This might qualify as one of the silliest academic papers of the year. An Australian professor has written about the problematic dangers of small chairs in classrooms for young children.
Such furniture can haunt individuals, and they symbolize “the undervalued nature of teaching young children,” Jane Bone writes in her recent article published in the journal Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.
“Chairs, as objects that furnish human lives, can also haunt those lives and give contradictory messages of power, comfort and suffering,” the senior lecturer at Monash University in Melbourne writes in the abstract of her paper, “Ghosts of the material world in early childhood education: Furniture matters.”
She continues: “Now and to come, the chair is a trace, a symbol, an instrument of torture and object of desire.”
Sounds like an Onion spoof, doesn't it?