When educators say we should scourge ”The Simpsons” from the landscape
(”Bart: It`s buy him or bash him,” June 3), I reply with Mr. Sleary`s line from Charles Dickens` ”Hard Times”: ”People must be entertained. They can`t always be learning.” Furthermore, entertainments frequently include worthwhile lessons; Bart pays for his serious sins and learns from them, whether it`s cheating on an intelligence test or cutting the head off the statue of his hometown`s founder.
”Gradgrindism,” or lockstep schooling, breeds as many criminals as does amorality, and ”The Simpsons” isn`t amoral.
Likewise, should we ban a story that has a son butcher his dad and then wed his widowed mother? Or white out all traces of a tale of a kid who flees from home refusing to grow up and instead lives in the wild without rules? Say yes and you`ve just outlawed ”Oedipus Rex” and ”Peter Pan.” There is a lesson to learn from ”Lord of the Flies”: If you`re reared thoughtlessly revering the rigid oak, the wind will snap you in half.
