Lessons from Our President

I originally published this here because it started out as a post about buying Al Capone new books. It got picked up in a trending topic on Twitter last night and I got a couple hundred hits in ten minutes, 3 pieces of hate mail (two were really nasty, but my favorite was "You call me ignorant for keeping my child home and you named your kid Al Capone."), lots of positive comments, and probably some really confused people who ended up on my other blog thinking it was about censorship, Obama, children's literature, etc and discovered that really it was an isolated post buried among 1 million reasons I think I have the cutest baby on the planet. So I'm reposting here as well...

Those who know me, know that I feel very strongly about discussions of appropriateness and children (and their books). I write about* children's books for a living. I can honestly say that I have one of the best jobs in the world, yet on days like today I get very frustrated.

This morning President Obama spoke to school children directly. Our local newspaper ran an article about the speech and posted the entire text of the speech online and still parents went ballistic. They called school board members, they kept kids out of school, they declared it propaganda, they demanded alternative assignments, they filled the newspaper comments section with hateful and racist comments. All of this name calling and hate speech because the President of the United States wants kids to stay in school, pay attention, live up to their potential, ask questions, watch less tv, work hard, and never give up. If this is brainwashing, I'm okay with these messages.

What I'm not okay with is parents who try to take over the schools because they don't like the President. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to skip school if you don't like the person who is talking. I'm not okay with teaching kids that you don't even have to listen if you don't agree with a person. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to make up your mind before you know the whole story. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to disrespect the President, their teachers, or other adults role models. I'm not okay with teaching kids that there is only one right way of thinking or one right answer to a problem. I start every semester by telling my students that I will never ask them to agree with everyone's point of view, but I will ask them to listen and treat each other with respect. It makes me sad when I see parents who use children as an excuse to perpetuate intolerance, disrespect, and hatred.

If Al Capone was old enough to understand and watch television, I would have hoped that he would have watched in school and we would have watched again as a family after school. Since he's not old enough and won't be any time soon, I went online and bought books that are often banned or challenged by people who feel that they have the obligation to protect children from the harmful ideas like diversity. Unfortunately, he won't be able to grow up and say that he remembers when he listened to President Obama at school, but maybe he will grow up being open minded enough that when classmates or their parents try and close down conversations with narrow minded, ignorant rhetoric, he will fight back. Hopefully he will never call our President by hateful slurs because he doesn't agree with his ideologies. Hopefully, he will never make fun of a classmate who's skin or family or religion or ability is different from his own.

We can't afford to buy Al Capone all of the books that I would like him to read, but today I added a few more to his library. Here's what I got him in honor of all of the ignorant parents who think it's okay to breed hatred and intolerance in children.

• The Family Book--because families come in all different shapes and sizes
• And Tango Makes Three--because some of those families have two mommies or two daddies
• The Lorax--because recycling is a good thing and we should take care of the environment
• In the Night Kitchen--because naked baby butts are not bad
• Halloween books--because Halloween is not the work of the devil

Obviously, this is a mishmash of books. Diversity and tolerance cannot be taught in a single book, but when children grow up with images of diversity, hopefully they do not turn into close minded adults.

*For those who don't know me well I do NOT write children's books, I write about them. I teach critical analysis of children's and adolescent literature to future teachers.

Burping Slugs

This makes me happy...

Me: talking about ideologies and Harry Potter and showing students the graphs showing reasons for challenges.
Student: All of those reasons sound like personal preference. I thought banned books did something illegal.
Me: Most of the challenges are personal objections, but banning doesn't take into account everyone else's personal preference. Why do you think people might object to Harry Potter?

[list of reason goes here]

Different student: People actually think that spells in Harry Potter are real? If they were real, I'd make those people burp slugs.

Willy Wonka and/in the Lincoln Bedroom

Oompa loompas are a little creepy and do seem like the spies of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but apparently their spying ways in the film are not all that different than Roald Dahl's own past. The news that Dahl was a war-time spy was not nearly as entertaining as last month's revelation that Julia Child was a spy, but his methods were a little more scandalous. According to recent reports, the celebrated children's author was employed by the government to charm and then sleep with well-connected Americans in order to win confidences from them. Does 007 really come from 00-mpa loompa? According to one source in The Telegraph:

"I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that [was worth] more than $50,000 a year."

While this this may sound like a great gig, accordng to Newsweek:

Dahl was assigned to gather pillow talk from Mrs. Luce, who was regarded as anti-British. It was hard duty. "I am all f–––ed out," Dahl complained to the ambassador, Lord Halifax, after a three-night stand. "You know it's a great assignment but I just can't go on."

Supposedly FDR knew he was a spy and allowed Dahl to report his pillow confessions to the UK, as the US would enter WWII shortly. More interesting to me, however, is what the children's lit backlash will be.

In my 170 class this morning we talked briefly about this and related issues and my students seemed unsure how to process sex spy turned children's author. Luckily they seem to have fallen in love with his books first and are unwilling to degrade their value simply because of scandal. Let's just hope Sarah Palin doesn't get wind of this story. According to Time, while mayor of Wasilla, AK she, among other things,

continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them.

Clearly Harry Potter is to blame for teen pregnancies!*

*I've found conflicting reports about the titles of the books she sought to ban. John Green first alerted me to this connection. I'll be interested to see what's on that list though.

Self-Censorship

I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which I silence myself. I don't like confrontation, and so I although I do have strong opinions, I frequently keep them to myself (stop laughing Rakicy) when I perceive the situation/person to be unwilling to even listen to differing opinions. I take it personally when you shut me down, so as a defense mechanism I refuse to allow you the opportunity. Unfortunately, in doing so I shut myself down.

There are people and situations in my life that seem so self absorbed in their own ideologies that they simply say "no" or "you're wrong; I'm right" when confronted with people who don't think like they do. I, on the other hand, really value dialogue. I grew up in an environment where nearly everything was part of a dialogue. Discussion did not equal fight, and conversation was important.

I joked this weekend that my filter was broken, but really I discovered this morning that maintaining that filter (the you're not willing to listen, so I'll have this conversation with myself filter) is exhausting. Sitting in a room where I have self-imposed silence on myself is more exhausting that nearly anything else in my life. One of the things I really like about my group of friends is their openness to actually listening to other ideas. I'm not exhausted when they leave. We don't all think the same, but we don't shut down people for thinking differently.

In the last couple of weeks, I've run into multiple situations (professional and personal) where "different" is used as an insult in disguise. This really bothers me. Of course most of the time, I don't tell the person using it in this way that it bothers me because they aren't interested in a dialogue about the situation. So unfortnately, I realize that as I type this I am telling the people who already value dialogue, but communicating my frustrations makes me feel better--that's why I blog.

Censorship is Not Your Friend

Shortly after writing my post admitting that I read Pantagraph comments despite the fact that I know they will anger me, I went to the Pantagraph site. The headline was: Patron complains that DVD at Bloomington library is pornographic Good News; all 8 comments so far say something along the lines of "is you don't like it don't check it out." I was worried, but people can really think for themselves sometimes. Yay!

BTW...If you are curious the film in question is Short Bus. I haven't seen it, but I may have to go check it out from the Bloomington Public Library now :)