Drugs of the mind

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

Learning to read is learning to empathise

This article is a fascinating argument for the power of reading to not only improve academic performance, but to improve empathy for and understanding of others. The idea makes intuitive sense, and I have certainly often found it true for myself. But then, does our temptation to censor reflect a fear of who and what we may learn to understand in a more positive light?

Article on ABC's The Drum: Learning to read is learning how to live

Learning time

After my entry on Karin, life took over and I ceased to have time to read and reflect on anything outside work. But now I have a new and exciting reason for delay: my spare time is currently being eaten up by reading about qualitative research, in preparation for my new work role. I am therefore, for the moment, not able to contribute directly to my own thinking and enquiry into censorship. However, in the longer term, I hope that both my reading and the experience that I gain will be invaluable resources.

This project will clearly be one for the very long term and will continue to change as my experience changes. I wonder where it will end up and how it will be affected.

Formative child, finished adult?

Stories like Narnia deserve to be taken very seriously because what we read as children is perhaps the most important literature we ever encounter. We're then at a formative stage of life. "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world" goes the saying. And if that's true, what about the hand that holds the bedtime fairy-tale? For that matter, what about the hand that writes the bedtime fairy-tale?

Michael Ward, The Narnia Code

Introduction to "Children's literature: new approaches"

Lesnik-Oberstein, K. n. (2004). Children's literature : new approaches / edited by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, Palgrave Macmillan.

Normally I try to wait to read an entire book before I start a summary, but I find I cannot do that on this occasion. I have so far read only the introduction, but feel compelled to weigh in with my own personal memories before they overwhelm me.

Karín Lesnik-Oberstein has one of the most phenomenal minds I have ever encountered. She has laser focus and is able to discern and analyse complex arguments seemingly at a glance. And, wonderfully, she has the rare ability to share her understanding. She is an energetic and passionate teacher with patience to help students as they slowly evolve in their thinking. I have seen her walk past a classroom in which we, as a class, sat, waiting for a teacher who had not arrived. Quickly sizing up the situation, she came in, sat down, and picked up a copy of the week’s text, which she had never before encountered. She asked us to start a discussion, and then promptly weighed in with some of the most insightfully relevant comments and queries I have encountered. Throughout my whole whirlwind encounter with the University of Reading, I felt that I was in the presence of a force of nature; this, to me, was the true essence of academic learning.

I had the rare privilege of having her as my MA dissertation supervisor, and then, briefly, as my PhD supervisor. I feel that any academic muscle I might once have built (since lost through lack of use), I gained from her and her colleagues. And then I quit. I knew at the time that I was mad to do so; I know it now. In quitting my PhD, I gave up a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn to the limits of my capability and beyond. And yet, there was no other decision I could have made.

Karín opened up for me the exciting possibilities of reading across disciplines, across boundaries. She revealed limitless vistas and rejected stolid, easy answers. And so, why did I feel so limited, so hamstrung? The more study I did, the more I knew that I could not continue, nor usefully contribute to knowledge, without first answering this question for myself. It is still the question I set for myself, and I begin to think that it is the question of my life, the answer to which I will forever seek, and to which I may never quite glimpse the answer. Doubtless, it is really the question I am seeking in my current “research”, as I revisit my old PhD ideas. I am reminded of I robot, in which the protagonist seeks help from the necessarily cryptic memory fragments of his murdered friend. The friend, prior to his death, was able to record clues, but, for fear of discovery, not to answer questions directly. Instead, as the protagonist flounders in frustration, the computer program interjects at key points with “And that is the right question.” Now as I in turn blindly seek, I feel the memory-ghost of Karín gently nudging me towards more rigorous self scrutiny. What is the question I am seeking to answer and why? What choices and assumptions do I therefore make and how might this affect the way I view information, and indeed what I view as information?

And so to the introduction of Children’s literature: new approaches, a copy of which I was privileged to receive from Karín herself when I was still at Reading. I opened the book asking myself “new”? What does she mean by that? And of course, the first chapter is devoted entirely to that question. She argues that many authors have addressed the issue of how theory might work for or apply to children’s literature, an apparently simple and transparent field. Is there a meaningful and useful separation between professional enquiry (e.g. librarianship, teaching) and academic criticism? Many have claimed to offer a new approach, and yet all have held ultimately the same goal: how to find the right book for the right reader at the right time and for the right reasons. One issue that emerges for Karín (I know I should respectfully write “Lesnik-Oberstein” rather than “Karín”, but it just feels too unnatural at this stage) is the question of whether it is in fact possible to have a new approach when the goal remains fundamentally unchanged. Karín argues that ultimately, it is not. Another issue, of course, is the possibility of there being any sensible way of defining “the” reader or “the” book in any generalised sense. In the introduction, she concentrates on two authors as examples: Roderick McGillis and David Rudd.

Echoing my own earlier observations, Karín notes that both McGillis and Peter Hunt believe that “there are processes in reading which are somehow unavailable to the reader, but something of which the reader can be made aware, and that this is what theory does.” (p. 6). In fact, “McGillis discerns two types of readers: ‘innocent readers’ who are ‘imposed upon by what we read,… powerless to escape the enforced quiescence reading can put upon us’, and readers who have been taught theory as a way to ‘end their innocence’” (p. 6). I find the power attributions here quite astonishing: the average reader is seen as a stunningly helpless creature, even a perpetual victim, with text as a powerful tool or weapon. At the same time, there is the further power imbalance created, not by the text, but by the “expert” who can lead the reader out of “innocence” and into understanding. How does the expert become the expert, able to authoritatively lead the average reader along the path of knowledge? And if the reader is generally so naïve and helpless, who is to say that the expert does in fact have the “true” understanding?

Rudd appears also to hold similar views on the power of language, as he asserts that "certain ways of talking about a subject… actually form that subject… certain ways of speaking become naturalized and literally 'in-form' our thoughts, our way of addressing issues" (p. 14). Language and discourse thus become the essential moulders of our lives and world view. Rudd seeks to resolve the problem of the “constructed” child by addressing “real” children, and seeking their views on the books they read. As Karín asks, if the adult is generally acknowledged by Rudd to “construct” the child, how, by surveying children, does he believe to have escaped from the construction in order to access the “real” child in a way that most adult critics can’t? As Karín points out:

What kind of account could any child - any reader at all - possibly provide that would, first of all, account for the taste, emotional response and memory of any other reader according to any given similarity attributed to them (gender, age, ethnic group, etc.)? And secondly, how could any such account, even given that it existed, be seen in exactly the same way by that reader (is there only one, consistent, eternal account of a reader and a reading?), every critic and every other reader? (p. 19)

Finally, at the end of the chapter, Karín returns to the subject of the book, the reason why she, in turn, claims that the book authors’ approach is “new”. McGillis, Rudd and many others, seek finally to solve “the mystery of children’s literature” - answer the puzzle, once and for all. Children’s literature: new approaches seeks fundamentally to shift this focus, in fact precisely “not to stabilize, to end, meaning” (p. 20). She provides an example from psychotherapeutic therapy, inadvertently simultaneously addressing my own question about my lack of ability to feel satisfied by the rigorous academic training I once had the privilege to absorb:

'not knowing' is seen as an essential element of a making sense which therapy is, a toleration which is essential to a recognition that meaning - both of the patient and the therapist - is not stable, consistent and there-to-be-found, but that it is continually being created. (p. 20)

Certainly, in my own counselling, I am constantly both astonished and delighted by the continually evolving and flowing meanings that emerge and shift as I place memories, thoughts and beliefs into new contexts, in relation to new people and situations, and to accommodate new information or understanding. Why, then, can I not fully embrace the possibility of a similar approach to my study? I think of Paley and The girl with the brown crayon. Part of what delighted me in this book was the fact that Paley approached her teaching with the knowledge that she could not predict the meanings that her children would create from their interactions or readings. Each story had to be addressed as a question, with the children as active agents in defining the meaning of the story for themselves as individuals, and for the class as a social body. Would those meanings remain stable or alter over time? Paley did not know, and did not try to set the agenda. Nor did she have a preconceived notion of what the children would make of the concept of an author study, or how they would deal with the idea of author-behind-the-text. Would the different stories become one, larger story, or not? Paley set out on a voyage of discovery, and allowed herself her own meanings, complementary to or in opposition to those of the rest of her class. And she knew that these would change over time, and that the next year’s students would choose different stories, based on their own particular needs, interests and group dynamic, and have different dominant themes and motifs.

That is how I want to see the world Karín offers. And yet I don’t. In the introduction to this book, she outlines some of the difficulties inherent in seeking to stabilise meaning, or to attempt to generalise about reading or childhood. But, having highlighted such a crucial point, where to? What I found in my study at Reading was that, in the same way that other critics might endlessly seek to answer the same question of how to find the right book for the right child, the new reading I was doing seemed endlessly to re-problematise the same issues. I use the word “problematise” deliberately; for me it was about finding the problems in thinking, not only in the work of others, but in one’s own work. But, crucially important as this is, on an ongoing basis, naïvely I ask, is this all that there is? Having highlighted the difficulties with our thinking, are we condemned ever to repeat the same re-problematising loops of thought? Or is there another way in which we can hold onto the fluidity and instability of created meaning? In my own reading of Paley, I see her, not as analysing difficulties, but as embracing and celebrating the joyous, unstable and transient knowledge of the moment. What is the new approach to children’s literature criticism?

"Forbidden fruit"

McNicol, S. (2008). Forbidden fruit : the censorship of literature and information for young people : conference proceedings / Sarah McNicol (editor), BrownWalker Press.

[reproduced from lybrary.com]

The 2008 conference on the censorship of children’s literature (which I would have loved to have attended but couldn’t), brought together a multidisciplinary and multinational group of professionals approaching censorship from perspectives as diverse as public librarianship to linguistics. Each presenter therefore focused on different aspects of text and readership, from the obvious forms of book banning, to the more subtle issues of self-selection and translation of cultural references. What perhaps did not receive much direct attention, is what the relationship might be between text and reader, or between intended audience and actual reading.

Lucy Pearson uses two texts, Young mother (1965) and Forever (1975) as an indicator of the change in social attitudes across a decade, but perhaps what strikes most resonatingly for me is not the difference depicted between the 60s and the 70s, but the contrasting sense of “then and now” that highlights the constructedness of our ideals of morality. For example, in the apparently progressive Forever, all responsibility to avoid pregnancy appears to lie with the female protagonist, Katherine. More disturbingly, in Young mother, the protagonist, Pat, is held accountable for the poor moral choices that led to her pregnancy; “moral choices” that would now more likely be described as rape. The assumptions behind these responsibilities are not explored, reminding Pearson, and me, of how rarely we recognise the assumptions underlying our own values, and of the fact that our sense of reality is largely possible through contrast and contradiction. Pearson’s essay is, for me, a cautionary tale in relation to my own explorations of a theme, and I recognise myself as a link in a chain that will one day doubtless be seen as woefully biased and limited in the light of hindsight. And what do I mean by that? Am I suggesting a progressive linearity of continuing evolution for the better? I suspect there are some interesting assumptions in there that could stand dissection!

In two separate papers, Chapman & Wright (UK) and Harter (US) tackle the provision of LGBT materials for young people in libraries. What immediately strikes me from Chapman and Wright’s paper is the emphasis on the educational, bibliotherapeutic and demographically reflective value of texts. Within the context of provision of materials, the texts appear to be viewed, not as art or thought or new idea, but as a vehicle for reflecting, explaining and assisting people to accept and adjust to reality. The value of text therefore becomes both didactic and representational; it should encourage the values of inclusivity and self-acceptance:

Data on the current situation in schools suggest that there is a need to tackle homophobia and to provide positive information for young people who are LGBT or questioning their sexuality. (p. 21)

The role of literature therefore becomes to help people to feel good about themselves. Much as I personally applaud the values of inclusivity and tolerance implied by the essay, and would want to support the aims of reducing the incidence of negative mental health outcomes related to poor self-image as a result of homophobia etc, I can’t help but wonder at the level of censorship or “positive selection” involved in thus deciding the role of the library and of literature in the lives of assumed readers. Why, specifically, should literature have to “be” anything or fulfil a particular role or purpose?

Harter follows a very similar theme from a US perspective, citing Devon Thomas:

If we read to discover new worlds, we also read to find ourselves. (p. 42)

For me, this feels very personally true, as I define myself by both similarity and contrast, by my own evolving process of selection, both of texts themselves, and by what I choose to draw from each text I read. But is it the responsibility of the writer to help me achieve that? What is the relationship between writer and reader? Is there one, or are the processes somewhat exclusive?

Harter appears to put his own views fairly firmly on the table with his use of language, when, for example, he contrasts the “widely held view” (usually biblically connected) that homosexuality is a choice, with:

the most reputable U.S. social and scientific organizations that have weighed in on this debate present the view that homosexuality is not a personal choice, but an innate trait (p. 43) (emphasis mine)

The Bible and popular belief do not stand up well against the depiction of “reputable” organisations. However, having come up with an argument against the “it’s a choice” campaign, it is interesting that he then feels the need to use this as his justification for the inclusion of LGBT materials on library bookshelves. On pages 45-46, he goes on to discuss the importance of serving the “needs of a select group of children…” LGBT themes are thus seen to relate to a particular minority of readers, rather than to any general readership. The unspoken sentiment appears to be that, if non-conformist sexualities (and presumably also transgender identifications) were not an innate, unchangeable trait, then the book banners might have a better argument. In other words, an LGBT lifestyle is deemed to be okay because it’s something that can’t be helped, perhaps like a disability. What, then, are acceptable choices, and does literature have a responsibility to choose and promote these? And is it assumed that we will only wish to read reflections of ourselves for our own bibliotherapeutic benefit?

Ioanna Kaliakatsou examines attempts in Greece to control rather than ban the discourse in relation to themes such as sexuality. She quotes Foucault:

Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but it [is] possible to thwart it. (p. 87)

Interestingly, she also points to evidence that text can influence social attitudes and behaviours:

When Goethe's Werther was published, there was an accompanying wave of suicides, while a series of women readers turned to daydreaming in imitation of Flaubert's romantic heroine, Madame Bovary. The cultural suspicion that the fiction has the power to threat social institutions clearly revealed by Lawrence Stone who states that 'The romantic novel of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries has much to answer for in the way of disastrous love affairs and of imprudent and unhappy marriages'. (p. 77)

By contrast with Chapman & Wright and Harter, Kaliakatsou paints a picture, not of literature reflecting and validating reality, but of literature connecting to or creating desires, that readers then attempt to turn into reality (with apparently varied outcomes). If this is true, it is perhaps then not surprising that the Greek government and other authority institutions might wish to control the expression of desire through careful portrayal of acceptable outlets for that desire. I am reminded of Rose’s exposure of UK education attempts to shape a nation according to its economic and social requirements.

This point is reinforced by Evangelia Moula, who states that “Every act of reading is basically political.” (p. 92). What I find interesting about this statement is that it is not the texts themselves that are political, but the act of reading. This is an interesting contrast with other papers which talk about the importance of supplying materials for a specific target audience. Moula’s statement appears to divorce the text from the actual process and outcomes of reading. It suggests personal agency, with power to the reader to create and shape meaning, and to situate that meaning within a societal context with implications for social norms. This, however, contrasts with official retellings of Greek classics in an attempt to control what messages children will read. In this, Moula reinforces Kaliakatsou on the felt need to control the discourse. And yet:

A text is considered to be classic when each generation discovers in it something new. In other words it is the text which supports different points of view and different kinds of perceptiveness in various times… canonical works are supposed to remain always new, inexhaustibly open to fresh interpretations. (p. 91)

There is an obvious irony between the depiction of “the canon”, chosen by academics and “experts” to represent the inexhaustibly fresh, and the definition of what constitutes a classic or canonical text. The relationship between attempted imposition of message and the ability of the individual to freely and innovatively interpret material appears to be uneasy and unresolved.

Power of attraction

Things that are banned instantly become more interesting than they ever were before.

Damian Harvey