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does the line of edginess move?
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From: Barbara Tobin <barbarat>
Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 23:56:17 -0400
Mary wrote:
< What is it about the Pabbis site that you found objectionable? --I did find the few pages of text describing the reasons for the existence of the site a bit on the hysterical side>
It's that hysterical tone that scares me, Mary. It seems to almost incite parents to be looking for shadows in every page; almost inferring some awful conspiracy of teachers to wilfully corrupt the morals of their children. Worse, by neatly packaging all the 'juicy bits' for each
'bad book', it encourages parents to jump on the bandwagon brandishing pitchforked excerpts to be excised, without having to read the entire book to see if perhaps it does have some literary merit, and could in fact provoke some meaningful discussion, where a group of young people, under the guidance of a caring teacher, could talk through some of the issues that they will not be able to avoid in their young lives, not just through seeing it in the media, but in their own social lives, and yes, even in some of their homes.
By publishing long lists of every book that has ever been challenged, especially on a website that is URGING parents to take a stand, a site like this, no matter what good service it might seem to provide for parents, encourages adults to scour these booklists to see what else they might need to object to (The Giver, Tuck Everlasting, View from Saturday--- and on down to Where the Wild Things Are, Tar Beach, Strega Nona, and Crow Boy---Crow Boy??!!). If they carefully read and evaluate each book to determine the suitability for their child, that's one thing. However, I have seen some of my prospective teachers really scared to use good books for fear that they will offend somebody and jeopardize their job. Their future students are likely to be deprived of some potentially rich discussions because of this increasing pressure on teachers.
Check out some of the responses to Diane Ravitich's book The Thought Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn to see where this kind of thinking leads us, to the ludicrously razed, sterile landscape after these guardians of our children have swept through
(another good child_lit discussion!) :
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/books/29KAKU.html?pagewanted=1 http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?articleE02
Sorry, Mary, I got a bit carried away there, straying from our topic.
* How are we defining 'egdy' here?
* Does the line of edginess move as the YA genre grows?
I recall Eliza Dresang saying, in her explication of her theory of Radical Change, that 'the radical soon becomes the regular (to youth the radical is already the regular)". Let me conclude (finally!) with a quote from her book:
"But the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it [otherwise we finish up in the antiseptic world of Lowry's The Giver]" (pp. xvi).
Barbara Tobin (barbarat at gse.upenn.edu)
Received on Sun 04 May 2003 10:56:17 PM CDT
Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 23:56:17 -0400
Mary wrote:
< What is it about the Pabbis site that you found objectionable? --I did find the few pages of text describing the reasons for the existence of the site a bit on the hysterical side>
It's that hysterical tone that scares me, Mary. It seems to almost incite parents to be looking for shadows in every page; almost inferring some awful conspiracy of teachers to wilfully corrupt the morals of their children. Worse, by neatly packaging all the 'juicy bits' for each
'bad book', it encourages parents to jump on the bandwagon brandishing pitchforked excerpts to be excised, without having to read the entire book to see if perhaps it does have some literary merit, and could in fact provoke some meaningful discussion, where a group of young people, under the guidance of a caring teacher, could talk through some of the issues that they will not be able to avoid in their young lives, not just through seeing it in the media, but in their own social lives, and yes, even in some of their homes.
By publishing long lists of every book that has ever been challenged, especially on a website that is URGING parents to take a stand, a site like this, no matter what good service it might seem to provide for parents, encourages adults to scour these booklists to see what else they might need to object to (The Giver, Tuck Everlasting, View from Saturday--- and on down to Where the Wild Things Are, Tar Beach, Strega Nona, and Crow Boy---Crow Boy??!!). If they carefully read and evaluate each book to determine the suitability for their child, that's one thing. However, I have seen some of my prospective teachers really scared to use good books for fear that they will offend somebody and jeopardize their job. Their future students are likely to be deprived of some potentially rich discussions because of this increasing pressure on teachers.
Check out some of the responses to Diane Ravitich's book The Thought Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn to see where this kind of thinking leads us, to the ludicrously razed, sterile landscape after these guardians of our children have swept through
(another good child_lit discussion!) :
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/books/29KAKU.html?pagewanted=1 http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?articleE02
Sorry, Mary, I got a bit carried away there, straying from our topic.
* How are we defining 'egdy' here?
* Does the line of edginess move as the YA genre grows?
I recall Eliza Dresang saying, in her explication of her theory of Radical Change, that 'the radical soon becomes the regular (to youth the radical is already the regular)". Let me conclude (finally!) with a quote from her book:
"But the danger of withholding information from youth far exceeds the danger of providing it. The onus is on us, the adults who care for and work with young people, to guide them to it, give them the background to sort through it and interpret it, and write, edit, and publish books that give them the opportunity to reflect upon and absorb it [otherwise we finish up in the antiseptic world of Lowry's The Giver]" (pp. xvi).
Barbara Tobin (barbarat at gse.upenn.edu)
Received on Sun 04 May 2003 10:56:17 PM CDT
