altivo

I haven't posted much this month because I've been busy. Not at the computer. What a concept, huh?

Today I was largely engaged in creating a display for the library on the subject of censorship and banned books, since this is "Banned Books Week" or, as I prefer to call it, "Freedom to Read Week." My director doesn't usually make much observance because she thinks doing so might encourage people to challenge more books, but I convinced her that it was equally important to let the reasonable majority know about book challenges and how absurd they can become.

Consequently I found myself looking up the American Library Association's current list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books and checking to see how many we had available to display. A few were checked out to readers at the moment (such as Lois Lowry's award-winning book The Giver which is number 14 on the list) and there were several that we just don't own (though I'm assured that in some of those cases we did once have them and they somehow "disappeared".)

Some discussion with others inspired me to post these remarks. Those who live outside North America often have very peculiar ideas about American culture (and sometimes, rightly so) engendered by such things as attempts to censor popular books while movies and television remain replete with violence and obscene language. The answer is that books have more and more become the target of choice because they are the easiest target. A huge majority of US residents watch lots of television and movies, while those who read for pleasure make up a now steadily shrinking minority (according to this report on an on-going study by the Census Bureau and the NEA.) The large vocal groups who demand censorship of books are generally made up of non-readers who readily admit that they have not read the book they attack, but they "heard on good authority" that it contains something offensive to them. These folks are already suspicious of books and reading to begin with, and it is easy to incite them to form a mob.

So anyway, I spent the afternoon tastefully arranging Maya Angelou's autobiographical I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (number 3 on the list) and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (number 5) alongside Rowling's Harry Potter books (number 7) and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (number 6). Michael Willhoite's gentle book Daddy's Roommate is still number 2 in challenge attempts (we no longer have a copy, it "disappeared") and I'm sure none of you can guess (unless you already looked it up) what the grand champion, most-challenged book in the US is. Alvin Schwartz' collections of Scary Stories... and More Scary Stories... are number one. And the complaint against them? Apparently, they are "too scary."

Anyway, in other news: That tractor we bought back in August finally got returned for a refund. The dealer's support was non-existent, the manufacturer's responsiveness was even worse. Calling to complain for the fifth time or so, we accidentally got to talk to the store manager, and he agreed to refund the whole price, including the delivery charge.

Summer is officially over, though we are still having warm sunny days. I eagerly await the fall color display, though it may have been too dry. Oaks are dropping leaves already.

I was off work last week, and got a few things done, including a long overdue cleaning of my home office, so I can have some room to work on writing and art again. And that's the news from Fuzzy Bear Farm, where the horses are stubborn and the sheep are noisy.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Nightnoise - Bleu

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From: (Anonymous)

John Steinbeck, William Golding, Harper Lee, Mark Twain... these are important figures in literary history, how can they be on a "challenged" list??? Insanity.

Now, although I don't agree with this challenging business, perhaps it will actually help the fantasy genre if Harry Potter starts getting less attention. I don't have anything against Potter per se, but I don't like the fact that young people today might think of Potter as "the" fantasy series, and possibly miss out on true quality fantasy literature by people like Ursula Le Guinn and Peter Beagle - who have produced true fantasy classics, not hyped fads.

There was one part of the latest Potter book that I found hilarious, though. (Paraphrasing):

Parvarti: "Don't you like the new Divination teacher? He's a dreamboat!"

Hermione: "I never liked horses."

Parvarti: (gasp): "How can you say that? He's a incredibly handsome centaur, not a horse!"

Hermione: "Well, he still has four legs."

....LOL !

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

I can tell you that among the kids who read Harry Potter, there are two groups. One group will never make the mistake of thinking this is the only fantasy. They are the ones who are already readers, and they enjoy HP as much as anyone else. The other group are those who have never been inspired to read anything before. That group are problematic. We find that most of them still don't want to read anything else. They either read Harry Potter over and over again or they stop reading anything when they finish it. I have tried to interest them in authors who write similar material, like Diane Duane, Ursula Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey, Susan Cooper, T. A. Barron, or Patricia Wrede, but with very little success.

The book challengers are utterly unimpressed with the standing of the authors in question. Many of them have no idea who Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and Harper Lee are, and they don't care anyway. They don't read, they haven't read the book they are challenging, they just object to dirty words, or sex, or some political aspect of the subject matter. Most challenges are based on the religious opinions of the challenger. I'm sure you know there is nothing rational about religion. I firmly believe that many of them, if presented with unexpurgated literal texts from the Old Testament (without telling them what it is) would find them objectionable and demand that they be censored.

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

A little addendum:

I've often wondered why The Wind in the Willows isn't challenged more often. It is obviously the story of a homosexual love affair, with two male bachelor characters, the Rat and the Mole, who fall in love at first site, shack up together, and live happily ever after. Then, of course, it also contains the transvestite adventures of their flamboyant friend, the Toad. And to top it all off, it's furry. Perversion simply oozes from the pages. It glorifies law-breaking, prison escapes, grand larceny, laziness ('simply mucking about in boats'), and even contains a pagan religious sequence in the chapter 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.'

Needless to say, that classic is one of my most beloved childhood books. :)

From: (Anonymous)

I can hardly believe that. (I'm not saying that it's untrue, I'm sure that what you say is correct, but... it's a bit shocking). Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies (three titles that are on the challenged list!), 1984, Animal Farm, A Tale of Two Cities, etc - these titles were set work for us in high school (along with many more). I know that not all of these are in the challenged titles list, but the point is that many of the titles listed there are classics of the same calibre. I would've thought that it would be difficult to graduate from high school without at least reading some of these - and especially John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, etc - these are American authors. Don't Americans value their own culture and heritage anymore?

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

>Don't Americans value their own culture and heritage anymore?

Quite simply, no. Or rather, the commonly accepted definition of what makes up American culture has nothing to do with literature. We live in an environment that is totally dominated by the so-called passive media: film, television, and spin-off media. Those media now shape American culture. Reading is on the decline (see the study I referenced in my original post, it's shocking) and readers are often viewed with suspicion. Educated and literate politicians like Al Gore or Michael Dukakis have to overcome terrific prejudice on the part of the voters, who see them as "eggheads" or "intellectuals" and view them with jaundiced mistrust. One reason for George Bush's apparent popularity is his intellectual mediocrity. He makes Joe Idiot Voter feel better about himself.

There was a time when American students had to read those books before they graduated from high school. Even in my day, we read Dickens, Elliot, Shakespeare, Twain, Hemingway, and Steinbeck in high school. But the decline was already beginning. For example, my elder brother (seven years older) had to read Tale of Two Cities while in my time that was considered "too difficult" and instead we read "Great Expectations". Macbeth was replaced by Julius Caesar, and For Whom the Bell Tolls by The Old Man and the Sea. Shorter works with simpler stories.

Now, three decades later, many high school students are never exposed to these "difficult" authors at all. The sad truth is, the average reading ability of a high school graduate in the US has declined to about that expected of a 6th grader (12 year old) fifty years ago. The colleges are expected to take up the slack, but since incoming students are not capable of serious reading and it is considered injurious to their self-esteem to make them take remedial classes, many institutions have cut back on or eliminated the general education requirements (the history, math, and literature courses that used to be required of all students, regardless of their focus or curriculum.)

Time for my horror story. From 1994 through 2001, I was a librarian at an accredited four year college in Chicago, one with a substantial enrollment of about 9000 students. One May, a student came to me at the reference desk with a "take home" exam from her journalism class. (You may not know the concept: an examination that the students are allowed to take home with them, look up the answers wherever they can find them, write their responses and return. A pretty poor test of learning, it mostly teaches them how to cheat.) She began by proudly telling me that she would be graduating in two weeks and this was the very first time she had been in the library. Since she didn't know where anything was, she wanted my help. One of the questions that was puzzling her:

In which play by Shakespeare was Mercutio a character?

You probably know the answer, since you seem to have a traditional education. She asked me where to find Twentieth Century Literary Criticism so she could look for the answer there. I explained to her that Shakespeare wrote in the 16th century and would not be covered by that series. Her response left me dumbfounded: "Well how should I know? I never heard of him before." This is a typical (alas) American student who has completed not only high school but a four year college degree.

From: (Anonymous)

That's sad, but there is something even worse about to happen in South Africa... They're calling it "Ciriculumn 2005" or something similar. By 2005, they want to do away with exams completely. Ever since 2000 or so, they have been lowering academic standards (although I'm sure that even in my own time standards were lower, than say, 50 years ago), but it still hasn't helped a lot with the high school pass rate. When I graduated (late 90s), the pass rate was under 50%. Since 2000 they have managed to bring it up slightly, but "previously disadvantaged" South Africans are still failing for the most part. The new ciriculumn sounds very...progressive. Most of the classes involve discussion only, and grades will be awarded based on how hard the student tried, not on test results. They were supposed to have pilot programmes in 2003 and 2004, but so far the old cirriculumn still seems to be in effect. I understand that it would be nice to have a pass rate comparable to a first-world country like those in North America and Western Europe, but at what expense? Instead of allowing things to progress naturally, the government is going to interfere and alter the education system in SA radically. It's a sad situation, but I don't have children, and don't plan to have children, so it's not a huge deal for me.

Don't misunderstand me, I still think that SA is a good country and has a lot of potential, but I don't believe that taking short-cuts like this is a good way of going about realizing that potential. The economy in SA is still growing, but the government seems content to let forgeiners be the driving force behind that. (Thanks to the exchange rate, Americans and Europeans are buying properties/businesses/etc here as if they were playing with monopoly money). The exchange rate has also been favourable for big business (eg, BMW's factories in SA produce a large portion of all BMWs worldwide and are exported from SA)... but how long is it going to last? It is not possible to rely on cheap labour and cheap currency for economic growth forever... and lowering the quality of education will not make it easier for SA to produce more skilled workers. So I'm not sure I am seeing the big picture, the grand plan for SA, in what the government is currently doing.

From:

altivo.livejournal.com

Uh oh. You're describing exactly the same decline that has poisoned US schools. I think it started in the 1960s but didn't really gain momentum until the 1980s. Now it's in full swing. Comparing students to each other, or making them meet standards at all is considered unfair and insulting.

Education has been redefined. Instead of fitting the student for life and teaching them to think, it is now viewed only as making them ready for the job market. Anything that does not have immediate relevancy to the demands of employment is considered optional or even undesirable. No matter that big business really prefers to have large numbers of cheap, unthinking robots to hire from, if that's the demand then that's what we deliver.

Thinkers are dangerous. They might turn out to be political liberals or something. Worse yet, they might influence others and start revolts against the status quo. So more and more our schools have abandoned thought, logic, reason or anything that might just lead to dissatisfaction. Instead they teach their students how to be good consumers and cooperative cogs in a capitalist oligarchy. Dangerous ideas are suppressed. Better that they don't even know of such things.

From:

calydor.livejournal.com

I'm surprised '10 little niggers' is not on that list. I can understand #60 - American Psycho. That book is BO-RING, and -should- be banned. ;-)

To quote my mom when I told her this: Please tell me it's just a PR stunt from the publisher ...