Sheila

No I didn't mean to say that planning was a distinctively masculine thing - just that things to do with preparation happened to engage my son whereas most other things didn't. From my experience women are exceptionally good planners in all kinds of ways!

Emma

Your experience is pretty much what I meant when I said that one couldn't help feeling ambiguous about some aspects of the traditional male qualities. Some of my son's computer games inevitably made me a bit uneasy and the gun thing has always disturbed me. Men and guns is something deep in the unconscious I think. Watch in a shop or anywhere there are realistic guns around. The behaviour of men and women to these artifacts is totally and disturbingly different. And I don't think the cliche Freud thing gets anywhere near the depth of the issue.

Another example - I was a fully-signed up anti-war guy in the 60's and 70's etc. I still hate guns (but still find myself doing the aiming thing etc when there is one around) and violence. BUT when one looks at situations like Darfur or Kosovo where unless you have disciplined trained people able to resist violence and protect the innocent, then the bad guys with guns have a free ride and kill whoever they want. We can't just let that happen.

The inexorable commercial pressure on books is perhaps the most disturbing thing for all reading not just boys. I've helped close 2 superb independent bookshops with customers literally in tears at their loss. But when NO independent bookshop will make anything on the biggest book of the year because the supermarkets have 'commoditised' books and are willing to sell them at a loss just to sell more baked beans we are in trouble. Even the corporate book chains hire out 'tables' to specific publishers so instead of getting a genuinely eclectic, shop-chosen display, you get publishers pushing their rubbish with their good titles.

We need a rigorous enquiry into the book business. Many of the supermarkets practices must be close to predatory.

Big issues. But as a philosopher I can only bemoan the gradual decline of the written word. But the boys' instincts may represent the future. I certainly hope not.

regards

Z

I've always loved those huge flourescent water-shooters - enormous boy-style fun, and the colours take the piss out of the whole gun-culture, it seems to me. I did, of course, say we'd have no weapons in the house when the children arrived, but given my taste for hist fic (and fascination with military history) we had knights and armour pretty soon. The only thing we never did have was replicas of real weapons.

Emma

But as a philosopher I can only bemoan the gradual decline of the written word.

Do you really think that's happening?

Glad to hear about the family ban on replicas, Emma. When some student takes it out of the home to show off to his friends, then points it at a passing teacher, she really can't tell the difference.


Sheila

That was exactly why I banned them...

Emma

Hi

Well, I went to see the movie tonight, and have to say I was disappointed. Before you hang me, I didn't think it was bad, I just expected that much more after all the hype. For what it was, it was watchable with one or two enjoyable moment. And I do mean one or two. This film dragged, and my bum was very numb before anything of any real consequence happened. I should have expected this considering that the book was also twice as long as it needed to be.

The nasty characters were left painfully unexplored, such as Bellatrix LeStrange (Helena Bonham Carter) and even He Who Must Not Be Named didn't rise above the typical 'scare' factor. The final confrontation was well realised, but over far too quickly considering the build up. I preferred the last one, to be honest. And the cast are beginning to look a little old for the roles.

Overall, I think these films and books suffer dreadfully from being overhyped and overlong. They also seem to take themselves increasingly more seriously, which to my mind, doesn't quite fit the subject matter. JK tends to go down avenues that are pointless to the plots, or add ons to make something happen that are far too contrived to hold any weight.

So, good, but not brilliant, as I've always said. Average but not excellent, and even the kids in the audience were messing around, clearly bored with the movie. Just because people want something to be that great, doesn't mean it is. I think HP is not so much a victim of its own success, more that it was only pedestrian to begin with.

JB

But as a philosopher I can only bemoan the gradual decline of the written word. Do you really think that's happening?

'Fraid so, Lammi. As an ex Literature teacher I've observed the effects.

During the eighties - maybe earlier- a decline in reading set in and English teachers were dragged, for the most part reluctantly, on 'curriculum development' courses. Students needed 'media literacy' instead of being forced through Jane Austen and Dickens when they baulked at reading even modern books.

I can't remember there being 'young adult' books when I was in my teens- you went on from the children's section of the library to the classics with nothing much in between.

It wasn't all youngsters who, faced with competing entertainment, stopped reading but in the state system per capita costs count, so the number of Literature classes declined as well. In my college in 1989, 18-20 students was considered a minimum number for an A Level Literature group. When I'd begun teaching in the seventies, six had been OK. Funding got tighter, more students were staying on until eighteen and classes for younger students were smaller as they became increasingly unruly. What used to be one of the most popular subjects now attacts much smaller numbers, so there are fewer classes. Arguably you don't need to be taught Literature to enjoy reading, but it's a chicken and egg situation - if kids don't like books they'll be offered fewer Literature classes when it comes to making choices at GCSE and above.




Sheila

I don't accept that argument. Literature is more widely available today than it has ever been. People generally are more knowledgeable than they were even fifty years ago, and language has always been in a state of flux.

I don't understand how anyone can know that 'less people are reading'. Perhaps classes have declined, and interest in curriculum classics, but that is no real indicator of the decline of the written word, surely?

JB

I can't remember there being 'young adult' books when I was in my teens- you went on from the children's section of the library to the classics with nothing much in between.

- And you imply this is a bad thing? I don't know how much YA lit you've read lately, but a lot of it's extremely high quality, and demanding of its reader.

I left teaching in 2003, but the texts set for GCSE and A level (on our board anyway) were your traditional novels, including Austen, Dickens, Hardy etc. Pre-20th C material was core - you simply weren't allowed to omit it.

At A level, we never had any trouble filling our Lit courses (it was a compulsory subject at GCSE). As for media literacy, I only taught this at Key Stage 4 but it seemed to me to be wholly worthy of study. Why not look at modern forms of narrative against the traditional? Why not, for instance, look at the opening to the film of Billy Liar when you've spent weeks studying and writing about the play? A film-maker's interpretation shows the students how other critics and artists approach the text.

Whatever one thinks of HP, when I was young no one would have queued to get their hands on a 600 page book, or gone to a sleepover at their local bookshop. When I was at school, you were considered a bit of a wuss for having your nose in a book. I never ever remember kids passing books round between themselves in the 70s as they do with such enthusiasm today.

Yes, I used film whenever I could since starting teaching - there was an excellent film loan service in the heady days of ILEA - so I was one who was only too happy when it recognised as an adjunct to English teaching. I think the ILEA collection was mainly intended for science subjects.

No, I don't think YA books are a bad thing at all, and it probably means more children cary on reading where they might have stopped before. I was speculating that reading the classics in one's early teens (there was a special bookshelf in the main library of my provincial town) were a preparation for the books on the A Level syllabuses. I may be completely wrong about this, as I have no real way of knowing.

Which YA books would you recommend? I have some grandchildren at/approaching this stage.

Sheila

My 80 year old mother-in-law was a bit worried this week when our nephew (aged 9) asked to bring 3 friends round after school. How was she going control 4 tearaway boys?

When they turned up they all sat down and read their Harry Potters and mum-in-law carried on knitting.

I think HP is going to be the Bros of the naughties. I think JK's done a fabulous job in getting kids reading, but as they grow, and discover real literature, they're going to look back on her dreadful books with a blush of embarrassment. And heaven knows how the rabble rousing adults are going to feel.

JB

Sheila, the YA writers who spring to mind are Jan Mark (try Aquarius, or The Ennead, or Useful Idiots), Alan Garner, Meg Rosoff and Celia Rees. The first two are especially challenging.

Or ask in the YA group here - I'm sure those guys will have plenty of useful suggestions for you.

Given where this thread started, naturally we have been equating the ‘written word’ with reading etc. When I said the written word was in decline, my concern was more about our culture as a whole. Philosophically – the connection between the written word and thought. A few thoughts on this for anyone interested in that angle.

I do think the written word is in decline. Not apocalyptically. We lose precious things gradually, bit by bit. A bit like love. Wittgenstein once said that he did not know what he thought until he tried to write it down. The written word provides a critical discipline to thought. That is why it is so important.

Two powerful forces that are hostile to the written word are computers and business. The paperless office concept has generated massive businesses like banks and insurance eg who are paper averse and therefore lack the continuity of record that customer service demands. So the ‘customer’ as usually conceived is dying or dead.

Voice Recognition (VR) is the coming thing with computers. Foolishly in my view, for having finally got most people comfortable with the keyboard, the pressure is on for VR - not because it's better, but because it provides a market for a whole new generation of products. The keyboard and written word are infinitely more efficient at communicating facts and information at speed than the spoken word. VR will require that our language is simplified, robbed of its nuance and ambiguity to facilitate recognition. Business has always favoured direct unequivocal language. Yet paradoxically has re-introduced a pale shadow of these elements through management-speak. Hence fancy words are used without any stable or agreed meaning so that everyone sounds impressive, as if they and only they, know what they are talking about. Whereas when pressed they can never explain an issue without recourse to this gobbledegook. The antithesis of the true value of language. Fewer and fewer people in companies can actually write an original letter, reliance increasingly being placed on auto-generated letters built from stock phrases. If they can avoid writing anything down they will.

In schools, Large number of children's school reports are now produced the same way from a databank of 'stock' phrases and descriptions. At GCSE level English certainly students answering questions on Shakespeare are not required to have read the whole play!! The penalty for this is paid at A level when teachers and students alike panic about how to deal with the 'synoptic' paper where the student's own (written) 'voice' is looked for.

It won't be long before 'Artificial Intelligence' researchers ditch the wonderful 'Turing Test' of a computer being able to 'think' in favour of something easier to meet. So they can market more products. (Turing said he would admit that a computer could think when you could hold a remote conversation with one and not be able to tell that it was not a human being).

Nuance and ambiguity are the spirit of poetry, let alone drama and fiction. When we lose nuance, ambiguity and the resonance they create we diminish the richness of our relationships with one another too. Listen to many young people talking on the train, in a café, in the cinema for God's sake!!!! The only real area of blindness I have with my kids is that they are both into Big Brother. This leaves me literally speechless. This manipulative, brainless, witless, cruel money-making machine is surely the perfect illustration of what happens to communication when the discipline of the written word is lost.

There is a direct connection between the written word and the quality of our spoken thought. Business-marketing and sadly modern politics, wants lack of clarity in expression and thought. Both hate to put things in writing - because then they are denied the deception of 'what I meant was'…. Sam Goldwyn got it right when he said that " a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on".

Philosophically I believe we enter the word through our use of language, Who we are as conscious human beings is revealed though the language we use, written and spoken. I have always felt that we read the old Chinese saying the wrong way round. It is not the fact that a 'picture is worth a thousand words' that should impress us: but that a 1000 words, and more, can be used intelligibly about a single picture.

I'm with Wittgenstein - until we are able to write things down, we don't really know what we are thinking. Which is to say that the richness and accuracy of our use of the written word is deeply connected with the richness and accuracy of our thought.

Soapbox again. Sorry folks. But if this subject isn't worth some serious thought (as exemplified by this discussion thread) on a site like writewords, then I don't know where it would be!

Regards


Z

Murphy, what a great story!

Emma