As somebody with a better sense of how more than myself said, the pedagogy of the oppressed has turned into the pedagogy of the depressed. Here’s a selection of books that will be foisted on 8-graders by their school:
We can complain ad infinitum about kids not reading but who’d want to read this twaddle? These books have no aesthetic value. There’s no interesting story. All they contain is vapid pseudo-psychological moralizing.
I agree, if I read this as a kid, I’d be put off reading too. I read everything as a kid: Little Golden Books, fairy tales, the New Book of Knowledge encyclopedia, old issues of National Geographic. Kids shouldn’t have this junk foisted on them, they should be allowed to explore whatever books strike their fancy instead of this whole garbage that’s boring and depressing and has no real literary merit except as agitprop
Ignoring the particular subject matter, what is the value of reading YA books and other popular fiction at school at all? The stated reason is usually along the lines of “instilling a love of reading through books kids will enjoy rather than fussy old classics,” but even with books that are naturally enjoyable such as Harry Potter, the fun is that you read it on your own as a recreational activity. If it’s assigned at school, it’s no longer “fun” in the same way.
Meanwhile, you’ve lost your chance to instill the great works of Western civilization in the next generation, which seems a little more important. Also, kids will read books like Twilight and Harry Potter whether or not they’re assigned in class. Kids may not pick up Shakespeare on their own, but then once it’s assigned they discover they enjoy it. Many children are being deprived of this opportunity in the name of “relevancy.”
Of course, one reason there’s been a move towards contemporary YA is precisely to bury the old. Many woke teachers think that new is always better and old is always else. Years ago I came across a twitter threads of woke teachers discussing what they will and won’t assign, and one recurring theme was teachers saying they won’t assign anything more than 50 years old, or 20 years, or a decade. Like you’ve said before, some underdeveloped people are angry that there was a world functioning just fine without them for millennia before they were born.
This is one of the consequences of our dislike of hierarchies that has been taken way too far. We are not supposed to say that there’s art and there’s dreck and they are of different value. We need to pretend that books are as interchangeable as people. And here’s the result. People in my profession are actually scandalized when I say that something isn’t art. “You don’t really believe it!” they say. “You are trying to say something outrageous on purpose!” As a result, we have no language left even to make the argument that real literature should be taught instead of all this.
I agree, just because something is a book doesn’t mean it’s literature. YA agitprop isn’t literature and the gross Mafia/kidnapping/bondage books that proliferate on Kindle Unlimited and Wattpad aren’t either, both are common denominator junk. Auto tune pop music isn’t art and neither is the latest flashy Marvel film, they are music and movies but not art, just products
There’s a lot of film and music I enjoy that’s not art and I don’t see as art, but just entertainment and there’s nothing wrong with that if you treat it as entertainment. Recently I watched Morbius with my brother and I liked it, it was a fun popcorn film that was entertaining but certainly not art, it was just a fun movie to watch on a Wednesday morning. There’s a place for fun, silly entertainment and then art, enjoying a silly film once in a while is one thing, it’s another to think such stuff is actual art and take it seriously
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I agree, most YA is trash. Kids ought to be exposed to the classics at school, YA should be reading for outside school. I read stuff like The Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew at home, it wasn’t school books. In school is where I first encountered Romantic poetry, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Ancient Greek myth.
I could not relate in the sense of my background, but such works showed me something different than living in suburban New Jersey. Too many teachers think that if kids can’t relate to the work, then it’s irreverent to them. People seem to think that if they can’t see themselves in the work, then it’s useless. If people only consume media about their group, they’ll lack empathy and the ability to see other’s point of view.
I agree about stuff that’s supposed to include my group, my family is Cuban American and the YA books about Hispanic people are pandering junk about being undocumented with loads of gratuitous Spanish and racist white people. I’m offended that people think this is what Hispanic culture is supposed to be about, it would be great to see a YA book about Hispanic kids which isn’t pandering and racism.
In my own fiction, my characters are almost never from my background since I like to research other cultures and create new characters that are different from me. For example, in my latest fiction, the lead character is a young American woman of paternal French/maternal Finnish descent who finds out she’s the heir to a duchy since her grandmother the Duchess is dying, her mother was disowned for marrying a common husband. I’m not of French/Finnish descent, not noble and not related to anyone noble, I just got inspired and started writing
When Dad was a kid, he went to an American school overseas. Calvert model, I think. He was around 8, and they read Moby Dick. Not the kids, but the teacher read it aloud to them. It was apparently riveting and he remembers it fondly. Says when they came back to the states, he did nothing in school for three years, because it took that long for the public schools to catch up to where they’d been at the old school. Can’t even imagine anything like that in current schools. Which is why we do it at home. Kids enjoy all sorts of classic literature if it’s time and attention from parents. We’ve read them Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels and the Life of the Spider and tons of other stuff, and they dig it because they love being read to.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
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