[New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination]

25 minutes ago, regentrude said:

 

In my opinion, writers should write and make art. Their responsibility is to tell the stories that move them to the best of their artistic ability. The judgment is up to the readers, the critics, the publishing industry... but nobody should censor what a writer can write.

 

 

Yes, and this gets at essential questions about what censorship is...like of course people can write whatever they want and no one's going to stop them (well, with some exceptions for things that are actually illegal). And they can give it to whoever they want to read and these days they can self-publish it and sell it on Amazon. But generally a wider audience requires a publisher as a go between (not always! The Martian!), and it's not censorship if a publisher chooses not to publish your book. 

[New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination]

8 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

I haven't seen a huge movement towards authors writing outside of their experience, although I see a lot of harsh critiques when it goes wrong.  I have seen a lot more of this argument being made when it comes to TV and movies.  People complain about a neurotypical person being tasked with playing an autistic person, or an able bodied actor playing a disabled character.   

Yeah, although it still happens plenty. My perception is that the objection there is more about how if there's a role for a disabled person, a disabled person should get the role because there aren't a lot of roles like that to start with. As opposed to feeling like actors can't effectively portray someone with a different identity...which is an interesting difference (if my perceptions are even correct). And, of course, we're coming from a time when white actors played, say, Asian characters regularly and played them as terrible stereotypes. Have we gone too far the other way? 

[New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination]

I'm still kind of hung up about how PEN purports to link to evidence that there's a movement to stop people from writing about characters who don't relate to their own identity and experience and then does no such thing. I'm not saying such a movement doesn't exist, but they haven't presented any evidence for it. There's a HUGE difference between saying that there's value in seeking out, say, disabled authors writing children books about disability, et. al. (in a space that historically has not allowed a lot of room for diverse authors) and saying that no one else should be allowed to do so. The site they link to does the former (and, importantly, it's not a publisher, but a site that curates lists of children's books). It's simply not true that people aren't writing well-received, popular books about characters with different racial, ethnic, etc. identities from their own right now. 

I'm interested in and concerned about these issues, and I do think there's plenty to talk about...but I'd like to talk about actual examples (I think yours about your ex being expected to always sit on panels about post-colonialism is a good one, @Melissa Louise), and the only one they're giving says, "hey, probably if you want your kids to learn about Diwali, an author who grew up celebrating Diwali is more likely to get the details right!" Interestingly, it looks like the Own Voice movement is, in fact, backing away from the term and having its own discussions about limits and nuance and all that. 

[New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination]

1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:

Writers of fiction don't have to do anything, really. Other than write from the imagination.

Sort of the point of art. 

 

I'm not sure what this is in response to? Obviously writers can write whatever they want. I would disagree that using one's imagination is the primary point of art, although it's certainly a necessary component of it. Art has had and continues to have a lot of purposes and those have never been separate from forces like politics, religion, the marketplace, etc. 

[New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination]

I followed the link they give as evidence that "some critics are calling for an identity-essentialist approach to literature, holding that writers can only responsibly tell the stories that relate to their own identity and experiences," and it doesn't actually link to a source calling for that. It links to a site that deals exclusively with childrens literature and a page that talks about the "own voices" movement. It does say that there's value in reading books written by people who share an identity with their protagonist (again, it's talking about childrens literature) and points out some potential problems when that's not the case, but it says, "If a book is specifically about the experience of a character who uses a wheelchair, we want the creators to look to how those in that community feel about the book. If a book is about Diwali, the creators must be looking at how the book resonates with those who celebrate in the South Asian community. If authors/illustrators don’t hold those identities they are representing, we expect them to listen to those who do." I.e. it's great to read books written by authors who can identify with their protagonists, but it's also okay if they don't, as long as they're respectful of those identities and work to get them right.

It's interesting, because I can certainly remember instances recently where writers have been criticized for how they've written about marginalized characters with whom they don't share an identity...but then there's, say, Geraldine Brooks, who mostly had a bunch of praise heaped on her when she wrote from the perspective of Black characters in Horse. I think there's tons of nuance here and a million different issues at play. It's interesting that we've never really taken issue with writers writing from the perspective of a character of a different gender the way we have with race. For example. Just one little example. There are lots of examples!  Going back to my first post, William Styron got a lot of crap, but he also won a Pulitzer. 

 

[New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination]

Hmm. I don't think this is a new issue at all. I've been surprised a couple of times recently to see it framed as such. It's certainly as old as William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) at any rate. I did a tutorial on southern lit in grad school--a one on one thing with a professor where I'd read a book a week and go in and discuss it. That week I was all ready to talk about whether it was William Styron's story to tell or not, and the prof shut it down immediately by saying that all stories are any writer's story to tell. Which did not leave me with much to talk about that week, sadly. I continue to both think he was right and that it's more complicated than that. Which I imagine is why people are still talking about it. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

5 hours ago, PaxEtLux said:

 

As I said in my first post, I'm outside the public school system. But what I see, and what others on this thread say, is that many (most ?) teachers seem free to create their own custom curricular materials, or grab any from the millions of web sites, paid or free, or show any youtube videos they can find.  So, teachers seem to have a tremendous amount of autonomy in this regard.  Is this what you see in your new role?

It easy to get upset about Shakespeare and other materials being removed from the classroom, but I'm more interested in who decides which books are read in a classroom. I don't think that should be the state legislature or governor, but I'm not sure it should be down to the individual classroom teachers, either.  If a school has four English 10 classes, should each be reading completely different texts?

And I think it is particularly cruel to teachers to threaten them with loss of employment (or worse) if they select the "wrong" material, without giving them any serious guidance on what is "wrong" or "right".

Honestly, this seems like a completely different discussion; the stated point of current legislation in Florida and elsewhere isn't to create a common curriculum so that all 10th graders are learning the same thing (remember Common Core? That WAS the point of that, and it definitely wasn't embraced by conservatives). Would it be nice if there were a common body of literature that we could expect everyone would have read by the time they graduated from high school? Maybe? I don't think it's necessary, and in some ways I think the fact that we don't is reflective of what a wonderful variety of excellent texts we have to choose from rather than the narrower canon that generations past had to work with. But, at any rate, that's NOT the goal of current legislation. So do I think it would be better for teachers or students if teachers were given a narrow list of acceptable texts that carefully avoided all mention of racism or sexuality or religion? No. If you want to talk about how we create a modern literary canon that takes into account the full range of human experience and ensures wide representation across cultural and racial and gender lines, then that's an interesting conversation. But it's not the one that's happening right now in the US. If you want to cut lots of people back out of the canon in an effort to ensure that no one is ever made uncomfortable (and when we say "no one" in that context, we mean no straight, white, middle class, Christian kids), then I'm not interested. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

15 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

I’m probably rambling but just to re-center, is all of this stuff (limiting what people can learn) who we are, have always been, and if not…how do we change course? If these problems are indicative of minority/authoritarian rule, how do we combat it?

I think it's who we've...often been? Like I think it's worse right now than it's been in awhile, but there was McCarthyism. There were the Alien and Sedition Acts back when the ink was still drying on the First Amendment. So I think there's always been a tension between free speech and attempts to stifle it (and shifting ideas about the limits of free speech). 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

Just now, Sneezyone said:

It’s not in THEIR interest to do it, and alienate users??, it’s in ours. It’s NOT their responsibility, it’s ours.

I don't think I'm disagreeing? I'm just commenting on the incredible difficulty of the task. Or impossibility. I was just thinking of AP exams as maybe the closest thing we have to the comprehensive exams some other countries have. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

1 minute ago, Sneezyone said:

Except the college board is a private entity and not a public initiative. We have citizens actively promoting, even today, the notion that slavery was a gift, a beneficial condition, of marginal import in modern life. The ONLY reason folks can say these things with a straight face and not be laughed out/run out of polite company is the lack of shared history. It’s a problem.

Sure...I'm definitely not holding the College Board up as an example of everything pure and good..but they DO have a monetary interest in creating a common curriculum that's acceptable to as wide a range of people as possible, while still being acceptably comprehensive and rigorous for colleges to see it as valuable....and they STILL can't do it. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

I mean, AP courses are an attempt to create a standardized curriculum--one that's comprehensive but also widely acceptable to people all over the US--and two of its courses have recently been banned in Florida. So I'm not terribly optimistic about a search for common ground. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

6 minutes ago, Halftime Hope said:

OK, split hairs about the way I worded the sentence: school districts and their policies are very, very different from one place to another in the US. What we are experiencing, or our teachers, or our neighbors are, can be very, very different. (See math discussion above.)

 

I wasn't trying to split hairs; I was clarifying...I'm certainly not claiming (I don't think anyone is) that every school district in the country is doing these kinds of things. My kids are homeschooled, but I'd be surprised if this stuff were going on in my own school district at the moment. That doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't be concerned about it happening elsewhere.

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

30 minutes ago, Halftime Hope said:

Clearly our lived experiences in school districts across the US are very, very different from one another.

However, if a child watches any TV or engages on social media, they will not lack exposure to positively-portrayed gay relationships nor to racism being addressed and condemned. 

It's not my lived experience, it's what I've learned from listening to teachers who are teaching in affected districts. I guess "they don't need to learn that in school because they can just watch TV" is...an answer, though. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

Just now, Murphy101 said:

 

Can you give specific examples?  

I consider reading books like Beloved that look unflinchingly at the history of racism in America to be essential. My kids know that racism was indeed woven into the founding of America and is still with us--including lots of ideas from the AP African American history class banned in Florida. I also already gave the specific example of Shakespeare being banned in one district in Florida for fear of crossing the new laws. The Don't Say Gay law is commonly interpreted to mean teachers cannot acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ people at all, including mentioning their own family members--certainly not teaching any literature with any portrayals of gay people--Florida recently banned the teaching of AP psychology because of material pertaining to sexuality and gender, although it looks like they might be backing off on that (but not before lots of schools have already removed it from course offerings this year). Here's a quote from an AP lit teacher on my Facebook group:

Quote

We teachers in Florida need the country to understand what we are dealing with under the new law, HB1069. We are threatened with (up to) prison for giving the wrong book to students, talking about inappropriate subjects in class, and of course respecting transgender or gender neutral students.

Districts are individually interpreting a response to the law, mostly from a fear base. A neighboring district published a list of 120 books banned for high school; my district won’t put anything in writing but has banned all Shakespeare and The Crucible outright. Everything else must be approved, including classroom libraries, before use. School starts next week and I have no approved materials for AP.

 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

8 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

Which goes back to what I said upthread, something we can all, perhaps, agree on...

The U.S. doesn't have a shared history/cultural narrative that's inclusive and tested, tried and true.

This. MY idea of what is absolutely essential knowledge and reading for my American kids is no longer allowed to be taught in Florida. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

6 minutes ago, PaxEtLux said:

I'm not suggesting mandating how to teach, but consider how math is usually taught in High School -- the teacher mainly uses one textbook, which has been reused for years, and teaches from that book, in order, using problems in that book.  I've never heard a complaint from math teachers about lack of autonomy even though they've been working this way forever.

I'd also point out that making a standardized curriculum to save time for teachers isn't what's going on in literature classes. It's not about helping the poor, overworked teachers, it's about ensuring that students are never exposed to ideas that certain segments of the population find objectionable. Like the facts that gay people and racism exist.

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

Just now, PaxEtLux said:

I'm not suggesting mandating how to teach, but consider how math is usually taught in High School -- the teacher mainly uses one textbook, which has been reused for years, and teaches from that book, in order, using problems in that book.  I've never heard a complaint from math teachers about lack of autonomy even though they've been working this way forever.

My husband's a math teacher. The books actually seem to change every couple of years around here, but if he doesn't like the book he's given he regularly makes his own materials and uses them (and/or coordinates with other teachers in his department). If someone told him he couldn't do that and HAD to only use the problems in the textbook he was given, he'd be very upset. Because he knows what works for his students better than a curriculum development team or textbook writer who's never met them does. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

7 minutes ago, PaxEtLux said:

I'm outside the public school system, so there's mountains I don't understand, and I certainly sympathize with these teachers.

But I am shocked that we ask each of these individual teachers to do so much work to come up with assignments, reading lists etc., on their own, when it could be shared between all the teachers of the same subject across the district or state or even AP.  It reminds me of the scandals we hear, seemingly yearly, about classes holding a "slave auction" or writing essays with questionable prompts that came from a "teachers pay teachers" web site.  Why are the teachers creating this material on their own?  Why can't the district/State/whatever provide a set of, say, 30 books for 10th grade English teachers could choose from, and a bunch of essay prompts for each of those?

It reminds me of our situation with the IRS, where the IRS knows how much tax we should owe, but never tells us outright -- they ask us to compute our tax, and if we compute too low a number, we get in trouble.

That definitely doesn't sound like a college level class to me, which is what AP lit is supposed to be. I think less teacher autonomy is a great way to drive more teachers out of the profession. I know a lot of teachers, and being told exactly what and how to teach isn't what they're looking for. A standardized curriculum where everyone graduates having read the same books that don't grapple with any topics any parent might find objectionable doesn't sound so great to me. Incidentally, the latest post about book banning in Florida reports that this teacher's district has banned all Shakespeare to be sure they're complying with the new laws. 

[U.S. residents/voters of good will...come in, pls.]

I'm in the AP lit teachers Facebook group (because we're doing AP lit at home), and it's truly scary and disheartening to hear the kinds of experiences these teachers are having. One teacher described having to have absolutely every reading assignment approved at the district level...where they would go through software that would filter out anything objectionable, including stuff like any profanity at all. In what's supposed to be a college level class. 

[Question about diversity/inclusion language]

41 minutes ago, KSera said:

 

A 5-year study by the American Academy of Pediatrics of more than 300 transgender youth recently found that after initial social transition, which can include changing your pronouns, name, and how you might dress or present yourself, 94% continued to identify as transgender while only 2.5% identified as their sex assigned at birth.

“Once people came out as gender diverse they really ended up persisting in those identities over time. So fewer than 2.5% of children who made that initial social transition ended up identifying as their sex assigned at birth at the conclusion of the five year study. That means that over 97, almost 98% of the children in that study persisted on in their gender diverse identities over time,” said Dr. Melissa Cyperski, Clinical Psychologist with Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

 

This data (and other similar studies) is often used as evidence in favor of social transition, but that’s ignoring the fact that kids who do not socially transition most often eventually identify with their biological sex. And given the significant mental health differences between transgender and cisgender people, that’s something to give weight to. 

That study isn't comparing kids who socially transition with kids who don't, though? You're (? can't tell if the last paragraph is a quote or your commentary) stating as fact that most kids who don't socially transition eventually identify as their biological sex, but that's not in the study (or at least not your summary of it--there's no link to it).

[Stanley tumbler huge blowout sale (link below)]

41 minutes ago, CTVKath said:

How do we know this isn't a company in Hong Kong that bought out a bunch of BB&B product before it was shipped to stores?

I've got my receipt by email. And when I go back to the website and track my order with my email address, it comes up with the order number that matches my receipt although it is listed as "unshipped". I could cancel the order because it hasn't shipped yet. But it seems like I"m going to get something....or maybe it's knock off Stanley cups?

The way the website is set up also seems like it's trying to make you think they ARE Bed, Bath, & Beyond, but BB&B still has their own website up and running with (not nearly as exciting) clearance items. And the text on the site just screams scam: 

Closing Store Promotion

With heavy hearts, we announce the closure of Our Store It is an unfortunate end to our journey together. However, in this liquidation sale, we offer the remaining inventory at incredibly low prices. We sincerely thank you for your years of support and loyalty. May your homes continue to be filled with warmth and comfort.

[Have you lived in an area that has greatly improved its public transportation?]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you have in mind, but our city and the city adjacent to us recently finished putting multi-use paths along both sides of the road our neighborhood is on, and it's had a HUGE positive impact on our lives. The road used to be pretty much unusable by pedestrians in places (largely because of a busy bridge with no sidewalk or shoulder) and not safe-feeling for the casual biker, but now we can walk to tons of restaurants, a brewery, library, stores, etc. etc. And my kids can walk or ride their bikes to their best friend's house (he's only a mile away, but across that bridge!). My husband sometimes bikes to work as well. 

[Stanley tumbler huge blowout sale (link below)]

5 minutes ago, Indigo Blue said:

https://www.amazon.com/30oz-tumbler-handle-Light-blue/dp/B0BZRK29WM/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?crid=2DCM4QU2FE62Q&keywords=stanley+tumbler&qid=1691176352&sprefix=stanley+tumbler%2Caps%2C401&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRm&psc=1

They do have them for 24.99 at Amazon. That’s as low as I’ve seen them. 

the link goes to an off brand one (name brand listed as "generic")

 

[Question about diversity/inclusion language]

Oh! Here's a really interesting history from NPR's Code Switch about the hispanic/not hispanic question on the census: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/16/321819185/on-the-census-who-checks-hispanic-who-checks-white-and-why

[Question about diversity/inclusion language]

The reason for the hispanic/not hispanic question is that the US government (and other people making such forms) finds it helpful to be able to identify Hispanic people and Hispanic people identify as a variety of races. (with the SAT example, the College Board runs the National Hispanic Recognition Program, for example). Maybe I'm not saying anything people don't already know...it just seemed as if there was a question of why hispanic/not hispanic is singled out, and I think the reason is that you don't run into the same issues or at least you don't run into them as frequently when you ask someone to identify as Asian or Black. Not making a value judgment about how the categories work...I mean, wasn't it impossible to indicate that you were more than one race until very recently on the census? Obviously, there are issues.