Mary Poppins

As an elementary teacher and mother, the news of the newest school shootings certainly hits me as hard as anyone. Just days ago, a middle school student here was arrested for threatening classmates. What better time to offer my unashamed, sugar-coated solution to part of today's madness: let kids grow up slower and sweeter, gosh darn it! My number one educational aid in the "slower, sweeter," curriculum is showing Mary Poppins as often as possible.

This movie made a screen star of Julie Andrews, and paved the way to her triumphant role in The Sound of Music--another excellent family movie that really is fit for families. When Mary Poppins was released, it featured special effects that, while tame today, were state-of-the-art then. If you saw this musical as a child, the fireworks exploding over London surely must have taken your breath away, and those kites dancing in the wind must tug at your heartstrings even now.

Julie Andrews, of course, is Mary Poppins. The magical nanny is a tad conceited, but since she is so close to perfect, most everyone adores her anyway. She blows in to help Michael and Jane Banks recapture their parents' attention. (Read the Time article on the California shooting and talk to me about parents' attention!) George is busy at work, and mother Jane is a woman rights' activist. Jane and Michael are little terrors, because although they live in a comfortable, well-staffed home, they need attention, love, and guidance. (Ahem.)

All the roles in this movie are played to perfection. Hermione Baddeley often crops up as a sour domestic, and Ed Wynn is a superb character actor even when floating around annoying grown-ups with bad jokes; both are in their element here, needless to say. Glynis Jones, as Mrs. Banks, portrays the dilemma women still face--do you strike out for equality, or support family first. And Dick Van Dyke--well, he's superb in whatever he does. Here, as the resourceful Bert, he outdoes himself, especially as the woebegone but wise chimney sweep.

If Mary Poppins merely preached, it would be important but forgettable. Richard and Robert Sherman, however, created a musical score that is comparable to works by such teams as Lerner and Lowe or Rodgers and Hammerstein. In fact, when I double checked the credits, I was surprised to find their names instead of Lerner and Lowe.

From the rousing "Step In Time," with the extensively choreographed maneuvers of the chimney sweeps, to the tender "Feed the Birds" )(which my "personal" children wish I would quit trying to sing), the soundtrack is worth hearing over and over all by itself.

But my purpose in reviewing Mary Poppins is to talk about something that might come from the song "A Spoonful of Sugar," and that is the idea of at least exposing our children to works like Mary Poppins.

Yes, some will say today's children are too smart, and too easily bored, to watch this lengthy movie. And yes, the film's English setting and dialect isn't commonly known to children who need it most, troubled American youth.

I don't care. My first graders see it once a year. I explain about the language, and I don't expect them to sit through the whole thing without a fidget. But I would a million times rather offer them the chance to see it, than to not expose them to it. My own daughters know the lyrics by memory, and often put it on themselves--even though they are teenagers and allowed to watch most of the programming on TV. Maybe some of my first graders will arrive at the conclusion, some day, that there are other choices than the current crop of movies and programs. I hope so.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not simplistic enough to tell you that if we made everyone watch Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and similar shows that violence would go away. I realize that perfectly well. But I do think that providing entertaining shows without gunfights, sexual innuendo, or violence (if you exclude the "deflowering" scene at the bank, which is, after all, pretty mild!) can only help children understand that "how it is" isn't necessarily how it was, how it should be, or how it has to be.


Mary Poppins is suitable for children of any age; if you expose them from an early age, they may develop a fondness for the music and the message. So take your children back in time now and then, to a world where children could reclaim their parents' love, and family was a magic place of contentment and innocence. We need that for all of us, now.