Demons don’t move pencils. Gravity, friction and the shape and position of the pencil do.

Careful – these pencils are possessed by demons

If my sons were still children today and exposed to the ‘Charlie Charlie’ pencil challenge in the schoolyard, at least one of them (no prizes for guessing that he’s the one who builds data-mining systems) would have spent the next 10 minutes explaining to his friends in detail the forces of gravity and friction which cause the pencils to move, while the other two would have taken it for granted that there were such forces at work.

And this in childhood. The thought of their thinking or believing, in their teens, that there is a demon at work moving pencils about is laughable.

This is not because I brainwashed them against demons and superstition (I didn’t) but because I made damned sure that they thought rationally, something which involved keeping them well away from mind-bending processes like ‘duttrina’ and anything and anyone else whose purpose was the cultivation of irrational thought.

Rational minds are made in early childhood. After that, it’s too late.

Once you think rationally, you assume that there is a rational explanation for everything and the alternative doesn’t even occur to you.

But if much of your education has centred around irrationality and religious superstition (cue that ‘duttrina’), then yes, you will think it perfectly possible that demons move pencils. Why shouldn’t demons move pencils if they spend so much time popping out of cupboards to tempt you?

To automatically assume that there is a rational explanation strikes me as the normal, not the exceptional, way to be. My sisters and I were (are) the same. If we had put one pencil on another and told our mother and father that a demon was moving the topmost one about, they would have told us not to be so ridiculous, that demons have better things to do than move children’s pencils about, and that it’s simple friction or gravity. Then they would have told us to run along, and carried on doing whatever they had been doing.

They wouldn’t have raced off to see the parish priest, all freaked out, wanting advice on what to do about our potentially demonic pencils. I have to laugh just at the thought of it. And unlike me, they’re practising Roman Catholics, believers and church-goers.

It’s bad enough that children believe this Charlie Charlie nonsense (not just a demon, but a Mexican demon, because demons have earthly citizenship) and that, despite going to school, they don’t understand why something pencil-shaped would move when placed in that position.

It’s even worse that teenagers believe it. Aren’t lessons in physics compulsory? I thought they are.

But that their parents should believe it too is just incredible. If there were a Parenting Licence, it should be withdrawn on these grounds alone. If children who believe that demons move pencils -let’s not get into the subject of believing in demons in the first place – see that their mothers and fathers, though I would say more probably their mothers, are panicking about it, they will be encouraged in their irrational folly.

The Archbishop’s Curia isn’t helping, either. The new Archbishop, who has made a real impact so far with his sensible pronouncements on bird-shooting and the protection of the environment, has really let the side down by not issuing a statement telling hysterical parents: “It’s simple physics. Demons don’t move pencils. The Roman Catholic Church’s spot of bother with Galileo Galilei was 400 years ago now. We’ve forgiven him for telling the truth about why things swing and move. Look him up for an explanation of your swinging pencils.”

Instead, the Curia has told parents to discuss the matter of the pencils with their children “in an unprejudiced, calm and mature manner”, adding: “The fact is the pencils do move. What makes them move? We simply do not know for sure. The explanation could range from physics, collective psychology, psychic forces, brainpower, imagination, fantasy, sheer peer pressure to spiritual, occult forces or a combination of them all.”

The Curia also tells parents that they should trust their children’s “innate ability to distinguish between what is harmful and what is positively beneficial”.

That makes no sense in this context. It makes no sense in any context, because children do not have an innate ability to distinguish between right and wrong, between what is harmful and what is beneficial, as famously illustrated in Lord of the Flies. Children learn from the adults around them, which is why the children of criminals are raised to be criminals too.

This is not about being able to distinguish between the harmful and the beneficial, anyway – but about the tension between science and irrationality.

Group hysteria is a common phenomenon among children, especially in a cabin-fever context: boredom, being cooped up together and so on, which is why school environments are particularly prone to it. When I was at primary school, there was this hysteria about somebody having seen ‘a Blue Lady’ – or was it a white lady? – walking on the water below Taormina Kiosk at the end of Tower Road, Sliema, where Fresco’s restaurant and Peppi’s tal-Mqaret are now.

Suddenly, the school was rife with rumours about different people seeing this Blue or White Lady, and children running up and down the school’s back-stairs screaming in horror because the Blue (or White) Lady was lurking at the top. But that was 1972, and the school was run by nuns who had every reason to encourage the boys and girls to believe that the Blue/White Lady was the Madonna.

The Archbishop should know better. It’s 2015 and these are pencils we’re talking about here.