For the Children

For the Children was a British television programme targeted at children of school age. First broadcast on the BBC Television Service at 3 pm on Saturday 24 April 1937, for its first two years the series was ten minutes in length. Suspended in 1939 along with the rest of BBC Television for the duration of the Second World War, it returned on 9 June 1946, running on Sunday afternoons and expanded to twenty minutes in length.

The series featured a variety of different presenters and acts: story readings, puppet shows, songs. In August 1946 the "hugely popular" children's puppet Muffin the Mule made his television debut on the show, accompanied by his "friend" Annette Mills.

For the Children was last broadcast in December 1951, when it was superseded by other BBC children's television programmes, including Watch with Mother.

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Further reading

Think of the children

"Think of the children" (or "What about the children?") is a phrase which evolved into a rhetorical tactic. Literally, it refers to children's rights (as in discussions of child labor); in debate the plea for pity, used as an appeal to emotion, is a logical fallacy.

Art, Argument, and Advocacy (2002) argued that the appeal substitutes emotion for reason in debate.Ethicist Jack Marshall wrote in 2005 that the phrase's popularity stems from its capacity to stunt rationality, particularly discourse on morals. "Think of the children" has been invoked by censorship proponents to shield children from perceived danger.Community, Space and Online Censorship (2009) noted that classifying children in an infantile manner, as innocents in need of protection, is a form of obsession over the concept of purity. A 2011 article in the Journal for Cultural Research observed that the phrase grew out of a moral panic.

It was an exhortation in the 1964 Walt Disney Pictures film Mary Poppins, when the character of Mrs. Banks pleaded with her departing nanny not to quit and to "think of the children!". The phrase was popularized as a satiric reference on the animated television program The Simpsons in 1996, when character Helen Lovejoy pleaded "Won't somebody please think of the children!" during a contentious debate by citizens of the fictional town of Springfield.

Children (disambiguation)

Children is the plural of child.

Children or The Children may also refer to:

Films

Music

Other uses

The Children (1984 film)

The Children (French: Les enfants) is a 1984 French comedy film directed by Marguerite Duras. It was entered into the 35th Berlin International Film Festival where it won an Honourable Mention.

Cast

References

External links

The Children (2008 film)

The Children is a 2008 British horror film directed by Tom Shankland and starring Eva Birthistle and Hannah Tointon.

Plot

Casey (Hannah Tointon), a rebellious teenage girl, is travelling with her mother Elaine (Eva Birthistle), her stepfather Jonah (Stephen Campbell Moore), and her two younger half-siblings, Miranda (Eva Sayer) and Paulie (William Howes), to spend the New Year holiday at the secluded home of Elaine's sister, Chloe (Rachel Shelley). Chloe, her husband Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield), and their two young children, Nicky (Jake Hathaway) and Leah (Raffiella Brooks), welcome their visitors. Shortly after arriving, Paulie begins vomiting, which the adults believe is due to travel sickness.

As the night progresses, Nicky and Leah also begin to show symptoms of an illness. Leah's vomit has strange bacteria in it. As everyone goes to bed, the family cat, Jinxie, goes missing. Casey back at the woods, makes plans with her friends to escape and attend a party when she hears Jinxie snarl. But she is not able to locate the cat. By the next day, all of the children have become infected. At dinner, Miranda becomes violent, scratching Chloe and ruining the food. While Jonah tries to comfort Miranda upstairs, Robbie takes the rest of the children outside to play in the snow. Nicky places a garden rake in Robbie's path while he is sledging, which slices open Robbie's head on impact. The children scream, drawing the attention of Casey, Jonah, Elaine and Chloe. Elaine phones an ambulance, but Robbie quickly dies of his injuries.