skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I was looking though my copy of Free To Be... You and Me today. It’s a great book published in 1974, filled with poems stories, pictures, and songs. They all have messages about challenging stereotypes and not being sexist, racist, mean, etc. It was meant as a “new kind of children's book”, and though it may sound dumb, it’s actually quite good (at least in my opinion). At the back of the book, there’s an afterword written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I’m sure I’ve seen it before, but this time it caught my eye and I took the time to read it. I’m disappointed that we’ll never get to read Welcome to Earth.“I’ve often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they’re on, why they don’t fall off it, how much time they’ve probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don’t fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn’t explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I’d tell them how we reproduce, how long we’ve boon here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. And one thing I would really like to tell them about is cultural relativity. I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It’s also a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it.”
I’ve been reading a book by Lucia Hodgson, Raised In Captivity: Why Does America Fail Its Children? I have to return the book to the library tomorrow, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to finish it, so I skimmed through the last of the chapters today. I picked it off the shelf in the library around a month ago, and i’ve been pleasantly surprised by her arguments and viewpoints. I assumed it was going to be one more book railing on how we need to protect our children from violence and TV, but she has decidedly more of a radical tinge:
“I am not suggesting that children should be allowed to ignore the laws that make civilization possible. But I am arguing that children have the same right to self-determination as adults: the same right, for example, to pursue the religion or sexual orientation of their choice. I am arguing that we should raise children to be what they want to be, not what we want them to be, and, therefore, the goal of ideal child rearing should be to provide a safe, nurturing environment with as few restrictions as are necessary to maintain it. I am arguing that children deserve safety and protection whether their behavior pleases the adults around them or not. They deserve to be protected and empowered.” For much of the book, Hodgson describes how Americans believe that they care about their children, but through examples shows that in fact most parents are acting on their own fears and wishes. Most examples are nationally well-known court cases from the early ’90’s, involving child abuse, child custody, murder, and foster care laws. I wish she had given more detail on these cases. Because they were recent at the time of publication, there was an expectation that the reader would already know the details of the cases and people involved.
I’m generally a very private person. I’m not really sure how this blog thing will work out, but i’ve always been intrigued by the idea. And there’s no harm in trying, right? I don’t really have a specific topic for this blog. I figure if there’s meant to be one, it will start to appear; but otherwise it will just be random thoughts, musings, and discoveries that I feel the need to share.I can’t really think of who would want to read this.. but, here I go anyways.
