Autobiography of a Reader
I happened to tune in a few minutes ago to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now where Julia Wright, Richard Wright's daughter, was being interviewed. Immediately there came to mind the tremendous impact that Wright's classic, Black Boy, had had on me as a very young reader -- the sudden awareness of the terrible injustices done to people in this country where I had had in school only the most benign reports of happy alliances with native Americans a la Thanksgiving celebrations and the usual 'we are the best' routines that we kids were imbibing -- along with the slogans manifesting our deeply embedded racism -- "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." "Enny meany miny mo, catch a nigger by the toe," with which we would choose batting orders or whatever in our school yard games (I once inadvertently slipped and repeated this when working with young African American teens in West Harlem many years later and was halted by a startled, "TEACH!").
Okay, I was a lucky one. I grew up as an early reader which exposed me to the wider world in more direct ways than the minimal media interferences with our learning processes in my day. I went to a nursery school in West Hartford, Connecticut as a non talker at 2 and 1/2 -- my parents were worried about my development until I came home from my first day speaking full sentences -- I had been able to get by just pointing until then.
We moved shortly thereafter to the outer 'burbs -- Farmington, Connecticut where we purchased an old apple orchard from a farm family that had received a royal charter to their land prior to the Revolution and who were living on the proceeds of their chickens -- as their family dwindled down to only two sons -- one not married and living at home.
I had scarcely entered the local Farmington kindergarten when I developed what was diagnosed as the then deadly for children rheumatic fever which attacked the heart -- a playmate and I later had overheard our parents mention that our doctors had predicted that we would not live beyond our teens -- seemed a long way off for her and me then at about 6 ;-).
The result of this condition was that I was held virtually immobile for several months -- carried out in the orchards to lie on an old army cot days and confined to my bed days. My caretaker during my mother's pregnancy with my younger brother was a marvelous English nurse who taught me both how to count and how to read which I undertook with great enthusiasm. As we lived about 3 miles north of Farmington in rural circumstances -- nearest neighbors about 1/4 mile away, my frequent relaxation lay in reading voraciously whatever came my way. My good fortune was both that we had inherited a rich library from my academic grand parents and that my mother, too, was a voracious reader who brought a steady stream of books into the house. Comic books helped me, too, to expand my reading vocabulary. The only animated cartoons that I saw were the Disney things on Saturday mornings when with many another American child I headed to the nearest movie theater for the standard fare of a double feature and a slew of cartoons -- the latter tended sometimes to stimulate nightmares.
The end result of all this reading was that I was a bit of an odd ball compared with my peers. I had been made conscious of some of the horrors of our American prejudices -- anti-Semitism as well as anti-African American racism -- against which I would later editorialize at Yale which was permeated with it -- a quota for Jewish students and virtually no Jewish faculty -- only two among my philosophy faculty. I found the same restrictions at Vassar where I began my teaching and also challenged that as well as the exclusion of African American students there, too. In my Yale class there had been 3 in a class of 1,000, and Vassar in the mid 1960s had only 3 African American students in a student body of 1,700!!! And Jewish faculty were an uneasy one in number. We have come a way since then.
The point of my self-exposure here is that I am worried that our current generation coming along is being deflected from realities beyond their immediate personal experiences -- person to person or MTV media distractions -- that can only be discovered by plunging deeply into books or other information sources such as going there and looking for oneself? I hope the internet will partially correct this cutoff from experience that I witness in my otherwise very intelligent students. Few of mine, for instance, have much clue what is where. I finally in desperation printed out some maps of Africa and the Middle East last semester to orient them to what is where -- and I teach philosophy -- not geography.
My reading as a pre-teen and during my early teen years carried over as a habit into college, where no matter how busy I was I continued to read beyond my class assignments for interest and enjoyment. I am curbed now by near blindness -- but, hurray, can enlarge with the computer as I need and can find innumerable things simply by Googling.
It is the feelings of respect and concern for others that I find lacking in current American culture. Is there a disassociative process going on from watching too much Roadrunner and not plunging into the worlds of consciousness of others that one can only fathom by contemplative reading -- not sound and sight bits that constitute the mass of fragmented information deluging the typical American these days? How can we be so uncaring about all those people we are killing day by day in Afghanistan and Iraq. The silence on such things is truly deafening -- and horrifying. These killing games are just as horrendous as they were in Viet Nam. But the present consciousness of Americans is very different. Witness the bold dishonesties of the Republicans that they press out without widespread challenges -- cut and run? Slash and burn, I call it, but I am in a minority of those who have gone beyond the skin and shell of such things.
I fear what we are becoming a nation now that we have largely ceased being readers. We are returning to the feudal era when few had the benefits of literacy. When one is illiterate one tends to be traduced by the loudest voices assaulting one with repeated messages (lies). The Nazis perfected that tactic and the Republicans are replaying it -- Carl Rove is Bush's Goebbels. They can get away with such stuff because we Americans are trapped in a fog with explosive noises emanating from here and there that are stunning us into silence and impassivity.
I hope I am wrong with this analysis. It frightens me, frankly. But things have been changing and I fear not for the better.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
Okay, I was a lucky one. I grew up as an early reader which exposed me to the wider world in more direct ways than the minimal media interferences with our learning processes in my day. I went to a nursery school in West Hartford, Connecticut as a non talker at 2 and 1/2 -- my parents were worried about my development until I came home from my first day speaking full sentences -- I had been able to get by just pointing until then.
We moved shortly thereafter to the outer 'burbs -- Farmington, Connecticut where we purchased an old apple orchard from a farm family that had received a royal charter to their land prior to the Revolution and who were living on the proceeds of their chickens -- as their family dwindled down to only two sons -- one not married and living at home.
I had scarcely entered the local Farmington kindergarten when I developed what was diagnosed as the then deadly for children rheumatic fever which attacked the heart -- a playmate and I later had overheard our parents mention that our doctors had predicted that we would not live beyond our teens -- seemed a long way off for her and me then at about 6 ;-).
The result of this condition was that I was held virtually immobile for several months -- carried out in the orchards to lie on an old army cot days and confined to my bed days. My caretaker during my mother's pregnancy with my younger brother was a marvelous English nurse who taught me both how to count and how to read which I undertook with great enthusiasm. As we lived about 3 miles north of Farmington in rural circumstances -- nearest neighbors about 1/4 mile away, my frequent relaxation lay in reading voraciously whatever came my way. My good fortune was both that we had inherited a rich library from my academic grand parents and that my mother, too, was a voracious reader who brought a steady stream of books into the house. Comic books helped me, too, to expand my reading vocabulary. The only animated cartoons that I saw were the Disney things on Saturday mornings when with many another American child I headed to the nearest movie theater for the standard fare of a double feature and a slew of cartoons -- the latter tended sometimes to stimulate nightmares.
The end result of all this reading was that I was a bit of an odd ball compared with my peers. I had been made conscious of some of the horrors of our American prejudices -- anti-Semitism as well as anti-African American racism -- against which I would later editorialize at Yale which was permeated with it -- a quota for Jewish students and virtually no Jewish faculty -- only two among my philosophy faculty. I found the same restrictions at Vassar where I began my teaching and also challenged that as well as the exclusion of African American students there, too. In my Yale class there had been 3 in a class of 1,000, and Vassar in the mid 1960s had only 3 African American students in a student body of 1,700!!! And Jewish faculty were an uneasy one in number. We have come a way since then.
The point of my self-exposure here is that I am worried that our current generation coming along is being deflected from realities beyond their immediate personal experiences -- person to person or MTV media distractions -- that can only be discovered by plunging deeply into books or other information sources such as going there and looking for oneself? I hope the internet will partially correct this cutoff from experience that I witness in my otherwise very intelligent students. Few of mine, for instance, have much clue what is where. I finally in desperation printed out some maps of Africa and the Middle East last semester to orient them to what is where -- and I teach philosophy -- not geography.
My reading as a pre-teen and during my early teen years carried over as a habit into college, where no matter how busy I was I continued to read beyond my class assignments for interest and enjoyment. I am curbed now by near blindness -- but, hurray, can enlarge with the computer as I need and can find innumerable things simply by Googling.
It is the feelings of respect and concern for others that I find lacking in current American culture. Is there a disassociative process going on from watching too much Roadrunner and not plunging into the worlds of consciousness of others that one can only fathom by contemplative reading -- not sound and sight bits that constitute the mass of fragmented information deluging the typical American these days? How can we be so uncaring about all those people we are killing day by day in Afghanistan and Iraq. The silence on such things is truly deafening -- and horrifying. These killing games are just as horrendous as they were in Viet Nam. But the present consciousness of Americans is very different. Witness the bold dishonesties of the Republicans that they press out without widespread challenges -- cut and run? Slash and burn, I call it, but I am in a minority of those who have gone beyond the skin and shell of such things.
I fear what we are becoming a nation now that we have largely ceased being readers. We are returning to the feudal era when few had the benefits of literacy. When one is illiterate one tends to be traduced by the loudest voices assaulting one with repeated messages (lies). The Nazis perfected that tactic and the Republicans are replaying it -- Carl Rove is Bush's Goebbels. They can get away with such stuff because we Americans are trapped in a fog with explosive noises emanating from here and there that are stunning us into silence and impassivity.
I hope I am wrong with this analysis. It frightens me, frankly. But things have been changing and I fear not for the better.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 9:55 AM
1 Comments:
Impressive reading...
Post a Comment
<< Home