‘Slow and steady wins the race,’ or so says the tortoise to the hare.

It’s certainly up for debate whether or not references to Aesop’s fairy tales will mean anything to those 18 or under these days. Guaranteed, The Tortoise and The Hare will be cancelled at some stage. I personally don’t see how there could be anything politically incorrect about a small mammal and a reptile running a race, but I could probably find something if I tried (or was willing to be offended by the fact that both creatures weren’t sufficiently applauded for ‘trying their best’).

Analyse anything deeply enough and you’ll inevitably take offence to something. But I digress…

I could wax lyrical (to the tune of Gangsta’s Paradise, of course, in honour of the man of the moment) about the ceaseless attempts of people on both sides of the political spectrum to ban books, but that’s not the point I wish to address.

Fairy tales. That’s the F-word I think our society needs more of.

Every culture boasts a rich storytelling history. Stories are our way to connect, and serve as an emotional bridge that spans the gap between societies and ages. The authors of earlier centuries may not have had smartphones, but even then we were connected by a shared love of the miraculous, the unexplained, and the possibility of magic.

I was brought up on a diet of myths and legends (for anyone interested the Irish know how to spin a yarn, although there are an awful lot of tragedies, evil queens, and swans involved, fair warning). I believed in Santa Claus until the age of 12, was in love with the idea that Hogwarts just might exist, cheered on Cinderella, and feared the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood and the tick-tock of the Peter Pan crocodile.

Fairy tales teach us about being human, instil values, encourage us to persevere, and caution us against greed long before we are old enough to know about law. Without the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and without our history of mythology what are we? These tales inform our sense of self, and help us to create the purpose which leads to progress and the drive which leads to innovation.

Without imagination, we stagnate.

We complain an awful lot about the actions and words of the human toilet bowls aka the political leaders we choose to represent us. Yet when a problem crops up in society, it is to them we turn. Government has gone from a lawmaker to an ethical tyrant, and we need to be less comfortable with that. Maybe we would have less to complain about if we did more and demanded less? Perhaps things would be better if we had faith in ourselves and our legends to define us, rather than our politicians and their policies…

We are a world depressed, beaten down by a relentless news cycle, overexposed to every woe in every corner of the globe, defined by our tragedies, and the ritual of ‘owning our trauma’. Children are exposed to this unending stream of negativity, and are not nearly as hardened as we are to withstand it. If we want to solve the big issues of our time, we need to cultivate a culture of magical thinkers, not middle-aged nihilists trapped in the bodies of eleven-year-olds. Teaching children about the horrors of climate change won’t create the pioneers we need to tackle it. We instil passivity and hopelessness, or anger when what we really want to teach is the value of initiative. What we want are visionaries.

It might seem more prudent to focus on the potential extinction of the Tortoise, rather than his triumph in Aesop’s tale. But fiction is far more powerful than fact, as propagandists the world over know.

Let our fairy tales be the foundation of our society rather than our legislation. Let magic guide teaching, as much as method. Unless of course we’d prefer a society of Eeyores, over Tiggers. Personally, I’d prefer bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, and pouncy. But then, I never grew out of Harry Potter.