Classic lit[erature] no longer fit for children. (Another reason to home-school)

Providence Journal ^ | 9/21/03 | Julia Steiny

[aShepard]

Edwatch by Julia Steiny: Classic lit no longer fit for children 01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 21, 2003

For years I had wondered why the kids in schools seemed to be reading such dreck in their English classes. Not all, but much of the assigned reading and classroom textbooks seemed awkward, vacuously well-meaning and written with bland prose that had a programmed feel to it.

In the "serious literature," gratuitously depressing darkness seemed to be taking the place of real depth. What passed as passion often sounded to me like whining. When the classics make it into the syllabus, which is rare except for the obligatory Shakespeare, only the same tedious handful seem to be acceptable, never Twain, George Elliot or my dear Dickens, all of whom seem to have disappeared from education. Literary canons need to be flexible about including new and rediscovered writers, but why completely chuck the old masters?

In the summer of 2002, I found my answer in Diane Ravitch's Daedalus article, "Education after the Culture Wars," which was expanded into her chilling book, The Language Police.

Ravitch's story begins as the first Bush presidency transitions into the Clinton era, when the federal government was starting to develop national standards for history and literature, along with grade-level assessments. The feds pulled together high-end educators including Ravitch, an expert on the history of education, to work on the project which did not come to completion.

While reading dozens of passages under consideration for the assessments, Ravitch writes in The Culture Wars, "I realized that the readings themselves had a cumulative subtext: the hero was never a white boy . . . Almost without exception, white boys were portrayed as weak and dependent." Indeed, "The passages, I discovered, had been edited to eliminate anything that might be perceived by anyone as a source of bias."

Not only was bias eliminated, but according to one set of textbook guidelines for appropriateness -- of which every textbook company has a similarly "correct" set -- the passages also have to be "free of subject matter that many would consider controversial or emotionally charged." So, collections of readings for English classes would be as free as possible of anything that has the power to move a student to some passion about a story -- for or against the author's point or point of view. Moved to tears is out of the question.

We would eliminate, then, my own memorable seventh grade experience of an out-loud reading of Bret Harte's Outcast of Poker Flats, which dissolved the entire class. How too bad.

Ravitch explores the amazing length to which the English classroom is being scrubbed to meet sanitary standards, but here's one specific: "A passage from a well-known fable was also edited to remove the moral of the story. The original had ended with the conclusion that "God helps those who help themselves." To avoid any reference to a deity, the editors had replaced this phrase with the advice that "People should try to work things out for themselves whenever possible."

Perhaps the clunkiness of the new moral doesn't bother you; perhaps to you the new says roughly the same thing as the old, though I don't think so. But surely we are all adequately steeped in the First Amendment to feel uncomfortable with the arrogance of changing the original author's words. Think back to the parent who busted the New York regents exam for sanitizing a bit of Issac Singer to remove references to religion, as if Jewish was not one of the principal lenses through which Singer shows us his world. The sanitizers seemed to feel we'd all be better off if this otherwise fine writer were not Jewish.

So we are no longer acquainting youth with the literature of different cultures, but indoctrinating them, in correct culture, of which there is apparently only one. We're not really celebrating difference, because a writer can neither let her imagination rip nor drill deeply into the social realities of her world. Writers who do can kiss off getting published by any company who deals in texts for schools. Acceptable texts need to support the idea that we are homogenizing into one, bland, specifically uncultivated human cohort, free of troublesome distinctions from one another.

Ravitch writes, "When I asked why so few reading passages were drawn from classic children's literature, the publisher explained that it was a well-accepted principle in educational publishing that everything written before 1970 was rife with racism and sexism. Only stories written after that date, he said, were likely to have acceptable language and appropriate multicultural sensitivity."

As if. As if the 1970s were a golden age of English literature and the 19th century were not. We are all trying to be culturally sensitive, but where oh where did we get the idea that we would slam the door on our illustrious heritage to do so?

Ravitch explains, ". . . the content of today's textbooks and tests reflect a remarkable convergence of the interest of feminists and multiculturalists on one side and the religious Right on the other. No words or illustrations may be used that might offend the former groups, and no topics can be introduced that might offend those on the other side of the ideological divide. The Left gets censorship of language usage and pictures, and the Right gets censorship of topics."

As she puts it: "That helps to explain why so many American children now arrive in college without every having read anything by writers such as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather, W.E.B. DuBois, Jack London, Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, George Orwell, or Charles Dickens."

Now you'll notice that while those authors are all definitely dead, they are neither exclusively male nor white. But they all do cause feelings, sometimes big ones. Some of those African-American authors have the politically correct skin pigment, but they also can light some pretty warm fires under otherwise comfortable behinds.

I have been a devout fiction reader for my entire reading life. Novels in particular gave me experience of places and people I couldn't possibly have had otherwise. In the hands of a great writer, those experiences were palpable. I've been to prisons, orphanages, work houses, ancient lands, survived sea storms, deaths and diseases; I've been trapped in torrid, but hopeless romances. I've ruled the land and cleaned the hearth for my ugly step-sisters. I don't believe cultural wisdom is to be had without ranging through the widely disparate experiences of literature. I'm very sorry my sons have never read Dickens, and probably never will.

As institutions, schools are intrinsically conflict-averse, and no one rushes to defend their right to challenge students with dicey issues. This blandness, then, is not their fault so much as the tendency of Americans to be offended by difference and their persistence and luck in getting difference legally removed from their presence.

Apparently our real goal is not to be multi-cultural, but mono-cultural.

[aShepard]

Our PC world will produce generations of automatons, unable to comprehend emotion.

[CasearianDaoist]

And how do we raise the cane up when it is in the fields? After another generation of this nonsense would it be possible to restore education even if there was the will to do so?

The end draws nigh.

[GaltMeister]

And the dumbing down continues. It is a sad state of affairs, but it seems like we are turning into a nation of whiney professional 'victims' staring slack-jawed at the "reality" shows on Tee-Vee. It sure as hell ain't your grandfathers America.

[StarfireIV]

Sadly, this movement goes hand-in-hand with the tendency toward iconoclasm in literature(Shakespeare didn't write many of his plays), history(Washington, Jefferson held to 20th century societal standards), and religion(Old Testament discredited as a collection of Middle Eastern fables).

[Stopislamnow]

My just turned 16 year old neice has a lit class this year.

Last week, she brought home "A Clockwork Orange".

My brother was apoplectic.

Teacher recommended renting and watching the movie.

Sickening.

[dawn53]

I homeschooled for many years and we read many classics (even had a bookstore employee give me a hard time when I tried to buy "Uncle Tom's Cabin" because he didn't think it was appropriate reading for a teenager, who wasn't "supervised by a teacher"-he knew we homeschooled).

Now my 15 year old is in a dual enrollment program at a local college. What is the first thing his professor asked him to read in his Comp 101 class, "What is a homosexual?" by Andrew Sullivan. I checked with a few other parents whose kids are also enrolled in the same class but with a different professor. Sullivan's piece was also on their required reading list, so it must be part of the curriculum.

Well at least he got the classics at home, don't think he'll be seeing many of them in his college classes.

[YourAdHere]

You mention Dickens. I went to a public high school, and have never heard of this person. Were they inspired by Maya Angelou?

</sarcasm>

[eno_]

Read it yourself before condemning it. It is an anti-police-state statement.

[ClearCase_guy]

Schools (of course) get it entirely backward.

We're going to push Sex Education -- controvery be damned!
We're going to push the Homosexual Agenda -- controversy be damned!
We're going to stomp on the Pledge of Allegiance -- controvery be damned!
We're going to stomp on Christianity -- controversy be damned!

What? Read a book printed before 1970? Well ... it might be racist ... or ... sexist ... and that would be, like, controvesial, ya know? We don't want to go there and stir up trouble.

[Stopislamnow]

I've read it and I've seen the movie.

Rape, murder, deviant sex, general mayhem. Of course it's anti-police state.

For a college lit course or a college film course? Fine.

For a high school sophmore lit class? Don't think so.

[Cicero]

"A Clockwork Orange" is a good book, though not Burgess's best. But it takes a certain maturity not to misunderstand it. It's not good reading for most teenagers. Nor are the other usual books: A Separate Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, or The Lord of the Flies.

Before they read this relatively second-rate stuff, they should be reading Mark Twain, Dickens, Melville, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Milton, and the rest. "Huck Finn" is worth twenty Lords of the Flies.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the teachers in public schools can no longer be trusted to put these books into a proper moral context.

[headsonpikes]

Public education is distinguishable from Moloch only in that the brazen deity has never demanded a pension.

[Pietro]

"I'm very sorry my sons have never read Dickens, and probably never will."

The blame for that rests w/ the author. I believe Dickens is still available in most bookstores and libraries.

If she can't find any, I've got a dozen copies for sell; Oliver Twist, Bleak house, Great Expectations, A tale of Two Cities, etc., etc.

[yoe]

A recent copy of the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales I have, does not seem to be like the one of my childhood. Have they sanitized this also?

[Clemenza]

Favorite High School Books: Crime and Punishment, The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights.

[Viva Le Dissention]

You know, this is something for which I don't have a whole lot of symphathy, for the simple fact that most of these authors seem to entirely forget that there's nothing that prevents these kids from picking up a book on their own time and reading it.

"That helps to explain why so many American children now arrive in college without every having read anything by writers such as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Conrad, Willa Cather, W.E.B. DuBois, Jack London, Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, George Orwell, or Charles Dickens."

I will say what bothers me is the editing of writers' work. If presented, it should be presented in its entireity and without one word altered or omitted.

As for what the teachers choose to teach, it's a different story. Despite my fine Jesuit education, my entire British Literature course in high school was Shakespeare. But does that mean I haven't read Dickens or Orwell? No, I just do it on my own time.

Hey, if your kids arms aren't broken, tell them to pick up a book on the weekend. Popular opinion to the contrary, they actually CAN learn things that aren't taught at school.

[Question_Assumptions]

I'm sorry but I'm not a Dickens fan, especially the writing for which he was paid by the word. Ugh.

[dsc]

"Last week, she brought home "A Clockwork Orange".

16 may be a little young for CO--I completely missed the point at that age--but I'd recommend you click around the net and read a bit about it.

The author, a Catholic, wrote it as a statement against extreme measures to combat youth crime--including aversion therapy. It is a bold statement of his belief in the importance of free will and the possibility of redemption.

Not many Americans seem to know that the last chapter was cut from the book for publication in America, and the movie was made from that version.

The missing last chapter is available on line, and it is that chapter in which the apparent nihilism of the book is turned on its head.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

"I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village."
  -- H.D.Thoreau, "Walking"

[dsc]

Well, it's you, Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, and me against the world.

[RightWingAtheist]

A Clockwork Orange is a modern masterpiece that ranks with the best of Huxley and Orwell, but Burgess's experimental use of language might be too off-putting. But at least they're not assigning the kids Finnegan's Wake and expecting them to get it after the first reading.

[Billthedrill]

So we are no longer acquainting youth with the literature of different cultures, but indoctrinating them, in correct culture, of which there is apparently only one.

That's the key to the article for me. And it's a sordid anti-intellectual effort that is doomed to failure. Great literature is, above all other qualities, profoundly subversive. And until we get to a Fahrenheit 451 scenario great literature will out. It doesn't take much of an inoculation for the kids to see right through this crap - despite the best efforts of three decades of educational engineering they're pretty much the same as they've ever been.

Want proof? When they're through slogging through Maya Angelou, give them a copy of Watership Down or Huckleberry Finn or Have Space Suit, Will Travel, or A Wrinkle In Time and tell them "yeah, this is stuff they don't want you to read. You might ask them why some time." By the time they're ready for something really subversive, like Atlas Shrugged, the local education association won't have a chance.

[ladylib]

That's possible. Last year NY students took the State Regents exam and read passages from "The Elderly Man and the Sea."

[luckystarmom]

I haven't read most of those authors, and I graduated high school in '80 and college in '84.

I know I've read Jack London, Charles Dickens, and John Steinback, but that's it.

[Aquinasfan]

"Huck Finn" is worth twenty Lords of the Flies.

To give Beelzebub his due, I have to admit that "Lord of the Flies" describes my government school experience in four simple words.

[Aquinasfan]

The missing last chapter is available on line, and it is that chapter in which the apparent nihilism of the book is turned on its head.

Interesting. Thanks.

It wasn't appropriate for me at the age when I saw it. 18 maybe? It was too brutal. I so overwhelmed by emotion and so confused by the imagery that I couldn't begin to think about the author's message.

[aShepard]

""The Elderly Man and the Sea"

Now that's unbelievable!!

I'm amazed it wasn't something like "The Age Impaired Person and the Sea"

[ladylib]

NYC public school students don't know the meaning of the word "impaired."

[eno_]

People have been sanitizing Grimm's for decades. I have a very funny book from the late 19th century: "Plutarch for Boys and Girls" That's right, Plutarch without the buggery!

[TontoKowalski]

You know, I've read a great deal of the classics, and I always find it interesting that edifying literature can be so entertaining.

The books just have rolicking good storylines to them. With the sole exception of Ulysses, all the books I've read just to improve and challenge my mind have been terrific.

I think my brain is just too small to understand Joyce. First I tried to read the book, then I actually resorted to Cliffs Notes to help me, then I abandoned the book altogether and just tried to read the Notes, and then I just gave up.

[dsc]

"I was so overwhelmed by emotion and so confused by the imagery that I couldn't begin to think about the author's message."

Yeah, me too. Finding out about that last chapter and reading some interviews with Burgess brought it into focus--when I was in my 40s.

[dsc]

"I think my brain is just too small to understand Joyce."

And I think Joyce is just another case of the emperor having no clothes.

[Billthedrill]

Ulysses is kind of fun if you read Dubliners first and treat it as a drunken Irishman stumbling through the city. That is, actually, what it's about. I think Ulysses is kind of a Rorschach test for folks trying to be too intellectual - it's allusive and opaque enough to allow the chronically deep to read in profundity where none is really intended.

I could, of course, be wrong about this - maybe "three quarks for Muster Mark" is the key to life, the uninverse, and everything...but I kinda doubt it...

[Billthedrill]

Ugh - "uninverse" = "universe." That is, unless I was implying something really deep there...

[Marie Antoinette]

I'm very sorry my sons have never read Dickens, and probably never will.

What's this??? Is she some helpless bystander here, or is she a PARENT? Why can't she bring home some classics for them to read?

[SLB]

My 12 year old is just finishing up with reading and doing a report on The Odyssey (full version, not abridged). Completed within a month. Her and her older sister (15) are also taking college level Latin.

Their older sister, a college Senior (honors program with a 4.0 GPA including a semester at Oxford) is an Englsih Literature major.

Now, someone tell me the home schooling does not prepare them for college!

We do not allow trash literature in the house and they do not want to read it. Something about expanding their minds and horizons.

[cookcounty]

Let me tell you a true story. My son had a most difficult time in school, the proverbial square peg in a round hole. He had an awful time paying attention in class, yet he exhibited an absolutely carniverous attitude toward books. He read Homer's Oyssey and the Iliad in the 7th grade, because he liked "big stories." He could tell you exactly what happened and why it happened in every chapter of every volume of the "Narnia Tales." Before Peter Jackson had started to make movies out of Tolkein's LOTR, he could tell you the whole linguistic background for the languges Tolkein invented for his stories. But my son had a problem: He couldn't pass an English class.

I'm dead serious. The school told us he was LD, ADD, and if we didn't get him on medication, "he likely would end up in prison" (despite the fact that he never displayed any violent or destructive behavior). He took the ritalin, he got headaches and his usual happy demeanor was replaced with constant depression. He begged us to take him off the stuff. We did. He had one counselor at the school who told us "If you tell anybody I said this, I will completely deny it, But you need to take your son out of this school. If ever a kid needed home-schooling, it's your son."

I changed my work schedule and he stayed home for his last 2 years. He took the SAT and scored high. As soon as his class had graduated, he took the GED (in our state, you can't take it earlier). They said it was the highest score they'd ever seen. He marched down to the recruiter's office, demolished the ASVAB, and signed up for five years in the army--for him, a great choice. Today he's serving with SF, protecting our country. He has matured far beyond the people he was so far "behind" in high school.

So, Moms and Dads------don't quit!

[ChewedGum]

It sounds to me like they might be out of the house now and the window of opportunity is now closed.

Gum

[Lurker]

Geez, lighten up. I read Anthem, Brave New World, Clockwork Orange, and 1984 as a Sophomore in HS. While I wouldn't recommend the movie CO to a sixteen year old the book makes some very chilling points about Liberal government.

L

[CasearianDaoist]

Well I went to parochial school years ago and we had course work very much like what you are assigning. Maybe there is hope but I sometimes wonder.

Your children could end up as "town readers" somewhere in middle age.

[ClearCase_guy]

He had one counselor at the school who told us "If you tell anybody I said this, I will completely deny it, But you need to take your son out of this school. If ever a kid needed home-schooling, it's your son."

It says interesting things about Government Schools when a counselor has to give hush-hush advice to help a child. "I'm not supposed to help your child at all, but I'm going to do it anyway. Here's what you need to do if you want your child to succeed ..."

It's a sick world.

[aShepard]

...Today he's serving with SF, protecting our country. ....

Thank you for raising a proud son!

[steplock]

I bet you read Clockwork Orange in HS for the same reason I read Ian Flemming's books in H.S.

Tittalating! (sp?) ok sexy! a turn on for the proverbial teenage boy.

My 11th grade term paper was "The Lives & Loves of Dobie R Gillis!" The teacher had to accept it because I had the required number of references. Who knew that Dobie has such a vast following. ;>)

[StriperSniper]

Diane Ravitch's Daedalus article, "Education after the Culture Wars,"

[radiohead]

Good for you, Cookcounty! I had similar issues w/my son, though not grade-wise. He would repeatedly skip school. Sometimes he would leave the house, wait for me to go to work, then come back home.

And what was he doing all this time? Reading! Tristan and Isolde, Lord of the Rings, Adam Smith, Hayek, Jefferson, Paine. When video games came out, we choose strategic games about the Shogun era or early Western Civilization so that he would learn something about history while playing.

Although the teachers would ask me to get him back in school more often, as a straight A student, they really couldn't complain that skipping school was hurting his grades. He took the SAT in the 7th grade and scored at the same level as a high schooler. He was in gifted and talented programs from 3rd grade on, and apparently was still bored.

I guess I was a bad parent. I thought it was my duty as a parent to introduce him to literature, art, and music. I had no problem taking time off myself to spend the day w/him at a museum, playing a board game, talking about what he was reading, or just engaging in conversation. When he was in high school, I read the books he was assigned so that we could have conversations about them at home. Instead of signing him up for every afterschool activity, I gave him time to himself to read, write his own stories, or draw, even if he was just drawing Transformers.

Previous posters are right - there is nothing stopping that parent from buying the classic of her choice and giving it to her kids. There is no way my son was going to go through life w/o having read the classics, if I had to guide his reading myself.

He's now grown and a FReeper, so I must have done something right.

[GOPrincess]

What a great story!! Our thanks to your son for his service.

[ppaul]

A Clockwork Orange...Teacher recommended renting and watching the movie.

Next thing ya know she'll be recommending that the students don penis masks too.

[eno_]

My five year old plays Advance Wars on his GBA. He complains he can't play against his classmates because games like Advance Wars require reading (and a little bit of arithmetic understanding, too).

[GOPrincess]

I've always loathed LORD OF THE FLIES and found nothing redeeming about it, for all that it's supposed to be a "classic." I read it in 9th grade and when it came up again in 11th or 12th, I was upset, as I had found it so sickening. I protested to my teacher that once in a lifetime was enough for that book, and she, being a kind soul who loved to encourage good reading, quietly let me deviate from the regular class curriculum and read GREAT EXPECTATIONS instead :).

[GOPrincess]

Amen! My oldest is in public high school but I feel that I'm homeschooling her in literature :). She just started THE SCARLET LETTER last night. Parents can do a lot to interest their kids in reading quality stuff at home, starting with having the books on hand (preferably with intriguing covers ) and leaving them lying around the house. I've even offered "prizes" for reading a certain number of "approved" books during the summer (usually the prizes are money to buy books of the child's own choice, so it's a win-win situation ) in order to entice them to read new things that look "hard." Always hooks 'em into reading more for "free." Daughter earned a free book reading two Shakespeare plays this summer, then read two more plays just for the fun of it :).