Free food and $100 prizes: Alaskans rally to get challenged classics to students
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I was a voracious reader as a child, though I somewhat fell out of the habit once I reached adulthood - other pursuits, chiefly tech, took precedence for me once I was able to afford them on my own. I still read far more than the average; apparently around one in four Americans haven't picked up a book in any form in the past year[0]!
I've read all of these books except "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". I have a vague memory of feeling like the Maya Angelou's poetry was somewhat forced on me in school, and as a result wasn't particularly interested in any of her works. This article lead me to do a bit of reading about who she was and the experiences in her life that were included in her "Caged Bird."
I had no idea she spent much of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas. That's especially surprising to me because I grew up and went to school in Arkansas - K-1 in Plainview (in central AR) and 2-12 in Lead Hill (in northern AR). I don't know that I've ever been to Stamps but I do know that several of my ancestors lived in that area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This is the second time I've felt that the government schools that I attended have done me a significant disservice w/r/t literature: the first was when I discovered "Summer of My German Soldier[1]," another book centered around significant historical events in my home state.
I just bought "Caged Bird" on Kobo, and plan to read it in the next couple of weeks. Afterward, I'll likely add it to my list of books I'd like my daughters to read.
0: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_My_German_Soldier
I wasn't interested in Angelou because I sensed that it was included in the curriculum by "the authorities" to advance a specific agenda. The lesson wasn't about her works; it was about what the people who set up the lesson wanted me to take away from it. The works themselves were merely a means to that end.
This is obviously only my opinion, but I think literature should be approached with an open mind, filtered through the biases and experiences of the reader, and perhaps discussed with others. There is the perspective the author wanted to convey, sure - but there is no "correct" interpretation of a work, and to base classwork around a single interpretation seems equivalent to judging the effectiveness of a scientific experiment by whether it confirms the desired hypothesis.
None of the above is really revelatory for me. I'm the father of two unschooled daughters, and the approach that my wife and I share toward education is one of motivation and encouragement instead of the imposed structure and conformance that we experienced. It just feels good to examine the bases of my beliefs and to share them with others. :)
[snip]
> The books remain in school libraries, but will no longer be taught.
> According to a flier from the district’s Office of Instruction, Angelou’s memoir had been challenged over its “sexually explicit material, such as the sexual abuse the author suffered as a child, and its ‘anti-white’ messaging”, while Fitzgerald’s classic novel was pulled for “language and sexual references”. Invisible Man was marked for containing “language, rape and incest”, while Catch-22 was included for its violence, “a handful of racial slurs” and the fact the characters “speak with typical ‘military men’ misogyny and racist attitudes of the time”.
Here's the full flier as a PDF:
https://go.boarddocs.com/ak/matsu/Board.nsf/files/BNQSWL743B...
Removing "profanity and sexual references" from high school curricula does not eliminate them; it only ensures that they will be learned through interactions within the prevailing culture - and likely never examined in detail by most.
Placing context around things that are "socially unacceptable" is one of the most important parts of the transition between childhood and adulthood. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to allow that to happen incidentally?
Because if you ask children to think about misogyny, homophobia, and racism in their fiction, they might apply those lessons to their parents, and We Can't Have That.
That's exactly the problem that I've identified with my education: the goal shouldn't be "show children that their parents have flaws," but "expose children to material where people challenge the views of authority." The former caused me to approach things in terms of defending my own view of the world, while the latter would have had me examining it.
Framing the conversation is important. If you go too far with it, you breed resistance to learning. If you don't go far enough, all you're really risking is that someone might take the "wrong" lesson away from it.
Personally, I'd rather have someone who has more fully absorbed the material take away the wrong lesson than someone say the right things about it while never truly examining the work. In that case, at least they will have a broader base of knowledge and experiences to draw from later in life if and when their worldview changes.
I'll take a different approach on this. If I had to describe high school in general, that would be one of the first phrases I'd use.