Lewis Carroll was one of the first to tell stories through a child's eyes--and in so doing he did much to help invent the genre of children's literature. Along the way, he framed lasting notions of how children's minds work, and of the kinds of curiosity, anxiety, determination, and uncertainty they feel. There is something archetypal about Alice; her story and her character were wholly unusual in her day, but have since become utterly embedded both in popular culture (we all know the story, even if many of us have not read the original book) and in our conceptions of childhood.

I was recently reminded of this while watching the film adaptation of Harriet the Spy (a mid-1990s version of Louise Fitzhugh's classic early 1960s novel). Harriet is older than Alice, and she lives in a different century on a different continent. And yet one of her touchstones is Carroll's nonsense poem, "The Walrus and the Carpenter." She and her nanny rehearse the poem together nightly, trading lines. It's how they register their closeness, their sense of shared wonder and whimsy, and, as Harriet comes painfully of age, their bittersweet recognition that sometimes life descends into awful absurdity--the sea really does get boiling hot, and pigs really do turn out to have wings.

I was reminded again of Alice by this story from the Daily Mail:

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.

One parent, Sharon Luinen, said: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far.

"I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer.

"Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful.

"I don't want this to look as if I have a problem with the school because I am generally very happy with it."

Another parent Karen Williams said: "I am absolutely furious my daughter was made to take part in it and I don't find it acceptable.

"I haven't got a problem with them teaching my child other religions and a small amount of information doesn't do any harm.

"But not only did they have to pray, the teacher had gone into the class and made them watch a short film and then said 'we are now going out to pray to Allah'.

"Then two boys got detention and all the other children missed their refreshment break because of the teacher.

"Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right.

"They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."

"My child has been forced to pray to Allah in a school lesson." The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class said: "It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it.

"My daughter and a lot of other mothers are furious about their children being made to kneel on the floor and pray to Islam. If they didn't do it they were given detention."

"Well!" thought Alice to herself, "after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (which was most likely true.)

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? "I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud, "I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--" (for you see Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good opportunity of showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to hear her, still it was good practice to say it over,) "yes that's the right distance, but then what Longitude or Latitude-line shall I be in?" (Alice had no idea what Longitude was, or Latitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Presently she began again: "I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll be to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards! But I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?"--and she tried to curtsey as she spoke (fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air! do you think you could manage it?) "and what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."

The kids at Alsager High School might be similarly open, interested, and receptive--but their teachers appear to be doing everything they can to crush any natural inquisitiveness they may have beneath the weight of punitive sensitivity training. Alice makes up her own mind (and she does, incidentally, eventually reject the logic of Wonderland: "You're nothing but a pack of cards"). Perhaps that's what the teachers at Alsager High are afraid of--if you let kids think for themselves, if you give them room to explore, deliberate, judge, and choose--they might not come to the "right" conclusions. Better, from this point of view, just to shove all them all down the rabbit hole and ram the approved affect and outlook down their throats.

UPDATE 7/7: There's much more at Augean Stables.