charliesmum | (no subject)

In reference to my last post, I have a question to pose to all of you.

There's a passage in Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb where the main characters are talking about WWII and one of them says something about how they should mind because it happened a long time ago. (Of course, being Terry Pratchett and being a book about time travel, another character pointed out that it was happening NOW.)

I just wonder if, by reading about something that happened a long time ago makes it easier to dismiss it as something that 'used to happen' and thus ignore the more subtle signs of racism that we see today.

What do you think? I am not saying kids shouldn't be taught how things were, but in the context of reading materials, do you think it would be more helpful for them to read something that is more contemporary - something that highlights problems that exist today, so they can think and learn and maybe not do that themselves?

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Reading is nothing, in itself - look at how many HP fans think Draco is a whole and wise character. Drilling the horrors of the day, and the horrors of history, into heads is going to be counter-productive and dehumanizing after a while. Discussing books with a view to seeing how they are reflected in the current context is what I do.

If there is an indication of insensitivity, of racism, or of any such prejudice, in anyone around me, and if it seems appropriate for me to say something, I take a calm interventionist approach - my son posted something rude about a teacher on facebook, and I tried to address the issue on three levels - what if that was being said about him, what if the person saw it and decided to react in kind, and what was so wrong about being a teacher being strict in the circumstances he described? Of course, there were also side implications about the childishness of getting points with peers and so forth, but the gist, and I this is what I told him directly, was that if there was a real problem, a mean-spirited post on facebook that could lead to him getting disciplined and to the teacher being exposed to baseless ridicule, was not the way to handle it.

Not all at once and not quite so directly, as the conversation went, but it was all there.