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Marsco Readings and Reports

9/28/2013

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September 28, 2013 – Saturday – Grading and Game Day

            Okay, so I am slow on the uptake of technology. I have begun to make PowerPoint presentations for class in the past year, for example; it’s taken me that long to get going on that.

            I was looking for my Cloud connection today, so I can send my work from my office computer to my laptop easily. Instead of finding the Cloud, I found this instant blog link. So, I’m writing this “entry” in my journal this morning with the intention of posting it via my computer right to my blog. We’ll see if it, one, works, and two, if I have anything to say.

            I started my blog to get more buzz out there about my work, specifically The Marsco Saga, my four-volume speculative sci-fi piece. I am happy to report (as many of you know) that the first novel, The Marsco Dissident, is now available on Amazon for e-reader download. It has been up since June and sales are happening.

            This month, I did a pair of radio interviews locally (NPR hasn’t called yet). These shows were via SMSU and owe their manifestation to Jim Tate who is the campus PR guru. Jim organized them and was my front man for them. In a word, they were a hoot. I had never really been on a show like this. (I have to add, by the way, that Jim is part of a gaggle of SMSU folks who have made this project possible: Jim, Marcy—the cover, Dana—Kindle format, Neil—encouragement to go to e-publishing format: SMSU all!)

            The first locally, KMHL in Marshall, I sat in the booth with the glass separation and deadening sound. Earphone and mic. I saw the radio host on the other side of that dividing glass. It went pretty well. The second I was at home and did the same over a pre-arranged phone call. I liked the first better; it gave me a sense of “being on the air” as opposed to just chatting and looking at all-too-familiar surroundings. Those listeners who heard me said I did a creditable job. I thought so, too.

          I was asked to speak of future projects, so I explained that all English profs have at least one novel in them parodying academic life. That caught the campus attention. I do have such a novel organized; it will have to wait until after The Marsco Saga and The Aries-Augustan Saga are published; both multi-volume sci-fi works. Marsco is finished; Augustan is underway.

        My two readings went extremely well on Tuesday September 17th. At noon I was at the Marshall/Lyon County Library. That night back at SMSU.

     The Library garnered a small crowd of 16 listeners. But, they listened and asked good questions. This experience was a great warm-up for my evening reading.

     Back on campus, I spoke and read to 115 people. I was blown away by their attendance and interest. I spoke, read my first passage and then answered some questions. Once more, good questions. Then I read a second passage with answers following. My whole time went an hour. Not sure how many sales I made, but it has all generated a host of Spur articles, (our campus student newspaper) and a bit of buzz in Marshall.

     To current readers and owners of The Marsco Dissident, I once more say thanks. To future readers, I do want you to know I have reduced the price to $3.99. Dissident can be downloaded to a Kindle, an iPad or iPhone, or any PC with the right (and free) app. I am looking into print-on-demand; will keep you posted on that. Of course, I won’t chase away the chance to have a publisher pick it up for mass marketing. To viewers of this blog who might be unwilling to buy the book, there are two chapters posted on my site that give you a taste of the novel. Enjoy them first before you download the whole piece. I am sure they will convince you that my work is worth the time and effort to read.

     Until next time, good reading and Go, Mustangs!  And Go, Irish! Beat the Sooners!

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Downton Abbey and the Loss of Matthew Crawley -- Spoiler Alert!

3/3/2013

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              Downton Abbey and our loss of Matthew Crawley
                                       Spoiler Alert!
                                               *
            Okay, first an apology for not posting anything in nearly a year. I know I have no excuse except “I’ve been busy.” That’s a feeble one, but it’s all I can offer.
            Busy end of my Spring ’12 semester. Busy summer winding down my five-year tenure as Chair of the English Department here at SMSU. Busy sabbatical semester which included lots of writing and editing and reading; a week-long trip to California for a wedding; a three-week trip to London, Bath, and Canterbury; then home to surgery (needed but not life-threatening); Notre Dame going 12-0 during their regular season; Thanksgiving, Christmas, and an intense Landmark Forum Weekend; and then school resuming with a rush and with me again teaching fulltime.
                     [Insert a longing breath for more sabbatical
                              disguised as a deep sigh…..]
                                                     *
            And now here I am, heartbroken over the Season Three finale of Downton Abbey.
            I wish I could sing it like Curly does in Oklahoma!, “ol’ Judd is dead, poor Judd Frye is dead…” but I can’t. Judd wasn’t dead, but Matthew Crawley is most sincerely dead. He lies in a ditch; blood running down his handsome, young face; crushed by his sports car that flipped over on top of him after being hit by a furniture remover’s lorry on a beautiful Yorkshire road near Downton Abbey itself.
            Only moments before, he’d held his son, his only child, born of his beautiful wife, Lady Mary, who never looked better even though she just went through labor and delivery.
            And he’s saved the estate, Downton. And he’s saved his brother-in-law, Tom Branson, from poverty and estrangement from the Crawley family. And he’s saved Cousin Rose, Lady Rose MacClare of Scotland, from running off with a married man three times her age and as randy as a goat on the heather-covered moors of Scotland. And he stood by his sister-in-law, Lady Edith, as she strove to become a journalist.
            Oh, Matthew, so middle-class! He once worked as a lawyer, after all, and is the son of a physician whose practice was in Manchester, the hallmark of all things “trade” in Edwardian times. And yet, he grows so aware of what it will take to save an institution like Downton for generations to come and understands why that’s important for his family and the nation. And those will be his generations, since he managed to melt the icy-but-not-so-maiden Lady Mary and produce a one-and-only heir by her.
           I think at times, if it weren’t for bad luck, the Crawley family would have no luck at all.
           Let’s take Lady Mary as an example. She’s born into the most powerful social class ever, the Gentry of the Victorian Period, and she grows up surrounded by limitless Edwardian splendor. But that enormous grandeur can’t be hers; she’s a woman and can’t inherit directly.  This is a historically inaccurate plot line, by the way. Jane Austen used the same last will and testament tension in Pride and Prejudice, but it wasn’t accurate even in 1813. By 1912, women didn’t have all the rights they do now, but it’s reasonable to assume Lady Mary would have been sitting pretty without tying the knot to secure her own home. But, in 2011 when Season One opens, we accept this twist of fate and horrid Crawley luck as history, but it’s not.
          So, Julian Fellowes, our script writer, has taken some liberties with Lady Mary’s fortune.
           And, even before the opening credits for Episode One (Season One) have ceased running (with the spectacular Highclere Castle in the background and swarms of starched servants preparing breakfast and ironing the newspaper to stop the ink from bleeding), Lady Mary is left with an unscathed heart. This is April 15, 1912, the morning that the tragedy of the Titanic makes headlines. Lady Mary’s fiancé died on that emblem of wretched excess gone with the waves.
          In A Room with a View by E. M. Forester and published in 1908, Lucy and her brother refer to all fiancés as fiascos; it’s a running family joke in this Matthew Crawley-like middle-class family. Lady Mary’s never-seen-on-screen-alive-or-dead fiancé fits as a fiasco to be sure. He was a distant cousin of her father’s, the Earl of Grantham, Robert Crawley, and conveniently close enough in blood to be a lackey for Lady Mary to marry the estate she loves.
          Unlike John Brown, who lies moldering in his grave, this cousin’s remains are never recovered, and he is declared dead.
          Lady Mary wears black, but hardly feels the loss except for the inconvenience of having to find another way “to marry Downton” as it were.
          Her luck runs from rot to riot as a lover dies in her illicitly sensuous bed, potentially razing her social status while her jealous sister, Edith, stokes the fires of ruinous scandal.   
          Now enter Matthew Crawley, by chance, a more-distant cousin and only living male descendent able to inherit Downton from Lord Crawley. Matthew, of course, is smitten at once by the beautiful and haughty Lady Mary, but he manages to insult her even before she’s properly introduced herself and delicately raised the veil of her riding habit, so fashionable in 1890 yet still in style at the Yorkshire Downton estate. Soon, to show how much he really loves her, he even tries to disinherit himself. He knows the law. He tries to give back his future title, and thus Downton, but can’t while he’s upright. No way exists to do so.
          Another unlucky sister of the Downton threesome is Lady Sybil. She’s the youngest, a bit wild, appearing in one scene wearing I Dream of Jeannie Harem garb and in another helping a house maid secure a position as a typist, at the time, a job with a future for a young, independent woman.
          When Lady Sybil is being wildly political by going to a Suffragette Rally that turns violent, Matthew comes along with Branson, the chauffer, to save her. It’s at this point that Lady Mary sees Matthew for what he really is, a decent, smart, kind gentleman who happens to love her and happens to have the key to her happiness—the future ownership of Downton. But, in fairness, I think Lady Mary is more caring and generous than not, but brought up to presume that life will always be fair to her and always gild her way.
          That evening, after Lady Sybil is back safe at Downton, Lady Mary order sandwiches for Matthew. They sit together in a small dining room, just the two. He has wine, which he offers to share but lacks a second wineglass. She accepts but won’t break the enthralling spell by ringing for a servant to fetch one. She drinks from his crystal goblet; one sip’s all it took.
          At the end of The Princess Bride, the grandfather tells his grandson that Wesley’s kiss of Buttercup was one of the best ever given. I would rate Matthew’s leaning over and kissing Mary after he proposes (the first time) right up there. The way she hold his neck to draw him closer, it’s a marvelously done scene. In this informal setting in an all-too-formal world, the seemingly invulnerable woman allows herself to be vulnerable, allows herself to love an honorable man.
          Then, her change of heart: her engagement with Matthew is off and the Great War is on.  Season One closes as that magnificent world ends, at English high summer with its gaiety and splendor, and with thoughts of Sarajevo far from everyone’s mind. No one at Downton that bright day knew the lights were going out all over Europe; no one knew they’d never be lit for these gilded elites again. No one at that summer lawn party has the gruesome vision to imagine the unimaginable horrors of Ypres or Gallipoli or Verdun.
          Season Two begins with Captain Matthew Crawley a gallant officer on the Western Front, the Somme specifically, about the worst hell-hole in the whole bloody, aimless affair. He’s now engaged to Miss Lavinia Swires, like himself, a wealthy middle class denizen. And luckless Lady Mary has snagged a wealthy scoundrel from the heap of conniving opportunists circulating London society but not in uniform.  She takes up this second fiasco, Sir Richard Carlisle, a wealthy up-and-coming newspaper mogul whom no one likes and many fear, even though clearly she prefers the engaged-to-another-woman Matthew. Dante would be hard pressed to know into which circle of Hell to fling this fiasco; he’s mean-spirited and threatening, vindictive, arrogant, and utterly contemptuous of the very privileged society he hopes to marry up to. Even the butler, Mr. Carson, knows better than agree to work for the future bride and her brooding, ill-tempered groom-elect.
          Also in Season Two, Lady Sybil becomes a nurse surrounded by Gentry officers but falls for her father’s worst nightmare, the chauffer:  a commoner, an Irish Catholic, a Sinn Féin supporter, and one solidly principled and conscientious young man. No father could ask for more of his Irish son-in-law except possibly a Trinity degree.
          And this season ends with the Great War reaching its non-conclusive Armistice and the Great Influenza cutting its snarling swath through many of the War’s survivors, including Matthew’s Lavinia. But eventually, Lady Mary sees the light, accepts Matthew’s hand (a second time) and his second memorable kiss in the snow of Christmas 1919. All seems set for a happy Season Three.
          But early in Season Three, Lady Sybil, now Mrs. Branson, dies from complications of childbirth, which paints a cross-hair target on Lady Mary’s back at the end of this season when she, like her sister, becomes pregnant. Was Sybil’s condition hereditary, and thus, would Lady Mary suffer the same fate? Would this pregnancy be another successful live birth that tragically costs the mother her life?
          Circumstances beyond the control of the producers forced Julian Fellowes to let Lady Mary and child both survive but forced Matthew’s death. Dan Stevens’ decision to leave Downton Abbey after three years left few options. So, Matthew, played by Stevens, dies in that ditch five minutes before the end of Season Three.
          It’s a painful loss. Matthew was so upstanding without being a prig, so middle-class in the best sense: fair and open, willing to hear all sides, dedicated to his principled causes, willing to speak up against the disdainful authority and omnipresent precedence of class and society as often represented by his father-in-law. And he loved Lady Mary and let her know it. He actually seemed to me to be the embodiment of everything we brag about as being a modern, enlightened, and liberal-minded American.
          In the USA, Season Four won’t start until January 2014. We’ve ten months to fret, to hope for leaks from across the Pond informing us of what’s up at Downton, and to follow the actors as closely as we are following Princess Kate’s pregnancy.
          I speculate that Tom Branson will shine even more now that he’s not in the glare of Matthew’s stellar status. I’m pulling for Tom and Rose to fall into a stunning and fulfilling love. And I hope Lady Mary will discover she can run Downton as well as our deceased Matthew did. And here’s a plug for Lady Edith finally finding an honorable single man rather than converting to Catholicism and joining an order of nuns heading off to equatorial Africa as a missionary.
          But I fear for Matthew and Lady Mary’s son, who will be old enough in Downton Abbey, Season Twenty-Two to die on the beaches of Dunkirk.  

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"Libraries of My Life"

2/5/2012

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Nota Bene: Reports of my discontinuing this blog are premature! Christmas came and went with this essay lingering on my computer.  Then the semester began in a rush.  But, I am back to the blog-task and hoping to get one a week or two a month posted throughout this semester.  Thanks for hanging in with your absent blogger! 

I hope you enjoy.  

                 
“Libraries of My Life”
        
     As an English professor, libraries have always been a part of my life.  Fortunately for me, I work on a campus with a wonderful, recently-renovated university library and also live in a town that opened a brand new city-county library. They are gems open to all out here on our wind-swept prairie. 
         
     My earliest memories of libraries go back to the Ella K. McClatchy branch library in Sacramento, California. I went there for school projects and general library use from grammar school up through high school. Set in a neighborhood, this one-time mansion became a public children’s library in the 1940s. Recently, I looked at pictures of the building on Google and remember the long exterior stairs going up to the main door.  I also remember the dark woodwork and the racks of books in salons and sitting rooms with marble fireplaces and gleaming mirrors, sentinels of times past welcoming and tolerant of the hordes of noisy children trooping through the stacks, often lost amid the Dewy Decimal System.
             
     It’s ironic, but as a child I was slow to learn to read. Grammar schools, I am convinced, are designed to teach girls not boys.  We are messy and energetic multi-taskers who find it hard to focus on neatness and the minutia of details.  Reading, spelling, penmanship—beyond most boys’ ken. My lack of precision on 1950s drill sheets led the nuns to assume I wasn’t getting it.  One spring in the 5th grade, the nuns tested me and said I read below a 2nd grade level.  

    Fortunately, my parents sent me to a reading tutor after school for a year and then a private summer school program to brush up on my reading after 7th grade. When tested again after completing that summer program, I scored high enough for my teacher to say I could get into West Point if I applied myself. (My goal in life at that time was a career in the Army.)  
 
    Taking standardized tests was boring.  I quickly got lost in the rows of circles, and after a time, I didn’t care where I marked or whether I marked C
when I should have marked D. I wasn’t a slow learner, I was a bored learner.
             
     Even so, I loved the McClatchy Library.  I knew all those books were a treasure that only a genie could open for me. That genie was the force of will it took for me to concentrate and read carefully.  I never marked up a library or school textbook, but once I bought my own books, I began marking them
and jotting notes in the back to force myself to concentrate and remember.  

    To this day, I still read with a pen in hand.  For me, that became the key.  But that key unlocked the
door when I was in college.  Getting there was an anxious and frustrating experience, but I knew I
wanted to go to college and not seek my fortune as a grocery clerk as too many of my family and teachers suggested.  Determination has always been a driving force within me not easily shut down. It also helped to have supportive parents who believed in you.
              
     I learned early on as a college student to use a library as a quiet place to study.  At Saint Mary’s College, that was St. Albert’s Hall.  I seem to have a knack for being at schools with new libraries; St. Albert had just opened when I matriculated at SMC in 1968.  I have one visual memory from those
evenings I spent studying in St. Albert’s.  One quiet reading room had a common but expensive wall clock that shows the whole world on its broad face and a wave diagram passing over the surface of the planet to designate the edge of daylight or the coming of night. Although SMC had a European travel program, I wasn’t able to swing a trip during my undergraduate years.  But that clock always reminded me of places I wanted to visit, especially
England. I finally made it, several times:  alone, with
friends, with Marianne and Elaine, with students, with my brothers.  
            
     Sacramento State University, where I earned my MA, also had a new library.  The North Wing, as it is now called, opened in 1975, two years after I started part-time there. (A South Wing was added in 1990.) Even after I went to Notre Dame to start my PhD, I used the Sac State library in the summer. There
in the North Wing, I mastered French—translation French that is. (As my colleagues in the SMSU French Department will tell you, my pronunciation of their beloved language comes out like horrendous French mixed with Klingon plus spitting and a soupçon of belching.)  But, after that summer, I could sight-read French fairly well, even Baudelaire’s poetry, a much
more difficult form of writing than prose. 
             
     At Notre Dame, I started out regularly using the Hesburgh Memorial Library, the one with "Touchdown Jesus."  At first, I had a locking cart which allowed me to check out books directly to it
instead of lugging them home.  On quiet nights, like a Friday or Saturday after a game, when only grad students were trying to study, we did race on our four-wheeled carts, but mostly I was a serious student.  
            
     In time, I got my own study carrel, about twice as big as a phone booth.  It had the same privilege
as my locking cart, which I surrendered in lieu of a private carrel. I graded papers, read, prepped for my comprehensive exams, actually took my comps and wrote my dissertation in there.  I know it sounds a little like solitary, (after all, there is no room for a carrel-mate), but for the neophyte scholar, it was all the room needed.  “The mind is its own place, and can make a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell,” as Milton tells us.  
              
     In time, before my comps, I got one of the few study carrels with a window.  Mine overlooked the quad facing west, allowing me to see the famous Golden Dome about a quarter of a mile away.  It was under the Dome that one up-and-coming associate editor, Marianne Murphy, worked. Cutting to the chase, after we were serious, then engaged, then married, I knew when she was leaving work (before email or texting) and could watch for her crossing the library quad on her way to meet me for dinner at the end of the day. And I still got my dissertation done, her wonderful distraction aside. 
              
     Although a bit dingy when I arrived, the SMSU Library has always been a great place for me as well. I quickly found a window seat in the campus library and went there regularly over the years for reading or grading or prepping.  My special nook was a corner which is now office space for the library staff. My particular window faced north across prairie almost as far as the eye can see.  
               
     Several years ago, the SMSU Library closed for 18 months for major renovation.  Its grand reopening was a dazzling sight.  New computer banks and labs, sleek circ and reference desks (always staffed by helpful librarians and perky students), quiet study areas, and its wonderful conference room on the top floor with its vista of the endless prairie (and now the new Marshall High School campus). There is not much to see on a prairie but wind and space; the Conference
Room gives you an unconstrained view of that endlessness.  
          
     Because of his generous bequest, the SMSU Library has been renamed the Dorothy and D. C. “Pat” McFarland Library.  Mr. McFarland left the campus a cool $2 million, the largest single donation from an individual to the university to date.  SMSU is coming of age.
      
     Besides this treasure of a library, to Marshall’s credit, a second exciting and grand library has opened just across town. Entering the new Marshall-Lyon County Library is truly an “out of Marshall experience.” It’s hard to believe you are still even in Marshall once you cross into that welcoming, lovely place.  It opened just a few months ago but I visit it regularly. The last time I had visited the now-closed, musty downtown library was seven years ago.  

    The new open and airy space invites you to sit, read, and enjoy your time there as you would savor a five-star meal in the Cities or Paris or San Francisco.  
              
     In a few months time, my five-year tenure as English Chair will end.  I will get a short sabbatical and then return to fulltime teaching.  I am looking forward to the change of pace, mainly, a change that will give me much more control over my time.  It’s a heavy teaching load, but my days will be spent around my schedule and not other people’s meetings. (The creative way to avoid work is to have a meeting!) When that time comes, I am planning on scouring both the McFarland and Marshall Libraries for just the right spot to prep and grade and then sneak in a guilty pleasure of a sci-fi or military history on the side.

    Life is good in a fine library.

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"All Children Left Behind"

11/11/2011

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                “All Children Left Behind” –
        The Decline of Reading in Our Lifetime
     
     Several years ago, a Catholic grammar school in the Cities tested their students in the mandated, standardized Minnesota proficiency exams. These students were, by all measures leading up to these tests, “at risk.”  They came from low-income, mostly minority backgrounds.  The school, once a flagship of a parish filled with European immigrants, sat in a
deteriorating neighborhood ridden by crime, drop-outs, delinquency. The parish, however, hung on, kept the doors of its school open, and worked with the low-achieving students who came through the
gates.

    When the results were in, these students—the ones predicted to fall into the lowest percentiles as all US students do from a similar background—scored
among the highest in the state. It’s almost axiomatic that the parents’ ZIP codes predict student achievement. Wealthy ZIPs mean stronger students. This case was exactly the opposite. 
 
    Of course, why? Why did these sure-to-fail students achieve at the Eden Prairie and Edina level?
         
     Easy:  they could read.  Their curriculum included reading Shakespeare in the 7th and 8th grades. Early on, they were tackling The Iliad and
The Odyssey.  When it was time to read, these young scholars read. And they devoured not the educational pap generally flung at students, which limits syllables and includes only preselected vocabulary words slipped
into unnatural and stilted sentences, but they tore through the classics at an early age.  It is the rare exception for a “young genius” not to be an avid
reader.

    Reading. It’s the key and core to all things educational.  These “at-risk” students proved it.  Asked to solve so-called“word problems”?  Math was not a problem for them; they understood the questions. Vocabulary became a breeze.  Getting the gist of the social science paragraphs was ridiculously easy, given that these young scholars read at the 11th- or 12th-grade level.  (Hopefully, they were reading texts before they were dumbed down by the Texas Board of Education.)  

    You want to reform education in the USA?  If so, then get students reading at an early age. Make them read the classics, not books expunged of what’s thought distasteful by some.  Leave Huck Finn alone, for Twain’s sake.  Anyone offended by Twain’s "politically incorrect" vocabulary should listen to 5 minutes of Rap music—our kids are.  They hear much worse on the air waves, they see much worse on cable, than will ever enter a classic novel whose plot they can understand.  There is nothing worse than “textbook” talk, especially now when the uneducated and politically biased and religiously warped are re-writing our students’ textbooks.  
 
    Many years ago I sensed a reading crisis in education was coming. I was finishing my MA in English at Sacramento State before heading off to Notre Dame for my PhD.  I had taught in a Catholic high school for two years by this time, but was between jobs and did some substituting in the Sacramento Diocesan system.  What I saw was done by students at the high end of achievement, so it was even more shocking.

     The 7th-graders I was subbing were asked to read an essay in their textbooks and then answer the
multiple-choice questions at the back of the book. 
Instead of actually reading the essay first, they all thumbed right to the questions, read Question One, and then skimmed the first section of the essay assignment. It was easy to gloss over the essay in pieces, fitting the section of the essay to the questions at the back, get the right answer for each
in turn and never really bothering with reading the essay start to finish.  The questions were in order anyway, meaning, Question 1 asked about the first few paragraphs, Question 2 the next few, and so on.  
 
    These were bright kids; they’d figured out this gig early.  And their test scores showed they were well ahead of the curve. Not bad considering they really rarely ever read anything start to finish in a sustained manner. I am sure their story is not unique.  Why read an essay when the ideas aren’t important and can’t hold your attention? The 10 points at the end are important—satisfy teacher with 10 for 10; forget any notion of actually reading the material.

     Even at the university level, I hear the same sort of notion and witness the same lack of skills. I am always dumbfounded by the lack of basic skills far too many of my students display.  When asked to
read aloud, so many (far too many) struggle over basic words.  I had a student trip up on the simple word melancholy the other day, to give just a recent example. He insisted he had never seen the word
before.  Having graded his written work, it is no wonder he’s such a weak writer.  Poor readers are weak writers, no doubt.  And worse yet, weak writer
and weak reader that he is, he’s convinced “in the real world after college” he won’t need such skills. He is part of the self-marginalizing Twenty-Something Generation I witness each day.

     Another time several years back, I gave out a very short (to me) reading list for a class on the
first day.  I had purposely already reduced the list from seven novels to six by adding two movies in hopes of getting all my students to finish the entire syllabus. At the end of my intro lecture imploring my students to actually buy the books and then read the material, one student returned my printed handouts with the admonition, “Books! Books! Why are all you
professors always demanding we read books?  Can’t you just give us the answers?”  And he was a history
major!  
 
    All this would be of little concern if I was talking about how many copies of
Harry Potter are sold each day. The real issues of declining reading skills are social and economic, not just artistic and recreational.

    The 2004 NEA report, Reading at Risk, demonstrated the steep decline in reading among our young. But the report also pointed out that “these declines will have serious civic, social, cultural, and economic implications,”or so Matt Burriesci concludes in his review of this NEA report.  (
The Writer’s Chronicle, Feb 2008. 
http://www.awpwriter.org/pdf/mburriesci01.pdf.) 
For his review of this NEA report, Burriesci interviewed Dana Gioia, NEA Chairman, who noted “the central importance of reading for a prosperous, free society.” We are not talking about curling up with an Agatha Christie, we’re talking about a skill that is, in Gioia’s words, “both fundamental and irreplaceable for democracy.”

     The NEA report also rightly concludes that “weak reading skills strongly correlate to lower academic
achievement, lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.”  A poor or non-reader is more likely to be incarcerated.  Strong readers are more than likely to vote, participate in cultural events, volunteer their time for charities, and enjoy rewarding careers.

     Life-long readers and learners are the cornerstone of a thriving democracy.  It is no wonder that dictators burn books.  You’ll note that Hitler
didn’t start a program to have his Iron Youth read widely; he closed libraries and destroyed the content of their shelves.  If Germans were to read, he was going to know what they were reading.

     Today, the censorship of the web in some dictatorial countries smacks of the same paranoia and political control.

     But this brings me back to our students, our children, our culture. I find it so ironic and extremely depressing that in a society that has every book virtually at its fingertips, our young people are electing NOT to read.  Hitler shouldn’t have
burned books; he should have made more books available to his Iron Youth.  Given the chance to read, if they are like our youth, they wouldn’t have.

     The lack of interest in reading suggests to me this horrific vision:  Our 11th- and 12th-graders are taught to drive, given their drivers’ licenses, given access to cars and paved roads and the Eisenhower
Interstate System.  But instead (in my dystopian vision), they elect to let their cars rust or run out of gas for lack of the enterprise of filling the tank.  And so, they’re forced to work closer to home (so they can walk). They’re forced to seek entertainment and cultural events within walking distance, never
finding new outlets. They’re forced to live among only their neighbors, never venturing into new neighborhoods with different foods or art style or political takes on the world.

     And it’s all self-imposed.  
 
     Perhaps the Occupy Movement is this generation’s wake-up call.  It reads less, votes less, is more inclined to be swayed by demagogues. 
And at least some now are waking up to the fact that placating the top cats comes by draining the younger citizens and newer voters dry of what society should provide its young:  a stable society; a solid, basic education; a brighter future. 
 
     Readers know of that brighter future.  And, I believe, readers can muster the skills to obtain it on all levels:  personally, professionally, culturally, and globally. 

     Let’s hope our youth don’t skip that part of the essay because there wasn’t a question about it at
the back of their books.  Let’s hope our young readers of today have a thriving economy and fully functioning, just democratic society to embrace as they grow older. Or else, the few remaining readers may have to read about such a bygone society in the neglected History Section of some neglected library. 
      


  


 
 
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    The Zarzana Eclectic Blog seeks to occasionally publish essays about assorted topics that would interest a wide reading audience.

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