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I read Burma Days in just the last year or two. Highly acerbic. Really depressing. And brilliant.
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I don't know. It could be. I think it's a lot to do with genre. I like a lot of hardcore sf. I really don't look at the author, unless she was recommended to me. I go by the blurb on the book jacket, mostly. Sometimes I'm lead astray.
I tried to read some women, just to try to read the stuff. So I've sampled Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath (Bell Jar). And I don't like either one. (Well, actually, I do like some of Woolf's essays. Amazingly well-written, but To the Lighthouse bored me to tears. It could be that your putative reason applies to why I don't like the female writing I've tried more than to why I don't seek it out. OTOH, I like Mary Stewart a lot (maybe 5 books), and George Eliot (only Silas Marner).
I like the Bolo series that Keith Laumer started (it's pulp, I don't recommend them, but I do love the stories) and I think some of the stories were written by women (I don't remember any of the authors' names). I also like James Tiptree junior and had no idea it was some old woman writing under a pseudonym. Again, I mainly go by how interesting it seems.
I don't like fantasy mixing with my sf - just one or the other. But Macaffrey's Pern stuff was pretty fun, though I only read 3 of them. That was enough. Still, I might try to get my kids into them.
I'm not sure it's that I have an aversion to emotional stuff, so much as an affinity for other things.
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Absolutely, I agree.
There is so much great stuff out there that the chances a kid is going to find *something* interesting is much improved.
One of my best experiences in high school was my very last English class, which I took as an elective. Usually I just hated anything that wasn't science or math. But this was very different. First day of class we were given six pages, comprised of three lists of book titles of two pages each. Books from the second list were somehow (subjectively) classified as harder books than those in the first list. The third harder than the first two. Our assignment was to read two books from each list. You could start at the second or third list, but you couldn't go back to an easier list if you did that. If you wanted to read a book that wasn't on any of the lists, you could bring it in and the teacher told you on which list you could substitute it.
Most classes that didn't have to do with math or science just plain sucked. Since we moved around a bit (dad was in the army), I ended up reading Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar three times each. This class was different. It was called Honors Reading and I've always wondered why it wasn't available to nearly everyone. At the very least, things should be turned around. If we force people to read things, it should be in, say, the last two years. In, say, the K-10 years, there should be a lot of choice.
BTW, one of my picks was The Hobbit (forget which list it was on). A guy I really respected recommended it to me back in the 8th grade up in AK. I had tried to read it a few times and just couldn't get into it. Finally, with this course, I read the whole thing and loved it. After school, I immediately read LOTR and The Similarillion, which were the last books I read before leaving home. (I also read Catch 22 and Hiroshima in that class. And maybe White Lotus. I don't recall exactly. It was a long time ago.)
Anyway, it's true there will be some parents who will be pissed off at everything. But if we open things up, I think we'll find that kids are much more interested in reading than even they believe themselves to be. I didn't get near as much of the classics as I now wish I should have as a kid, but this one course (and another fortuitous event) made them seem much more accessible to me.
Soon after this course, I went to live with my teacher aunt for a few months. And that's where I completely changed my mind about the classics. (I recently wrote a letter to her friend to read at my aunt's 70th birthday party, thanking her for the experiences she gave me more than two decades ago. I think I was supposed to roast her, but I just couldn't do it.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear FF: What are your thoughts about teen-age peer pressure when it comes to choices of both music movies, and reading? I don't remember any significant amount of peer pressure in my teens. I see more harm than good in it at present. Too many kids admire the wrong things.
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Things seem to be accelerating, so what my kids face may be a little different than what I faced. In some ways better for them, in some ways worse.
Peer pressure can be good or bad. If one's kids are in with a group of kids with good values (i.e. values *I* agree with), then things can work to one's advantage. Unfortunately, television portrays parents manipulate children's friendships as terrible, judgemental, racist, harmful, irrelevant, etc. A main mission for now is to get my kids ready to deal with peer pressure. This is why I teach them about this junk and introduce them to things like sex, raunchy movies, etc, myself.
A woman I know insists that my kids know way too much about sex and far too soon. I don't think so. When my oldest was 6, she was propositioned for sex by two slightly older boys. She knew how to handle it. Being perfectly innocent, she didn't hesitate to tell me about it. Even my wife says my kids show me no respect. Ever since we watched Austin Powers, they've taken to calling me "fat bastard" in private. This *really* irritates my wife who insists my kids shouldn't get away with being disrespectful to me. Contrary to what she thinks, they idolize me. To be sure, they think I'm a wimp (which is true enough). But, really, they just plain idolize me - and they know very well how far they can push it.
I think one very important thing I do with the kids is watch this stuff with them and we talk about it. I give them my opinion of things. Kids give me theirs. Early on they just repeated whatever I said, but over time they've come to diverge, the oldest moreso, of course. I'm vaguely aware of some study done that shows kids who watch violent video games are much more likely to think violence is okay, but that when an adult talks to them about the violence they are no more likely to be violent than kid's who haven't played the games. I wasn't aware of this when I started out, and came to the conclusion intuitively. I don't claim this is what everyone should do. I don't believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. Parents need to be proactive, understand things, make an active decision one way or the other, pay attention, follow through.
Sad thing. I went to a parent-teacher night with my oldest's teacher. The kids had a test for us. They asked us questions about themselves on a sheet of paper and we answered and graded ourselves. I got the highest "grade" in the class. It was a C. No kidding. We live in a not-too-bad, multicultural, middle class, suburban neighborhood with a few boneheads, but mainly people who have a strong interest in their kids' educations. It seems obvious to me, though, that we have a few things that could use a little work.
In general, though, I think peer pressure is pretty strong for kids. Pressure to have sex. Pressure to slough off in school. Pressure not to perform. Pressure, pressure, pressure. I tutored for several years in a local (pretty famous) high school - little physics, little algebra, mostly geometry. Wasn't able to reach every kid, but a few I think I really touched. One kid in particular started thinking he could go on to college. "Do I need geometry to major in electrical engineering?" (Even worse - you need trig. ouch!) He was asking me questions, getting involved, inching his grades up. Another kid started in on him, "Estupido, blah, blah, blah." Only partly in English, but it was pretty clear his buddy didn't think too much of his intellectual pretensions.
The most obvious problem that every single kid I tutored had was lack of parental oversight. These kids were going out to parties several nights a week, or working at jobs, or playing baseball, or watcing tv. All of this took priority over doing homework. It's not clear exactly how much of the problem was peer pressure, per se, and how much was the natural tendency of anyone to avoid doing hard work. Maybe it was peer pressure reinforcing the natural tendency.
On the good side, I had the same situation over and over. I'd come in. Kids would be kicked back, staring off into space, not paying attention to any word I said. I'd ask them questions. They'd ignore. I'd persist. I'd keep explaining and asking, re-explaining and asking, etc. After maybe 10 mins they'd sorta discreetly look at what I was doing. After 20 they'd be actively involved. By the end of class, everyone or nearly everyone would be paying attention, joking about problems, actively involved. Fortunately, I got to work with small groups (5 max, usually around 3).
One kid was a muslim girl from whom I had to coax and cajole any participation at all. She just wouldn't try. Eventually, after maybe 2nd or 3rd meeting, she came out of the shell, gradually. At a later meeting, she voiced a startling discovery to me, "This is very easy!" No kidding? I think the pressure she got may not have been peer pressure exactly. But still it was pressure. She worked from a D to a B, btw.
All of this is anecdotal, of course. I don't claim to prove anything. I don't claim that my opinions are scientific, only that they seem reasonable based on my own experiences. I think peer pressure, like any other pressure, can be a powerful force, but that it's not insurmountable. I also think the subtle, pervasive pressure is often stronger than blatant pressure.
It just seems a lot easier to me for parents to teach kids how to handle pressure than it is to try to mask the pressure from them. Nevertheless, I support any active decision a parent makes and won't try to circumvent their wishes. This is just what I think. If someone else's kid asks me about sex (which they have), I gently redirect them to their parents. If they ask about god (which they have), I send them to their parents. If they curse in my house, I ask them "Do your parents allow that?" I don't watch rated R movies when other kids are at the house. I don't let my kids curse when other's kids are at the house. (I did offer to let a group of kids watch Shrek in my house recently, not having any idea that some parents don't want their kids watching it. It just didn't occur to me. Fortunately, a little girl spoke up. I wasn't being manipulative, though, just thoughtless.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear FF: I like your attitude. It used to be that kids got almost equal amounts of character formation at home and in religious school. Now too many parents leave everything to the public schools. A partial vacuum gets filled by peer pressure. How stupid it is for highschool kids to be so concerned about what their peers think of them, since they will have an entirely new set of peers after leaving high school.
The opinion of teachers will be important to potential employers.
We have people who know a lot about how to sell things. Why don't we have people who know how to sell the value of education and character to kids?
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St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, is, I believe, unique in the academic world. They operate on what they call the "Great Books" method. The students spend 4 years reading 100 books, which the College thinks are the indispensible books for an educated person. (The list is revised periodically -- it's not always the same 100). It covers such diverse writers as Euclid, Freud, Isaac Newton, and, of course, "literary" authors. Science and math[s] are learned from original writers. Also, there are no professors, no lectures and no exams. The students are taught by tutors, as at Oxford & Cambridge. [Actually they teach themselves, guided by tutors.] Strange as this may sound, it actually produces graduates who are in great demand by corporations and other employers. I imagine they have a website where you can learn more about this program and the reading list. It's not a real old idea; although St. Johns is an old institution, it used traditional methods until the 1930's, when it was on the verge of going out of business and the Great Books program was invented to keep it going.
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Pooh-Bah
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>I did offer to let a group of kids watch Shrek in my house recently, not having any idea that some parents don't want their kids watching it. It just didn't occur to me. Fortunately, a little girl spoke up. I wasn't being manipulative, though, just thoughtless.
I've only seen this film whilst half asleep over Christmas. Did I miss something? What is there to object to?
We've become regular cinema goers in the last year and our newly teenage children have become used to the flexible age game. We took them to see Billy Elliot, Bridget Jones, Oceans Elven and several other "15" films in the last year. I'd rather make my own decisions about what is suitable. They are pretty broad minded and since TV seem to think it is OK to show lesbian weddings (in Friends) at 6pm and they are allowed to stay up past the nine pm watershed there is little that hasn't been discussed at home or at school (these days complete with graphic illustrations and free samples). Most of the teen fiction that they read seems to cover the same ground although I'd love them to get onto soemthing a little more meaty. I was reading Solzenitzen at their age and I still have bad dreams from seeing "Midnight Express". Gratuitous violence isn't to my taste, so our DVD collection stops short there. Last night I hade the misfortune to see the last half hour of "Scream" on TV. I know that it is a spoof but I'm still not wild about it.
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I've heard of The Great Books, but I wasn't aware it was used as a curriculum. I used to have a friend who started reading them for the heck of it. Was it Adler who was one of the moving forces for it? The same guy who headed the Paedeia committee?
Sounds like a great idea for kids who are into it, though I don't think it's something that should be coerced. Sounds like a very highly enriching experience.
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