How do I develop my child's literary taste?
The love of beauty is innate… but its appreciation is acquired… its standards differ between societies and civilizations, and vary across the ages. Language is the tool for crafting literature of all kinds… For a child to be able to feel the beauty of a literary text he reads or hears, his language and literary taste must be at a high level of maturity and awareness, along with his exposure to literary experiences and expertise that enable him to perceive and interpret the aesthetic qualities and artistic values in the story or poem he reads or hears. A child speaks spontaneously and automatically without a teacher, but in order to learn to read, write, understand poetry and criticize literature, he will not dispense with a teacher… This is what Ibn Khaldun calls “the faculty of language .” Listening and imitation are the basis for language acquisition, while language crafting requires someone to develop it and guide its learner to become a skilled craftsman in its arts, know its grammatical and morphological characteristics and recognize its eloquence.
Developing children's literary taste is built on knowledge and develops through learning and practice. The more a child acquires knowledge and is exposed to experiences specific to a particular field, the more their ability to perceive quality and distinguish the uniqueness and importance that give a work value in a particular field grows. Artistic taste develops through frequent art viewing and increased knowledge related to a type of art to judge its level. For example, to judge a painting, we need to inform the child of the school to which the painting belongs and what distinguishes valuable and famous paintings belonging to that school; so that they understand the reasons for its fame and points of distinction. Anyone with musical taste must have heard a number of distinctive musical pieces and recognized their points of distinction, or conducted research about them, or perhaps learned to play; in order to offer objective criticism and give a sound judgment that determines the value of that piece. This is how we begin by increasing knowledge and learning in the field in which we want to develop the child's taste.
Literary taste consists of the linguistic ability to understand a text, extract ideas from it, evaluate words and structures, and connect imaginative concepts, to determine the literary value in a text, and learn critical thinking skills such as analysis, interpretation, comparison, perception of similarity and difference, and preference..., and creative thinking skills such as originality, fluency, and details..., These abilities are the basis for judging and studying a literary work. Simply put, if we want to raise a child’s literary taste, we need to raise his linguistic level, first by exposing him to a large amount of literary pieces, explaining and refuting the strengths and beauty in them, then we strengthen his subjective perspective by asking him what he believes and feels, and providing him with the tools that make him dive into the depths of the literary text; To create a kind of emotional connection with the work, sharpen his literary sense, enhance his taste, feel happy, and realize the main qualities that make a text beautiful and distinctive. The child can then appreciate the aesthetic values in texts, not only in terms of words, but also in terms of meanings and figurative images. The essential question is when and how do we begin?
We must start at an early age, from 1-5 years old, as linguistic memory is formed and auditory memory is refined. At this stage, the child retains passages and stories, especially those heard in the arms of those who reciprocate his love; they are associated with intimate feelings. Among the influential factors are: the child hearing an abundance of stories, and songs with good literary formulations and strong rhetorical devices. The more we read to the child and chant poems to him, the more we enrich his linguistic vocabulary and prepare fertile ground for literary taste.
At the age of 5-8 years, this stage is characterized by linguistic spontaneity, spontaneous speech, and the ability to understand the components of language. It is important to surround the child with a sound language. Therefore, Arabs and Muslims are keen to memorize the Holy Quran and teach children some of the Prophet's hadiths at this age. This helps them master the pronunciation of Arabic sounds and recognize the finest figurative images, as these are the strongest linguistic models that a child can learn at a stage in which they acquire linguistic behavior, imitate what they see and hear, and begin to understand and mimic texts. They also begin the stage of dealing with the connotations and symbols of the language, interacting with them sensorily, mentally, and emotionally. At this stage, the child loves imagination and swims in it, to the point that they may sometimes confuse it with reality, and bring life to almost everything. The seeds of literary taste are planted at this stage.
Here, literary taste begins to emerge at the age of 8-10 years, as the child savors literary stories and poems, and is able to understand some similes, such as when you say to him, “You are like the moon,” “I fly like an airplane.” So, it is important to encourage the child to read continuously and listen to literary models with aesthetic values, emotional and sentimental dimensions. The child should also be encouraged to interpret, analyze, and understand the meanings of texts, and connect them to his present and real life, and give him the opportunity to imitate these models and try to imitate them so that his literary and creative abilities grow and develop.
At the age of 10-15, linguistic and expressive abilities emerge to understand literary meanings in different texts. They are able to use linguistic embellishments, rhetorical formulations, and rhetorical styles that give an aesthetic musical rhythm to words, such as: rhyme, alliteration, antithesis, etc. They are able to write distinctive literary texts. They are also interested in human emotions, appreciate emotional literature, and love literary models with ambiguity, those that call for thought, and contain a degree of suspense. They comprehend symbolic literature with its imaginative and semantic density, and understand dramatic plots.
I would like to draw attention to the issue of cultural identity and appreciation of local literature, which contributes to the child's psychological stability and strength. Exposing him to texts related to his cultural and popular heritage and focusing on it positively helps him to connect to it psychologically and emotionally, and thus develops feelings of pride and honor in the identity of that linguistic and literary heritage, which connects him to his cultural origins, upon which he builds his modern literature. His influence by other cultures decreases, and he becomes immune to falling into the trap of losing his Arab identity and cultural assimilation. Here, I do not mean isolating the child from learning about foreign cultural models, but rather the fear in the age of globalization that his ignorance of his heritage will lead him to a state of fascination with a foreign culture, and he may feel inferior compared to his own culture.
Finally, literary taste is multifaceted, encompassing stories, poems, plays, and novels. It would be wonderful if children were to become acquainted with the diverse facets of literature, which live alongside languages, growing and changing to keep pace with the times and the flow of life. Therefore, let us introduce learners to the classics of literature and open their minds to develop, update, and employ whatever images of their reality they like, for taste cannot be frozen within specific frameworks. Rather, it is an art and a creativity that is always subject to renewal.