judgement or not. These types of stories create scenarios that promote

lessons for a child to interpret on their own. In a way fables can be considered a tool used to

encourage the critical thinking process within a child’s intellect. The stories are informative and

to the point in order to ensure that no complexity hinders the lesson’s purpose. The morals given

in this particular fable can be interpreted by children in many ways like procrastination being

considered bad, short cuts being wrong, not to follow social norms blindly and even the most

popular and obvious, “Slow and steady wins the race” (63). These types of fables try to get

children to think about what good judgement is and to mold their own opinions on the matter.

The fables were even made short and language simplified in order to adapt to the attention span

and reading level of children, which one can plainly see in the, “The Tortoise and the Hare”

fable due to most of all the words being of only 2 syllables or less, conversational vocabulary

being used, and concluding the story within less than 2 pages.

The AESOP fable also adds in a example depiction of someone who has been raised in

the environmentalist ideology. The character example being the Hare, who applies the same

tunnel vision mentality to his race with the Tortoise as Alice does when interacting with the

creatures of Wonderland. In the fable the Hare is shown making fun of the tortoise and taunting

him for being slow. He then accepts a race with the tortoise and states, “he could come to the end

in two or three jumps; so he lay down and took a nap first” (63), which insinuates that he

believes the rational that he is faster and would win a race under any circumstance all because he

was made to think that way from the information he was fed growing up. The Hare in a way is

depicted as a child derived from the environmentalist theory to also let children process what not

thinking for themselves will entail.

 The point of the fable as Carroll’s novel’s main focus was, was to display that a child can

be more intelligent than what the environmentalist ideology lets on and to fall for such a

questionable theory enhances the probability that children will turn out like Alice or the Hare,

unless they give children more credit and raise them in the manner of already capable and

critically thinking individuals. Children are categorized as unable to critically think for

themselves, so information is constantly spoon fed to them to conform to the society that they

were brought up in without giving them the chance to be critical thinkers for themselves. Carroll

proves this statement true through his character, Alice, by letting her be the culprit of the

environmentalist theory and letting society constantly hinder her ability to process information in

the real world. Alice’s faulty understanding of most things is due to her being taught the “whats”

and not the “whys”. The AESOP fable proves to be similar in showing a faulty example of

someone living under the “Tabula Rasa” theory and encourages the use of critically thinking

through ways of eliciting morals within stories to give children the tools to do so. The point of

children’s literature is to adapt to children’s understanding and processing levels, while still

allowing them to analyse, process, and interpret information on their own.

 Works Cited

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass.

Bantam Books, 1981.