You don’t usually expect controversy from the annual Christmas John Lewis advert - more a cosy, festive feeling and a quick weep into your coffee - but in 2016, the internet erupted into mild outrage. Because as well as teaching children that woodland animals are as fond of a good bounce on a trampoline as the rest of us, the advert has also, say the critics, taught them that mum and dad bring your presents rather than Father Christmas. (The advert began with a befuddled dad constructing and wrapping his little girl’s main Christmas gift.)

The dismay this caused makes it clear the lengths to which some parents are willing to go in order to preserve the Christmas magic for their little ones, but it’s not just parents who get caught up in the reality-bending gymnastics of teaching children that the world is full of wonder and mystery. Teachers can, too - and in some ways it’s even more difficult to negotiate the moral line between storytelling and outright lying to children when you’re doing it in a classroom.

Take, for instance, the heroic Devon head who last month put aside his correspondence with governors and other agencies to instead get in touch with a different type of authority - he wrote a letter to the Tooth Fairy on behalf of a distressed little boy who had lost a tooth somewhere on the playground.

Little white lies

It’s hard to view this as anything other than a bit lovely, really, and it certainly seems to demonstrate that most wonderful of things - a headteacher who understands children as well as budgets and data. But given that the job of a school is to educate, and that (brace yourselves) all of the evidence suggests that the Tooth Fairy does not, in fact, exist, are these the kinds of myths that schools should really be getting involved in?

The case for the prosecution would say that teachers are responsible for informing children about the world - that we break their trust and waste our time when we get involved in magic-making that is best left to parents. Worse, that many of the most common “magical lies” that we tell to children are not as culturally inclusive as they could be: what do you say to the little girl who has never had a visit from the Tooth Fairy and who wants to know if it’s because she’s been bad? And how do you cope with the religious contradictions of Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny?

Children, who can, of course, sense dithering on the part of an adult at 20 paces, will exploit uncertainty when they see it, so it isn’t always good enough to try to skirt these sorts of discussions. Particularly when, let’s face it, every class has at least one precocious poppet who will happily announce that “Father Christmas isn’t real” during carpet time, unleashing a riot of recrimination and rage, culminating in 20 upturned little faces looking to you as adjudicator and judge.

Do you: a) level with the children who are looking to you for facts about the world and then brace yourself for the inevitable parental backlash; or b) participate in the conspiracy and keep the magic alive, causing those children who already know the hard truth to lose all faith in you?

A mention of the Easter Bunny doesn’t necessarily require a change of subject

There is, perhaps, a third way. Because the truth is, it’s not our job to tell children what to think - it is to teach them how to think. And these are hardly the most difficult, let alone the most important, questions without easy answers we are likely to be asked during our careers. For me, one of the few silver linings of a 2016 filled with cataclysmic changes is that being asked why people would vote for Donald Trump really does put all other queries into perspective.

So I would argue that a mention of the Easter Bunny doesn’t necessarily require a nervous change of subject in order to avoid going on the record either way - it might instead lead into a discussion about belief more generally. Does believing a thing make it true? Why do different people have different beliefs? How do we decide what to believe? If such discussions are handled sensitively, even quite small children can be surprisingly philosophical and it’s a gentle approach that allows children to come to their own conclusions at their own pace.

More than this, the Tooth Fairy myth and others like it give children an insight into the kind of collective suspension of disbelief that is necessary to really play well.

In games, a thing can be both true and not true at the same time, and surely we all recall that strange in-between phase of belief where it’s a choice rather than an imperative to join in with a vast and hugely enjoyable secret like the existence of Father Christmas. It is also the case that when we talk about not wanting to drain the magic from the world too quickly for children, what we’re talking about in part is their imaginations.

Sprinkle fairy dust

And developing children’s imaginations is absolutely part of a teacher’s job. When a school I was working in left paw-prints all over the playground as an introduction to Where the Wild Things Are, teachers weren’t lying to children but instead inviting them to step, mentally, into a world where such things were possible. (Which is, of course, partially what Where the Wild Things Are is all about.) Telling the truth should not preclude this type of group imagining.

Developing imaginations is absolutely part of a teacher’s job

Perhaps ultimately, just as it’s sometimes alright for teachers to simply admit that they don’t know the answer to a question (I refer to the previous mention of Donald Trump), it’s equally acceptable to take the view that there are some questions that children need to answer for themselves, in their own time. What matters, at least for a little while, is not what we, as adults, believe - nor even what’s factually true - but what they, the children, believe. And by taking these beliefs seriously, we give children a space to talk about the things that matter to them in general.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that magic comes in many forms. And a classroom where children can discuss their dreams and beliefs is already a little bit magical, with or without the addition of fairy doors and elves on shelves…

Kate Townshend is a teacher in Gloucestershire. She tweets as @_KateTownshend