My dad likes to tell a story about when my brother was just a toddler and started messing with something my parents didn't want him handling.
"Billy, if you touch that, you're going to get a spanking," my dad warned.
Billy reached out his little hand, stopping just short of the forbidden object. My father swears that he could see the wheels turning in his son's mind: "I know if I touch this, I'm going to get a spanking, but it might be worth a spanking if I could just touch it ONE MORE TIME!"
How many of us have had this same experience? As soon as someone tells us no, we're immediately inspired with a craving for the forbidden fruit. To quote my father, a man who knows a great deal about human nature, once more: "Everyone wants what they think they can't have."
It's worth remembering that this wisdom holds true for books. For an excellent example, read Judy Blume's introductory essay to Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers.
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
Children's Media: Books vs. Movies
On July 4, I wrote about parents' attempts to limit their children's reading as "loving censorship," but in my first post, I mentioned the importance of finding age-appropriate books for young readers. I want to clarify this seeming contradiction. Sometimes parental direction is both beneficial and necessary, particularly when a popular children's book is adapted to a film that "everyone" is going to see. Not only will the movie be marketed to a much broader age group than the original book was intended for, but there's an essential difference between text and images.
As communications theorist Neil Postman explains in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, written language is a complex system that requires skillful interpretation; thus it functions as a kind of self-authorizing code. If the child is old enough to understand complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, and abstract thought, she is probably mature enough to handle the content of the text. Thus it's relatively easy to protect children from "adult" information encoded in books.
Film, on the other hand, presents information in images, which do not require (much) decoding and are fairly easy to understand. Therefore, movies and television have no built-in safeguards to protect children from receiving information they're not intellectually or emotionally ready to receive. I will never forget my shock at seeing six- and seven-year-olds racing up and down the theater aisles at a showing of Jurassic Park. Parents who thought dinosaurs + Spielberg + McDonald's tie-in = children's movie were outraged by the violent images in the film, but they would never have handed Michael Crichton's book to their children (nor would the kids have gotten through more than a paragraph or two).
Adults as well as children enjoy Harry Potter precisely because the series contains so many intellectual challenges: e.g., sophisticated vocabulary (including British slang), complex characterization, subtle foreshadowing, and detailed plotting, not to mention the daunting length (the fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, is 870 pages long). Understanding the movies does not require the same skill and intellectual maturity, however, and there's nothing but a parent's "no" to protect young viewers from frightening images. I would recommend telling kids that they can see the movie only if they read the book first. Readers who are too young for Harry Potter's dark tone and occasionally violent episodes are likely to give up on the book as "too hard" long before they become upset, unless an adult is reading and interpreting the book for them. And this leads me to my final point.
Allowing children the freedom to make their own reading choices means letting them decide when to put a book down. Young readers are capable of figuring out on their own that a book is too hard or scary or "weird" (i.e., out of sync with their beliefs and worldview) for them, and they will put it down without having to be rescued.
As communications theorist Neil Postman explains in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, written language is a complex system that requires skillful interpretation; thus it functions as a kind of self-authorizing code. If the child is old enough to understand complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, and abstract thought, she is probably mature enough to handle the content of the text. Thus it's relatively easy to protect children from "adult" information encoded in books.
Film, on the other hand, presents information in images, which do not require (much) decoding and are fairly easy to understand. Therefore, movies and television have no built-in safeguards to protect children from receiving information they're not intellectually or emotionally ready to receive. I will never forget my shock at seeing six- and seven-year-olds racing up and down the theater aisles at a showing of Jurassic Park. Parents who thought dinosaurs + Spielberg + McDonald's tie-in = children's movie were outraged by the violent images in the film, but they would never have handed Michael Crichton's book to their children (nor would the kids have gotten through more than a paragraph or two).
Adults as well as children enjoy Harry Potter precisely because the series contains so many intellectual challenges: e.g., sophisticated vocabulary (including British slang), complex characterization, subtle foreshadowing, and detailed plotting, not to mention the daunting length (the fifth book, Order of the Phoenix, is 870 pages long). Understanding the movies does not require the same skill and intellectual maturity, however, and there's nothing but a parent's "no" to protect young viewers from frightening images. I would recommend telling kids that they can see the movie only if they read the book first. Readers who are too young for Harry Potter's dark tone and occasionally violent episodes are likely to give up on the book as "too hard" long before they become upset, unless an adult is reading and interpreting the book for them. And this leads me to my final point.
Allowing children the freedom to make their own reading choices means letting them decide when to put a book down. Young readers are capable of figuring out on their own that a book is too hard or scary or "weird" (i.e., out of sync with their beliefs and worldview) for them, and they will put it down without having to be rescued.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
The Most Important Freedom
I have a friend whose father used to control her leisure reading so strictly that he actually used a magic marker to black out any objectionable words or passages. At the bookstore and the library, I frequently see children negotiating with their parents for the privilege of reading a particular book: "Please, please, please!" In running my book group, I've met several parent-child pairs who read together, and I've often thought what a wonderful experience that would be, but reading in tandem also opens the door to many opportunities for loving censorship: "I don't think we should continue with this book" or "Let's stop reading this book for now, and we'll come back to it when you're older."
My own childhood reading benefited from a kind of benign, or perhaps benevolent, neglect. My parents gave me books, many of them, which certainly directed my reading, but they also encouraged me to make use of my school and community libraries, where I always had the freedom to make my own choices. I don't remember ever having to plead for the right to read Judy Blume or Norma Klein or Zilpha Keatley Snyder (the closest thing my generation had to J. K. Rowling). My parents may have kept a watchful eye on what I was reading (and my mother assures me that they did), but I was unaware of it. For my part, I never tried to hide what I was reading from my parents. The thought never crossed my mind.
Today, the Fourth of July, we celebrate our many cherished freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. Underlying all these is the most important right of all--freedom of thought. Children should not be denied this most important freedom merely because they are children and therefore legal minors. Intellectual independence is not a privilege to be earned but a birthright. Children should and must be free to develop their own thoughts, and this means observing, questioning, and entering into conversation with a wide range of other thinkers. What better way to do this than to read?
My own childhood reading benefited from a kind of benign, or perhaps benevolent, neglect. My parents gave me books, many of them, which certainly directed my reading, but they also encouraged me to make use of my school and community libraries, where I always had the freedom to make my own choices. I don't remember ever having to plead for the right to read Judy Blume or Norma Klein or Zilpha Keatley Snyder (the closest thing my generation had to J. K. Rowling). My parents may have kept a watchful eye on what I was reading (and my mother assures me that they did), but I was unaware of it. For my part, I never tried to hide what I was reading from my parents. The thought never crossed my mind.
Today, the Fourth of July, we celebrate our many cherished freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly. Underlying all these is the most important right of all--freedom of thought. Children should not be denied this most important freedom merely because they are children and therefore legal minors. Intellectual independence is not a privilege to be earned but a birthright. Children should and must be free to develop their own thoughts, and this means observing, questioning, and entering into conversation with a wide range of other thinkers. What better way to do this than to read?
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