Gardening Minds

Anne Hathaway's Roses
Originally uploaded by peachicken.

I love gardening. One really interesting thing I have been thinking about with this class I am taking - Children's Literature and the Moral Imagination - is how raising or teaching children is very like gardening. A master gardener must make choices - decisions about what kind of environment to create. Small factors in that created environment can have a dramatic effect on the health and appearance of the flower. Too little sunlight makes a flower stringy... Too shallow earth makes for poor roots... And this translates to people, too. As children grow up, you can help develop their sense of morality and cultivate their nature by providing certain kinds of nutrients and sunlight to their souls. These factors are important to developing a healthy moral imagination. (And no, Mom. This post does NOT mean I am ready for parenting yet!)