“culture that sees school as the development of our potential as human capital, rather than as, you know, humans.” I love this! I’m an Instructional Assistant for Special Ed 1st and 2nd grade and even there, or maybe especially there, the focus is on molding the kids to be easier to handle for everyone, not be trouble. Not on helping them to become the happiest, most fulfilled humans possible. I teach writing to them. We write about their passions, most recently SpongeBob and leprechauns. I love your view on education. Will subscribe!!
You are on point as usual. I also want to amplify what reading means (or might be allowed to mean by words-on-paper people like yours truly). Having made the great (or mistaken--potato/potahto) decision to study rhetoric, I learned that the essential processes of reading reach beyond decoding printed words. And anyone who comes from a marginalized group can tell us this.
As brown kids watching almost exclusively white TV shows in the 60s and 70s, my brothers and I “read” films, television, songs on the radio, visual and print ads, commercials, as well as white teachers, priests, parents of school friends, stores, and lots more. We saw the overt “texts” and read between the lines to find out who we could trust, what the code words said beyond the veneer of friendliness. I excelled in language arts early on not just because I looked at books, newspapers, and magazines but because I *always* knew there was more to the text. And I see quite young people now who can do the same *when they’re asked to in situations that mean something to them* which doesn’t happen nearly enough in our endlessly benchmark tested schools.
So I don’t think reading has gone anywhere. It’s just being applied to a wider variety of media. By the way, reading your writing stimulates my mind every time. Please keep at it.
This may be misguided because I am not American and don't fully understand the school board process, but if that board is elected, in what sense are their decisions not democratic?
For what it’s worth, and even I am not sure that is very much-- I mostly agree with your point. But I do think Scott also has a point, even if he didn’t back it up so much as simply assert it, before flapping his arms about for a minute or two.
It may be that the Moms of Flapdoodle, or whomever, are not attacking reading so much as thinking. But while I suppose a Times writer ought to back up a statement like this better than I will, I don’t think it’s entirely correct to separate the two. Whether books are being removed from library shelves (the right, mostly) or from planned publication (the left, often), a TON of books are beinng attacked these days. It’s a big list, and it’s not only happening in right wing circles. And that doesn’t feel unrelated to our culture’s habit of avoiding serious reading.
I should emphasize: this piece of yours has led to me subscribing. Your stuff is good, as I’d heard somewhere. So I hope I didn’t overstate my position.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit since I'm not familiar with A.O. Scott's other writing, but this sounds like the problem with an atomized analysis of everything, rather than a systemic view. It seems to me that many opinion writers struggle to understand or tie together various threads because they start from a base assumption that the current status quo is generally the best way to organize society and we just need to encourage people to read more, or some other individualistic solution. As you clearly point out, it's a deeper crisis of democracy and governance. These analyses thus necessarily lack an understanding of power in the concrete way it is used and give the false equivalencies between abuse of government power (on the right) and vocal critique which sometimes brings consequences in a way that has happened for as long as people had social relationships (both the left and the right).
I could drop by to quote the same three things I always quote on this newsletter, but instead I’ll just point you and anyone else who hasn’t encountered it to Emily Knox’s work on book challenges and censorship, which has expanded and clarified my thinking about books, reading, book bans, and many other topics touched on here. Available in podcast form and in words on pixels or paper via the show notes: https://www.librarypunk.gay/e/065-book-challenges-with-emily-knox/.
Is your Mom still on Chicago’s North Shore? Happy Birthday to her!
“culture that sees school as the development of our potential as human capital, rather than as, you know, humans.” I love this! I’m an Instructional Assistant for Special Ed 1st and 2nd grade and even there, or maybe especially there, the focus is on molding the kids to be easier to handle for everyone, not be trouble. Not on helping them to become the happiest, most fulfilled humans possible. I teach writing to them. We write about their passions, most recently SpongeBob and leprechauns. I love your view on education. Will subscribe!!
You are on point as usual. I also want to amplify what reading means (or might be allowed to mean by words-on-paper people like yours truly). Having made the great (or mistaken--potato/potahto) decision to study rhetoric, I learned that the essential processes of reading reach beyond decoding printed words. And anyone who comes from a marginalized group can tell us this.
As brown kids watching almost exclusively white TV shows in the 60s and 70s, my brothers and I “read” films, television, songs on the radio, visual and print ads, commercials, as well as white teachers, priests, parents of school friends, stores, and lots more. We saw the overt “texts” and read between the lines to find out who we could trust, what the code words said beyond the veneer of friendliness. I excelled in language arts early on not just because I looked at books, newspapers, and magazines but because I *always* knew there was more to the text. And I see quite young people now who can do the same *when they’re asked to in situations that mean something to them* which doesn’t happen nearly enough in our endlessly benchmark tested schools.
So I don’t think reading has gone anywhere. It’s just being applied to a wider variety of media. By the way, reading your writing stimulates my mind every time. Please keep at it.
This may be misguided because I am not American and don't fully understand the school board process, but if that board is elected, in what sense are their decisions not democratic?
For what it’s worth, and even I am not sure that is very much-- I mostly agree with your point. But I do think Scott also has a point, even if he didn’t back it up so much as simply assert it, before flapping his arms about for a minute or two.
It may be that the Moms of Flapdoodle, or whomever, are not attacking reading so much as thinking. But while I suppose a Times writer ought to back up a statement like this better than I will, I don’t think it’s entirely correct to separate the two. Whether books are being removed from library shelves (the right, mostly) or from planned publication (the left, often), a TON of books are beinng attacked these days. It’s a big list, and it’s not only happening in right wing circles. And that doesn’t feel unrelated to our culture’s habit of avoiding serious reading.
I should emphasize: this piece of yours has led to me subscribing. Your stuff is good, as I’d heard somewhere. So I hope I didn’t overstate my position.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit since I'm not familiar with A.O. Scott's other writing, but this sounds like the problem with an atomized analysis of everything, rather than a systemic view. It seems to me that many opinion writers struggle to understand or tie together various threads because they start from a base assumption that the current status quo is generally the best way to organize society and we just need to encourage people to read more, or some other individualistic solution. As you clearly point out, it's a deeper crisis of democracy and governance. These analyses thus necessarily lack an understanding of power in the concrete way it is used and give the false equivalencies between abuse of government power (on the right) and vocal critique which sometimes brings consequences in a way that has happened for as long as people had social relationships (both the left and the right).
I could drop by to quote the same three things I always quote on this newsletter, but instead I’ll just point you and anyone else who hasn’t encountered it to Emily Knox’s work on book challenges and censorship, which has expanded and clarified my thinking about books, reading, book bans, and many other topics touched on here. Available in podcast form and in words on pixels or paper via the show notes: https://www.librarypunk.gay/e/065-book-challenges-with-emily-knox/.