Author says historical textbooks intimidate children
6 Feb 2012 15:14
Farough Safizadeh said his main goal of writing 'Ancient Knowledge for Children and Young Adults' is to reconcile them with history.
IBNA: Farough Safizadeh announced the publication of 20 volumes of 'Ancient Knowledge for Children and Young Adults' as a historical encyclopedia encompassing various subjects about ancient Iran. "Initial studies for the compilation of the series took almost 10 years and most of the references on the history of ancient Iran have been in three languages of Persian, English and German."
Stressing on the necessity to familiarize children with history, Safizadeh said: "Many of our scholars like Shahid Motahari have emphasized on the significance of national and religious identity and considered national identity preliminary to religious identity. The Holy Prophet had once stated that Love of fatherland is a sign of faith."
He continued: "Unfortunately the west and the Jews have attempted to form the history of Iran the way they desired. This resulted in the creation of abusive films like 300 in recent years. So I decided to revise the history of Iran and present it in a form appealing to children and young adults."
Safizadeh mentioned management, mysticism, biology and engineering as some entries found in the series and added: "The series is going to reach 80 volumes and addresses all the subjects any young child or adult may have questions about."
As for mysticism, he added, many children experience mystic dreams and therefore they have many questions about it. Such subjects are missing in other historical books and the issue is totally neglected here.
Safizadeh continued: "Reading history would push our children forward. We should be rooted in the past and yet look forward to future. Unfortunately our books of history miseducate our children, whereas history is a sweet narrative that can teach them how their ancestors used to live."
Proper of a language appropriate for children and classification of subjects are features of these series
Safizadeh added: "Despite its 200-year history, America has thousands of historical volumes published for children. We have not worked in this field enough and yet ancient texts estimate that the plateau of Iran is at least one million years old."
"The west introduces Greece and Rome as founders of human civilization in historical books, whereas Iranian civilization precedes the Greek's. This is even approved by Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato as they confess they have learnt philosophy from Iranians."
Refuting the claim of nationalism on this encyclopedia, Safizadeh stressed that the book's viewpoints are completely scientific and based on valid sources.
He finally stated that children's literature of Iran is rooted in its history. Western history of children's literature is no more than two hundred years old, whereas in Iran we have had texts specifically written for children, such as the Asurik Tree, and even parts of Avesta. This proves that Iranian culture has been a forerunner of children's literature as well.
