Celebrate Books The Memory of Mankind

Celebrate Books The Memory of Mankind For the past 29 years during Banned Books Week, late September, librarians and educators unite to celebrate our freedom to read and heighten our awareness of the liberty to treasure the written word.

I fell in love with words in childhood, while raised in a teachers’ family I was exposed to the beauty of books at an early age. I devoured books voraciously until I reached adolescense when reading was decidedly uncool.

I renewed my passion once I moved abroad in my twenties. Words took on a new allure when the written word in English was not readily available while living in a francophone and germanic language country. Then books in my mother tongue were like gold.

For two years, after a severe whiplash accident, my eyes could not focus on words in any language. When I finally recovered and the letters on the page stopped wiggling, I developed an ever greater appreciation for books.

The intellectual freedom to access ideas, to express opinions and to read what I want is my birth right as an American citizen. Protected by the 1st Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, as part of the Bill of Rights, it is a privilege we often take for granted.

Today I spend a part of my day trying to convince teenagers to invest energy in discovering books. Maybe if students know the book I assign to read had once been banned, they will be lured into cracking open the cover.

It is amazing the number of books that have been on the hit list, including some of the greatest books ever written, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, as well as, the Diary of Anne Frank, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Color Purple by Alice Walker, to mention a few.

During the Holocaust and other troubling times in history, books were burned, which reminds us of the danger when restraints impose limits on cultures, races and religions.

Though many books are challenged due to language or content, few remained banned, like Adolf Hitler ‘s Mein Kampf which publishers refuse to reprint to prevent inciting right wing extremist’s violence with Hitler’s destructive ideology.

Ironically often times the religious zealots are the first to challenge books in public education even though the freedom to establish and to exercise religion, was the basis of the Bill of Rights on which our nation was founded. Puritans, Quakers and others left Europe in pursuit of place where they would be free to practice the religion of their choice.

Words can never be underestimated. They make humans distinguishable from animals. By comprehending the hopes, conflicts, aspirations, successes and failures of people in time and space, we can better understand the self. Without literature, education would have no articulated spirit and our function would be survival rather than aspiration.

The only positive outcome of making books taboo that I can foresee is enticing rebellious adolescents to turn on to literature, one “bad” word at time.

Nightmares Teaching Today

In theory, teaching looks like the ideal job. All those school holidays. In Europe, every six weeks we have vacation. We even shut down for the week long ski break to hit the slopes. But there is no escape. Even on mountaintops, teachers obsess about how to reach kids. For today’s students, conditioned by instant gratification in a society wired 24/7, attention spans last no longer than 15 seconds, the time it takes to microwave a muffin.

Academic staples like reading, writing, ‘rithmetic? Forget it. Kids learn grammar off twitter, spelling by MSN, and math on calculators. 

At conferences, parents plead, “Rescue our child.”  How do you save a kid that hates to read and write?   Fill the house with books and unplug TVs.  Students that read the most, write best.  Children who were read to in homes with books learn to value the old fashioned printed word.  At the rate we are going, I fear that reading, like letter writing, will become a lost art!

 

At my school, report writing requires a special language degree.  Every trimester, teachers write novelettes on each child’s progress in all disciplines. Between marking periods, we remain on call available round the clock via email and cell phones.

Teaching is tougher than ever.  Even once loved courses, like physical education, are a hard sell.  Getting kids to move these days is like pulling teeth. Why put one foot in front of the other when the world beckons at one’s fingertips without budging an inch? Competing with Internet, wifi, and 1001 channels on television screens the size of football fields; teaching has become a losing battle.

In real life drama, people relocate, families’ collapse, loved ones die; educators deal with the fall out.   Sh** happens. 

Educators fill gaps in a world gone wild. As kids whiz through childhood at a reckless pace during rapid social change, teachers’ roles altered drastically.  Information abounds.  Yet kids still need adults to help interpret the « info-net. » With more attention deficit kids (i.e. regular children craving adult attention not ADD), never has the need for good teachers been greater, the kind of teacher that lies awake at night concerned about students’ well being.  There is no time off.  Teachers are always updating lesson plans, grading papers, counseling kids, answering late night phone calls and early morning emails.

Yet the worst part about teaching is not the day, but the night. In endless nightmares, I thrash about, looking for classroom doors, searching for mid term papers, forgetting locker combinations  (I don’t even own a locker!)  One night I dream that I lost control of a classroom full of ADHD kids while my new principal observed.  The next, I am scribbling on the board with my hand severed at the wrist.  Then, I wake up and start over again.  After a gulp of coffee, I head back on the front line, saving lives, one lesson at a time.  No child left behind.