In the strangest place I wondered tonight, why exactly is there such a huge gap in reading/learning between the races. It struck me then what the reason may well be. It doesn't hurt so much as it stuns. The social justice warriors convinced of the righteousnous of their stupid cause have no doubt decreed and enforced the rule that disadvantaged minority students have to read shit by minorities. So, when those young minds thirsting for adventure want to read Swallows and Amazons or Lord of the Rings, the enthroned enshrined teaching elite have decreed that they must read shit by Eudora Welty and other worthless trash by black authors who have no idea how to take children to other worlds like a frigate would, shining in the sunlight as it sets sail for Timbuktu. (work with me guys!) I'm sure they think a frigate can sail there if it really wants to and if it's black enough.
I was a voracious reader and with a gun to my head I wouldn't read Welty or most of the other crap foisted off on teenagers in the name of reading literateness in high school or junior high.
OTGH, I felt that way back then about reading Shakespeare in the 7th grade. I still wouldn't read his plays for any amount of money but to watch Much Ado About Nothing....that was sublime. That Brannagh guy captured the very escence of a form that had gone dead for me. He brought it back to life, like the fair Hero.
He set a high bar. They all did. After watching that 6 or 8 times, the play better be really good. Much Ado set the bar pretty high.
I think I am probably right though. I think the schools and literati have placed before the unwilling the dross and shite that makes anyone turn up their nose at reading. For me, it was my father's parents who sent me books by Fenimore Cooper. Yick. At my mothers parent's house there was the Princess of Mars, The Skylark of Space, Tarzan, every book on submarines that existed in 1937 and books on aerial combat featuring Luffberry, Rickenbacker and a host of others. Reading wasn't a chore. It was fun.
I think it's safe to say the 'karen' educators have sucked 100% of the fun out of reading. Too white, I'm sure.
7 comments:
(Don McCollor)...Even back in my day, school reading books seemed to contain only bland stories that offended no one, and any fun parts edited out. James Fenimore Cooper (gag). I much prefer Mark Twain's short story "Coopers Literary Offences". For fun (outside of class) there was Jules Verne and Arthur Conn Doyle, among others...
At 18, I asked my parents for the collected works of William Shakespeare, and got an excellent leatherbound edition. At 56, still one of my treasured possessions. Different strokes, etc.
I will agree that even in my day most of the 'literature' foisted on students was subpar.
--Tennessee Budd
I live on the street of Shaker Heights schools. On the block over is a man or a woman I admire greatly. I must introduce myself. They have made one of those little libraries in their tree lawn and stocked it with the books that tell a tale of adventure and yes, I was just captured by Linda and the Stone Ponies. Damn that is nice.
I read that again and again. How each of the indians leap off the branch over the riverboat....How the man shoots a rifle so well. Yes, that was amazing reading by a man who knew how to tell a tale.
Ah, that's the tale. At the ripe age of 60, perhaps I should sit down with the bard and read his tales. Much ado about nothing was pure fun.....and I caught some of the Taming of the Shrew at the O'club in Newport on TV with the cast of mooonlighting. I should read or watch it to see.
John Cheese made a very acceptable Petruchio, in a performance I saw on Wisconsin Public Television.
along with the death of the "book store" I cannot imagine how it is publishers can bring themselves to print books written by illiterate unimaginative authors who only manage to write a coherent sentence because of spellchecker. The one word answer must be "amazon" or "costco".
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