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author_by_nightSo a blogger and school head supposes that popular books like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games cause brain damage.
Let's get our spork on! (NOTE: I did leave some parts out. You can suffer through the entire thing if you'd like.)
Human beings have a conscious and unconscious brain. Stored in the latter, sometimes deeply entrenched in that mysterious, sensitive part of our brain,
Brain, brain...
lie the secrets of our past,
Secrets, secrets...
our inhibitions,
inn...hibitions...
our common habits
Shhh...ock!
and all the events that have formed each of our lives since we became conscious beings. Secrets of our emotions, our passions, and our hurt, can be lying there.
In today’s world of transformational humans,
One girl alone would rise to the occasion -
millions of therapists worldwide make a living from trying to understand...
Or that.
This morning, I recalled the many memories that lie deep in my own subconscious; the deaths of my loving parents, my three brothers, my wife and perhaps even more deeply entrenched are the experiences I had as a young child growing up after the war in a very different England. I recalled vivid pictures of the school bullies, and of the grim-faced teachers as they beat me. I can remember their smelly clothes, and can recall those smells and facial grimaces when they carried out the barbaric punishment that was meted out to many young, poor children, in the nineteen-fifties.
Okay, so I can't make fun of that. That sounds truly awful. But you know... maybe that's why the stories you're about to scorn exist.
Imagination is so rich and important that I cannot understand why any parent would not actively prevent exposure to modern-world electronic gadgets, screens, films and literature that will encumber the minds and especially the imagination of their children
Yes, agreed!
...that I cannot understand why any parent would not actively prevent exposure to modern-world electronic gadgets, screens, films and literature that will encumber the minds and especially the imagination of their children
Huh?
I love the first lines of ‘The Endymion’ by John Keats:
Leave Keats out of this, or I'll La Belle Dame Sans Merci you! (... let's pretend that made sense, shall we?)
At school I had a passion for literature; indeed I felt that by the age of thirty I had read all the books I wanted to read.
That is not the attitude of someone who loves literature.
Children are innocent and pure
Despite beginning the post with recalling what little sociopaths they were.
, and don’t need to be mistreated by cramming their imagination that lies deep within them, with inappropriate things.
So they can have an imagination, as long as that imagination isn't "inappropriate."
. Such colourful covers attract children to the point of mesmerising them, and they make demands of their parents stating that they want one because every other child at school has one!
I know, right? I'd much rather they say they want a cigarette because every other child at school has one.
Sensationalism is the key for marketing literature in today’s world. Publishers and authors don’t really care who reads what,
Say that to the billions of authors getting rejection letters by the ten dozens. Ooh, actually, DO say that! I'll bring popcorn!
Seriously though, it's nothing new. Jane Austen wouldn't be recognized as a literary genius for decades. (Also, in a Jane Austen novel, you'd be the guy the lead heroine would realize was smug and full of shit.) The literary world has always been fickle.
A trip to the Amazon website revealed that thousands of great books for children can be bought for less than the cost of postage! Indeed, sets of classical literature, the stories that I read as a young buy, could be purchased and delivered to my door for less than the cost of driving to a bookshop.
Just wait 'til this guy hears of Little Free Libraries.
Last week I saw a mother sitting on a bench in a shopping mall with her young baby, sampling the milk from its bottle, to make sure it was the right temperature and flowed freely. It was a beautiful and very serene scene of motherly care.
I'm sure she loved realizing some random bloke was watching her drink milk from a bottle.
Will that same mother, in thirteen years time, when that baby becomes an opinionated young teenager, be able to offer the same care? Will the mother sample the literature that it reads like it did the baby’s bottle,
or will she be usurped by her child who by then will certainly not be seeking sensible literature,
To you. Sensible literature to you.
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!
the mentally ill child,
Wait, hold on a second. How did we get from children only reading "sensible literature" to mental illness? That's a VERY strong and even dangerous accusation.
I stand for the old-fashioned values of traditional literature, classical poetry,
All of which you read by the age of thirty, I'm certain.
Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Dickens,
I dunno, I think Dickens would like the idea of affordable literature. You might want to take him off your list.
Shakespearean plays,
Only famous because the government allowed them to be, by the way. Not that I object, he was a damn good writer, but the fact that we know who he was is due to who he was able to please.
by those children whose parents adopt a protective attitude towards ensuring that dark, demonic literature, carefully sprinkled with ideas of magic, of control and of ghostly and frightening stories
... wait a minute.
Hamlet: Ghost of Hamlet's father tells him "yeah, your stepdaddy killed me." Also, Gertrude and Hamlet may have an Oedipal thing going on.
Macbeth: Three witches trick Macbeth into killing the King, and it only gets worse from here; also, they kill swine for shits and giggles.
The Winter's Tale: Neurotic king's dead wife was a statue all along; or was it the other way around?
Romeo and Juliet: A teenage girl pretends to die; her husband kills himself, and when she wakes up, she stabs herself in turn.
Night, kids! Enjoy your totally not magical, ghostly and frightening stories!
Harry Potter,
I thought the "Harry Potter is teh evulz" crap ended in 2007, but okay.
Lord of the Rings,
Oh, no you didn't. You didn't. Am I into LOTR? No. But his books were derived from classical mythology and the oldest Anglo-Saxon works.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and Terry Pratchett, to mention only a few of the modern world’s ‘must-haves’
So anything currently popular is bad. Which means someone letting their kid read Keats when he was alive would've been poisoning their imagination, but it's okay if they let them read Keats now.
Here's the thing: All old works were new once. All of them. Keats? Was new. Shakespeare? Was new. And it took a long time for some of them to even be recognized, perhaps in part due to snobbery like yours.
; yet they can be bought without a special licence,
What is this, Communist Russia?!
and can damage the sensitive subconscious brains of young children
As you pointed out in the beginning, they're really not that sensitive. Where are you even getting that from?
many of whom may be added to the current statistics
Ooh, guys, he said STATISTICS! That word MEANS SOMETHING. Therefore, anything that follows-
of mentally ill young children.
MUST be taken with utmost seriousness.
In actual seriousness, though, really? That's not how it works. I'm not a child psychologist, but I'm sure a proper one could tell you why there's so many mentally ill children, and "they read The Hunger Games" probably wouldn't be one of his or her reasons. Actually, that's pretty offensive.
It is the duty of parents to spend time to study such matters and form their own conclusions, not to think that because the world is filled with such sensational literature they have to have it for their children, because everyone else does! Beware the devil in the text! Choose beauty for your young children!
If I had young children, I would. I'd have them read a book about an abused child who finds out he's a wizard and makes a lot of difficult but brave choices, who puts his friends and courage and loyalty above all else. I'll have them read an epic saga based on Norse Mythology, where they're transported to a land filled with Elves and Dwarves, exposed to poetry and songs, not to mention runes. And you know, if they want to take a break and read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, that's permissible too.
Obviously I would encourage them to read the classics. Hopefully school would also provide that for them, but I'd encourage it on my own as well. I agree that it's important.
But what matters the most is that they read. Because as you point out, a child's imagination is vital to his or her development. Hindering that for no reason other than snobbery - albeit under the guise of protecting their fragile minds - is, to me, utterly deplorable.
Let's get our spork on! (NOTE: I did leave some parts out. You can suffer through the entire thing if you'd like.)
Human beings have a conscious and unconscious brain. Stored in the latter, sometimes deeply entrenched in that mysterious, sensitive part of our brain,
Brain, brain...
lie the secrets of our past,
Secrets, secrets...
our inhibitions,
inn...hibitions...
our common habits
Shhh...ock!
and all the events that have formed each of our lives since we became conscious beings. Secrets of our emotions, our passions, and our hurt, can be lying there.
In today’s world of transformational humans,
One girl alone would rise to the occasion -
millions of therapists worldwide make a living from trying to understand...
Or that.
This morning, I recalled the many memories that lie deep in my own subconscious; the deaths of my loving parents, my three brothers, my wife and perhaps even more deeply entrenched are the experiences I had as a young child growing up after the war in a very different England. I recalled vivid pictures of the school bullies, and of the grim-faced teachers as they beat me. I can remember their smelly clothes, and can recall those smells and facial grimaces when they carried out the barbaric punishment that was meted out to many young, poor children, in the nineteen-fifties.
Okay, so I can't make fun of that. That sounds truly awful. But you know... maybe that's why the stories you're about to scorn exist.
Imagination is so rich and important that I cannot understand why any parent would not actively prevent exposure to modern-world electronic gadgets, screens, films and literature that will encumber the minds and especially the imagination of their children
Yes, agreed!
...that I cannot understand why any parent would not actively prevent exposure to modern-world electronic gadgets, screens, films and literature that will encumber the minds and especially the imagination of their children
Huh?
I love the first lines of ‘The Endymion’ by John Keats:
Leave Keats out of this, or I'll La Belle Dame Sans Merci you! (... let's pretend that made sense, shall we?)
At school I had a passion for literature; indeed I felt that by the age of thirty I had read all the books I wanted to read.
That is not the attitude of someone who loves literature.
Children are innocent and pure
Despite beginning the post with recalling what little sociopaths they were.
, and don’t need to be mistreated by cramming their imagination that lies deep within them, with inappropriate things.
So they can have an imagination, as long as that imagination isn't "inappropriate."
. Such colourful covers attract children to the point of mesmerising them, and they make demands of their parents stating that they want one because every other child at school has one!
I know, right? I'd much rather they say they want a cigarette because every other child at school has one.
Sensationalism is the key for marketing literature in today’s world. Publishers and authors don’t really care who reads what,
Say that to the billions of authors getting rejection letters by the ten dozens. Ooh, actually, DO say that! I'll bring popcorn!
Seriously though, it's nothing new. Jane Austen wouldn't be recognized as a literary genius for decades. (Also, in a Jane Austen novel, you'd be the guy the lead heroine would realize was smug and full of shit.) The literary world has always been fickle.
A trip to the Amazon website revealed that thousands of great books for children can be bought for less than the cost of postage! Indeed, sets of classical literature, the stories that I read as a young buy, could be purchased and delivered to my door for less than the cost of driving to a bookshop.
Just wait 'til this guy hears of Little Free Libraries.
Last week I saw a mother sitting on a bench in a shopping mall with her young baby, sampling the milk from its bottle, to make sure it was the right temperature and flowed freely. It was a beautiful and very serene scene of motherly care.
I'm sure she loved realizing some random bloke was watching her drink milk from a bottle.
Will that same mother, in thirteen years time, when that baby becomes an opinionated young teenager, be able to offer the same care? Will the mother sample the literature that it reads like it did the baby’s bottle,
or will she be usurped by her child who by then will certainly not be seeking sensible literature,
To you. Sensible literature to you.
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!
the mentally ill child,
Wait, hold on a second. How did we get from children only reading "sensible literature" to mental illness? That's a VERY strong and even dangerous accusation.
I stand for the old-fashioned values of traditional literature, classical poetry,
All of which you read by the age of thirty, I'm certain.
Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Dickens,
I dunno, I think Dickens would like the idea of affordable literature. You might want to take him off your list.
Shakespearean plays,
Only famous because the government allowed them to be, by the way. Not that I object, he was a damn good writer, but the fact that we know who he was is due to who he was able to please.
by those children whose parents adopt a protective attitude towards ensuring that dark, demonic literature, carefully sprinkled with ideas of magic, of control and of ghostly and frightening stories
... wait a minute.
Hamlet: Ghost of Hamlet's father tells him "yeah, your stepdaddy killed me." Also, Gertrude and Hamlet may have an Oedipal thing going on.
Macbeth: Three witches trick Macbeth into killing the King, and it only gets worse from here; also, they kill swine for shits and giggles.
The Winter's Tale: Neurotic king's dead wife was a statue all along; or was it the other way around?
Romeo and Juliet: A teenage girl pretends to die; her husband kills himself, and when she wakes up, she stabs herself in turn.
Night, kids! Enjoy your totally not magical, ghostly and frightening stories!
Harry Potter,
I thought the "Harry Potter is teh evulz" crap ended in 2007, but okay.
Lord of the Rings,
Oh, no you didn't. You didn't. Am I into LOTR? No. But his books were derived from classical mythology and the oldest Anglo-Saxon works.
Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and Terry Pratchett, to mention only a few of the modern world’s ‘must-haves’
So anything currently popular is bad. Which means someone letting their kid read Keats when he was alive would've been poisoning their imagination, but it's okay if they let them read Keats now.
Here's the thing: All old works were new once. All of them. Keats? Was new. Shakespeare? Was new. And it took a long time for some of them to even be recognized, perhaps in part due to snobbery like yours.
; yet they can be bought without a special licence,
What is this, Communist Russia?!
and can damage the sensitive subconscious brains of young children
As you pointed out in the beginning, they're really not that sensitive. Where are you even getting that from?
many of whom may be added to the current statistics
Ooh, guys, he said STATISTICS! That word MEANS SOMETHING. Therefore, anything that follows-
of mentally ill young children.
MUST be taken with utmost seriousness.
In actual seriousness, though, really? That's not how it works. I'm not a child psychologist, but I'm sure a proper one could tell you why there's so many mentally ill children, and "they read The Hunger Games" probably wouldn't be one of his or her reasons. Actually, that's pretty offensive.
It is the duty of parents to spend time to study such matters and form their own conclusions, not to think that because the world is filled with such sensational literature they have to have it for their children, because everyone else does! Beware the devil in the text! Choose beauty for your young children!
If I had young children, I would. I'd have them read a book about an abused child who finds out he's a wizard and makes a lot of difficult but brave choices, who puts his friends and courage and loyalty above all else. I'll have them read an epic saga based on Norse Mythology, where they're transported to a land filled with Elves and Dwarves, exposed to poetry and songs, not to mention runes. And you know, if they want to take a break and read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, that's permissible too.
Obviously I would encourage them to read the classics. Hopefully school would also provide that for them, but I'd encourage it on my own as well. I agree that it's important.
But what matters the most is that they read. Because as you point out, a child's imagination is vital to his or her development. Hindering that for no reason other than snobbery - albeit under the guise of protecting their fragile minds - is, to me, utterly deplorable.
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:13 am (UTC)And wow, I wish I could cover all the books I felt were worthy of being read by the time I turn 30! But then, my TBR is full of YA SF/F, so I suppose none of that is actually worthy in this guy's eyes.
Honestly, I had a pretty sheltered upbringing, but my parent's never even looked at what I was reading. The only time I can recall anything was a facetious comment from my mother about whether I was old enough to read Bridget Jones' Diary at age 16 (we'd both seen and enjoyed the movie by that point so there was no real question).
no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:28 pm (UTC)And wow, I wish I could cover all the books I felt were worthy of being read by the time I turn 30! But then, my TBR is full of YA SF/F, so I suppose none of that is actually worthy in this guy's eyes.
Noo, not YA Sci Fi/Fantasy! :P
And you're right, kids really are more discerning. They know what they want to read. Although I actually think I restricted myself a bit too much when I was younger, but that's another issue.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:37 am (UTC)My philosophy has always been to let them figure out that words and books are are fun and enjoyable, then introduce them to stuff that might not be so initially attractive to them, because then they know reading is awesome and there are some really cool stories out there. I really don't care what my kids read, within reason, as long as they're reading. I mean, obviously, I'm going to object to my 10-year old reading pornography and/or excessive, graphic violence...(for now,because I don't think she's ready for that yet). But if they want to read comics/graphic novels or Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or... I'll do my damndest to make sure they get their hands on a copy.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:19 pm (UTC)This! I've looked at reading lists distributed by schools and libraries before, and while the books on there were good... they were what academics want kids to read, not necessarily what kids want to read. I prefer the ones with more balance. (Especially when trying to draw in reluctant readers.)
And yeah, you do have to employ common sense. There's also books that may be fine for one child, not fine for another of the same age just because of their maturity level. Although even then, I think at some point kids can gauge that for themselves.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 01:09 am (UTC)Also, I just skimmed, but is he suggesting that Dickens and Shakespeare and so on don't contain anything that might be shocking or upsetting to children?!
no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 03:12 pm (UTC)And Pratchett! I would put him with Austen and Shakespeare, definitely (and Dickens I guess, although I don't really like Dickens). His grasp of human nature, his way with words, and the sheer... humanity that shines through his work. The beauty of Pratchett was that on the surface, yes, they were fantasy novel, but they always put a mirror up to the reader. There are SO MANY LAYERS there, and jokes that you only get at the 20th reading. I honestly feel that he was one of the greatest writers of the last few decades and I'm still sad that he died. :(
How DARE this guy call him a bad influence, stupid writer!
no subject
Date: 2016-05-10 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-11 07:34 pm (UTC)The author you're mocking probably has the attitude that we can shape children into enlightened nonviolent beings by controlling their exposure to threatening works. (Where "threatening" means whatever he thinks it means.) This is not true, because children will interact with the real world at some point. Those who are prevented from dealing with the real world will have severe problems because of it.
I found the books/shows that were supposed to be realistic and reflect the experiences of people my age to be way more disturbing than anything else I read/watched.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-22 02:47 pm (UTC)Terry Pratchett said it: the only person with a logical reason to be against escape is a prison guard.