Bye, Abe, George and Diane!
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@george-k said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
exposing young people to stories in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm may sow seeds of bias that can grow into indifference or prejudice.”
Especially when the woke are around to REMIND THEM OF IT EVERY FIVE MINUTES.
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Column: Erasing classic literature for kids
John KassJan 29, 2021 at 6:58 PM
When I was a boy about 11, I committed a crime that changed my life.
I stole a book. I was a book thief.
I found it in another kid’s desk and began reading, hiding it behind some boring textbook, and couldn’t give it up.
And when the last bell rang, I hid it furtively under my jacket as if it were some rare, precious and struggling bird, and walked home.
It’s still with me. I’ll never give it up.
That book that opened up the world to me.
“Odysseus the Wanderer,” written for children by the classicist Aubrey de Selincourt.
It is a version of the “Odyssey” of Homer, the greatest adventure story ever told. I’ve since read several translations of Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey.”
The crafty Odysseus, the man of wrath, was an expert trickster. He duped the Trojans with his Trojan horse, befuddled the man-eating Cyclops and withstood the deadly song of the sirens.
Though he was clearly pre-Christian, I considered the wandering King of Ithaca as a patron saint. There was no trap he couldn’t escape with his wits. His story has shaped Western literature — as well as “Star Trek” — for some 3,000 years.
But there is one thing Odysseus may not be able to withstand:
The political left and the growing #disrupttexts movement — fueled by critical race theory — in American public schools wants him gone.
Classic Western literature, from Homer to Shakespeare, Mark Twain and even Harper Lee, is now being canceled, much in the same way that the Islamic State group and early Christians destroyed ancient statues that offended them.
There is something quite barbarous about it all.
Just a few days ago, zealots in San Francisco began stripping “offensive names” from public schools. Names such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and even Democratic U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, who is a living witness to her own cancellation.
The stripping of names are public events. They pit aging, worried traditional liberals against a radical leftist movement that will devour them as surely as the relentless Bolsheviks devoured the more moderate Mensheviks.
But the purging of great literature often takes place quietly, among woke teachers and librarians. If the classics aren’t exactly banned outright or burned, they have another way:
To place offending literature on the back shelf, out of the reach of the young, where they’re lost to gather dust in the shadows.
Author Padma Venkatraman wrote an essay titled “Weeding Out Racism’s Invisible Roots: Rethinking Children’s Classics” in the School Library Journal. She supports this purge.
“Challenging old classics is the literary equivalent of replacing statues of racist figures,” she writes.
“… exposing young people to stories in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm may sow seeds of bias that can grow into indifference or prejudice.”
And so, the astounding complexity of great literature and great writers is now reduced, as are so many things these days, to angry zealotry and political correctness.
Shakespeare’s glaring sin is his anti-Semitic treatment of Jews in the “Merchant of Venice.” But isn’t there value in his other works? Do I really have to ask that?
Harper Lee’s sin is creating hero Atticus Finch, the white liberal savior of a Black man wrongly accused. And what is the blind poet Homer’s outrage? He didn’t think of himself as belonging to the West, the way we think of the West.
But when Odysseus enters the underworld and meets the vain and deadly killer Achilles, Odysseus is told this:
“I would rather be a slave of a landless barbarian than king of all the dead.”
A #disrupttexts leader, Lorena German, author of “The Anti-Racist Teacher,” explains her purge this way:
“So, let us be honest, the conversation really isn’t about universality … This is about an ingrained and internalized elevation of Shakespeare in a way that excludes other voices. This is about white supremacy and colonization.”
If the new test for all literature, movies, statues — anything of historic value we consume — is 100% purity, all will fail. And who would grade the test?
When I was young, there were no books that couldn’t be read. To deny classic literature was to brand yourself a barbarian.
But now those narrow minds deciding what books children will read are the dictators of the new “tolerant” culture. There is nothing delicious in the irony.
There is great value in diverse characters the young can identify with. I’m not arguing with that. Even Homer understood the multicultural world.
What’s irksome is the way offered, as ideological catechism to politically shape the minds of the young. If it meant more kids picking up books and reading, I might understand.
But kids aren’t stupid. They’re not easily led farm animals, despite what the new Napoleons believe.
If children associate literature with didactic political indoctrination, whether from right or left, the smart ones will put up a wall and shut down.
And they won’t develop the necessary skills of logic and critical thinking needed to grasp and wrestle with the great conflicting ideas offered in classic Western literature.
Perhaps that’s the real plan. Who needs to develop critical thinking when the great books are gone?
Politics is always downstream of culture. And I’m just glad I stole that book when I could.
When books weren’t placed on the back shelf, out of the reach of a child.
@george-k That article makes sense. It is important to be exposed to different ideas and views from different people.
If you see things and read things you agree with, it is easy to forget that there are different things out there.
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@george-k That article makes sense. It is important to be exposed to different ideas and views from different people.
If you see things and read things you agree with, it is easy to forget that there are different things out there.
@taiwan_girl said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
That article makes sense.
John Kass is a great columnist. He has picked up the mantle of Mike Royko in the Chicago newspaper world. Insightful, funny, and smart.
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I wonder how long before the author is purged.
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I'm imagining what would have happened if this ilk had lived in General Washington's day.
He'd have said, "To hell with it. Let the Brits keep 'em. Ima go back to the farm and grow cabbages."
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I'm imagining what would have happened if this ilk had lived in General Washington's day.
He'd have said, "To hell with it. Let the Brits keep 'em. Ima go back to the farm and grow cabbages."
@Catseye3 said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
I'm imagining what would have happened if this ilk had lived in General Washington's day.
He'd have said, "To hell with it. Let the Brits keep 'em. Ima go back to the farm and grow cabbages."
He didn't grow cabbages. He grew tobacco, then converted to wheat. Just sayin'.
Please love yourself.
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@Catseye3 said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
I'm imagining what would have happened if this ilk had lived in General Washington's day.
He'd have said, "To hell with it. Let the Brits keep 'em. Ima go back to the farm and grow cabbages."
He didn't grow cabbages. He grew tobacco, then converted to wheat. Just sayin'.
@Aqua-Letifer He converted to wheat along with other grains and corn, carrots, and cabbage.
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@Catseye3 said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
I'm imagining what would have happened if this ilk had lived in General Washington's day.
He'd have said, "To hell with it. Let the Brits keep 'em. Ima go back to the farm and grow cabbages."
He didn't grow cabbages. He grew tobacco, then converted to wheat. Just sayin'.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
He didn't grow cabbages. He grew tobacco, then converted to wheat. Just sayin'.
“During the 1780s, with agricultural prices depressed, Washington found it hard to make any headway as a farmer. In November 1785 he told George William Fairfax that he never viewed his plantations “without seeing something which makes me regret having [continued] so long in the ruinous mode of farming which we are in.”24 The following year, perplexed by what to do, he launched an important correspondence with a renowned English agronomist, Arthur Young, who sent him his four-volume Annals of Agriculture. Candid about his own inadequacies as a farmer, Washington asked for advice about more than just the ruinous practices and backward farm implements at Mount Vernon. Rather, he saw the agricultural system of the whole country as bogged down in outdated methods and was especially critical of Virginia planters who exhausted their soil with endless rounds of tobacco, Indian corn, and wheat. Deciding to conserve his soil through crop rotation, Washington ordered a variety of new seeds from Young—including cabbage, turnips, rye, and hop clover—and under Young’s tutelage eventually planted sixty different crops at Mount Vernon. A severe drought and a boll weevil infestation drastically cut his wheat yield in 1787. Nonetheless, determined to rotate his crops, he had by 1789 planted wheat, barley, oats, rye, clover, timothy, buckwheat, Indian corn, pumpkins, potatoes, turnips, peas, and flax. As president, he lent the prestige of his office to espousing a national board of agriculture that could diffuse scientific information to farmers.”
Excerpt From: Chernow, Ron. “Washington.” Apple Books. ”
That's the only reference I could find to GW growing cabbage. Ellis's biography doesn't mention it at all.
The Mt. Vernon site
HISTORY
George Washington had cabbage planted between his rows of corn at several of his farms.On 6 Aug. 1786 Washington sent him a grateful response. "Agriculture has never been amongst the most favorite amusements of my life, though I never possessed much skill in art, and nine years' total inattention to it, has added nothing to a knowledge which is best understood from practice; but with the means you have been so obliging as to furnish me, I shall return to it (though rather late in the day) with hope & confidence" (Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia). Washington ask Young to sent him two plows with extra shares and coulters and the best varieties of cabbage, turnip, sainfoin, winter vetch, and ryegrass seeds, as well as any other grasses which might seem valuable.
One of Washington's great preoccupations, during his whole career in agriculture, was finding the right crops for the soil, climate, and practical needs of his Mount Vernon establishment. His determination to throw off the bondage of single-crop farming seemed at times almost too dogged. The number of field crops he raised, attempted to raise, or at least experimented with on a small scale is well above sixty. In a set of "Notes & Observations" he kept for 1785-86 (George Washington Papers, Library of Congress) he mentions planting barley, clover, corn, carrots, cabbage, flax, millet, oats, orchard grass, peas, potatoes, pumpkins, rye, spelt, turnips, timothy, and wheat.
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Literally the first words that appear in my google search:
Initially growing tobacco as his cash crop, Washington soon realized that tobacco was not sustainable and he switched to grains, particularly wheat as a cash crop in 1766.
My point is that the joke would make much more sense picking one of Washington's more major crops.
That's like making up an Elon Musk quote saying, "whatever, I'm going to go back to making my city guides." Yes, technically Musk had a business for that in the past, but that's not at all what he was known for so it's weird and falls flat.
"I'm going back to my wheat harvest."
"I'm going back to work on my gout problem."
"I'm going to go back to wearing dead people's teeth."Y'know, something more immediately relevant.
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Literally the first words that appear in my google search:
Initially growing tobacco as his cash crop, Washington soon realized that tobacco was not sustainable and he switched to grains, particularly wheat as a cash crop in 1766.
My point is that the joke would make much more sense picking one of Washington's more major crops.
That's like making up an Elon Musk quote saying, "whatever, I'm going to go back to making my city guides." Yes, technically Musk had a business for that in the past, but that's not at all what he was known for so it's weird and falls flat.
"I'm going back to my wheat harvest."
"I'm going back to work on my gout problem."
"I'm going to go back to wearing dead people's teeth."Y'know, something more immediately relevant.
@Aqua-Letifer Gotcha. My thinking was that the joke was that Washington found that even growing something as unexciting as cabbages would be preferable to dealing with idiots. Wheat or tobacco just didn't have the same punch.
Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace. – Mike Ditka
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@Aqua-Letifer Gotcha. My thinking was that the joke was that Washington found that even growing something as unexciting as cabbages would be preferable to dealing with idiots. Wheat or tobacco just didn't have the same punch.
@Catseye3 said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
@Aqua-Letifer Gotcha. My thinking was that the joke was that Washington found that even growing something as unexciting as cabbages would be preferable to dealing with idiots. Wheat or tobacco just didn't have the same punch.
Fair thought process!
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
I met my high school english teacher at my parents' yard sale, when they were selling their house. I hated english in high school, so I thought he'd find it surprising I got a master's in poetry.
He said, "that's actually not surprising at all."
I asked him why that was.
"You couldn't just do an assignment, you never just did your work. You had to add some stupid shit to it that made it funny and interesting to you. So creative writing makes a lot of sense. In fact when other kids cut up in class, you would actually insult them if you felt they weren't being funny, and told them what they should've said instead."
"Really?"
"All the time."
So yeah, apparently it's a problem. But I'm better now! I mean, right?
Please love yourself.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Bye, Abe, George and Diane!:
Bro I have long hair, a frivolous Master's, ride a singlespeed, do film photography and buy vinyl gear. It's been a bit grim for awhile now.
But I don't eat no fucking avocado toast. I have no problem dying on that hill.
Skinny jeans can go to hell, too.
