What do children see when they encounter classical myth?

As I have set out in the previous two postings to this blog, I am currently beginning to plan my second set of activities for autistic children, which, as I have said, will be concerned with interplays between between myth and history. The current posting reflects on an issue that I am taking note of as I prepare these resources, namely how far I am writing not so much for ‘real’ autistic children as for my own sense of what an autistic child might be.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a piece for Liz Hale’s Antipodean Odyssey blog setting out my ‘Saturnalian surprise’ of 2017. The surprise in question was my contribution to a set that Liz was collecting from the Our Mythical Childhood team. What I shared was this: despite the best efforts of adults in packaging classical myth in the best possible way for children, the children in question might not respond in the way that the adult expects them to.

One issue here might be a point made by Sheila Murnaghan in an article that I quoted from in the posting, namely that, as it is adults who write children’s literature, their work “inevitably answers to adult agendas and addresses not so much real children as adults’ constructions of children”.[1] Re-reading this quotation a year and a bit on, I am struck by just how well it applies to the resources I am creating for autistic children.

During the early months of 2018, I produced the first of three sets of resources for use with autistic children, based around a particular episode concerning Hercules, where the hero faces a choice between two opposing paths in life. I did this having thought a great deal about what it is like to experience the world as an autistic person. I thought about what the distinctive traits of autistic thinking and autistic experience can be. I thought about how far it might be possible, though myth, to set up a gateway between the world of an autistic person and that of a non-autistic person. I thought about how far, though classical myth, I could help autistic children deal with some of the challenges of living in a world where non-autistic experiences dominate. And I thought about how far, through classical myth, it might be possible to stimulate autistic children’s imagination.

Having done all this, I am now reflecting on how it is inevitable that, as an adult, I have been bringing my own notions of children and childhood to what I write. I am also reflecting on how far the activities I was developing were responding to adult agendas, and addressing my own construction of an autistic child.  I did, however, stress in the Saturnalia piece that it is important to take account of what children say about myth. I said: "Children learn when they encounter myth. We can learn too – from children." Since then, I have been musing on how far it is important to observe what children see when they encounter something classical.

I attended a Q&A session recently – in late November of last year – with Marcia Williams, an experienced and successful children’s author. When asked whether she runs focus groups she replied that she never does. Rather, she writes what she thinks children will find entertaining and interesting. At the other end, I have heard arguments in favour of finding out how children respond to children’s literature. For example, in a review of Katarzyna Marciniak's recent edited collection on Classics and children's literature, Nadya Willliams suggests that one approach might be interview children about how they feel about what they have read on a given topic.

In addition, I have learnt a great deal from the practitioner’s reports that Sonya Nevin has added to some of her entries for the Our Mythical Childhood survey. Here, here and here for instance Sonya discusses how the intended audiences of books for very young readers respond to the material presented for them, including in ways that the author did not intend (for each link, click the heading 'ADDENDA').

In the months after I completed the first set of resources, I began gathering feedback on them – from adults, including a group of autism specialists. I took part in a workshop in Warsaw in a café run by autistic people and some of the staff from the café took part. Again, they were adults. I also worked with Effie Kostara, a classical philologist and Education practitioner who wrote a guide for teachers who might be using the resources. I ran an activity last month with students at Roehampton where their depth of engagement with the activities led to some deeply-engaged responses including the one pictured here. But, again, the participants were adults.

I have learnt a great deal from these various activities, but what is missing from them is engagement with children. However, as well as all these activities with adults, I have also, twice now, been into a local primary school’s autism unit with Effie, firstly to meet the children and their teachers and secondly to conduct a very initial pilot study of the Choice of Hercules activities. It is in response to some of the questions asked by the students that I have come up with the topic for the second set of activities. Soon, I shall post on what the questions were and how they have shaped this new stage of the project.