Don’t’ read that! It might be bad for you. – Amanda Green

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Don’t’ read that! It might be bad for you. – Amanda Green

Once upon a time, our children were encouraged to read. They were given books with exciting storylines and characters they could identify with, even cheer for. They were given non-fiction books in school that taught them it was a good thing to strive for the stars and not worry about being told something was impossible. If they could imagine a way to make it happen, they knew they could try to find a way to make imagination turn into reality. Long before man made it into outer space, some young boy or girl lay in bed, staring out the window into the night sky. They saw themselves on the Moon or Mars.

Or they imagined themselves becoming the next Einstein or Edison or Marie Curie. They were Paul Bunyon and Pecos Bill. Scheherazade and Aladdin. So many stories, fact and fiction, and we were encouraged to read them. Better than all that, we were encouraged to read above our grade level, to excel.

Sure, there were books we weren’t supposed to read, at least according to the school administrators. When I was in high school, back in the Dark Ages, one of the “forbidden” books was Catcher in the Rye. Whether the administrators were afraid we’d all become like Mark David Chapman and go out and assassinate some musical icon or something else, I don’t know. All we were told was that it was not “appropriate” for high school students, even those in the advanced classes – classes now viewed as AP or even IBE courses. We weren’t mature enough to be able to differentiate what Holden Caulfield did from real life.

Since then, we’ve seen Toni Morrison’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings all the way to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books being put on the banned books list. All it seems to take in so many education districts is one parent objecting to a book for whatever reason. The reasons can range from language to sex, implied or real, to religion or violence or anything else they might find objectionable.

Now I know that to truly ban a book you have to be a government, but when you’re a school you still can keep books away from students, or at least you might think you can.

The latest example of this comes from Florida. It seems the principal of Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola has decided to remove Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother from the One School/One Book summer reading program. Well, to be fair, the first stories I read about this said the principal was removing the book from the program – the word “ban” was being bandied about – but subsequent stories noted that the book was only being removed from the reading list for the ninth and tenth grade students.

What makes this instance of pulling a book from a school reading list different from many of the other instances when this has happened is multi-fold. First, the author had been scheduled to visit the school and discuss the book with the students at the end of the summer. Whether you agree with Doctorow’s politics or not, you have to give it to him for wanting to visit with the entire school to discuss the book and its themes. More importantly, the ability for those students to hear the author discuss why he wrote the book – and what it means to be an author – could be invaluable for any number of them.

Now, even if he does make the trip at the end of the summer, there will be a number of students who won’t be allowed to hear him because they weren’t allowed to read his book.

So, why weren’t they allowed to read it? Let’s start with the fact the principal admitted to only having scanned the book and becoming concerned about some of the topics. It was while he was scanning the book that he noticed it “included language and themes he didn’t think were appropriate for his younger students.”

Mind you, this is the same principal who said, “I take it upon myself to look at what kids are exposed to and what’s in their best interests.”

And this is my first and probably greatest problem with what happened here. As any English teacher worth her teaching degree will tell you, you can’t get the full impact of a story, no matter what its length, by scanning it. Your eyes will pick out certain words but not necessarily their context. You certainly won’t get the deeper meaning of the book.

So here you have a principal who proclaims that he takes it upon himself to look at what his students are exposed to and to then determine what is in their best interests. So tell me, how can he do so without actually reading the book?

But there is another subtext here that the principal seems to be missing – and one that Doctorow and his publisher, Tor, has embraced. Tell a kid that he shouldn’t read something and it is almost a guarantee that he’s going to race out and try to find a copy, if for no other reason than to find the parts of the book that were so bad he shouldn’t read it. Doctorow and Tor realize that and, for that reason, they are sending 200 free copies of the book to the high school for the students.

I guaran-damn-tee you that those ninth and tenth graders will be huddling up somewhere, thumbing through the books they’ve either picked up for free or have gotten from their friends or older siblings looking for the – gasp – sex or violence or whatever the adults are whispering about and that makes Little Brother so bad.

Instead of worrying about how the poor little darlings might be led astray by a story about teens questioning authority and Homeland Security, wouldn’t it be better to actually discuss the book and its themes? Gee, maybe there is something in there those kids ought to be thinking about – like the encroachment on our rights by the government and what our options are to slow and, hopefully, stop the slide into socialism or worse.

But I guess it is dangerous to have our teens actually thinking about issues that might impact them and their families. Just like it is dangerous for them to read about people who are different from them or about British boarding schools where “magic” is taught. After all, the one might help us understand those raised in a time or place different from what we were and the latter – gasp – might reek of Satanism.

Yes, my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek on the Satanism comment because, as with Principal Roberts, most of those who objected to Harry Potter in our schools had never read the book. They heard it was about magic and we all know that magic is actually magick which is nothing but blood rights and black magic and devil worship. It is so much safer for all of us to pass judgment on a book or a poem or essay based on rumor and innuendo than it is to read the thing. If we read it, we might be contaminated and where would we be then?

Oh, I know, we might be infected with an attack of imagination or inspiration. We definitely can’t have that in our schools, can we?

Maybe this bothers me so much because I read it on the heels of D-Day. I wasn’t alive back then – heck, I wasn’t even a twinkle in my mother’s eye. She was 13 years old then, younger than many of the kids impacted by the decision not to let them read Little Brother. The parallel it draws in my mind is to the Germans rounding up books, tossing them into piles and burning them “for the good of the nation”. This might not have been a book burning, but the reasoning for not allowing these youngsters the chance to read the book is too close to what happened back then for me to like it.

Maybe I suffer from being brought up in a home where I was encouraged to read – everything I could get my hands on. Or maybe it is because high school for me included teachers and administrators who weren’t afraid to challenge us with unpopular topics to consider and discuss. I first read the Communist Manifesto on junior high. Even then it was a bunch of rubbish. Sure, it looked good on paper but there was no way, humans being what they are, that it could work the way it was envisioned.

I read the John Birch Society’s Blue Book, almost as chilling in some ways as the Communist Manifesto, in 11th grade history. Why? Because Mrs. Monk, my teacher, realized I was bored with what we were studying. I already knew the material. So she came in one day and called myself and one of my best friends, who was also bored, up to her desk. That’s when she handed us each a copy of the Blue Book and gave us a week to read it, study up on the JBS and to prepare a presentation to the class. After that, while everyone else still toiled – for the umpteenth time since we began school back in the first grade – on the Civil War and its aftermath, David and I had to study and debate which would be best, the United Nations or the League of Nations, Communism or Socialism or Democracy.

I was raised, as were so many of my generation, to question authority and not to blindly accept what the government – or any other organization – said, especially if it was prefaced with “for the good of the [fill in the blank]”. Now we have our schools and other institutions teaching just the opposite. Let Big Brother care for you. Big Brother is here to protect you, succor you and comfort you. Trust Big Brother and all will be well.

Sorry, I’ll be over here in the corner reading the books you don’t want me to, telling my son and – hopefully one day his children – why it is important to question authority. If we don’t, if we just accept what those in power tell us, there is no longer any real check and balance of power. I’m not ready to let anyone tell me, or my children, what we can or can’t read – and especially when they haven’t read the book themselves.

I may not agree with a lot of what Doctorow stands for. But in this, I agree with him completely and kudos to him and to Tor for sending the 200 copies of the book to the school.

Of course, I remember the Ayn Rand Institute doing that with both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead when my son was in high school and both of those are books I could get behind more than Little Brother. Both were books my son had no interest in reading – especially Atlas Shrugged because of its size – until he was told by the school he couldn’t read them.

When will our so-called educators learn that kids will do exactly what you tell them not to do and when will we start educating and not indoctrinating our kids in our schools? It can’t happen too soon.

364 thoughts on “Don’t’ read that! It might be bad for you. – Amanda Green”

  1. Many moons ago, I was twelve and had no bookshelves. Instead, I had a stack of books on the shelf in my closet. One stack. I am a mild obsessive-compulsive and arranged the stack from the largest to the smallest. I was given a freebie book, Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, although it was more a pamphlet. One day my mother found my stack and confiscated Lucretius. And yes, I went back to the freebie source, got another copy and read it. I was mystified by why it was forbidden, Epicureanism? Really? This is evil? Many years later I asked my mother why she had taken it. After questioning, I found she had never read it, but had confused it with Aristophanes Lysistrata. I was firmly convinced I’d never ban any books for any reason.

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    1. A lot of people make the bizarre – though painfully understandable – mistake that wrong=evil (whether wrong in absolute terms, or simply by their lights) and work hard to eliminate any such wrongness from their environment. See: progs, vileprogs (and their “statistics” *rimshot*). My own parents (a pastor and a teacher, note) had an interesting take on it. There were things they asked that I wait to experience, and everything else – especially early on – had a debriefing afterward. We talked about movies, books, plays, school lessons, etc. It seems to have worked out fairly well, and Mrs. Dave and I intend to pursue a similar line with Wee Dave and siblings.

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      1. had a defriefing afterward

        This Sunday a friend, a formerly very rebellious preacher’s kid, told of how her father would not lecture or rant, but would calmly sit her down, look her straight in the eye and ask, “What did you learn from this?” (She did note: sometimes it took her a few tries for her to learn from her experiences.)

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    2. I agree with your mother’s decision, even if it was ill-informed. Epicureanism is a terrible philosophy; you should have been reading Marcus Aurelius.

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    3. I’m halfway convinced that one of my kids reading “The Complete Jung” at the age of 12 was a very very bad idea. Even so, I’m not sure what good forbidding it would have done.

      It’s all fine and good to figure parents should read anything their kid reads and then discuss it, but in the real world it’s not very practical. What are you going to do? Deny all books until you’ve got a few hours to read a single book on someone elses to-read list?

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      1. My mom made sure to try to read at least a bit of anything I brought back, and the ONE time that she was going to suggest that I not read something– I’d already gone “….this is stupid. Not sure why this author is so famous, this story sucks and I’m three chapters in with a bunch of mooning over blood and all the trappings of evil for no good reason.”

        Scan and read more if there’s a specific worry… or if you get hooked on their books. (Mom. Drizzt)

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    1. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one whose mind went in that direction.

      The funny thing is, Little Brother is on the reading list I’ve given to my son, and he’s going into the 8th grade. Why? In part, I want him questioning authority, to not blindly accept that because someone is calling the shots that they actually know WTF they’re doing. Little Brother actually does a good job of introducing kids to some of that.

      The sequel he put out recently, not so much.

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  3. Ok, in 1985, i switched schools (school systems-literally states) two months into the school year. My dad had purchased the D&D basic set about a year before and was thinking about playing with some old friends. That didn’t happen and D&D was a popular nerdy topic at my new school, so i tucked those books in my bookbag and took them to school, reading them largely on the bus. (hey, 90 minute bus ride on both sides, i had to use the time)

    And then i found out i couldn’t have them at school, they were BANNED.

    Not ‘maybe’ banned, really actually banned, in all the schools in the county. ‘Banned’ as in ‘we take the books away from you and give them back at the end of the school year’ banned. (more often than not, it was ‘give them to your parents directly as soon as they complained in person”) I was in junior high (8th grade) and they were banned because a kid at the high school had ‘killed himself over D&D’.

    I know the look you’re giving me. It was one of the ‘actual’ cases of it. His mother went on to become one of the biggest anti-RPG activists.
    So i left the D&D books at home. And brought other RPG books. And got friends to. By the time i hit 10th grade, they didn’t really bother as long as it didn’t interfere with your schoolwork.

    (Yes, I am aware that I just gave you enough information to figure out where I went to high school. BFD.)

    Anyway, in high school, I played D&D for awhile with some people who were in that poor kid’s gaming group. They said he was always a little ‘off’ and had mentioned things to their parents and his parents and were ignored. The particular person i was friends with, who used to be in his gaming group, was the salutatorian of his graduating class, and ended up going to Harvard as a poly sci major with a full ride scholarship.

    So much for how horrible D&D is.

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    1. Oops. Forgot the coup de grace of the story….

      In 1996 I was professionally published as both a writer and artist working on White Wolf’s Trinity RPG.. I received copes of the first two books and kept copies, gave my dad copes, and the other copies (one of each)….

      I donated to my high school’s library.

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    2. It’s interesting reading about the D&D hysteria – I probably went to highschool some years after that particular moral panic burnt out.

      I wish I had known about those sort of roleplaying games back then. I remember independently inventing what amounted to roleplaying games that I would play with my brother, but I never had any idea at the time it was a thing that other people did. That sort of freeform shared-imagination play with someone else was probably the most fun I’ve ever had.

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      1. A suburb thereof, but yes.

        And i said “at the high school” when i should have said ” a nearby high school” but anyway.

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        1. OK, after some research i found out what the ‘deal’ was…

          The principal of Pulling’s school was the same man as the principal of my high school.

          Add that together with having people known to be in his old game group in the school…

          Funny how the precise details get fuzzy. Also funny how exactly what school he went to is so hard to find.

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          1. Unfortunately there are some who will become obsessed with and abuse just about anything. This does not make it wrong for everyone. (or we could all consider quitting eating and drinking…)

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            1. Aw, darn. Here I was hoping you were talking about Dallas Egbert III, and you were from my area. (And no wonder somebody named Dallas Egbert III would have a drug problem and go running around the steam tunnels being a druggie, and no offense to I and II who were no doubt worthy men. It’s just too bad that he dragged D&D into it.)

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              1. James Dallas Egbert III wasn’t the one who dragged D&D into it. It was the brilliant super-detective Bill Dear who was wandering around the steam tunnels looking for Dallas (and sending his game notes to Gary Gygax to see if he could “decode” them). Young Egbert had run off to New Orleans and by all accounts was having the time of his life. Eventually he heard his family were looking for him, and called home.

                The brilliant super-detective later wrote a book about it, in which he somehow managed to convey the impression that wandering around the steam tunnels at Egbert’s college had anything at all to do with cracking the case.

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            2. I have known people to get obsessed with and to abuse the Bible, but I do not blame the Bible for their misuse (well, okay, parts of it, like Revelations, and the story of Lot & his daughters is reallllllly squicky. The part about David, Bathsheba and Uriah isn’t suitable family reading, either)

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              1. No, but that last one gives you a good handle for the Benghazi matter, as I have a strong feeling that our president “pulled a Uriah maneuver.” For what reason, no one knows.

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                1. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! You just made this crystallize. I’m no fan of the worst executive since, well, forever, but you just made me realize that he didn’t do it – he’s just an accomplice. It was Hillary. It fits and she has a trail of mysterious deaths behind her twelve parsecs long.

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                2. I misread that and was trying to figure out what the Bergdahl deal* had to do with Uriah. But Benghazi, I get where that would be plausible.

                  * I don’t need to go into how abysmally idiotic that deal was, even if he had been a hero. There’s a reason why my employer made me sign a document when I went overseas, saying that if I was ever kidnapped and held for ransom, I understood and agreed with the fact that no ransom would ever be paid for me. And I signed it with no reservations, because that’s absolutely the right policy to take.

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                  2. And that’s not as bad as the fact that those holding Bergdahl wanted money, not terrorists released. It was our ‘leaders’ who insisted on that ridiculous 5 for 1 deal. Oh you want a $100,000 for a deserter? Why don’t we trade you five top terrorists, instead? With leaders like that, who needs enemies?

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                    3. On the other hand one could, if they wanted, spin this as the government thought that an American, even if a possible deserter, was worth five of their top men and that their top men are worth no more than $20,000 a head.

                      I wish I could believe the present government thought that our representatives abroad were, indeed, most precious, but something about their track record makes me rather uncomfortable on that front.

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                    4. There is a theory — rapidly becoming obscured by the honor guard of lies surrounding this misadventure — that what we gave up for Bergdahl’s release was money — enough to fund terrorist actions against US interests for a decade. The terrorist release thus would have been something gratuitous, thrown into the pot by an administration seizing an opportunity to justify release of five of Gitmo’s worst, easing the release of further “detainees” enabling the Administration to close the facility before leaving office, checking off one more item from its “to-do” list.

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    4. I had one elementary teacher who was Very Concerned that I was drawing pictures of trolls. Like, calling my parents concerned. Fortunately, my parents didn’t listen.

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    5. I lived through that hysteria. It taught me that the people who think that D&D is evil (or Harry Potter) are pretty convinced that other people cannot reliably tell fantasy and make-believe stories apart from reality. I was about 11, I think, and attended a private Christian school. We had a big film and sermon denouncing it in chapel, and later in class my teacher asked “How long can you play with make-believe gods before you start believing in them?” as rhetorical justification for telling us not to play the game. Similar reasoning went with playing with make-believe magic. The result was that for a few weeks I switched to playing only non-magical characters, before I thought it through and decided the pastor and teacher were both nuts, and I was not about to change my basic beliefs over playing a game.

      Of course, that teacher didn’t seem to like that I read novels, SF or otherwise, either, much less studying other religions, and I still encounter that attitude often among the more religiously conservative Christians.

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        1. If one or both of those girls doesn’t have some kind of psychiatric case file, I’m a monkey’s uncle.

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      2. I wonder what they would make of the fact that Tracy Hickman used to use D&D in his work as a youth pastor? Or that he wrote a whole article on the subject and used the example, IIRC, of writing an adventure that taught the Beatitudes. (That article is sadly no longer available on his website, though it’s probably in the Wayback Machine)

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      3. Quite a few of those who are anti-Harry Potter are also anti-C. S. Lewis. The content of the story, or even the authors ‘point’* they are trying to get across, doesn’t matter. Fiction is not truth, therefore it is a lie, and lies are evil; or so their reasoning goes.

        *I don’t think J. K. Rowling really had a ‘point’ to try and put across, C. S. Lewis however was attempting to promote Christianity or at least Christian morals through many of his works.

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  4. My parents were very pro-reading, and had no hangups about me reading anything I wanted to. I had a fishnet thing hung over my bunkbed with a giant heap of books over my face that I would read at night when I was supposed to be sleeping (with one of those snake-light flashlight things tied around the bedpost.) (Man, that thing hurt when it came loose from the wall and fell on my face :-P) Most were library books IIRC, because back then I didn’t have the money to buy things I wanted to read all the time.

    The nearest encounter to the censorship attitude that I can bring to mind is someone finding out that I had read a certain book, all the way through, and actually liked it for what it was. (Atlas Shrugged, in this case) – he started yelling at me and telling me that I was uncivilized, unsafe, unfit for society. No one sane could read that book and not recoil in horror, I was a monster and had no place in the future. (eyeroll – it was unsettling though, because I had to work with these people. Having them go nuts because of things that I *might* be thinking because of what I once read … )

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  5. Well, there’s the “flip side”. That is, being required to read stuff “for your own good”. Sometimes, what the schools think is “for your own good” teaches garbage.

    Perhaps off topic, here’s my take on the “Banning Harry Potter”. The first protests about “reading Harry Potter” were by people who didn’t want their children to *required* to read Harry Potter. The “fun” was that the teachers didn’t care what the parents thought or wanted.

    As for why, they didn’t want their children to read Harry Potter, there’s a belief that by practicing magic, you’re opening yourself up to unfriendly powers. It doesn’t matter if the magic works, you’re still inviting their notice. Oh, a similar belief is that playing with the Ouija Board invites the notice of unfriendly powers *and* one of Mercedes Lackey’s characters “warded” a Ouija Board before she sold it to some teenaged girls so that they won’t attract such powers. I doubt that Mercedes is member of the “Religious Right”. [Evil Grin]

    Hey, where did this soapbox come from????? [Very Big Grin]

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    1. Yeah. Unaccountable teachers are a big part of the problem.

      A teacher who taught geometry in algebra class would get in trouble, but a English class is a license to abuse children by assigning books that you know will give some of them nightmares.

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    2. My grandmother use to read tea leaves… until her “silly” random association stuff started being so incredibly accurate that it scared her into removing even fairy tales from her house, not allowing her sons to read fantasy books and not letting us watch any fantasy where humans do magic.

      This is a woman who grew up listening to wolves and cougars outside of the barn they slept in, who would calmly face a man twice her size that was yelling at her and threatening violence, who drove from Texas to the Oregon Border with two babies and an idiot woman and her main complaint was that some people wouldn’t walk the board-bridges back across when they used them for crossing rivers.

      She was no wimp and no-nonsense– the idea that she’d be accused of some sort of evil for not wanting her kids to be forced to read a book that involved a threat is horrifying.

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      1. Anyone who grew up in a village/close to the bone, has a healthy respect for magic/that sort of thing. You don’t do it, and you don’t invite it. And if you have spontaneous far-seeing dreams, as I do sometimes, you get spooked.
        BUT even I couldn’t take Harry Potter seriously, being obviously written by someone who doesn’t know the supernatural from a hole in the ground.
        Technically for that Tiffany Aching is way more serious, because it is very close to how things were done in the village I grew up in. BUT it also has a healthy respect behind it, and the scary things it can lead to.

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        1. Parents shouldn’t have to read and do a point by point explanation of why they don’t want their kid to be required to read something they find objectionable and possibly dangerous.

          I was about to build a case around the “divination” class making the exact stuff that Grandma was freaked out about seem silly and harmless… but it really shouldn’t be a requirement.

          Heck, I can see folks objecting because Harry Potter is so oblivious to real world type magic– it makes it look silly and/or harmless. Kind of like the parlor games that got my grandma doing the tea reading in the first place. (It was kinda isolated, the “Spiritualist” fad was still there.)

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          1. My mother asked me about that, given the hoohaa about Harry Potter back in the day. I told her not to worry since the stories had not even a remote smidgin of real world mythologies woven in.

            And yes, it’s scary stuff, when you run into it. I keep saying there’s a real reason why superstition is still strong back in the old country, even in the metro area. It’s worse out in the provinces. My mom recently recounted a tale brought to her by a friend who visited a novice priest friend of his assigned to a small town up in the mountainous region of her home province. The novice priest said that he’d never before believed in possessions till he was sent out there.

            It’s stuff like this that makes me want to write about the ‘side’ of the Philippines that most folks don’t read or hear about. It’s completely unfamiliar, yet a part of life. It makes for a very interesting dichotomy.

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            1. Wasn’t it C.S. Lewis who pointed out that the reason we don’t burn witches anymore is because we figured out that there aren’t really people who can do that and not because people who can do that are harmless?

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              1. Basically yes. We don’t believe that people can get Power from the Evil One and use that power to cause harm to others. The “Witch” of Folklore (including non-European Folklore) was very often a person with Power who caused bad things to happen to others.

                The African “Witch-Doctor” was a person who protected people from Witches as well as a person who removed curses (illnesses) from people cursed by a Witch.

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              2. One notes that during the witch crazes, there were areas where witch trials got under way only where you could evade the authorities, if at all, because the authorities were stinky about demanding evidence that a crime had been committed at all, and that there was evidence linking the crime to the accused. People do fall ill, after all, and even if your illness was so odd and abrupt as to appear supernatural, how did you know it wasn’t the Devil in person, not the accused witch? Like the time a Spanish Inquisitor dismissed a case because a confessed witch said that she had seen another at the sabbat, and that her claim of being asleep in bed was just an illusion, and the inquisitor said that actually, it could have been the sabbat appearance that was the diabolical illusion.

                Increasing numbers of lawyers who could be stinky about evidence, increasing court demands for good evidence, and new procedures, such as automatic appeals, were what really killed the witch trials.

                Of course, philosophically considered, the very difficulty of proving who did what witchcraft was the very thing that roused terror.

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              3. Also, people denounced as witches might be tried as poisoners — and sometimes, actually were poisoners.

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                1. That’s an important point to remember — some of those convicted of witchcraft might actually be committing real possible crimes — irregardless of any magic powers. Historically, some supposed witches actually did do a side-business in supplying poisons to murderers — or using the poisons themselves to commit such crimes.

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            2. Actually, Nicolas Flamel was a real man, and the Philosopher’s Stone was indeed supposed to turn things to gold and make men immortal. (Because gold doesn’t rust, tarnish, corrode, etc. It’s immortal; the stuff converts stuff to their immortal equivalent.)

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          2. The problem is that there really *are* some very dark places, and actions. Kind of like playing at walking down dark back alleys. Most don’t/won’t discuss the real reasons.
            A good example is the “bomb/fireworks information” on the Internet. Some of it is just plain “bad information.” Some of it is, IMO, written with the *intent* to cause harm to those following the “instructions.” I have no doubt that much “magic/spiritualist” info is written by dabblers. People that a) have no idea who dangerous the information can be. Or, b) intend to cause harm to those foolish enough to “play” with it. (BTW, Alistair Crowley, was one of the latter. According to what I’ve been told by those knowledgeable about the subject.)
            The real problem with “dabblers” is that they do it a couple of times, with no harm, and then assume it isn’t dangerous. When applied to guns, explosives, vehicles, etc., this is usually called “Thinning the herd” (AKA Darwin Awards). Of course, some is done by those who proudly proclaim. “I don’t believe in _any_ god, or spiritual power.” (I classify these as the same category as people who believe that Guns (on their own) kill people. You are free to disbelieve in God, but not to bluntly say. “Evil doesn’t exist.” There are enough _documented_ cases that it is massive self deception, Evil on the scale seen in far too any cases, argues that there must be an *equal* force for good.
            I’m a “protector,” and have been most of my life. That means I will protect _anyone_, with one exception. Those who actively court, or refuse to acknowledge the existence of, evil, do not get my protection. They are on their own.

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            1. I have personally read a woman be very indignant online at the very notion that she could be opening herself to demonic influences. Why, she didn’t believe in them.

              For some reason, she thought it would confer a protection, not leave her absolutely vulnerable.

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        2. No argument there about Harry Potter’s “magic”. For that matter, IMO for “magic” to be a danger, there has to be intent. IE playing around with it without intending anything to happen (including intending to “learn” something) isn’t going to be danger. Now if the person intends something to happen or to “make” contact, that’s another matter.

          Another “soapbox” thing, a few years back some teenaged girls got ahold of a “magic book” that included “curses” and went around telling people at their school that they were going to “lay curses” on them. The school reasonably IMO took the book away from them. Some “idiot” Wiccan complained that it was like “taking a Bible away from school kids”. Ignoring the fact that some schools had “discouraged” kids from bringing Bibles to school, since when is “laying curses” part of Wicca? [Frown]

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            1. Similar to D&D magic, you don’t believe it will have a real world result.

              Younger kids playing like they are “Harry Potter” (or other Potterworld characters) don’t believe that the spells will work like they do in the books.

              Now teens or adults might be “playing around” but also might think it to be “cool” if something “real” happened.

              I’d be more worried about the second than I’d be worried about the first.

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                    4. Counter thought: Any science, sufficiently advanced, becomes indistinguishable from magic.

                      I do firmly believe in the supernatural, though I won’t go into too much detail here. I know a pastor who has performed an exorcism, and several recent ancestors (grand and great-grandparents) have left other accounts. Including the observation that if you don’t believe in evil spirits it is very hard to get rid of them. I can see people wanting to be cautious, but the real thing is hard to miss once you’ve seen it, and hard to mistake for anything else. There are nasty things out there that are more nasty because people don’t believe they exist.

                      On a side note. I think one of the problems I’ve had with a lot of modern Sci Fi and fantasy, is that evil is rarely treated as evil any more… because too many authors have decided evil doesn’t exist. Fortunately, this and various other blogs (mostly those mentioned here) have given me a new range of authors to try that should not have that problem.

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                    6. Including the observation that if you don’t believe in evil spirits it is very hard to get rid of them.

                      *Shudder*

                      Did a write-up on demons a while back.

                      Which meant I went through Catholic Exorcists’ notes on what the signs of various levels (see why I love the Church? So… classify-ie….) of demonic possession. Which were very familiar, although I don’t even watch any movies like that, because they’re on every freaking ghost hunter show you’re going to see.

                      *Shudder*

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                    7. Foxfier, is there a link to a site with this in an easy digestible form? Or did you compile it so, and will you send it to me. Someone I love (not family, so chill) is acting very oddly and I realized yesterday it “feels” like possession, which is different from mental illness. Not that I can do anything about it, (again, not family) but it would be good to know.

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                    9. On a side note. I think one of the problems I’ve had with a lot of modern Sci Fi and fantasy, is that evil is rarely treated as evil any more… because too many authors have decided evil doesn’t exist.

                      Yes, they often do not wish to identify evil as evil. Except in the form of certain tradition religions, homophobia, racism and sexism…and Larry Correia and his ilk…then they are all too ready to pronounce evil.

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                    10. Be careful with looking for demons, once you start looking for that war it’s unlikely you’ll stop seeing it.

                      Foxfier, I’m not familiar with the Catholic records of such things beyond that they exist. Everyone listed in mine has been Protestant, though fortunately of sufficient old school culture that they wrote things down. I’d also be interested in any more codified records. Especially if they don’t require a theological degree to understand.

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                    12. @Heather Yes. I originally did not believe in the supernatural. Then I had several very close encounters of the utterly terrifying kind. Then it became a choice of ‘is it more rational at this point, to believe, or disbelieve?’ And yes, I firmly believe in evil.

                      Be careful with looking for demons, once you start looking for that war it’s unlikely you’ll stop seeing it.

                      No kidding. Once seen, definitely cannot unsee, ever again. And you see the parts where the bad guys win too. It’s got a… very different feel from the run of the mill, ‘ordinary’ life tragedy.

                      @ Foxfier My mom sent me a few books on Catholic exorcism. They make for rather unsettling, to say the least, reading. So your stuff I’ll read and pass on to her.

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                    13. Sounds like she’s got a lot more first hand experience than I do– mine’s more of a “primer and the right words to find out important stuff.”

                      Still enough to scare the @#$#@ out of me, since everybody and his brother has a ghost hunting show.

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                    14. Sensitives run in the family, on both sides. The one who sees the most ghosts is my middle brother. He’s the one who loves watching ghost hunting shows the most, but it’s more out of a desire to know that he’s not alone having these things happen to him. I’m the one who has Weird Unexplainable Crap happen to me.

                      We have lots of stories.

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              2. Ah. The thing is, I wouldn’t describe playing wizards in a story as “playing about with magic.”

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          2. Laying aside the argument that most modern-day Wiccans are making the stuff up out of whole cloth, my understanding is that contemporary Wiccan belief holds that using the power to do harm is profoundly self-destructive, as you reap what you have sown.

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            1. There seems to be a carve-out for deserving targets in some folks’ personal theology, as well as creative definition of “harm.”

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                1. Unfortunately, he’s very light on citations, sources, definitions, etc– although Superversive’s writing is part of what inspired me to do the series.

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            2. Correct.

              And then you have folks like me, who usually shrug and go why cast a spell when you get off your lazy backside and take care of it yourself?

              I’m not too popular in some circles. LOL

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              1. No point, since while you seem to sometimes get results they are not consistent, and the process is always highly unreliable, and possibly at least somewhat risky. There are a lot easier ways to get what you want in life. :)

                Makes some sense when it’s at least partly an attempt to figure things out, or is done for the sheer pleasure of the practice (it can be, quite, sometimes).

                But best not get obsessive, and always be ready to back off if something starts to feel off, or uncomfortable. The risk is probably not big if one can keep it light, a part of life but not the main focus, but there seems to be a real one for those who immerse themselves into the study and do become obsessive.

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              2. James Blish had a story (Black Easter?) where a sorcerer informed an employer that he would require travel expenses. The employer asked why the sorcerer didn’t use magic to travel. The sorcerer responded by telling the employer about what the travel ritual involved and said that buying an airline ticket was much simpler. [Evil Grin]

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            3. Many religions hold that certain behaviors are profoundly self-destructive. Do their members therefore consistently refrain from them?

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            4. There’s plenty of evidence that Witch Hunters weren’t after pagan groups in Europe. They were after people suspected of causing harm to others via magic.

              Even if the Wiccans have a real connection with pre-Christian religions, there’s little or no evidence that the witches hunted in Europe had anything to do with pre-Christian religions.

              I’ll be polite and not give my opinion of Wiccans who call themselves Witches.

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              1. I do use that last word sometimes, as a translation for the word I call myself in Finnish, but there is a bit of a translation problem there, the Finnish word has a somewhat different meaning. ‘Noita’ was once used for both the devil worshippers and local versions of shamans where there still were genuine ones in this part of the world and then for people who used the old folk magic while technically being Christians, and now it’s sometimes used for neopagans. I’m just the last, but it’s a good description here anyway, most people seem to get what I mean when I use it.

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              2. The problem here, is that the word actually used, is properly translated as _poisoner_. If you go back, and look at what “poisoners” did, they were secret assassins. Which is they they are condemned.

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                1. And the calling on spirits was trying to force the dead to come tell you stuff. So, kidnapping and whatever forcing people to do stuff is– just you also get demons who are disguised as the person you’re trying to make prisoner.

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                2. Sigh. “Witch really means poisoner” is incorrect based on what I’ve heard from people who are experts in Hebrew. IIRC that word is often translated by Jews as “Sorceress” or “Sorcerer”.

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                    1. In Elizabethean English, to say “kill” you said, “slay.” For “murder” you used “kill.”

                      Semantic drift. Ain’t it wonderful.

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                    1. There’s a lot of confusion about that one. There are several forms of magic (for lack of a better term) proscribed in Deuteronomy. Kasheph (more or less) seems to be the use of incantations for evil purposes. It got translated into maleficos in the Vulgate. Witch was a contemporarily accurate term for the KJV, which was intended to put a Bible into English churches so the commoners could understand the Word.

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                    2. As best I can tell, the Commission James I put together to translate the Bible was because all the English versions they already had were…um… kinda painful to read, especially if you didn’t know enough Latin to figure out what directly translated phrases meant. Contrast with the about-the-same-time release of the Douay Bible.

                      The KJV is well known for its poetry for a reason. :D

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      2. An aside, but since I do use Tarot for myself (differing opinions as to how accurate you can get with that, as it, like pretty much all divination systems, depends a lot on free association – when you read for yourself, or people you care about, what you _want_ will inevitably color the reading), I did get death, and other cards with a similar meaning, repeatedly last fall and early winter, before my father died. The Death in tarot is usually said to mean any profound change in an effort to calm any fears it brings, but yes, while that can be any change it can also be what the label says.

        Not the first time that has happened. I do not take single readings all that seriously, but if something starts to repeat I mark it.

        Right now I’m getting king of swords.

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        1. I had the same experience with the I Ching, when I was practicing. There were runs of hexagrams that repeated WAY more often than chance, and there were some that never came up.

          zuk

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      1. I wonder how they tested that, or whether they bothered. I rather suspect the latter (in part because I don’t believe in magic or any other supernatural phenomenon, and in part because I doubt people who’d make such an assertion about the nature of magic would be likely to think in terms of rigorous proof).

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        1. IIRC, it was a basic tenet of whatever branch of Christianity they believed they were following. I only read it because another person had linked to it while talking about the whole kerfuffle.

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        2. It is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. MAGIC comes only from the demonic. MIRACLES are G-D’s working through man and any similarities between the two are proof you are doing the Devil’s work. Never mind the throw down between Moses and Pharaoh’s sorcerers.

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          1. Well, actually, magic is something you can do on demand, which you could only get by trafficking with them. Neither God nor His angels would consent to act on command.

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            1. I saw an interesting distinction made years ago between divination in the strict sense, seeking direction from the divine, and magic. He used the example of the ancient middle eastern rite using a pair of arrows or sticks. A priest might pray and then cast the sticks, using them as oracles for the god’s answer to a question. Magic, he explained, was the belief that there was some power in the sticks themselves, or in the one doing the reading.

              I don’t know if it’s a useful delineation to anyone else, but I found it intriguing, especially having grown up with D&D and its distinction between arcane and divine power. I’ve been meaning to use it in one of my games, to flavor the setting and gameplay, but I haven’t quite gotten around to it.

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      2. I’m actually considering doing that next for my Catholic blog article– a sort of explanation of what biblical “magic” is, vs its use in fiction, vs wishy-washy uses of the word “magic.” (I decided to do a series debunking silly stuff “everybody” knows from a Catholic perspective– this month I did D&D being satanic!)

        The Dresden Files got me thinking about it– there objectively is calling-on-fel forces magic, and then there’s natural-skill-for-good-or-bad-use type magic.

        The statement “magic is only demonic” is defensible depending on how they define magic…..

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        1. It could be interesting. [Smile]

          Now IIRC historically magic is invoking “Powers” (spiritual beings) to do something for you. Sometimes, it’s to protect you from Powers (including some to ask the Power to not attack you), to protect you from actions of your human enemies, to protect you from “natural” events, to ask the Powers to do something favorable, and often to ask the Powers to attack other people.

          IMO the “magic is evil” folks are operating under the belief that you can’t invoke (invocations have an element of compulsion) Good Powers and thus the Powers that respond are Evil Powers. Even if these Powers can be compelled to used for a Good Purpose, there is the idea that (as I said earlier) by invoking them you’re opening yourself up to be controlled/corrupted by Them.

          While in Dresden Files universe, there is “energy” that certain people can tap into for both good uses and evil uses, there are Powers (evil and neutral) that the wizard can invoke for information and to compel.

          Oh, I think you can “invoke” Angelic powers (Harry did it at least once), but the Angelic powers don’t have to respond and definitely don’t have to do what the wizards wants. IIRC Harry invoked Uriel and while Uriel responded He was very annoyed with Harry.

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          1. Historically the belief was that you couldn’t invoke demonic powers either. The Devil might promise you wealth, status and ability to avenge yourself to get you to sign the pact, but once you did — haha, just kidding, here’s the powder that will let you avenge yourself, and forget the others.

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            1. Nod, but I’m also talking about pre-Christian beliefs concerning magic.

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              1. Ah yes. There’s a shrine in Britain where there are lead “curse” tablet in its spring, invoking the goddess to bring harm on the thief. One offers the stolen goods to the goddess and tells her to arouse herself and reclaim them, lest she be shamed among the gods.

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            2. The Devil might promise you wealth, status and ability to avenge yourself to get you to sign the pact, but once you did — haha, just kidding, here’s the powder that will let you avenge yourself, and forget the others.

              From the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster based on a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, who has credit as co-author of the screenplay.

              [Jabez Stone is examining Mr. Scratch’s contract]

              Jabez Stone: What does it mean here, about my soul?

              Mr. Scratch: Why should that worry you? A soul? A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No. This soul, *your* soul, are nothing against seven years of good luck. You’ll have money and all that money can buy.

              The contract is subsequently challenged and brought to court, which leads to (transcript below):

              Daniel Webster: Gentlemen of the jury, tonight it is my privilege to address a group of men I’ve long been acquainted with in song and story, but men I had never hoped to see. My worthy opponent, Mister Scratch, called you Americans all. Mister Scratch is right. You were Americans all. Oh, what a heritage you were born to share. Gentlemen of the jury, I envy you, for you were present at the birth of a mighty union. It was given to you to hear those first cries of pain and behold the shining babe, born of blood and tears. You are called upon tonight to judge a man named Jabez Stone. What is his case? He’s accused of breach of contract. He made a deal to find a shortcut in his life, to get rich quickly, the same kind of a deal all of you once made. You, Benedict Arnold. I speak to you first because you are better known than the rest of your colleagues here. What a different song yours could have been. A friend of Washington and Lafayette, a soldier. General Arnold, you fought so gallantly for the American cause till – let me see, what was the date? – seventeen seventy-nine. That date, burned in your heart. The lure of gold made you betray that cause. And you, Simon Girty, now known to all as “Renegade” – a loathesome word – you also took that other way. And you, Walter Butler, what would you give for another chance to see the grasses grow in Cherry Valley without the stain of blood? I could go on and on and name you all but there’s no need of that. Why stir the wounds? I know they pain enough. You were fooled like Jabez Stone, fooled and trapped in your desire to rebel against your fate. Gentlemen of the jury, it is the eternal right of every man to raise his fist against his fate. But when he does, these are crossroads. You took the wrong turn. So did Jabez Stone. But he found it out in time. He’s here tonight to save his soul. Gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to give Jabez Stone another chance to walk upon this earth, among the trees, the growing corn, and the smell of grasses in the Spring. What would you all give for another chance to see those things you must all remember and often yearn to touch again? For you were all men once. Clean American air was in your lungs and you breathed it deeply. For it was free and blew across an earth you loved. These are common things I speak of, small things, but they are good things. Yet without your soul, they mean nothing. Without your soul, they sicken. Mister Scratch once told you that your soul meant nothing. And you believed him. And you lost your freedom. Freedom isn’t just a big word. It is the morning and the bread and the risen sun. It was for freedom we came to these shores in boats and ships. It was a long journey and a hard one and a bitter one. Yes, there is sadness in being a man… but it is a proud thing, too. And out of the suffering and the starvation and the wrong and the right, a new thing has come: a free man. And when the whips of the oppressors are broken and their names forgotten and destroyed, free men will be talking and walking under a free star. Yes, we have planted freedom in this earth like wheat. And we have said to the skies above us, “A man shall own his own soul… ” Now, here is this man. He is your brother. You were Americans all.

              [points to the Devil]

              Daniel Webster: You can’t be on his side, the side of the oppressor. Let Jabez Stone keep his soul, a soul which doesn’t belong to him alone but to his family, his son, and his country. Gentlemen of the jury, don’t let this country go to the devil. Free Jabez Stone. God bless the United States and the men who made her free.

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          2. Remember the old meaning of “pray” is kinda like “please”?

            That’d be why asking the un-Holy guys to help you is a Really Bad Idea.

            I think Mary pointed to the “try to make the good guys do stuff” form of magic is a sin too– Thamasomething?– at the same time she pointed out that the Bad Guys you’re “commanding” don’t HAVE to listen to you and are kinda known for lying…..

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            1. Instead of “The Bad Guys don’t have to listen to you”, I’d say “The Bad Guys don’t have to obey you”. Otherwise, no argument. [Smile]

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            2. In Christian cosmology (or mythology if you want to be rude) the demons are fallen angels. It would follow that Angelic powers, obedient to G-D are protected from compulsion by lesser beings (i.e., all others.) The Fallen, having disobeyed Him, would be subject to such compulsion although in such way as to betray those attempting to compel them (it would be fitting punishment for both Fallen and Magician) by means of willful misinterpretation (aka: exploiting loopholes) of requests (ref: joke about 12″ prick.)

              Yes, you can compel demons but you must be very very very careful about the precise wording of such contracts as you commit with them.

              This inability to compel angels is reflected in human society in the principle that you can use the courts to enforce a contract in contradiction of public policy (e.g., a contract to murder your spouse.)

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              1. Just clarifying, did you mean you can’t use the courts to enforce a failed contract to murder your spouse? I watched Dial M for Murder a few weeks ago and the villain would definitely attempted that. He was ice-cold.

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                1. Last I knew you could not take a party to court for breach of an illegal contract.

                  Well, you can, but you might find the court not only refusing to impose compensation might possibly even charging you with acts against the public order.

                  Sorta like calling the police to complain that the guy whom you met with in the schoolyard for a dope deal ripped you off by paying for the pot with counterfeit money. Even if (when) the police find and apprehend your erstwhile contractor it is unlikely the court will return your dope to you.

                  N.B., this may not apply in all jurisdictions, especially Chicago, Las Vegas or Harlan County, KY.

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              3. It could work either way, depending on the world-building. I have no objections to Operation Chaos having the characters break into Hell.

                However, compelling devils could hardly work by brute force — they’re stronger — or superior intelligence — they’re smarter — so the question is whether you really could command an angelic being, even one not protected by God.

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              1. Thanks, I have it somewhere but…. cleaning house. Worse, standing over children to get them to put toys away. No, AWAY. No, not there. Where you just put the other nearly identical one two minutes ago. Yes, there. No, you’re not done.

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          3. Also, supernatural events that are tied to Divine agents are usually classified as “miracles” as opposed to “magic”. It’s up to the author to determine whether that’s merely a matter of semantics, or something more.

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          1. Debating if that goes in lies (which I may or may not touch, depends if I feel like a flame war) or medicine (psychology)

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        3. My _own_ definition is using forces not normally accessible, and easily understood by, ordinary people. To those lacking a knowledge of physics, a gun/bow and arrow/slingshot is “magic.” In nearly all cases, the *intent* is what makes it “good” or “bad.” Some uses of “power” are independent of intent. (Firing a weapon in as random direction is one such. You may not *intend* to kill, but that _is_ a potential result.) Given that, most uses of “magic” are for demonic purposes. “Demonic” being defined as “to do harm to others.”

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          1. Problem being that applying those specialized definitions to Catholic theology would be argument by special definition– the idea is to stop folks from doing that! (Like the “if you play D&D you’re going to hell” folks– and yes, Catholics have them.)

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      3. Well, duh. “Magic” means unexplained casuality, but we put it through the Scientific Method wringer. Everything magic that came out “this works” got relabeled Science. Now there’s no other way for it to work but trafficking with things best left untrafficked with.

        In our universe. We can invent fictional ones where the wringer would turn out different results.

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    4. I played D&D for decades, and I’m still waiting for the magic powers that Jack Chick promised I’d get.

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      2. Yeah. I feel CHEATED I tell you! Where are my awesome magic spellcasting effects?! My ability to cause burning runes to appear as I point my finger of doom at my foes?! Hell, why can’t I turn into my ingame avatar at will?! /joking (actually, no I don’t want to. My ingame avatar in Lineage II has massive boobs, and my back hurts every time I see her run.)

        On the other hand, there are morons like this one.

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    5. A school friend of mine and I played with a Ouija board in class one time, and answered 27 out of 28 questions correctly. That kind of spooked the entire class, including us. She went on to MIT on a full scholarship, and to have a distinguished career in diplomatic service afterwards. My arrow was deflected…

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    6. Is this the magic thread? :-P My two cents: I don’t believe in magic in any literal sense (it’s all fantasy, and getting bent out of shape about it is a bit ridiculous, IMO), but I do have a funny anecdote:

      Back in undergrad, I think it was either the Army or the Marine corp ROTC downstairs – they were doing some sort of patrol or exercise out in the woods at night. Apparently the campus Wiccan group was also using the woods as part of some ritual. The cadets decided that “stopping the evil summoning ritual” fell under their mission objectives of defending the area, and mock-attacked the ritual. They were duly informed later that they were getting horribly cursed for that.

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      1. So much for Wiccan claims that “their magic can’t be used to do harm”. [Evil Grin]

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    7. There was a stink at my nephew’s school because one parent didn’t want their kid going to the Harry Potter *movie*… so the school is all, okay, that’s fine, but your kid is going to have to spend that time in the detention hall at school. And the parent/s objected… I think reasonably… to the implication that their kid was being punished. Instead of figuring out a way to excuse the kid in a way that didn’t end up being punishment, the school cancelled the whole movie field trip which made everyone furious at the parents who’d objected.

      I might think it’s silly to object to Harry Potter (I think it’s less silly to object to a Ouija board because it’s *presented* as being real) but I do understand why parents might be leary. And silly or not, they have a right to be leary over silly things.

      Or we’re not free.

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  6. And the books that schools are forcing on students may well be turning them away from pleasure reading.

    Also, Maya Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye.

    I’ve never had to deal with book bans of any sort, thankfully. My guess is that our teachers were happy that we were reading at all.

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  7. I confess that I’m of two minds about this.

    First of all, yes, I think censorship is foolish. Boo censorship. Yay freedom of expression. And, yes, yay anti-authoritarian books.

    BUT . . . There’s also such a thing as age-appropriateness. I don’t know enough about this particular case to know whether it was a high-school reading list, middle school, or elementary school, but that does make a difference. Doctorow’s novel Little Brother is not a “children’s book.” It wouldn’t belong on an elementary school list and I can see having a legitimate argument about whether it’s appropriate for middle-schoolers.

    Note that there will inevitably be some middle schoolers, and some elementary schoolers, who will enjoy reading the book and benefit from it. But there are also some whose parents will think — and possibly be correct to think — that it raises issues and contains scenes unsuitable for younger readers. A school reading list is in part an endorsement by the school: “These books are okay for your kids to read.”

    And perhaps most importantly, I think the principal should be praised rather than condemned for doing his job. He is exercising judgement. He is not simply cutting and pasting the state Department of Education’s reading list onto his own district’s letterhead. Now, he probably should have done this back BEFORE inviting Cory Doctorow to speak at the school . . .

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    1. Unfortunately from the books assigned to my sons — and across the country — from elementary on, sex and depression are things no one screens for. (I.e. sex that means nothing and amoral books where everyone dies screaming.)

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      2. I really wonder if the geniuses at Sch01astic realize what they might be doing with all the “authorities are evil, technology is evil, adults are probably bad, end of the world” books they seem to be churning out for the 13-17 y.o. set. I wasn’t really thrilled by the novel about the girl who is the girlfriend of a Columbine-type killer, either, but at least it argued that you can’t blame everyone else around for one person’s decisions and actions.

        There are some novels that, looking back, I wish I had not read when I was 12-13. Late 1980s EOTWAWKI with lots of physical and sexual violence was probably not the best thing for me to be absorbing, given my personality. But neither my parents nor the librarians stopped me.

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        1. “These books are written by unhappy, immature people, who think acting depressed makes them deep and important. Here’s pink monkey notes, so you can pretend to have read it. And here’s Citizen of the Galaxy and the Door into Summer.”

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          1. OT: The middle school where I work started its last book fair of the year today. I’ve slipped a copy each of Heinlein’s Space Cadet, Red Planet, and Star Beast onto the shelves. I’m curious to see if they get picked up and bought.

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          2. This. Right here. Had I done this in High School, it would have saved me from crazy-making boredom as we went page-by-page over “Return of the Native”. And as it happens, it’s good timing as my daughter is now in High School.

            BWAH HA HA HA HAAAAA….!

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              1. Kafka’s I assume, and not Ovid’s.

                :P

                I had to read the former multiple times. It was okay the first time, largely for its uniqueness. It got tedious on the later reads.

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                1. That would be the one. Of course, it might have been better, had I had any idea of the symbology in it (assuming the analysis I read much later wasn’t full of it), but I found it morose and tedious to read.

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                2. Momma, who found normal sized cockroachs nightmareish, would have throughly disapproved of Kafka’s.

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          3. The Spouse wishes that they would teach Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers. That sould start some interesting and worthwhile discussions.

            We used Starbeast with The Daughter as part of a discussion of what makes a sentient being. Also Little Fuzzy. Of course there were also discussions of government and justice as well.

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            1. Can’t teach Starship Troopers. Too many people think of it as espousing Fascism. You’d have riots at the School Board meetings.

              And Paul Verhoeven’s abomination hasn’t helped in that regard.

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                1. I don’t think Verhoeven was a fan.

                  I’m sure your way of thinking of it is much healthier for your blood pressure, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to sit through the whole thing. It *did* me to muttering curses, though.

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                  1. Oh, I agree. However, if I think of it as a fan film, I resist the urge to burn Hollywood to the ground.

                    I’m still going to punch the guy in the face if I ever see him face to face though.

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                    5. A good earthquake would do:

                      Victor surfaced fifty yards offshore, lungs bursting. Ginger erupted a few feet away. They trod water, and watched.
                      Holy Wood Town, built of unseasoned wood and short nails was shaking apart. Houses folded down on themselves slowly, like packs of cards. Here and there small explosions indicated that stores of octo-cellulose were involved. Canvas cities and plaster mountains slid into ruin.
                      …
                      A whole section of hill caved in.
                      …
                      Then it was gone.

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                    8. I believe Athena Hera Sinistra would recommend a different target, but in Verhoeven’s case that is probably not an option.

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                  2. Some fanfic writers don’t grasp that writing to undo and destroy the author’s conception mean you’re not really a fan.

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                    1. I think it can be an okay jumping off point, even if you really like the original it can give you ideas which are not compatible with it. As in ‘what if it went this way instead’ or ‘what if the characters were more like this instead’. And I don’t think it’s too bad to use the original names etc in that type of fan fiction, provided it’s just fan fiction – nobody gets paid and it remains obscure, just on some fan fiction site – AND the writer gives a warning in the beginning so those who’d prefer something truer to the creator’s original versions can stay away. (And what little fan fic I have read, it seems most writers are fairly good with those warnings, at least when their stories go wildly off from the originals)

                      But if one wants to go commercial with it – when the maker has the right to do that because the original story is out of copyright or somebody has bought the rights – it should be changed to something that reads as a new original. Or at the very least given some sort of alternate universe designation. Or if its an adaptation and the original names etc are used, call it ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘based on’ or something so that fans of the original do not pay for it expecting something they are not going to get (PLEASE!).

                      What I do tend to see as a crime is making something that gets advertised as a straight adaptation (or a continuation of the story) of an original but does that, destroys and undoes the creator’s intent.

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                  3. All that, yes, but the main thing keeping Verhoeven from qualifying as a fan was that he actually never read the book. Bragged about that fact to the movie media too.

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                    1. As I remember he said he had read part of it, but never finished it. And yes, it sounded as if he was bragging. Also, what I remember of the interviews I read before and then during he filming (since I was interested I bought some of the film magazines I could find here) back then the people involved talked as if they were going to make, and then were making a respectful adaptation of the novel, but after it had come out the director started to talk of how he had never finished the novel, and how he had deceived at least some of the actors before and during the filming into thinking they were making something a bit different than they actually were, and so on, and sounding rather pleased with himself.

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                    3. IMO even with the Hollywood meddling, the Puppet Masters movie was enjoyable and was closer to RAH’s book than that so-called Starship Troopers movie was.

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                  4. I’m sure he wasn’t a fan – I think he said in some interview I read at the time that he didn’t even read all of the novel. He wanted to make that type of film, the fact that the film company had the rights to the novel was a coincidence.

                    The irritating part is that I would not hate the film if it was named ‘bug wars’ or something similar, and the characters had different names. It’s not that bad as a film. I don’t love it either, if taken all by its lonesome it’s a decent, and somewhat amusing film – but using the novel it does become thoroughly annoying because it has nothing to do with ‘Starship Troopers’ beyond character names and other superficial similarities.

                    So I think of it as a satire which used the names and plot points and a few scenes lifted from the novel (and then distorted to where they at points read as something completely opposite than they do in the novel) in order to get more visibility. Cheap trick, often used. And it’s not really even a direct satire of the novel, more of patriotic war films in general.

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          4. That’s what I’m going to do should I ever have children. In the meantime, I always give the nephews and nieces books for birthdays and Christmas.

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      4. For literature this year, my son had to read “London” and “Great (unexpurgated) Expectations”.

        ‘Expectations’ didn’t do much for him – it was, to him, dull, boring, and the people in it acted in manifestly (to contemporary eyes) foolish and stupid manners. Even reminding him that the people in those days did things differently didn’t help, he’s got enough historical perspective to know what was common then versus now, and he STILL thought it was a waste of time.

        “Dickens got paid by the word, didn’t he?”

        “Yes, as I recall this was a newspaper serial before it became a book. I could be wrong though.”

        “No, he was definitely padding this thing out. You can tell.”

        “London”, on the other hand, he somewhat liked.

        But you’re right – they’re feeding the kids dystopias, and wondering why they’re not enthused about the future.

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        1. Oliver Twist had some themes that a modern reader who say “Oh come on now, that’s silly”. For example, Oliver was “obviously” of good birth because he was “delicate”. [Smile]

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          1. Or just take a look at the presumption that Tarzan, being of aristocratic English stock ….

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          2. …I’m trying to justify this, on the grounds that, in that age, lower class kids of that poor constitution died. Or (if it meant a nervous sort of response) had flinching beaten out of them whilst still much younger. But given what I’ve seen of the difference in both health and ‘leaning in’ of lower-income vs upper-income youths…I have to disagree.

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          3. I read a work several decades more recently where a boy raised in a Chicago orphanage had not only an Irish accent, but an upper-crust one.

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        2. Funny, I had a thought on this when I was getting out of the shower this morning and wondered when/if I’d have a chance to bring it up here. The dystopia is showing up in other areas as well. The end of Far Cry 2, the player character has to choose between shooting himself in the head after paying the border guards to let refugees through, or setting explosives off to drop a cliff to block a canyon to give the refugees time to escape – from the top of the cliff he’s going to blow. Bioshock Infinite ends with the PC choosing to allow his daughter hold him underwater so that he drowns in a time before his daughter was born. The list goes on and seems to be increasing.

          As for Great Expectations, I call false advertising on the title! I was forced to read that my freshman year of high school. I swore off ever reading anything by Dickens after that, and my teacher was offended when I told her that I felt really let down by the title and all the hype about it being a classic – that I was expecting something great to read and instead was forced to wade through something that could put a meth addict to sleep.

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          1. I, too, was required to read Great Expectations my freshman year of high school. I truly hated stopping every few chapters to write yet another character sketch. It was far better a read when I revisited it as an adult. I had more patience for a slowly developed story and more knowledge of the setting.

            Others here have already suggest that one might reasonably conclude that the purpose of assigned reading in school was to teach you that reading was not a worthwhile pursuit. I have long thought as much myself.

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            1. I wouldn’t be surprised. The cycle seems to swing between whole-word and phonics education, with each generation seeming to discard the old way of doing things for a new ‘one size fits all’ process.

              It’s not about teaching the kids, it’s about teaching them in accordance with the latest/newest/bestest theories – whether said sad theory works or not.

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            2. I rather enjoyed _Bleak House_, though.

              When Dickens avoids the Victorian era love of maudlin pathos his writing is far more satisfying than the vast majority of modern mainstream literature. But then again, when my mood is right I *like* Victorian novels, so my taste is likely warped.

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                2. Is that the one by Charles Dikkens (with two K’s, the well-known Dutch author)? If so, I think you got the title wrong…

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              2. Some of the maudlin pathos does kinda get to me at times. I suspect that some of the social postures of today are going to be viewed as equally over the top to future generations.

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            1. Because they want to believe it is the world that is to blame, not their adjective adjective euphemism expletive plan.

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          3. Yeah, Bioshock Infinite had a real downer of an ending. Beautiful – but still…

            And the add-on package – (at least the ending of Burial at Sea episode 1)… aagh. Episode 2 wasn’t really any better.

            You WANT at least some sort of reward for a victory – and what do you get? Screwed. Look at the ending of Mass Effect 3. No matter what, you’re gonna die.

            Which might explain why I like the Portal games so much. But after you figure out the spacial puzzles and beat GlaDos a couple of times, all that’s left is looking around. And why I like the Fallout series – you can WIN in those, and end up with – if not happily ever after – your character going on and the people you’ve helped in the games doing better or worse depending on your choices. Or you can just explore like crazy and have fun with no real end in sight.

            If the schools want classics that are entertaining and ‘morally uplifting’, so to speak, they could do worse than blow the dust off old Horatio Alger stories. Yes, they’re hackneyed and dated and moralistic and simplistic – but it shows if you work to make things better for yourself and others, you’ll often succeed.

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            1. Simplistic, etc thing– I think that is part of why Harry Potter hit so big.

              Yeah, it was major wish fulfillment. That’s the point. If you AREN’T a reader, you probably haven’t run into books that involve that kind of fantasy– you’ve got to eat the soft stuff before you go for complex, acquired tastes.

              Instead, folks are usually exposed to “ice cream and pickle juice” level of acquired taste stuff right off the bat.

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            2. Yet another reason to be glad I never played Infinite.

              Which is unfortunate, imo, because the original Bioshock had a rather nice ending (asssuming that you got the good ending, of course).

              Dying at the end of Mass Effect 3 didn’t bug me so much. It was the simultaneously forced and “out of nowhere” nature of the endings that ticked me off. The whole thing literally popped up out of nowhere (which, according to rumors, is pretty much what happened in real life…). And the blatant manipulation by the writer to keep you from automatically destroying the bad guys without a thought (“BTW, if you destroy the bad guys, you’ll also kill a friend and possibly some of your allies”) was just absurd. I remember finishing it for the first time and thinking, “What the heck just happened?” And not in a good “Gee, that gave me a lot to think about” kind of way. Not a good thought for a game developer trying to wrap up their big trilogy.

              And the fact that the original release of the ending was blatantly incomplete as well didn’t help, either. “Wait. Weren’t they just on the ground? What are they doing in space!?”

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              1. I never actually finished ME3 – I got ALMOST to the point, saw a spoiler Youtube, and went “Oh, hell no.”

                The Shore Leave DLC, however, was worth waiting for. Fleshed out the world a bit, and gave you some places to poke around in. As I understand, that was an ‘apology’ for the ending though I prefer to think of it as ‘After the ending’.

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                1. I’ve heard Shore Leave is good, but I can’t quite bring myself to want to *reward* Bioware with more of my money for the DLC.

                  >.<

                  I really, really, really HATED the ending to ME3.

                  It's interesting to me that the ending was so bad and so confusing that a huge grassroots group spontaneously sprang up claiming that the whole thing was in Shepard's head because (s)he'd really been indoctrinated. Yes, the ending was so bad that a large number of fans (including one of my friends) really came to believe that it could only be explained as "The protagonist got brainwashed by the bad guys."

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                  1. Yeah, I saw that on-line also. I could see how it would be a plausible explanation, and how Shepard was just hallucinating at the end, but… no. Just no.

                    They managed to end the Reaper cycle, then went to Shore Leave in the Citadel. And that’s it.

                    No other ending need apply.

                    :)

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                    1. I still haven’t finished the ME3 SP. Was thinking of trying the “Control” ending and imagining Shepard becoming like the Fleetmind from Schlock Mercenary, but at this rate I’ll probably download the “Happy Ending” mod which pretty much destroys the Reapers w/o killing EDI and the Geth.

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                2. There’s a section you can have Shepard walk by that is apparently groups of multiplayer characters talking/ranting about various quirks/irritations with the multiplayer game.

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              2. I wish companys like irrational and bioware would stop that.

                I stopped playing japanese rpg’s because it felt more and more like they weren’t trying to give you a good plot twist anymore, but instead wanted to leave you with a profound sense of “what the hell is going on here” even after you beaten it. Like M. Night Shymalan…. without the talent. >.>

                Now american games are starting to follow that same trend and it annoys the crap out of me.

                Also, why does suddenly every damn decision in the game have to be some variation of grey on grey. It used to be cool when a game would toss in some morally ambigous choices that needed to be made.
                Or even a future that was bleak but you could try and be the nice guy(fallout 1 and , arcanium, etc..)

                But playing The Old Republic showed me how stupid it’s getting. Nothing in there could just happen without some random person comming along and showing you how somehow saving an orphange was evil, or helping that old lady actually killed 50 sulstans… It got to the point i kept expecting my Trooper to have a dialog tree pop up while making a sandwich.

                You are making a sandwich. Do you:
                1. Use the meat of a semi intelligent Ithorian with some creamy dairy product forcible removed from a crying jawa’s teats

                2. Or do you have peanut Butter(picked by slave ewok labor) and Gungan Jelly(made from only the freshest gungun we can find) sandwich.

                3. Realize that Sith Loaf bread is actually made from ground up orphans and old people used for target practice, and decided to shoot yourself instead because nothing can ever just be positive, ever again.

                That crap gets old fast…

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                1. It got to the point i kept expecting my Trooper to have a dialog tree pop up while making a sandwich.

                  Trick question. The answer is:

                  4. Darth Barras ate it all.

                  So send Forex after him.

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          4. There was a video game released a while back. It was a first person shooter which was, iirc, called “Spec Ops: The Line”. You play as the leader of a three man special forces team investigating a city that was cut off from the rest of the world (via a massive sandstorm, iirc, which is still going over a year later). At one point, in order to progress through the storyline, you have to burn a crowd of civilians to death. They’re apparently clustered around a gate that you have to open in order to progress, and the only way to open the gate is with launched incindiary devices.

            Um. Yeah. Glad I didn’t purchase that game.

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    2. I’m of two minds about it as well, the principal was being silly in how he did this. Doctorow and his publisher saw a publicity windfall and ran with it. The principal removed the book from two grades (9&10) reading list. Not from the older grades. Doctorow lost his mind publically, because he knew he’d get attention.

      Parents need to have a say in what their kids read. They do not need to have a say in what everyone else’s kids read. This principal needed to think before taking this action, because this was the best way to make sure every kid read that book.

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    3. And perhaps most importantly, I think the principal should be praised rather than condemned for doing his job. He is exercising judgement.

      A thought.

      He probably said he scanned it because if he’d said he read it from cover to cover, someone would as a ridiculously detailed “Gotcha” question.

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      1. I evaluate books by scanning them — every trip to the book store. I call it shopping. I have become quite skilled at it and can now determine a book I have no interest in reading in almost no time at all.

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        1. Yes, but determining if a book is worthwhile as part of a curriculum requires a higher order of analysis than determining if something suits your tastes.

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          1. Determining a book is not worthwhile as part of a curriculum can be rather easy. Many books can be identified as such at a glance, and many more require less than five minutes to reach such a conclusion.

            Yes, it is possible to falsely discard a book as not suitable, but there are so many which are suitable that there is little risk to wrongly rejecting — a suitable book can yet be found.

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    4. Yup. I am reminded of the incident in the news a couple of months ago where a dad was arrested (led away by police in handcuffs) at a school board meeting because he objected to the school picking Jodi Picoult’s Nineteeen Minutes for (I think it was MS? His kid was 13 iirc) for required reading and not sending home a form asking for parent’s permission. The school later admitted this was an oversight as the book does contain some graphic scenes.

      The dad wouldn’t sit down & shut up after his 2 minutes were up so he got cuffed and led away. Public schools yay.

      My own objection would be – seriously – study Jody Picoult? She’s ok for the melodramatic weepy chicklit beach read scene, but her books make me feel used & manipulated (she;s on my “don’t bother” list after 2 books).

      I object to schools requiring kids to read newly published fiction for “thematic” content – waaaay too faddy imo. Kids do not have the emotional maturity to put the authors manipulations (let’s face it, most thematic novels are politically motivated) in context. If the kids want to read it on their own, fine. If the teachers want to flog an issue, have them use documentary sources to discuss.

      Let them pick classics for required reading. There they have the historical distance to keep things in perspective.

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    5. I had an interesting talk yesterday at a book event with a woman who is either a tutor (maybe an aunt, or relation) of a 14-year old girl who formerly was reluctant to read – but has suddenly been taken with historical fiction. She thought two of my books might do a treat – but I warned her that there was a smidgeon of explicit in one (barely a paragraph), and a couple of pages of very explicit in the other … all very tastefully done, nothing that would shock anyone who had read Forever Amber, of course. But still … fourteen year-old. I advised her to pre-screen them, first. I’ve said the same to my brother, whose precocious 10-year old adopted daughter also wants to read my books – also having developed a passion for historical fiction and a talent for reading waaaaay above her age group. (Daughter came out of an unfortunate family situation where sexual abuse was involved. Kid is a darling, and very, very bright, so … oops, tangent here.)

      Of course, looking at what IS being thrust upon middle-schoolers these days, my own stuff may not be very much out of line at all. Still, my best-seller over time is the first one, To Truckee’s Trail, which is so G-rated that I have Christian home-schooling friends who use it as part of their curriculum on the California-Oregon Trail. (No kidding – I had an early reader comment that I should market it as “Wagon Trains for Dummies.”)
      Thinking it all over in light of this and other conversations, I wonder if there isn’t a future in walking it all back, sexually-explicit-wise, to something about the speed of Forever Amber. I had some laughs from some other purchasers of my books yesterday, when I told them that. Of course, some of them were of the age to have read Forever Amber when it was the height of naughty historical fiction – but they all said, yes – really, they would like that, very much. And the younger reading element gave evidence of also preferring their HF a little more PG … even PG-13.
      From these conversations yesterday, I have definitely confirmed the wisdom of my decision to make Lone Star Sons G-rated and middle-school appropriate. At least – their parents and grands will feel OK about purchasing it!
      Any thoughts?

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      1. My eleven-year-old son, who is an advanced reader, specifically requested from the librarian books with real topics, adventures, and problems, but less romance stuff than Harry Potter. So there is certainly another interested individual young reader out there.

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        1. Well, recommend “To Truckee’s Trail” to him! Plenty of real-world there! And only a bit of what I used to call “goopy stuff”!

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          1. This morning I just finished Pioneer Children on the Journey West which, among things, sited Moses Schallenberger’s 1885 Overland in 1844, recalling that journey. Made me think about of To Truckee’s Trail.

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    3. I am not sure how many books, novella, pamphlets and other bits of writing I at least started reading because I was told not to, including Mao’s little red book. Being told that something should not be read is no guarantee of worthwhile reading.

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  9. All this discussion ignores the purpose of school. It is not to benefit the student, it is to benefit the state. What can you expect once you realize that?

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    1. Oh, this crowd understands that very well, riteturn, but part of the point is this: even accepting their claims of what they’re trying to accomplish, they’re still failures.

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  10. You are absolutely correct that banning a book only makes kids want to read it. The solution is to make it the center of the reading program. Go through it page by page and tell them about all the symbolism and themes. You could make “Monster Hunter International” boring this way. One of my English teachers destroyed “The Great Gatsby” this way (not that I would ever have read the book anyways). She went on and on assuring us that the green light Gatsby was looking at over the water symbolized hope. I’m still pretty sure to this day Fitzgerald meant it to symbolize a boat dock.

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      1. I didn’t do The Great Gatsby, but I remember having to do an essay on the symbolism in a short story we had read. The way this teacher graded was that you only got an “A” on anything if you showed her something she’d never seen before. She was a Phd with a lot of years under her belt, so that was harder and harder each semester.

        I BSed my way on that essay and made the only “A” anyone made that semester in that class. Imagine what could have happened if I actually bought into that tripe?

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        1. Aw Geez– I got A’s all the time in English Lit– You have to know how to BS plus also, I used archetypes. Since English Lit types don’t usually go in for psychology (the real stuff), it was easy. I did have one professor who expected my brand of twist though. ;-) so I wasn’t allowed to do the same thing twice in her class. Made it more interesting.

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          1. I was a political science major at the time, so I was working toward a BS in BS. That class did more to prepare me for the future world than any of my poli sci classes ever did. :)

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            2. hm? I did a turn at Political Science. One of my best teachers is now in jail for hiring someone to commit a murder, which, by the way (in answer to discussion elsewhere) is against the law. Hiring anyone to commit a crime is in itself a crime.

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              1. One of my best teachers had been a mayor of a town well north of here and is now a city commissioner.

                Your best became a criminal, and mine might as well have. :D

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              1. Seconded.

                At one point my fellow students and I competed to see who could spin the most outlandish of interpertations and get away with it.

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    2. “Dammit,” said Freud, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar! Stop reading so much into what you’re reading!”

      Or something like that. Overanalysis kills the joy of reading.

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    3. To this day I cannot tolerate Shakespeare. Spent an entire year in English class with a teacher who’s entire focus was on how “too too solid flesh” had to mean that Hamlet was over weight which was the source of all his angst and troubles. In retrospect, had to have been the subject of her master’s thesis, but for the love of Ghod lady, move on!
      Probably wasn’t the entire year, now that I look back, but sure felt like it at the time.

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      1. Maybe the real point was that H was experiencing “erections lasting more than four hours.” I mean, look at his relationship with Ophelia, after all.

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      2. For those who know, they will understan, this makes me think:

        My careereth is over. I am making a horseth asseth of myselfeth. Mark, I’m begging you. I’m BEGGING you. You want this kind of performance? Let me play Lady Anne.

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    4. Monster Hunter [ ______ ] has no business on any school reading list. It promotes gun culture, disrespect for governmental authority and a presumed right of self-defense. It also fosters stereotypes of the Monster-American community (several of the books also present anti-immigrant monster biases), promoting monstorphobic attitudes.

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    5. Clearly the werewolf boss represents the predatory nature of the one-percenters and Owen’s battle with him is symbolic of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat . . .

      Put down that carp!

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  11. Wait, they were going to REQUIRE the ENTIRE SCHOOL read a book and nobody bothered to check ahead of time if it might be questionable? And then a school admin finally thinks “Hey… maybe I should do a quick one-over to see what kind of trouble is going to fall in my lap when I require everybody to read this.”

    During the summer. Without providing copies for people.

    I’m REALLY not keen on schools taking it onto themselves to give assignments to children who are not in their custody, no matter if the justification is what a great opportunity it is and how good for them it’ll be. Suggested summer reading lists, sure, fine– as long as they’re non-binding.

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  12. My parents had a lot of books in our home, but they were not encouraging us to read them. In fact I was punished when I was found reading. I wonder sometimes if to my parents books were decorating items. *sigh

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  13. “Walter Mitty”, ya, that guy. The ordinary average guy who imagined himself a super hero fighter pilot secret agent man James Bond. Ya, him. They made fun of that ordinary guy who had dreams, fantasies they were called.

    I got the message; shut up and do your work. Don’t dream, don’t imagine great things, just do what you are told, and don’t make trouble.

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    1. Odd, I never read the book but my mom recently mentioned that she loved it- read it to bits, because she could relate to him. Life boring? Liven it up yourself!

      She really, really hated the idea of a movie, because she figured they’d desecrate it in the manner you’re mentioning.

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      1. I loved the story “Walter Mitty”, and didn’t get the moral that skandiarecluse got out of it. (Of course, I read it on my own time. That might have helped.)

        Considering all the other stuff that Thurbur wrote, it was entirely possible that this was meant as self-referential humor.

        And the movie with Danny Kaye is a lot of fun. (Can’t really go wrong with Danny Kaye, ever. <3)

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  14. There probably would have been hell to pay if mom had read some of the books that I was reading as a kid. But she turned a blind eye to me picking up the same books that my older brothers had read…often after dad had finished them. Good thing, most of them were mil fiction. From the Mac Wingate series (WWII) to a looooooot of Vietnam era stuff. Then there was the vigilante Mac Bolan. I think I’d even read Red Storm Rising twice before I finished the 7th grade, and that was tame compared to the earlier stuff. Come to think of it, if my teachers had ever picked up any of the books I was reading in elementary school, they probably would have had a fit!

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  15. Ok, I’m going to say some things that I doubt will be popular.

    1) education IS indoctrination. Children are uncivilized little savages. They need to be taught how to behave by their elders (or they will be taught much harder lessons at great expense to themselves and those around them). And that means that somebody in authority has to decide what to teach them, and those in authority are frequently pillocks. This is why I believe in school choice; I think it’s likely that most decisions about what to teach kids will be idiocy, and the more choices there are the more chance there is of somebody getting it right (probably by accident).

    2) It is entirely too easy to get all self-rightious about “banning books!”. But I note that the inevitable library display of banned books somehow never includes THE PROTOCALLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION or MEIN KAMPH, becuase its hard to feel smug about people having access to those. I think that, on balance, the idea of banning something is a bad one, but I would like to see (in general, not here specifically) a little better deistinction made between attemps at censorship and declining to buy something. If a goverment supresses the publication or importation of a book. That is censorship. If a community organ such as a school library declines to shelve a book, that might be thrift.

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    1. Point 1 – yes. Their minds are full of mush, and they have to be civilized by any means necessary. And I’ve had to ‘unteach’ the little guy some stuff – but thanks to our choice of school it’s not been all that much.

      Of far more importance, I think, is the willingness by parents to teach them what is expected behavior – both physically (this is how you behave at the table, how you keep things clean, how you change a tire because being an adult and NOT knowing how to change a tire is stupid… not being able physically to do it is one thing, but not knowing HOW is nearly a sin) and intellectually. (If you have an opinion, be able to back it up. Do your homework, be tolerant of others who have opinions but nothing to back it up, try to gently educate them. And watch out for excessive verbiage in anything from contracts to conversations – it’s usually hiding something.)

      Point 2 – Not going to argue much – but I’d just like to add that early inoculation against the types of ideas spouted in those books can have long-lasting intellectually immunological effects.

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      1. “early inoculation against the types of ideas spouted in those books can have long-lasting intellectually immunological effects.”

        Yeah. You don’t want to turn your kid into the intellectual version of the boy in the bubble; he’d “catch” the first thing he was exposed to an end up a Communist, or a Presbyterian, or selling Amway.

        I’d love to see HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS required reading in every school in the land; it makes one innately suspicious of the general statistical blizzard.

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        1. Elementary statistics and elementary formal logic ought to required for high school graduation.

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          1. Which was why I was glad to see the son’s school teaching elementary logic in 6th grade. He’s looking at a lot of things now and going ‘Do they really expect us to believe things like that?’

            Sadly, yes – yes, they do.

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      2. early inoculation against the types of ideas spouted in those books can have long-lasting intellectually immunological effects.

        Yes. But….

        nit # 1 – the first vaccines that we used to general good effect were *killed* viruses – taking a wild sample and either nuking it or killing it with toxin before administering it to the patient. Done to gubment standards, you know. And it generally takes several exposures to provide lasting immunity. It was not until later that we learned to do this without killing the virus first – because so often a wild virus reverted to wild type and caused an epidemic on its own.

        nit # 2 – G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate. I’m just sayin’.

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    2. I have just read about an imaginary world where cultures are free to teach their children as they please, but they must also have their children “receive a class taught by a World Government representative in which they learn about the other communities participating in Archipelago, receive a basic non-brainwashed view of the world, and are given directions to their nearest World Government representative who they can give their opt-out request to. ”

      Yup, the World Government has the real, absolute, and objective point of view.

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  16. I’m with those of two minds.

    …wait. That didn’t come out right.

    *ahem* Try again.

    I think this is more complex than just ‘don’t try to restrict reading material offered to kids’.

    Words have power. We have to start with that agreement or I don’t think this whole thing is worth talking about.

    1) As pointed out by none other than Baen’s TM in this very space, there is a lot of utility to creating common touchstones for communication and community building. In common areas. Communally. (okay, okay, stopping now.) For kids, that generally includes REQUIRED READING LISTS and other things of dubious merit. Even when we grow up, there are required reading lists (MSDS, manuals, checklists) to ensure the communication is as accurate as possible.

    2) There is a difference between ‘getting everyone talking about the same thing’ and ‘exposing everyone to the same lesson with a specific learning objective’. Standards are important for the second one, NSM for the first.

    3) If people with common backgrounds and povs couldn’t disagree heatedly on the worthiness, meaning and intent of works which have been around for centuries, there would be even less market for degrees in Classic Lit than there are now. And geek conventions would be a lot quieter.

    4) Kids adsorb the oddest things from the oddest places. Controlling communication (in the basic sense of “what you understood is what I meant to say”) can be touchy between people of common language, background, and pov. Throw in hormone-driven thought-addling, generational shifts in vocab and attitude, and the lower ability of less experienced minds and hearts to catch on to manipulation and irony, and it can be really hard to make sure that a given speech or work is not taken very inaccurately by *someone*.

    5) Translation is best done from the learnt language into the home tongue, or so I’ve been told. What this means for school princibles and teachers (and all of us) trying to pass on wisdom to the next generation, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

    TL;DR – I appreciate the frustration of CD and the publisher when their audience was shrunk, and I agree that this means the work should have been subject to more scrutiny afore time. But what if it had? Would that conversation been had at this quasi-national level? At this volume? Does this kind of reaction that mean we really are promoting pre-censorship, the sort where no one tries to promote something (someone else thinks) they shouldn’t have? Or the sort where no one feels comfortable changing their mind?

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    1. From what I’ve seen, the important issue here is sloppiness and knee-jerk reacting. Schools make decisions on what it appropriate and inappropriate reading all the time. However, here we have a reading list that was either not vetted ahead of time, or was created by someone with a vastly different view of what is appropriate than the Principal had, and then the Principal reports having merely skimmed the book before deciding to remove it from the lists for two of the grade levels. Even if he began by skimming it, had he then gone back and read thoroughly, and then perhaps sent out an advisory to parents to consider whether they wanted their children reading that particular book, I can’t see many people complaining about that, except some might complain that it had been included in the first place.

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  17. I guess I must have gone to a school that was on the cutting edge of whatever. The Beatles were on their way to their total break up and I was required to read Catcher in the Rye. I was thoroughly unimpressed by Holden Caulfield and his musings. This assignment came right after a bunch of dismal books about teens who were bullied, depressed, suicidal and experimented with drugs. All of these books made it to banned book lists at one time or another.

    Some of the books I was required to read that year may have provided excellent insight if they had been properly presented. But we read a number of these stories about uncomfortable teems in a row and the teacher, who was busy trying to convince us that he was totally hip and understood where we were coming from, failed to engage us in considered discussion. Anyway, it has ended up as one monotonous load of drivel in my memory.

    (Aside, my head is playing: Surely we’ve managed to promote the gloomiest man on this continent to head of our troops. Those are the most depressing accumulation of disaster, doom, and despair in the entire annals of history! And furthermore…)

    I am not in favor of banning books, but not requiring a book be read is not the same as banning the book. this is not a binary situation. (Is not presenting a book at school a ban? Then: Ooooo, Sarah is banned! Maybe this will help sales?) This is not to support the principal’s decision, or how he made it.

    I am concerned about how and what is being presented in schools. I am very concerned by the lack of depth and breath in the ideas being presented in our schools. At the same time I see teachers giving students books that they have neither the maturity or experiences to comprehend without careful presentation, and then not being providing the necessary support. (I also see propagandizing, but that is another issue.)

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  18. Age level of books is one thing, but ultimately I think that should be left up to the parents more than the school, as actual maturity level isn’t determined by what grade a kid is in. In my case, for example, I was reading books like Jurassic Park (and not the junior novelization) by the time I was in third grade, so while reading level was a moot point maturity level was, and my mom steered my books appropriately.

    Then again, it was also her that gave me stuff like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to read; but only when she thought I was ready.

    I’ve had three very different experiences with book banning/censorship over the course of my education, and each taught me something different.

    When I was in 11th grade a parent at my school was trying to get Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card banned (not that it was on many reading lists at that time) because it was “teaching kids to think all religious leaders were evil.” The teacher’s response was to ask for volunteers (me) to read it and have them reply to the parent/school board in a written letter. (For extra credit) I don’t remember what exactly I said, but it basically boiled down to, “This is stupid, yeah a pastor is the villain of the book, but him being evil and him being a pastor are completely incidental from each other.”

    The second one was a year later, when I noticed a stack of thin books on the English teacher’s bookshelf. Given that all the books we’d been assigned were closer to Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (still my favorite book) in length I wondered what it was. It was Gilgamesh, which I had heard of thanks to Star Trek. (Star Trek also having saved my butt on my Moby Dick essay, but that’s a different story)

    I asked the teacher about it and she basically said, “Oh, I can’t teach that one because some parents complained about the content, did you know it’s nearly the oldest story we have record of, and I won’t be checking to make sure they’re all there until the end of the year. Excuse me for a moment; I think I need a drink of water.”

    At the time (and now) I thought the parents’ complaints were stupid. Sure, there was the court priestess that ‘civilizes’ Enkidu, but you get more detail from Judy Blume, for Pete’s sake.

    The third time was in college, where the professor was rabidly anti-book bans, but to the point that she was assigning stuff just to shock us. I don’t think I will ever forgive her for forcing us to read 120 Days of Sodom, by the friggin Marquis de Sade, then after the test admitting she couldn’t get through it because it was so vile. Of course, she was also doing specifically to freak out the religious in the class, and being the Univsersity of Utah there actually were quite a few Mormons in the class who had just returned from their two year proselytizing mission, and were still about as religious as you can get without joining a convent.

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      1. I can probably guess what that is from context, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. Could you provide a little more detail?

        But yes, that was assuredly my least favorite teacher in college. Such disdain for religion gets wearying.

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    2. It has been a very long time since I read Gilgamesh (although not quite as long a time since it was published; I think I probably picked it up in mmpb rather than hardbound) but I am appalled at the suggestion that it might have been the origin point for the meme of “he (she) just needs to get laid) meme. NO Wonder it was banned deemed not suitable for all audiences!

      Sidebar: have y’all read any of the essays arguing that the movies’ ratings code has fostered movies that are more extreme in their presentation of objectionable material? I won’t attempt to recount the arguments, merely direct your attention thitherward.

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    4. Re Gilgamesh — I read this aloud with my 9th and 7th grade children while home schooling. I edited out the sex scene, though. Is there something else in there that I’m supposed to find offensive? Maybe I’m just shameless, ’cause it was just classic hero’s journey stuff to me … ??

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      1. “The” sex scene? The copy I have (but haven’t read in years) had far more than one. Most of them homoerotic (hence my failure to re-read).

        It was the Stephan Grundy (ironic name, that) version.

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        1. Well, the translation I had had only one sex scene that I recognized (and it was heteronormative). Maybe it was specifically intended for the school crowd … I am no expert and I remember getting recommendations on translations from The Well Trained Mind or the home schooling forum run by those folks. I don’t remember the version; it was awhile back.

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      2. The version my teacher had only had the one sex scene in it – it was an edition for a bit younger audience, after all. It’s been years, but most of it came off more as a buddy cop movie (or bromance if you prefer) than ho yay.

        Of course the fact that even the kiddie version wound up banned is worth noting.

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  19. Of course it occurs to me that we no longer ban books other than within the aspect of the educational system. What we do is denigrate authors for their racist sexist homophobic writing in an effort to ensure that any future works are never published, and ultimately never written. Ever so much more effective don’t cha know.
    On a side and somewhat silly note, should anyone express the desire to ban Harry Potter, silly though it may be, just accuse them of being homophobic. After all, Dumbledore was gay, Rowling said so.
    Regarding kids and reading, had a devil of a time getting my two interested. Finally hit on the perfect entry subjects: bikes and cars. Started them on the magazines and let it be known that whole books existed about their favorite subjects. Then I just stepped back and let nature take its course.

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    1. That’s what works with certain teachers that I know of – subtly let the kids know that there are … magazines and books out there, catering to their particular interests.
      Yep, step back, and let the reading begin. Just go around the corner to chortle about how your plan has paid off…

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      1. Before we moved to home education The Daughter attended a excellent grade school program for the highly gifted. Even among these students there were those who were less than interested in reading as a pass time. The third grade teacher kept a spinner of all sorts of books in the classroom, letting the children choose for themselves. His hope was that each child would find at least one book that would draw them into the joys of reading.

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  20. Growing up in the 50s-60s in the South, I was free to read everything I could. And I raised both my daughters to do the same. And to question authority when appropriate. My mother was no shrinking violet either… She was one tough old lady, well into her 70s before being stricken with blood clot, but there was still a book on her night table that last night…

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  21. OK, I’m going to let my pet, Peeve, take a brief walk (you have been warned). How banned is “banned” anymore? I ask because every flippin’ year the libraries have “Banned Book Month” (or week) with all the usual suspects on display, or read aloud, or what have you, and none of the books are ones that have been completely prohibited in the US, at least not since 1900. They are books that school districts removed from shelves or classrooms, or that certain religious groups complain about, but never a list of “Books unavailable in the United States because the Government does not permit their import and/or publication.”

    Peeve has been returned to his crate for the day.

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    1. AFAIK, nothing featured in any Banned Books Week is actually banned in the U.S. Such “weeks” are just marketing ploys anymore. Efforts to get kids to actually *read* something by making it edgy and forbidden. The implication is always that the books are still banned, and are banned everywhere, though that’s never actually the case.

      I find the whole thing rather silly myself.

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      1. I dunno — haven’t they banned Huck Finn? For all the wrong reasons, mind you. And I am old enough to remember when “Banned In Boston” was common and would not have applied to such authors as Sarah, Larry Correia or John Ringo as it now might.

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        1. Many books *have been* banned, in the past. None, AFAIK, are banned *now*. I may have been unclear, but lack of clarity is part and parcel of Banned Books Week, so my own opacity was appropriate:-).

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          1. This is the sort of logic that SPLC uses to label hate-groups: using ever smaller offenses to keep up the hysteria.

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    2. Growing up in the ’50s and ’50s I do recall that there were books and movies common in Europe that were banned here. It was not at all unusual for customs to confiscate certain literature from returning travelers. We’re primarily talking about what was then known as salacious material, ie porn. But with a flock of court rulings that mostly went away sometime in the ’70s, so not much of anything is officially banned these days.
      On the other hand, I see that our government has by executive order banned the re-import of thousands of M1 rifles and carbines made here and given to South Korea after the Korean war. So our minders are still looking after us, limiting our exposure to what they consider bad for us.
      And for that matter, what was the proposed “Fairness Doctrine” but an attempt by our government to present censorship as a “good thing?”

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    3. And, as I noted above, that display somehow never includes anything seriosly problematical, like THE PROTOCALS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION. Because the inevitable Banned Books Display isn’t about THINKING, it’s about feeling smugly superior.

      Demand that the same librarian who puts up that dispaly put tracts by the KKK on her shleves, and I somehow doubt her opposition to banning books will stand up. I also doubt she will see the connection.

      And, yes, I am assuming that the librarian ina public library will be female. I don’t believe I have seen more than a half-dozen exceptions in my lifetime.

      I suppose a male, non-dominant orangutang is possible………

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      1. The dominant ones have a lot of trouble getting jobs in industries with clear hierarchies (especially ones with something like “trial by combat”). Or, as my friend always says, “ook.”

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    4. Just give him a good petting and a treatsie for the day, ‘kay?
      Yeah, I’ve often wondered about that myself. Same as I’ve often wondered about the VileProg havvering about McCarthyism descending on us again, from some vast Right Wing starship or something. Really, the way that they go “Ooooga-booogha!” and run around in a panic is totally baffling.

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  22. A thought– it’s incredibly unlikely that the “question authority” theme was “question authority to determine if it is invalid and respond appropriately,” it was “reflexively reject any authority of the types lined out here and don’t question the wrong kind of authority at all.”

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    1. And then there’s the interpretation “Question Authority, because an authority on a subject is likelier to be able to answer your questions than some random guy you met in a bar.”

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      1. *laughs* Reminds me of something I saw recently… a scientist explaining that quoting a guy who was commenting inside of his field (not shared by the explain-er) was an “appeal to authority” and that the quoted guy was not to be trusted because he cheated on his wife and claimed to have taken LSD during the 60s. (prior to becoming a well known scientist)

        Hey, I laughed…..

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  23. This is always a little complicated, and perhaps nuanced.

    I absolutely believe parents are and should be the final authority on what their children are exposed to and when. Parents ought be the people most familiar with a child’s emotional development and mental flexibility. Bringing in books with themes that may be beyond the children’s ability to parse objectively is problematic, and it may very well be damaging.

    All that said, I don’t think teenagers are children. Not to say they’re fully developed or emotionally mature, and not to say they don’t still need protection. But — the idea that any adult has a major degree of control in a teenagers life is an illusion. They’re responsiveness to authority and rules is set in childhood and they’re working from that framework as they follow the developmental imperative to explore and grow into themselves.

    At this point, guidance is a better watchword, and a willingness to help the teens explore more mature ideas and find the boundaries. (Note, I do say boundaries, there are boundaries on behavior for all of us. Teens pushing limits does not mean they ought be allowed to blow past reasonable boundaries.)

    Parents who earnestly believe they can shield their kids from growing up are destined for shock and pain.

    A particular example that comes to mind is the woman who argued passionately for keeping condom dispensers off of campus. College campus, mind you. Because this would “encourage kids to have sex.”

    When you’re going to extend the hovering attempt to control into college and adulthood, you probably need to reassess.

    To the specific book, I haven’t read it so I’m unsure what the themes might be. But, I have a hard time imagining a mainstream book that couldn’t be read by 9th and 10th grade students with parent and teacher involvement and explanation. And as many have pointed out, now it’s going to be read by those same students without parent and teacher involvement. Except for the smart parents, they’ll get involved in the inevitable.

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  24. They heard it was about magic and we all know that magic is actually magick which is nothing but blood rights and black magic and devil worship.

    This may qualify as a nitpick, but…
    What are “blood rights”?

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    1. IMO that should be “blood rites” as in ceremonies where animals or humans are killed.

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  25. Had to read Catcher in the Rye in high school. Couldn’t really see why we were reading it. It was a so-so book in which absolutely nothing happened.

    Though I got the impression that the fact that nothing happened might have been why people thought it was a great book.

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      1. Me too. The translation was one on the lists we got, and one of the few I had trouble going through because a) I didn’t like the protagonist and b) thought it was a boring story. Another I remember is Madame Bovary, which I liked somewhat better – or maybe ‘tolerated’ is the more accurate word here – even though I didn’t like any of the characters and especially thought the Madame to be a totally brainless twit.

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  26. Not choosing a particular book to teach is not, repeat, not the same thing as banning it. Given the limited time and resources it would mean that virtually all books published have been banned. Education is in large part a matter of teaching discrimination of taste in matters of art and thus requires some standards be set; setting any standard perforce means some subjects will fall below the standard. All standards are, in some way, arbitrary.

    Frankly, I dislike the idea of a “one school, one book” summer reading program. I despair at ever finding a single book likely to be readable by, much less enjoyed by, the entire population of a four-year High School. I shudder to think I might have been forced to read Hesse’s Siddhartha and expect others would have been similarly appalled at my promoting Lord of Light or The Iron Dream as suitable course material.

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  27. Okay, everyone, I’m asking you to do my homework for me: my local librarian asked me, as the town’s Official SF Writer Dude, to recommend some SF and fantasy books for the town library. I have a pretty comprehensive knowledge of the field up through about the time my eldest child was born (1996) but after that my reading time mysteriously contracted.

    So: recommendations for post-1996 books. What’s our modern canon?

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      1. Troy Rising series by John Ringo, also Vorpal Blade series, Black Tide series, The Last Centurion. Princess of Wands and Queen of Wands.

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        1. I think I might have put the Prince Roger series ahead of all those for thematic significance (“growing up”) even though (IIRC) the prince doesn’t actually roger anybody in the first couple books.

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      2. What Sarah said, the Frontier Magic books by Patricia C. Wrede (YA but I see them sneaking out with adults, or vice versa), Peter Grant’s mil-sci-fi if they are allowed to get them, ditto Marko Kloos’s mil-sci-fi.

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    4. Does it matter if the majority of the books in a series were written post-1996 but the initial entry predated that? I’m thinking of the Vokosigan books.

      Funny, I lost several years of reading in the field after the Daughtorial Unit arrived. What an odd coincidence.

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    5. While Butcher is known primarily for his Dresden Files books, his Codex Alera is some of the best heroic fantasy I’ve read in a long time. Furies of Calderon, then Academ’s Fury, Cursor’s Fury, Captain’s Fury, Princep’s Fury, and First Lord’s Fury.

      Another plug for Scott Sigler’s The Rookie… and while they might not be appropriate for younger readers, older teens and grownups would probably like Nathan Lowell’s Solar Clipper books.

      I just finished Correia’s Grimnoir books, and they were fantastic as well.

      A big second on the Prince Roger series, also – March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars, We Few (so far, there are hints of another book to come).

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    6. SF and Fantasy books that I’d recommend (most of them post-1996, but not all of them):

      Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
      1632 by Eric Flint
      The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
      Lord Darcy by Randall Garrett (recently re-issued by Baen; they’re fantastic mysteries, a la Sherlock Holmes)
      Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
      Divine Misfortune by A. Lee Martinez
      Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling
      The Magicians by Lev Grossman
      Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
      Hard Magic by Larry Correia
      His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
      Player of Games by Iain Banks
      Jumper by Steven Gould (nothing at all like the terrible movie)
      Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

      I have a bunch of books by Sarah and the various Huns on the to-read list, but haven’t finished any of them yet (Currently about a third of the way through Draw One in the Dark, which I like so far)

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    2. To steal someone else’s line … how ridiculous, everyone knows that someone claiming to be a 13 year old Ukrainian boy on the Internet is a cop.

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  29. To judge by my own experiences, the kindest thing you can do for a writer you really like and really want to support, let alone a writer whose work, in the hands of the young, would potentially change the entire future for the significantly better, would be to commence a campaign to get them banned from the schools. (This does make sense…especially considering how powerfully anti-literate a force is embodied by the typical public school’s reading program.)

    I’m lucky. I didn’t even need to be encouraged to read. One fix, and I was hooked so hard that even 12 years of American public education couldn’t turn me into an aliterate drone. Had anyone bothered to try and keep particular books away from me, I would, of course, have put those on the top of my priority queue, but that never really happened either. (My mother was in favor of reading, in the abstract. But when she was a kid, it took so long for her to get decent glasses that even as an adult she was never quite able to shake the association of “reading” with “punishment” in her own subconscious mind. Which of course meant that, once I progressed past the standard “early reader” stuff, I was mostly making my own selections, and typically of things she hadn’t actually read first herself. This was greatly to my advantage, of course. :) )

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  30. Being as severely ADHD as I am, reading used to be a chore. School reading didn’t really help with that in the least. Being forced to read Steinbeck year after year (our English teacher apparently had a fetish for Steinbeck) made it so that I cringe at the mere mention of his name.

    Yet, in 7th grade, I read Island of the Blue Dolphins and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I considered it an anomaly and went back to avoiding reading at all costs until I picked up Starship Troopers in the Exchange on the local Marine base when I was home on leave after boot camp. I started reading a lot of stuff. In hind sight, much of it probably wasn’t even that good by SFF pulp standards, but I enjoyed it well enough.

    School reading lists actually hurt me when it came to reading.

    Meanwhile, my son has Advanced Reader books. There’s a point value assigned to each book, and it’s based on his reading level. I’m not thrilled with the program (won’t let him read above that level, which is bull), but it’s not bad because it lets him pick the books. For the last two years, he’s been among the top AR readers in his grade. Last year, trying to slog through a book he wasn’t feeling during the summer held him back a bit.

    By contrast, he’s had a grand total of two books he’s had to read for school that he actually liked. One was Catching Fire, and he’d already read that, so I’m not sure I should count that one. The other was called Hatchet, and I recently read it. Not to shabby, really. His knock on reading it was that they did it in class and took FOREVER to get through it.

    Schools don’t seem to do a lot to help kids love reading. If anything, they hurt it, which is clearly bad for us writers. Maybe we should start an effort to include more popular fiction in educational reading? Can’t hurt, and might do more to actually educate our kids.

    Which means it’ll probably never happen.

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  31. OT (because apparently I’m compelled to do such lately):

    So, I needed a new world for the Baen contest, not having anything suitable. Okay, whipped one up, discovered some characters wandering out past the wild edges and invited them in (cue ominous music) and set to work. Those characters have argued with me and stubbornly held their ground until I’m telling the story I’m supposed to tell, and things are coming together and moving along. Grand, yes?

    Now — those characters have decided there’s really a bigger story here. If I’ll just get this little short finished then we can get on with it.

    They don’t seem swayed by my list of other things I have to do. Really, I fear they may be plotting with the characters I already had hanging out.

    I don’t want a coup…

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      1. *sigh*

        Yeah, more outlines and character sheets. My head is getting (more) crowded.

        Dig the art, by the by!

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  32. When I was in middle school my Parents objected to LORD OF THE FLIES being required reading, on the (I think, reasonable) grounds that for all its iconic status its view of boys was seriously unrealistic. Would they end up as savages? Sure. Would they fall that fast? No. That would take adult idiocy. My mother it particular objects to the story point that NONE of the older boys even tried to look after the youngest.

    They didn’t want it banned, they simply thought it was inappropriate for middle school required reading.

    I gather that the administrator involved tried to pull the “I’m the education professional, and YOU are unqualified” speech. To my father, the PhD. He left the next year.

    Naturally I read it the following summer. It was the dullest pot of message I’d ever run into in print, to that point.

    Interestingly, that same summer I ran into A LONG VACATION by Jules Verne. Even considering its pulpy heritage, I thought it more realistic than FLIES. The boys aren’t all bad all the time, though some do go bad. OK, the Good Guys DO win (it’s a Verne).

    I know people who think LORD OF THE FLIES is wonderful, powerful, and so forth. I just found it tiresome.

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    1. I think Lord of the Flies is bullshit, psychologically. Well, all kinds of shit, really. WHY would the boys end up as savages? Oh, yeah, because the author’s disgusting views of humanity required it. The end.
      When I was 19 one of my suitors gave me Lord of the Flies for my birthday. Weirdly, I was never at home for him after that. :-P

      Also, I burned the book. It was fun.

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        2. I also hated Lord of the Flies – though it was more a movie shown than the book read. It made no sense to me for them to essentially act like a bunch of modern day peacetime brats if there’s a bloody war going on. Children are not spared from being at least aware of and the effects of war.

          Your youngest’s report is absolutely dripping with sarcasm and snark. It’s brilliant. How was it received, however? (I’d have given him full marks myself.)

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      2. At the time, I kinda liked Lord of the Flies. Because I was in junior high and it felt like every single kind in the whole school had ganged up on me. (It was just 20 or so, actually. The rest couldn’t be bothered.) So I was reading a documentary, set in a place with fewer adults, less bloodshed, and more plant-life. I suspect it would not improve on re-reading.

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  33. Heather’s comment having hit the right hand wall, I jump here to add this comment [https://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/06/09/dont-read-that-it-might-be-bad-for-you-amanda-green/#comment-175003] on her “I know a pastor who has performed an exorcism” remark. One reason Bobby Jindal may never be able to run for president is his honest admission of participation in college in a successful exorcism. [SEARCHENGINE] it — it is the first item arising on Google in response to “Jindal e” and you will understand the depths the opposition will go to in order to discredit his candidacy.

    Never mind that such a belief, like belief in a Created Universe, has little to nothing to do with the skills and talents required to be an effective chief executive and administrator. Frankly, I find them far less discomforting than a president who believes in money for nothing (aka, Keynsian stimulus), the fact is that the Clerisy running the country (see Instapundit quote of Joel Kotkin 06-09-2014 @8:26 am) will never allow somebody who doesn’t accept their vision to be viewed as credible.

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  34. I know all the shouting is over, and posting to an old blog post is probably the mark of Cain or something, but…

    I was thinking about this, and it struck me that the model we need to explain to the educators is actually pretty simple. See, first we start with the meme, which is basically a concept or idea wrapped in words, okay? Which can be spread, almost like a disease, through being exposed. Then second, we recall the principle behind vaccines and similar medical treatments, which is that the body, exposed to weak versions of diseases and other problems, develops antibodies to fight back, and can then resist the full-scale assault of the disease just fine.

    So, you see, by banning books and other attempts to remove exposure to such items, they are actually weakening their students and making them more likely to fall victim to these ideas when they run into them later. Instead, they should be providing the students with a broad exposure to these memes, preferably providing them with reinforcement such as assignments and other requirements to reduce the thrill of the unknown.

    Actually, applying the germ theory to memes makes a whole lot of sense to me. Of course, some of us do get infected, and even enjoy our illness, but let’s not warn the educators of those problems. Let them believe that they are strengthening their students against later exposure, which indeed, I believe they would be doing.

    What do you think? Could we educate the educators?
    ‘nother Mike

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    1. ‘Twould have to be an inside job. If someone were to propose such an idea, and that person were a known perpetrator of badthink, then the proposal would be dismissed out of hand and their resistance to it increased an hundred-fold.

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    2. I know all the shouting is over, and posting to an old blog post is probably the mark of Cain or something, but…

      I thought it was a Mark Of Odd…. we just keep THINKING about stuff!

      Also, love the logic.

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  35. I wish the outrage was for a book that was actually worthwhile, not the recycled infodump hippyster garbage that is Little Brother. I was angry at the laziness, lying, and stupidity of that book for days after I read it in 2008. I think that the way this was handled was probably not terribly effective, but the book itself is dreck – selfish power fantasy and leftist agit-prop at its worst.

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  36. I wish the outrage was for a book that was actually worthwhile, not the recycled infodump hippyster garbage that is Little Brother. I was angry at the laziness, lying, and stupidity of that book for days after I read it in 2008. I think that the way this was handled was probably not terribly effective, but the book itself is dreck – selfish power fantasy and leftist agit-prop at its worst.

    Like

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