WE don't like it! Ban it!

 

Bookbook - Geo G. Epp, copyright

In Texas (I read in the news,) public and school librarians are stressed right now over what books may remain on their shelves and what books may have to be removed. The choices will be driven by legislation and whatever enforcement mechanisms the state deems necessary. The selection of reading materials to be banned centers on issues of sex and gender this time, and whatever influence a book might have in promoting a liberal attitude toward gender fluidity. Underlying the controversy is an assumption that reading a book in which a trans-gender person is pictured positively might raise children’s questioning of their own gender identity and/or innocently embarking down a path that will leave them gender-identity confused or damaged.

We have a history to refer to in this regard. Examples galore exist where book banning/book burnings, have occurred in an attempt at suppressing unpopular developments socially, culturally or politically. Stifling objectionable ideas, speech, activities by force seems to be a predictable response to change, particularly in volatile times like the “world war years” in Europe, for example.

I find it ironic that accusations of “cancel culture” (generally aimed at the liberal population) is so clearly exemplified by the book banning segment of the public in the USA. Seems to me,  these are the same people who accuse the fictitious “woke” cohort of cancelling (banning?) right wing expressions of opinion. I agree with Jordan Peterson on little more than this one thing: we need liberalism to help us adapt to changing conditions, and we need conservatism to help us regulate the pace of our adaptation. For one to gag the other by, for instance, banning their written speech, is surely unwise for this reason alone.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t books in which gay and/or trans people are depicted positively written for different reasons than for unsettling cis-gender persons? We all know how traumatic school can be for kids who don’t fit conventional norms; good teaching doesn’t pretend the differences are non-existent or meaningless; its aim is to guide the class and each child in it toward a life of social acceptance and personal dignity. One important goal of public education according to the Canadian PeopleforEducation.ca organization is to “Build a society that values the wellbeing of all its members.” To teach children a healthy approach to the wellbeing of the student in the next desk isn’t in question, even though how and when to teach this remains a relevant consideration.

We must be careful here. Book burning and banning have never, ever done more than stifle the efforts of a community to adapt in changing times. For that, both educational expertise and parental involvement are crucial. Setting the standards for what is and what isn’t justified in the classroom is not well served by legislated enforcement.

But some humility and some compassion on the part of us who have embraced the need for educating for “a society that values the wellbeing of all its members” (emphasis mine) wouldn’t go amiss. The advocates for banning and burning are reacting to fears that are currently being stoked, namely that multiple conspiracies are at work against citizens’ interests, in this case through the children. Unless we dialogue openly and for however long it takes—with parents and teachers and administrators facing each other across friendly tables—the children will suffer for our fearful responses to charges that are educationally illegitimate.

And as I’ve conjectured before, aren’t we all in favour of book banning at some level? Isn’t it true that our controversies only arise because we disagree on the threshold where acceptable and unacceptable divide? I agree with those who would maintain that Hustler Magazine has no place in an elementary or high school library. I would not agree that Huckleberry Finn should be taken off the high school curriculum because of racist content. To become a culture that attends to the wellbeing of every person, our upbringing must show us the face of racism, sexism, ageism, etc., so that we may learn empathy for those who are different. A kind of “walking a mile in their shoes.” Books provide the stories; teachers are trained to understand their students well enough to make of the stories learning experiences that promote “a society that values the wellbeing of all its members.

It’s a bit of truism that books don’t jump off shelves and read themselves to people; the patron of a library chooses what book will and what book won’t be taken home. This principle doesn’t provide comfort in the case of the internet, where any child with a smart phone is accessible to those who would wish to use him/her/them wrongfully. There the stories do jump off the shelves and present themselves to wide-eyed innocents without the benefit of a responsible adult interpreter. Resolving that kind of intrusion into children’s development is going to be a much more complex issue than simple book authorizing/banning has ever been.

Make Sure youse Guys Right Good!

Whitakers Almanack, 1893

Maybe it's my reawakened interest in old books that leads me to wonder about our evolving language. I've been reading lately in a textbook titled Essays & Essay-Writing, an anthology of personal essays selected from The Atlantic Monthly and authorized for use in English classes at the Grade 12 level. It was published in 1933 and my copy comes complete with names scrawled in the frontispiece and flyleaves and the scribbled notes tell me that this copy was read (or, at least, possessed) by a series of senior students at B.L.C.H.S, which may be Blaine Lake Central (?) High School.

      An essay called “The Flavor of Things” by Robert M. Gay chronicling the author's defective relationship to mathematics contains the following sentence about people who love that particular discipline:

Permutations and combinations and the doctrine of chances filled their souls with elation; they would rather wander over the area of a parallelogram than over the greenest meadow under heaven, collecting angles and sides as another would daisies and buttercups, and chasing the unknown quantity as another might a butterfly (p. 17).

One can hardly read this today without visions of quills and inkwells, oak desks and tweed-jackets-with-elbow-patches springing to mind. The written word has changed a great deal since 1933, not only in the abandonment of antiquated diction (word choice) but in the aversion to long sentences, elaborate metaphors and the eschewing of contractions, slang and colloquialisms.

    A present-day version of Gay's sentence might well read, “Some guys really dig math.”

    I worry some days about the consequences of abandoning sensory writing and enlarged vocabulary, about the increasing inability to deal with complex sentence structures. I may be considered a language Luddite for such apprehensions, reinforced, possibly, by the style in which I've chosen to write this essay. Indeed, I've been accused in the past of writing in an archaic style that makes comprehension difficult. (Someone said to me about my book, What I Meant to Say Was . . . that they enjoyed what I'd written, even though they didn't understand much of it!)

    Go back to my first paragraph for a moment. If I had asked you to point to the frontispiece or flyleaf in a book, would you have been able to do it with confidence? These terms are book jargon, of course, and you don't have to know what they mean to be a connoisseur of literature, but I've long been of the opinion that a larger vocabulary is better than a smaller one, especially if being able to understand what's going on in the world and/or participating in significant dialogue matters to you. Likewise, if you want to read past page 5 in Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design with some understanding, a broad—as opposed to a narrow—vocabulary is almost mandatory.

    I don't know how the students of the Thirties fared with Essays and Essay-Writing, although I have noticed that some of the easier essays—language-wise—were more marked up than the more complex ones, a pretty good indication that the teachers using the text deferred to the apparent comprehension levels of their classes.

    In these days of the diminishing use of books for learning about the world, the questions, “what are we losing?" and "what have we lost?” seem relevant to me. Are you a bibliophile like me? Do you know what a bibliophile is? Do you share my concerns about language evolution?

    If so, let me hear from you and we can start a Language Complainers' Club! Be a nice change from complaining about the Harper Conservatives.

A Chardonnay in February

Fruit of the Vine

Yesterday was judgment day. Did you miss it?

Chapter One: After dinner, I watched Jian Ghomeshi’s panel kick the last-but-one book off the island in the final Canada Reads event on CBC. The long-awaited judgment? Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan is not as good a Canadian read as is February, by Lisa Moore. But both are better Canadian reads than David Bergen’s The Age of Hope, Jane Urquhart’s Away, or Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese.

Chapter Two: The Station Arts Centre held its Wine Tasting Fundraiser last night, an event at which locals who ferment kit and scratch wines enter their wares for judgment. The best kit wine was a Chardonnay; the best scratch wine a Mead.

So now I know what I ought to read and what I ought to drink with dinner. Or better yet, I could read February while sipping a glass of Mead, or Chardonnay perhaps. Quality on top of quality.

The wine judges used a point system to rank the many wines they were obliged to sniff, swirl and taste. The Chardonnay had the best all-round combination of colour, nose and palate, plus characteristics like clarity, balance and finish. It was all done very “objectively.” (Think about that for a moment; can taste, smell, ever be judged other than subjectively?)

Nowhere near as objective was the Canada Reads judgment. As the five-member panel debated the merits and demerits of the two finalists in the contest, I looked for criteria that are normally associated with quality in the novel art form: plot development, diction, setting, verisimilitude, character development, etc. Couldn’t find them. Had this panel been judging visual art, I expect that the debate would have come down to whether or not the moose in painting A looks better (and/or more Canadian) than the muskrat in B.

Mind you, I’m as vulnerable as the general population to misjudging what I see on TV, assuming too easily that what’s portrayed there is a “window on the real world.” As my friend once said, “You’ve got to remember that they’re not making education (or sports, or reliable information, etc.), THEY’RE MAKING TELEVISION!” The corollary being that TV is primarily a medium for marketplace advertising, the programming chosen and styled to keep the audience captive through the appeals-to-consume.

(I guess there’s no such thing as “reality TV”—as if pointing a camera at people doesn’t alter the event that’s being watched. What we know as “reality TV” should be called “shows that appeal to people’s voyeuristic inclinations and are cheaply produced.”)

Canada Reads with its tedious, drawn-out voting, its false suspense and its choosing-by-elimination has clearly adopted techniques of Survivor, American Idol, and the rest of “reality TV.”

I find that disappointing, somehow.

It’s possible that Canada Reads encourages reading, but I doubt it, at least if volume is the criterion. The country divides rather neatly into people who read novels and people who don’t. The people who do are more likely to read February than they would have otherwise, so Lois Moore must be ecstatic about this turn of events. The people who don’t read novels likely turned to the hockey game before Ghomeshi’s welcome.

As to the wine, we who were there knew full well that the event was not staged to help us recognize quality in wines, it was meant to raise money for arts programming in the Rosthern area.

Maybe that’s sour grapes talking (pardon the pun); my Chilean Merlot didn’t win! Not even an honourable mention.

  

The meaning of life - finally

(At Cameron Trading Post, Arizona)

The meaning of life – a reflection^©

by George Epp

“The purpose of life, the philanthropist knows, is to make the world better. The only question is, Why?” (Joan Chittister, Welcome to the Wisdom of the World, p. 130)

There are, of course, many stories and anecdotes that contain the question of “the meaning (or purpose) of life.” One such is a spoof on Kahlil Gibran and goes something like this:

A disciple climbed the high mountain to the place where the great guru sat in meditation. “What is the meaning of fate?” the acolyte asked. The teacher was silent for a moment, in deep thought. “It is what causes great ships to embark on stormy seas to carry goods to those who need them. It is what causes trucks and trains to travel many, many miles in the dead of night with a worthy purpose in mind.” “And that is the meaning of fate?” said the puzzled supplicant. “Fate?” exclaimed the master. “I thought you said ‘freight.’”

One of Chittisters chapters is titled, “What is the purpose of life?” In a few pages, she—in a manner that some would call ‘audacious’—proceeds to answer the question. It got me thinking, though, about the role this question plays in the way I see the world, and live in it. Like you, I don’t go around asking the question; it smacks of junior high debate, doesn’t it.

And yet, I realize that virtually all my choices are, in effect, an answer to that question. Why did I become a teacher? Because I believed that teachers have a role to play in “making the world a better place” through the education of the next generation. I didn’t say that, but I must have believed it or I would never have let myself in for the low salary (they’re better now), the hours and hours of preparation and grading, the struggles with motivation, discipline, etc., etc.

In retirement, I have chosen to do a number of things, including these:

• I cook meals for my wife and me on days when she works in the local library. I might say that I’m making the world a better place by nourishing her when she’s tired, and helping her to do the important work of providing educational resources to the community without distraction.
• I write this blog, which makes the world a better place because a few people will read this paragraph and think about how their choices represent their answer to the question of purpose and meaning.
• I chair the Eigenheim Mennonite Church council, because I believe that that institution has a role to play in making the world a better place.
• I edit a provincial newsletter for Mennonite Church Saskatchewan because I believe that what the Mennonite Churches of Saskatchewan do together makes the province a better place, and to do those things more and better, people need to be informed and motivated.
• I participate in the local Writers Group because I believe that a world in which people formulate and write their thoughts and share their knowledge and wisdom is a better place than a world without “literature.”

(Some days, I want to pitch all of it and move to a place where “nobody knows my name.” Other days, the activities reward and energize me.)

A behaviourist would smile and say that I do these things precisely because they bring rewards to me personally, and that what I ‘choose’ to do is motivated not by philanthropy, but by selfishness. I know what people around me will reward me for, in other words, so that’s what I ‘choose’ to do.

That may be closer to the truth than my list of activities above. Maybe I just-can’t-say-no to a lot of stuff because I don’t want to risk a loss of positive regard.

I occasionally write adult Bible study material. For that I get paid. It works out—probably—to about five dollars an hour or less. Would I do it without the pay? That would be another test of my version of the meaning and the purpose of my life.

Here’s Chittister again: “God did not finish creation. We are put here to do our part in completing the project. What else can possibly be worth a life?” (p.132)

I don’t think I’d describe it that way. I think my fellow church members—on average—would. What about you?

If you know the purpose and meaning of life, write to me at g.epp@sasktel.net and I’ll pass your wisdom on to all my readers. (Or should I have said ‘both?’)

Theists, deists, agnostics and atheists

Along with the members of a book club to which Agnes and I belong, I'm reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Although I'm not that far into it yet, I'm already finding it a bit of a challenge to chew, let alone swallow. It's been wisely said that there's not much point in debating the points for and against the existence of God, and I'm already feeling a vast gap between Dawkins' perceptions of the world and my own. Dawkins is, of course, a scientist, and consequently (but not inevitably) a materialist. He denies the existence of the supernatural out of hand and has warned me in the first chapter already that he will be providing plenty of evidence to make me understand that the probability of the existence of God is very, very low.

Not unexpectedly, Dawkins takes a full-bore run at fundamentalist concepts and the people who promote them. In my view, starting off with ridicule when a debate is desired, is an error. And Dawkins' caustic aspersions on the sanity of believers tells me that it's not a discussion or debate he's after at all. He sounds as dogmatic as any TV evangelist.

I'm sure there are a lot of rebuttals to Dawkins out there, and I'm sure Google would help me find reams of material refuting Dawkins. I'm determined, however, to postpone that kind of reading until I've done my own review, and I think it's probably a good idea to finish reading the book first. There are plenty of Christians condemning stuff they've never even looked at, including Harry Potter.

Dawkins starts out with a story about his wife who apparently hated school and wished she could leave. When she told her parents about this years later, they asked her why she hadn't told them about this at the time. "I didn't know I could," she said. Dawkins goes on to use this analogy to support his supposition that "there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don't believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name . . . but just don't realize that leaving is an option."

Dawkins writes hyperbolically (and in my view, inaccurately) about the death, bloodshed and mayhem that religion has caused throughout the ages. Certainly, wars have been fought on the basis of the defense of religion, but more often than not, there have also been contributing ethnic, territorial or economic factors involved. For instance, he labels the "troubles" in Ireland as a religious conflict when, if fact, religious differences there are peripheral factors in a conflict that is largely territorial and ethnic.

When I'm done, I'll follow this up. 'Til then, God bless you.