As always a well reasoned article from Kathleen but it does remind me that her background is at the woke end of the spectrum.
She’s absolutely right that crass political lecture books won’t move children, but try finding an Enid Blyton book in a library. Look at the recent furore over Roald. Dahl.
Talk to any school age child of your acquaintance and you won’t have to dig deep to find identity politics is being pushed at them relentlessly. Of course that matters “give me the boy and I’ll give you the man” and all that.
“Move along, nothing to see here,” just isn’t good enough.
“Give me a boy of seven and I’ll show you the man” suggests to me that the earliest years are the most important years.
So I read all the traditional nursery stories to my daughter when she was a toddler. Then the Famous Five and Roald Dahl books when she was a bit older. I bought the entire Ladybird collection of books about historical figures – Nelson, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone, Oliver Cromwell etc – and we read those together. I also took her to church every Sunday and so she knows the major Bible stories. More recently we have watched David Lean’s Great Expectations and some of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes TV series together. Anything to expose her to more traditional facts and fiction before the woke modern world takes over.
She is off to secondary school in September and I hope this gives her at least some immunity to the revisionism and dogma she will undoubtedly encounter.
Maybe you can’t change the direction of the culture but parents can control what your kids see and read in their first few years.
Similarly with my son. Which may or may not have had anything to do with him turning out to be one of the contrarian-minded children who very much went to the opposite pole in response to the heavy-handed moralising, indeed propagandising and indoctrination, of his school.
We used crass bribery. Our son could stay up an extra hour as long as he was reading and left the content to him as long as it was an actual book and not a comic or picture book. Worked wonders and he’s passed it along to his son.
Similarly with my son. Which may or may not have had anything to do with him turning out to be one of the contrarian-minded children who very much went to the opposite pole in response to the heavy-handed moralising, indeed propagandising and indoctrination, of his school.
We used crass bribery. Our son could stay up an extra hour as long as he was reading and left the content to him as long as it was an actual book and not a comic or picture book. Worked wonders and he’s passed it along to his son.
In my library Enid Blyton is certainly present (or so she was last time I looked).
Talking about Dahl, it has to be said that Blyton was sanitized years ago, and without much fanfare, so much so I could not find her original book when I looked at the time (some 6-8 years ago).
Blyton does seem to have been a particularly unpleasant individual and a cold parent. My objection to her books, though, is that they are appallingly badly written. One’s grandchildren should be steered towards Richmal Crompton and Anthony Buckeridge as soon as they are remotely old enough.
I can’t agree Dougie. I thought the Famous Five were excellently written adventures. But then I’m probably a philistine.
As for her being a bad person, it seems to me that few people who are single-minded enough to become the best in any field are generally pretty unpleasant people to live with.
Even on the mid-60s I found Willism and the Outlaws somehow… unrelatable. William himself is essentially moral, but his prosperous pre-War middle class life of private education (never seen, but clearly inferred from his ever-present cap and rumpled Prep School uniform), maids and cooks and sizeable suburban villa home was nearer the 1920s than the 1960s.
I remember Buckeridge’s books – Jennings, wasn’t it? Schoolboys in boarding school with gabardine macs and school caps?
Here’s a vote for the modern figure of Bart Simpson. Bart is rude and under-educated, and often an opportunist but he CAN read and is seen doing so. He often shows signs of recognising his doltish father’s inadequacies. He is clearly fond of his parents and at times, defends his sister. He rarely tells lies, doesn’t steal and doesn’t smoke (or if he does, it doesn’t go well for him). He has a well-developed sense of right and wrong. He certainly has no time for drugs (and from the obvious stoner behaviour of characters like Otto the bus driver) he comes in contact with them.
William, Jennings and Derbyshire! I lived in those books as a primary-school child. I conducted conversations with these heroes of mine nightly, lying in bed after the Aged Parents had ordered lights out.Thank you for reminding me! I thank god my son was a small boy in the 70s and so read all the books I had treasured and the best of what was on offer at the time: all still on the shelves for grandchildren and small visitors.
I can’t agree Dougie. I thought the Famous Five were excellently written adventures. But then I’m probably a philistine.
As for her being a bad person, it seems to me that few people who are single-minded enough to become the best in any field are generally pretty unpleasant people to live with.
Even on the mid-60s I found Willism and the Outlaws somehow… unrelatable. William himself is essentially moral, but his prosperous pre-War middle class life of private education (never seen, but clearly inferred from his ever-present cap and rumpled Prep School uniform), maids and cooks and sizeable suburban villa home was nearer the 1920s than the 1960s.
I remember Buckeridge’s books – Jennings, wasn’t it? Schoolboys in boarding school with gabardine macs and school caps?
Here’s a vote for the modern figure of Bart Simpson. Bart is rude and under-educated, and often an opportunist but he CAN read and is seen doing so. He often shows signs of recognising his doltish father’s inadequacies. He is clearly fond of his parents and at times, defends his sister. He rarely tells lies, doesn’t steal and doesn’t smoke (or if he does, it doesn’t go well for him). He has a well-developed sense of right and wrong. He certainly has no time for drugs (and from the obvious stoner behaviour of characters like Otto the bus driver) he comes in contact with them.
William, Jennings and Derbyshire! I lived in those books as a primary-school child. I conducted conversations with these heroes of mine nightly, lying in bed after the Aged Parents had ordered lights out.Thank you for reminding me! I thank god my son was a small boy in the 70s and so read all the books I had treasured and the best of what was on offer at the time: all still on the shelves for grandchildren and small visitors.
Blyton does seem to have been a particularly unpleasant individual and a cold parent. My objection to her books, though, is that they are appallingly badly written. One’s grandchildren should be steered towards Richmal Crompton and Anthony Buckeridge as soon as they are remotely old enough.
I’m so glad you pointed out Kathleen’s obvious woke-bias in this article (moral equivalence of the woke indoctrination going full steam within teacher’s colleges and publishing, v. honest if non-professional attempts to offer a different perspective).
I generally adore Ms. Stock’s observations, but this article was in part, a bald attempt to say “nothing to see here” about the intentional program to radically redefine Western Culture by the Woker-than-thou crowd.
“Give me a boy of seven and I’ll show you the man” suggests to me that the earliest years are the most important years.
So I read all the traditional nursery stories to my daughter when she was a toddler. Then the Famous Five and Roald Dahl books when she was a bit older. I bought the entire Ladybird collection of books about historical figures – Nelson, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone, Oliver Cromwell etc – and we read those together. I also took her to church every Sunday and so she knows the major Bible stories. More recently we have watched David Lean’s Great Expectations and some of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes TV series together. Anything to expose her to more traditional facts and fiction before the woke modern world takes over.
She is off to secondary school in September and I hope this gives her at least some immunity to the revisionism and dogma she will undoubtedly encounter.
Maybe you can’t change the direction of the culture but parents can control what your kids see and read in their first few years.
In my library Enid Blyton is certainly present (or so she was last time I looked).
Talking about Dahl, it has to be said that Blyton was sanitized years ago, and without much fanfare, so much so I could not find her original book when I looked at the time (some 6-8 years ago).
I’m so glad you pointed out Kathleen’s obvious woke-bias in this article (moral equivalence of the woke indoctrination going full steam within teacher’s colleges and publishing, v. honest if non-professional attempts to offer a different perspective).
I generally adore Ms. Stock’s observations, but this article was in part, a bald attempt to say “nothing to see here” about the intentional program to radically redefine Western Culture by the Woker-than-thou crowd.
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
As always a well reasoned article from Kathleen but it does remind me that her background is at the woke end of the spectrum.
She’s absolutely right that crass political lecture books won’t move children, but try finding an Enid Blyton book in a library. Look at the recent furore over Roald. Dahl.
Talk to any school age child of your acquaintance and you won’t have to dig deep to find identity politics is being pushed at them relentlessly. Of course that matters “give me the boy and I’ll give you the man” and all that.
“Move along, nothing to see here,” just isn’t good enough.
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Of one thing i’m absolutely convinced: Kathleen is right in her judgment that the types of childrens ‘literature’ she describes will simply bore children to perfectly natural distraction.
This is the idiocy of the Woke. They’re quite simply too thick – yes thick, to understand how their missives will be received by a young audience.
Am i being IQ-ist here? I am. This is why the Woke will not prevail.
Pathetically callow attempts to indoctrinate children will be forgotten by those children as quickly as i forgot what happened in school on 4 March 1963 (a Monday, 60 years ago.) I was more concerned with whether there’d be inedible lumps of potato in my school dinner. Turns out those inedible lumps, pushed to the side of the plate, turned into the brains of the Woke.
I wish I was as optimistic. The old culture will be gone and what replaces it is just boring and tendentious, while – as Kathleen points out – the video games and TikTok will take their place. So we will have the year zero anyway.
Thick in a sense, yes. But do you think people of high intellect are immune to blinkered ideologies? Were Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud themselves not all three geniuses of a sort who had certain great insights (yes, even Marx) but also wrongheaded, oversold ideas that agitated countless lesser lights? The staying power of these three thinkers is also real and not an accident. Many brilliant people have oversized blind spots, or go insane, or more insane (in this group, Nietzsche). Great wits are sure to madness near allied / And thin partitions do their bounds divide –Dryden
That said, as a general matter I agree that the Woke Mob is idiotic.
I was, of course, generalising and intellect alone as you rightly point out doesn’t confer immunity from ideological straightjackets.
I do think there’s a difference in kind from an individual capable of originating systems of thought which then gain enough traction to be discussed decades/centuries later, from those discussed by Kathleen.
Tony Price makes the point in the comments above that Kathleen’s article mainly concerns those whose books are seeking to counter Woke literature. I should really have laid greater emphasis on both the Woke and the anti-Woke attempts at child indoctrination. The quality of both appear doomed for the dustbin.
I was, of course, generalising and intellect alone as you rightly point out doesn’t confer immunity from ideological straightjackets.
I do think there’s a difference in kind from an individual capable of originating systems of thought which then gain enough traction to be discussed decades/centuries later, from those discussed by Kathleen.
Tony Price makes the point in the comments above that Kathleen’s article mainly concerns those whose books are seeking to counter Woke literature. I should really have laid greater emphasis on both the Woke and the anti-Woke attempts at child indoctrination. The quality of both appear doomed for the dustbin.
I can say that reading Sewell’s “Black Beauty” as a child has stayed with me for life – now at 82. That “indoctrination” was important, I think in improving empathy. Sadly, in homes without books it hardly matters.
I wish I was as optimistic. The old culture will be gone and what replaces it is just boring and tendentious, while – as Kathleen points out – the video games and TikTok will take their place. So we will have the year zero anyway.
Thick in a sense, yes. But do you think people of high intellect are immune to blinkered ideologies? Were Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud themselves not all three geniuses of a sort who had certain great insights (yes, even Marx) but also wrongheaded, oversold ideas that agitated countless lesser lights? The staying power of these three thinkers is also real and not an accident. Many brilliant people have oversized blind spots, or go insane, or more insane (in this group, Nietzsche). Great wits are sure to madness near allied / And thin partitions do their bounds divide –Dryden
That said, as a general matter I agree that the Woke Mob is idiotic.
I can say that reading Sewell’s “Black Beauty” as a child has stayed with me for life – now at 82. That “indoctrination” was important, I think in improving empathy. Sadly, in homes without books it hardly matters.
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Of one thing i’m absolutely convinced: Kathleen is right in her judgment that the types of childrens ‘literature’ she describes will simply bore children to perfectly natural distraction.
This is the idiocy of the Woke. They’re quite simply too thick – yes thick, to understand how their missives will be received by a young audience.
Am i being IQ-ist here? I am. This is why the Woke will not prevail.
Pathetically callow attempts to indoctrinate children will be forgotten by those children as quickly as i forgot what happened in school on 4 March 1963 (a Monday, 60 years ago.) I was more concerned with whether there’d be inedible lumps of potato in my school dinner. Turns out those inedible lumps, pushed to the side of the plate, turned into the brains of the Woke.
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Oh, come on – children’s stories have always been cautionary tales – certainly the good ones. From Grimm to Narnia, Alan Garner and Tolkien… Just take the Victorian ones, Peter Rabbit, Huck Finn, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Pied Piper, Green Fairy Book, Little Women, Railway Children, Three Children and It, Brer Rabbit, Jungle Book, Red Fairy Book, Hansel and Gretel – I read hundreds of them – I loved Children’s Books as a child!
I like there was good and bad – there was temptation and misleading – coupled with resirting and honesty – that there was Right and Wrong. I liked that as a Child, it is safe, and understandable.
Although those were good books – Moral and instructive on Decency and life with some brilliant imagination and excellent writing..
Then children’s books became just bad – just Cr*p, and then they became morally bad and degenerate..
This reaction against the degeneracy; a return to decent morals and life lessons of a positive nature – I understand it – it is needed…Childhood now days is Adults grooming kids to accept degeneracy as normal – that seems to be what childhood is now days…sick stuff – .
Also – the story of the lamb being fattened up by the teacher who is a Wolf – I think it is 100% on the money as far as the Education Industry today. Disney its self is a shop of race hate and perversions now days – Good for some writers trying to inject some decency and protect innocence into childhood again. (the walrus one is pretty sick though, but I still give them credit for pointing out the REAL sickness of that kind of thing being pushed)
The old tales were of course cautionary ones, but well written and imaginative and embedded in a serious culture. I think most of us – at least those who read Unherd – have been influenced by what we read years ago, and are grateful for it.
The old tales were of course cautionary ones, but well written and imaginative and embedded in a serious culture. I think most of us – at least those who read Unherd – have been influenced by what we read years ago, and are grateful for it.
Elliott Bjorn
1 year ago
Oh, come on – children’s stories have always been cautionary tales – certainly the good ones. From Grimm to Narnia, Alan Garner and Tolkien… Just take the Victorian ones, Peter Rabbit, Huck Finn, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Pied Piper, Green Fairy Book, Little Women, Railway Children, Three Children and It, Brer Rabbit, Jungle Book, Red Fairy Book, Hansel and Gretel – I read hundreds of them – I loved Children’s Books as a child!
I like there was good and bad – there was temptation and misleading – coupled with resirting and honesty – that there was Right and Wrong. I liked that as a Child, it is safe, and understandable.
Although those were good books – Moral and instructive on Decency and life with some brilliant imagination and excellent writing..
Then children’s books became just bad – just Cr*p, and then they became morally bad and degenerate..
This reaction against the degeneracy; a return to decent morals and life lessons of a positive nature – I understand it – it is needed…Childhood now days is Adults grooming kids to accept degeneracy as normal – that seems to be what childhood is now days…sick stuff – .
Also – the story of the lamb being fattened up by the teacher who is a Wolf – I think it is 100% on the money as far as the Education Industry today. Disney its self is a shop of race hate and perversions now days – Good for some writers trying to inject some decency and protect innocence into childhood again. (the walrus one is pretty sick though, but I still give them credit for pointing out the REAL sickness of that kind of thing being pushed)
Peter Quasi-Modo
1 year ago
No one book is likely to have a profound effect on large numbers of young minds. But woke-itis is now endemic in the publishing industry and becoming so in civic institutions such as education and heritage. The overall effect is a cultural mood music that is difficult for parents to oppose.
Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Quasi-Modo
Peter Quasi-Modo
1 year ago
No one book is likely to have a profound effect on large numbers of young minds. But woke-itis is now endemic in the publishing industry and becoming so in civic institutions such as education and heritage. The overall effect is a cultural mood music that is difficult for parents to oppose.
Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Quasi-Modo
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago
A question: In a world where…..
All TV channels are woke. Before every football match you have to watch the ridiculous footballers kneeling down with a sad expression, adverts have only mixed-race families, transsexuals are stars..
Every child has to have a laptop where they can watch endless videos and usually watch anything despite the concern of their parents.
Every child seems to have a smartphone and communicates with other children in Pidgin English.
Every child goes to school and mingles with hundreds of schoolmates who all try to be as trendy as possible.
Why is reading so important?
The problem nor answer is found in books, it’s found on TikTok.
Chris Wheatley
1 year ago
A question: In a world where…..
All TV channels are woke. Before every football match you have to watch the ridiculous footballers kneeling down with a sad expression, adverts have only mixed-race families, transsexuals are stars..
Every child has to have a laptop where they can watch endless videos and usually watch anything despite the concern of their parents.
Every child seems to have a smartphone and communicates with other children in Pidgin English.
Every child goes to school and mingles with hundreds of schoolmates who all try to be as trendy as possible.
Why is reading so important?
Last edited 1 year ago by Chris Wheatley
Arkadian X
1 year ago
Honest question: are you sure these books, like Raichik’s, are not satirical? Who is the intended audience, clearly the adults. Isn’t she just mocking a certain subgenre in children’s literature?
Arkadian X
1 year ago
Honest question: are you sure these books, like Raichik’s, are not satirical? Who is the intended audience, clearly the adults. Isn’t she just mocking a certain subgenre in children’s literature?
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
Ordinarily would agree, but we are long past the time when forbearance and subtlety are of any use whatsoever. The foe is literally pouring its poison over our children’s heads and it’s time for full-bore fighting back.
Daniel Lee
1 year ago
Ordinarily would agree, but we are long past the time when forbearance and subtlety are of any use whatsoever. The foe is literally pouring its poison over our children’s heads and it’s time for full-bore fighting back.
Lennon Ó Náraigh
1 year ago
The smarter kids are going to see through this indoctrination. A volume of the “Tuttle Twins” slipped into our house once. My lot would not touch it. Equally, they are horrified at the bowdlerization of Roald Dahl – as are their classmates. I’m not too worried about the bright kids – they will be fine. But I do feel sorry for the rest of the kids, who will swallow all of the faddish ideological nonsense out there, hook, line, and sinker.
Last edited 1 year ago by Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
1 year ago
The smarter kids are going to see through this indoctrination. A volume of the “Tuttle Twins” slipped into our house once. My lot would not touch it. Equally, they are horrified at the bowdlerization of Roald Dahl – as are their classmates. I’m not too worried about the bright kids – they will be fine. But I do feel sorry for the rest of the kids, who will swallow all of the faddish ideological nonsense out there, hook, line, and sinker.
Last edited 1 year ago by Lennon Ó Náraigh
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
the world is not short of children parroting favoured political attitudes to the delight of their parents — “so proud of this kiddo for coming out to the pro-life/anti-abortion [delete as appropriate] rally with me, and even making her own placard!” etc
////
I think a more salient example would be Greta Thornberg.
the world is not short of children parroting favoured political attitudes to the delight of their parents — “so proud of this kiddo for coming out to the pro-life/anti-abortion [delete as appropriate] rally with me, and even making her own placard!” etc
////
I think a more salient example would be Greta Thornberg.
Brian Villanueva
1 year ago
Let me get this straight. Liberals (the woke) control publishing houses, the arts, most media, the education system, Amazon, and nearly all independent bookstores.
And the problem we have is right-wing political propaganda making kids not want to read?
Kathleen is deep down the rabbit hole today.
Brian Villanueva
1 year ago
Let me get this straight. Liberals (the woke) control publishing houses, the arts, most media, the education system, Amazon, and nearly all independent bookstores.
And the problem we have is right-wing political propaganda making kids not want to read?
Kathleen is deep down the rabbit hole today.
Richard Parker
1 year ago
“Paws Off My Cannon? Is this about the perils of excessive masturbation or the importance of the Second Amendment? (Answer: the latter)” – led to a shout of laughter which gave me a second look at a mouthful of my breakfast. Worth reading for that alone, IMO.
The parents pushing their offspring into pet projects and causes of no natural interest to children is well satirised in Private Eye’s “From the message boards”, with periodic posts from Tim The House Husband, usually concerning his child Poppy (who mainly identifies as recreationally transgender). For those who’ve not come across it, Tim regularly beats himself up for being so unenlightened on current cultural obsessions, typically signing off his posts with “Am I wrong to be proud?”.
It raises two points for me: firstly, how much of the agenda was originally set by the children themselves, and secondly, why are the adults in the room so afraid and so ready to be instructed by the children?
Odd social inversions are afoot. I don’t see it ending well.
Richard Parker
1 year ago
“Paws Off My Cannon? Is this about the perils of excessive masturbation or the importance of the Second Amendment? (Answer: the latter)” – led to a shout of laughter which gave me a second look at a mouthful of my breakfast. Worth reading for that alone, IMO.
The parents pushing their offspring into pet projects and causes of no natural interest to children is well satirised in Private Eye’s “From the message boards”, with periodic posts from Tim The House Husband, usually concerning his child Poppy (who mainly identifies as recreationally transgender). For those who’ve not come across it, Tim regularly beats himself up for being so unenlightened on current cultural obsessions, typically signing off his posts with “Am I wrong to be proud?”.
It raises two points for me: firstly, how much of the agenda was originally set by the children themselves, and secondly, why are the adults in the room so afraid and so ready to be instructed by the children?
Odd social inversions are afoot. I don’t see it ending well.
ben arnulfssen
1 year ago
How is being taught that your parents should be trusted as the primary arbiters and defenders of your welfare, qualify as an ideological challenge beyond the grasp of young minds?
The real point here is that things ARE. That children should grasp that there are dangers they cannot understand, but should be able to identify in the general sense.
Keep it up.
ben arnulfssen
1 year ago
How is being taught that your parents should be trusted as the primary arbiters and defenders of your welfare, qualify as an ideological challenge beyond the grasp of young minds?
The real point here is that things ARE. That children should grasp that there are dangers they cannot understand, but should be able to identify in the general sense.
Keep it up.
AJ Mac
1 year ago
I love Stock’s oblique message of hope!
“And helping the whole process along will be books about non-binary giraffes and communist ice-cream sellers, written by axe-grinding political obsessives, killing off childish excitement at the written word one heavily pointed sentence at a time”
Not necessarily. But I think laughing at some of this absurdity, rather than rising in somehow still-shocked outrage, has become a more tenable response of late. Nicely expressed in any case.
How about wiling cart-horses cynically worked near to death and then sold for dog-meat? About pigs becoming indistinguishable from humans, and cynical (one might even say “eeyore-ish”) donkeys?
How about wiling cart-horses cynically worked near to death and then sold for dog-meat? About pigs becoming indistinguishable from humans, and cynical (one might even say “eeyore-ish”) donkeys?
AJ Mac
1 year ago
I love Stock’s oblique message of hope!
“And helping the whole process along will be books about non-binary giraffes and communist ice-cream sellers, written by axe-grinding political obsessives, killing off childish excitement at the written word one heavily pointed sentence at a time”
Not necessarily. But I think laughing at some of this absurdity, rather than rising in somehow still-shocked outrage, has become a more tenable response of late. Nicely expressed in any case.
B. Mink
1 year ago
These books kill the imagination and must be kept from children. Read fables, fairy tales, legends, myths….
B. Mink
1 year ago
These books kill the imagination and must be kept from children. Read fables, fairy tales, legends, myths….
Alex Carnegie
1 year ago
Good article and I could not agree more that the focus should be on any book that children actually want to read.
On indoctrination – and generalising wildly from my own experience – I suspect we all like to think we were independent minded even when young but, in reality, we underestimate the cumulative effect of being forced to read books with a particular angle.
It is true that I can remember thinking even as a nine year old (in 1968) that Our Island Story – and even more the map on the classroom wall with much of the world still coloured pink – was outdated BS. But more recently I have noticed uncomfortably that, when arguing with young woke relations, my passionate defence of free speech, debate, etc coincides almost exactly with the Cold War mentality one absorbed from reading George Orwell et al a few years later.
It makes arguing that the woke are brainwashed as teenagers tricky since it appears the same is often true of ourselves. As one recent graduate of the extremely woke Cambridge SPS course took great pleasure in pointing out to me.
I still have a copy of Island Story and while of its time and with an anti-Catholic bias, it tells an optimistic story with enthusiasm and good pictures.
I had also noticed the long-term effects of reading Orwell at secondary school age, a habit I have continued through life.
However, and its a VERY big BUT, Orwell was a very talented writer. He was also a very shrewd observer and a man of considerable personal courage; he had, after all fought in the Spanish Civil War and become deeply disillusioned by his experiences. Note also the writing of John Steinbeck in this regard – especially the cynicism and absolutism of the Communist Party union organisers in “In Dubious Battle”.
Orwell also managed the considerable feat of accurately describing much of what went on in the USSR (note the writings of Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov in this respect) without actually seeing it first-hand.
Orwell’s description of “Oligarchical Collectivism” is remarkable for its prescience.
He isn’t a “Cold War” writer – he didn’t live to see it. The everlasting pseudo-war in “1984” has no nuclear dimension and is a “hot” (ie consisting of actual combat) War to the extent that it exists at all, which is never fully made clear. There can be no “Cuban missile crisis” in Orwell’s world view, no Klaus Fuchs, no Philby, Burgess and McLean – who, let’s remember were real people who sent real SOE operatives to their very real deaths for ideogical reasons.
I still have a copy of Island Story and while of its time and with an anti-Catholic bias, it tells an optimistic story with enthusiasm and good pictures.
I had also noticed the long-term effects of reading Orwell at secondary school age, a habit I have continued through life.
However, and its a VERY big BUT, Orwell was a very talented writer. He was also a very shrewd observer and a man of considerable personal courage; he had, after all fought in the Spanish Civil War and become deeply disillusioned by his experiences. Note also the writing of John Steinbeck in this regard – especially the cynicism and absolutism of the Communist Party union organisers in “In Dubious Battle”.
Orwell also managed the considerable feat of accurately describing much of what went on in the USSR (note the writings of Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov in this respect) without actually seeing it first-hand.
Orwell’s description of “Oligarchical Collectivism” is remarkable for its prescience.
He isn’t a “Cold War” writer – he didn’t live to see it. The everlasting pseudo-war in “1984” has no nuclear dimension and is a “hot” (ie consisting of actual combat) War to the extent that it exists at all, which is never fully made clear. There can be no “Cuban missile crisis” in Orwell’s world view, no Klaus Fuchs, no Philby, Burgess and McLean – who, let’s remember were real people who sent real SOE operatives to their very real deaths for ideogical reasons.
Alex Carnegie
1 year ago
Good article and I could not agree more that the focus should be on any book that children actually want to read.
On indoctrination – and generalising wildly from my own experience – I suspect we all like to think we were independent minded even when young but, in reality, we underestimate the cumulative effect of being forced to read books with a particular angle.
It is true that I can remember thinking even as a nine year old (in 1968) that Our Island Story – and even more the map on the classroom wall with much of the world still coloured pink – was outdated BS. But more recently I have noticed uncomfortably that, when arguing with young woke relations, my passionate defence of free speech, debate, etc coincides almost exactly with the Cold War mentality one absorbed from reading George Orwell et al a few years later.
It makes arguing that the woke are brainwashed as teenagers tricky since it appears the same is often true of ourselves. As one recent graduate of the extremely woke Cambridge SPS course took great pleasure in pointing out to me.
As always a well reasoned article from Kathleen but it does remind me that her background is at the woke end of the spectrum.
She’s absolutely right that crass political lecture books won’t move children, but try finding an Enid Blyton book in a library. Look at the recent furore over Roald. Dahl.
Talk to any school age child of your acquaintance and you won’t have to dig deep to find identity politics is being pushed at them relentlessly. Of course that matters “give me the boy and I’ll give you the man” and all that.
“Move along, nothing to see here,” just isn’t good enough.
“Give me a boy of seven and I’ll show you the man” suggests to me that the earliest years are the most important years.
So I read all the traditional nursery stories to my daughter when she was a toddler. Then the Famous Five and Roald Dahl books when she was a bit older. I bought the entire Ladybird collection of books about historical figures – Nelson, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone, Oliver Cromwell etc – and we read those together. I also took her to church every Sunday and so she knows the major Bible stories. More recently we have watched David Lean’s Great Expectations and some of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes TV series together. Anything to expose her to more traditional facts and fiction before the woke modern world takes over.
She is off to secondary school in September and I hope this gives her at least some immunity to the revisionism and dogma she will undoubtedly encounter.
Maybe you can’t change the direction of the culture but parents can control what your kids see and read in their first few years.
Similarly with my son. Which may or may not have had anything to do with him turning out to be one of the contrarian-minded children who very much went to the opposite pole in response to the heavy-handed moralising, indeed propagandising and indoctrination, of his school.
We used crass bribery. Our son could stay up an extra hour as long as he was reading and left the content to him as long as it was an actual book and not a comic or picture book. Worked wonders and he’s passed it along to his son.
Similarly with my son. Which may or may not have had anything to do with him turning out to be one of the contrarian-minded children who very much went to the opposite pole in response to the heavy-handed moralising, indeed propagandising and indoctrination, of his school.
We used crass bribery. Our son could stay up an extra hour as long as he was reading and left the content to him as long as it was an actual book and not a comic or picture book. Worked wonders and he’s passed it along to his son.
In my library Enid Blyton is certainly present (or so she was last time I looked).
Talking about Dahl, it has to be said that Blyton was sanitized years ago, and without much fanfare, so much so I could not find her original book when I looked at the time (some 6-8 years ago).
Blyton does seem to have been a particularly unpleasant individual and a cold parent. My objection to her books, though, is that they are appallingly badly written. One’s grandchildren should be steered towards Richmal Crompton and Anthony Buckeridge as soon as they are remotely old enough.
I can’t agree Dougie. I thought the Famous Five were excellently written adventures. But then I’m probably a philistine.
As for her being a bad person, it seems to me that few people who are single-minded enough to become the best in any field are generally pretty unpleasant people to live with.
Likewise.
Famous Five, Secret Seven, even the Faraway Tree got me into reading at very young age. I wonder if Biggles is still in libraries.
Likewise.
Famous Five, Secret Seven, even the Faraway Tree got me into reading at very young age. I wonder if Biggles is still in libraries.
Also G.A. Henty for some excellent ‘ripping yarns’.
G.A. Henty, perhaps.
Yes, thanks. Slovenly editing, must do better!
Yes, thanks. Slovenly editing, must do better!
G.A. Henty, perhaps.
Even on the mid-60s I found Willism and the Outlaws somehow… unrelatable. William himself is essentially moral, but his prosperous pre-War middle class life of private education (never seen, but clearly inferred from his ever-present cap and rumpled Prep School uniform), maids and cooks and sizeable suburban villa home was nearer the 1920s than the 1960s.
I remember Buckeridge’s books – Jennings, wasn’t it? Schoolboys in boarding school with gabardine macs and school caps?
Here’s a vote for the modern figure of Bart Simpson. Bart is rude and under-educated, and often an opportunist but he CAN read and is seen doing so. He often shows signs of recognising his doltish father’s inadequacies. He is clearly fond of his parents and at times, defends his sister. He rarely tells lies, doesn’t steal and doesn’t smoke (or if he does, it doesn’t go well for him). He has a well-developed sense of right and wrong. He certainly has no time for drugs (and from the obvious stoner behaviour of characters like Otto the bus driver) he comes in contact with them.
William, Jennings and Derbyshire! I lived in those books as a primary-school child. I conducted conversations with these heroes of mine nightly, lying in bed after the Aged Parents had ordered lights out.Thank you for reminding me! I thank god my son was a small boy in the 70s and so read all the books I had treasured and the best of what was on offer at the time: all still on the shelves for grandchildren and small visitors.
I can’t agree Dougie. I thought the Famous Five were excellently written adventures. But then I’m probably a philistine.
As for her being a bad person, it seems to me that few people who are single-minded enough to become the best in any field are generally pretty unpleasant people to live with.
Also G.A. Henty for some excellent ‘ripping yarns’.
Even on the mid-60s I found Willism and the Outlaws somehow… unrelatable. William himself is essentially moral, but his prosperous pre-War middle class life of private education (never seen, but clearly inferred from his ever-present cap and rumpled Prep School uniform), maids and cooks and sizeable suburban villa home was nearer the 1920s than the 1960s.
I remember Buckeridge’s books – Jennings, wasn’t it? Schoolboys in boarding school with gabardine macs and school caps?
Here’s a vote for the modern figure of Bart Simpson. Bart is rude and under-educated, and often an opportunist but he CAN read and is seen doing so. He often shows signs of recognising his doltish father’s inadequacies. He is clearly fond of his parents and at times, defends his sister. He rarely tells lies, doesn’t steal and doesn’t smoke (or if he does, it doesn’t go well for him). He has a well-developed sense of right and wrong. He certainly has no time for drugs (and from the obvious stoner behaviour of characters like Otto the bus driver) he comes in contact with them.
William, Jennings and Derbyshire! I lived in those books as a primary-school child. I conducted conversations with these heroes of mine nightly, lying in bed after the Aged Parents had ordered lights out.Thank you for reminding me! I thank god my son was a small boy in the 70s and so read all the books I had treasured and the best of what was on offer at the time: all still on the shelves for grandchildren and small visitors.
Blyton does seem to have been a particularly unpleasant individual and a cold parent. My objection to her books, though, is that they are appallingly badly written. One’s grandchildren should be steered towards Richmal Crompton and Anthony Buckeridge as soon as they are remotely old enough.
I’m so glad you pointed out Kathleen’s obvious woke-bias in this article (moral equivalence of the woke indoctrination going full steam within teacher’s colleges and publishing, v. honest if non-professional attempts to offer a different perspective).
I generally adore Ms. Stock’s observations, but this article was in part, a bald attempt to say “nothing to see here” about the intentional program to radically redefine Western Culture by the Woker-than-thou crowd.
“Give me a boy of seven and I’ll show you the man” suggests to me that the earliest years are the most important years.
So I read all the traditional nursery stories to my daughter when she was a toddler. Then the Famous Five and Roald Dahl books when she was a bit older. I bought the entire Ladybird collection of books about historical figures – Nelson, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone, Oliver Cromwell etc – and we read those together. I also took her to church every Sunday and so she knows the major Bible stories. More recently we have watched David Lean’s Great Expectations and some of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes TV series together. Anything to expose her to more traditional facts and fiction before the woke modern world takes over.
She is off to secondary school in September and I hope this gives her at least some immunity to the revisionism and dogma she will undoubtedly encounter.
Maybe you can’t change the direction of the culture but parents can control what your kids see and read in their first few years.
In my library Enid Blyton is certainly present (or so she was last time I looked).
Talking about Dahl, it has to be said that Blyton was sanitized years ago, and without much fanfare, so much so I could not find her original book when I looked at the time (some 6-8 years ago).
I’m so glad you pointed out Kathleen’s obvious woke-bias in this article (moral equivalence of the woke indoctrination going full steam within teacher’s colleges and publishing, v. honest if non-professional attempts to offer a different perspective).
I generally adore Ms. Stock’s observations, but this article was in part, a bald attempt to say “nothing to see here” about the intentional program to radically redefine Western Culture by the Woker-than-thou crowd.
As always a well reasoned article from Kathleen but it does remind me that her background is at the woke end of the spectrum.
She’s absolutely right that crass political lecture books won’t move children, but try finding an Enid Blyton book in a library. Look at the recent furore over Roald. Dahl.
Talk to any school age child of your acquaintance and you won’t have to dig deep to find identity politics is being pushed at them relentlessly. Of course that matters “give me the boy and I’ll give you the man” and all that.
“Move along, nothing to see here,” just isn’t good enough.
Of one thing i’m absolutely convinced: Kathleen is right in her judgment that the types of childrens ‘literature’ she describes will simply bore children to perfectly natural distraction.
This is the idiocy of the Woke. They’re quite simply too thick – yes thick, to understand how their missives will be received by a young audience.
Am i being IQ-ist here? I am. This is why the Woke will not prevail.
Pathetically callow attempts to indoctrinate children will be forgotten by those children as quickly as i forgot what happened in school on 4 March 1963 (a Monday, 60 years ago.) I was more concerned with whether there’d be inedible lumps of potato in my school dinner. Turns out those inedible lumps, pushed to the side of the plate, turned into the brains of the Woke.
Flying Scotsman withdrawn from BR Service, Monday 14th January, 1963.
I wish I was as optimistic. The old culture will be gone and what replaces it is just boring and tendentious, while – as Kathleen points out – the video games and TikTok will take their place. So we will have the year zero anyway.
Yes, and we will have rendered an Idiocracy.
Hilarious movie, if too close to our reality.
Hilarious movie, if too close to our reality.
Yes, and we will have rendered an Idiocracy.
I think that you missed the point of the article, which is referring mostly to anti-‘woke’ literature as boring and counter-productive!
Of course he missed the point of the article. Too busy pointing out the speck in woke culture’s eye to see the log in his own.
Of course he missed the point of the article. Too busy pointing out the speck in woke culture’s eye to see the log in his own.
Thick in a sense, yes. But do you think people of high intellect are immune to blinkered ideologies? Were Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud themselves not all three geniuses of a sort who had certain great insights (yes, even Marx) but also wrongheaded, oversold ideas that agitated countless lesser lights? The staying power of these three thinkers is also real and not an accident. Many brilliant people have oversized blind spots, or go insane, or more insane (in this group, Nietzsche).
Great wits are sure to madness near allied / And thin partitions do their bounds divide –Dryden
That said, as a general matter I agree that the Woke Mob is idiotic.
I was, of course, generalising and intellect alone as you rightly point out doesn’t confer immunity from ideological straightjackets.
I do think there’s a difference in kind from an individual capable of originating systems of thought which then gain enough traction to be discussed decades/centuries later, from those discussed by Kathleen.
Tony Price makes the point in the comments above that Kathleen’s article mainly concerns those whose books are seeking to counter Woke literature. I should really have laid greater emphasis on both the Woke and the anti-Woke attempts at child indoctrination. The quality of both appear doomed for the dustbin.
Excellent. Another thoughtful response.
Excellent. Another thoughtful response.
I was, of course, generalising and intellect alone as you rightly point out doesn’t confer immunity from ideological straightjackets.
I do think there’s a difference in kind from an individual capable of originating systems of thought which then gain enough traction to be discussed decades/centuries later, from those discussed by Kathleen.
Tony Price makes the point in the comments above that Kathleen’s article mainly concerns those whose books are seeking to counter Woke literature. I should really have laid greater emphasis on both the Woke and the anti-Woke attempts at child indoctrination. The quality of both appear doomed for the dustbin.
I can say that reading Sewell’s “Black Beauty” as a child has stayed with me for life – now at 82. That “indoctrination” was important, I think in improving empathy. Sadly, in homes without books it hardly matters.
Flying Scotsman withdrawn from BR Service, Monday 14th January, 1963.
I wish I was as optimistic. The old culture will be gone and what replaces it is just boring and tendentious, while – as Kathleen points out – the video games and TikTok will take their place. So we will have the year zero anyway.
I think that you missed the point of the article, which is referring mostly to anti-‘woke’ literature as boring and counter-productive!
Thick in a sense, yes. But do you think people of high intellect are immune to blinkered ideologies? Were Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud themselves not all three geniuses of a sort who had certain great insights (yes, even Marx) but also wrongheaded, oversold ideas that agitated countless lesser lights? The staying power of these three thinkers is also real and not an accident. Many brilliant people have oversized blind spots, or go insane, or more insane (in this group, Nietzsche).
Great wits are sure to madness near allied / And thin partitions do their bounds divide –Dryden
That said, as a general matter I agree that the Woke Mob is idiotic.
I can say that reading Sewell’s “Black Beauty” as a child has stayed with me for life – now at 82. That “indoctrination” was important, I think in improving empathy. Sadly, in homes without books it hardly matters.
Of one thing i’m absolutely convinced: Kathleen is right in her judgment that the types of childrens ‘literature’ she describes will simply bore children to perfectly natural distraction.
This is the idiocy of the Woke. They’re quite simply too thick – yes thick, to understand how their missives will be received by a young audience.
Am i being IQ-ist here? I am. This is why the Woke will not prevail.
Pathetically callow attempts to indoctrinate children will be forgotten by those children as quickly as i forgot what happened in school on 4 March 1963 (a Monday, 60 years ago.) I was more concerned with whether there’d be inedible lumps of potato in my school dinner. Turns out those inedible lumps, pushed to the side of the plate, turned into the brains of the Woke.
Oh, come on – children’s stories have always been cautionary tales – certainly the good ones. From Grimm to Narnia, Alan Garner and Tolkien… Just take the Victorian ones, Peter Rabbit, Huck Finn, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Pied Piper, Green Fairy Book, Little Women, Railway Children, Three Children and It, Brer Rabbit, Jungle Book, Red Fairy Book, Hansel and Gretel – I read hundreds of them – I loved Children’s Books as a child!
I like there was good and bad – there was temptation and misleading – coupled with resirting and honesty – that there was Right and Wrong. I liked that as a Child, it is safe, and understandable.
Although those were good books – Moral and instructive on Decency and life with some brilliant imagination and excellent writing..
Then children’s books became just bad – just Cr*p, and then they became morally bad and degenerate..
This reaction against the degeneracy; a return to decent morals and life lessons of a positive nature – I understand it – it is needed…Childhood now days is Adults grooming kids to accept degeneracy as normal – that seems to be what childhood is now days…sick stuff – .
Also – the story of the lamb being fattened up by the teacher who is a Wolf – I think it is 100% on the money as far as the Education Industry today. Disney its self is a shop of race hate and perversions now days – Good for some writers trying to inject some decency and protect innocence into childhood again. (the walrus one is pretty sick though, but I still give them credit for pointing out the REAL sickness of that kind of thing being pushed)
The old tales were of course cautionary ones, but well written and imaginative and embedded in a serious culture. I think most of us – at least those who read Unherd – have been influenced by what we read years ago, and are grateful for it.
Ahhh, the blessings of multi-culturism.
Or not as the case maybe.
Or not as the case maybe.
Ahhh, the blessings of multi-culturism.
The old tales were of course cautionary ones, but well written and imaginative and embedded in a serious culture. I think most of us – at least those who read Unherd – have been influenced by what we read years ago, and are grateful for it.
Oh, come on – children’s stories have always been cautionary tales – certainly the good ones. From Grimm to Narnia, Alan Garner and Tolkien… Just take the Victorian ones, Peter Rabbit, Huck Finn, Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Pied Piper, Green Fairy Book, Little Women, Railway Children, Three Children and It, Brer Rabbit, Jungle Book, Red Fairy Book, Hansel and Gretel – I read hundreds of them – I loved Children’s Books as a child!
I like there was good and bad – there was temptation and misleading – coupled with resirting and honesty – that there was Right and Wrong. I liked that as a Child, it is safe, and understandable.
Although those were good books – Moral and instructive on Decency and life with some brilliant imagination and excellent writing..
Then children’s books became just bad – just Cr*p, and then they became morally bad and degenerate..
This reaction against the degeneracy; a return to decent morals and life lessons of a positive nature – I understand it – it is needed…Childhood now days is Adults grooming kids to accept degeneracy as normal – that seems to be what childhood is now days…sick stuff – .
Also – the story of the lamb being fattened up by the teacher who is a Wolf – I think it is 100% on the money as far as the Education Industry today. Disney its self is a shop of race hate and perversions now days – Good for some writers trying to inject some decency and protect innocence into childhood again. (the walrus one is pretty sick though, but I still give them credit for pointing out the REAL sickness of that kind of thing being pushed)
No one book is likely to have a profound effect on large numbers of young minds. But woke-itis is now endemic in the publishing industry and becoming so in civic institutions such as education and heritage. The overall effect is a cultural mood music that is difficult for parents to oppose.
No one book is likely to have a profound effect on large numbers of young minds. But woke-itis is now endemic in the publishing industry and becoming so in civic institutions such as education and heritage. The overall effect is a cultural mood music that is difficult for parents to oppose.
A question: In a world where…..
All TV channels are woke. Before every football match you have to watch the ridiculous footballers kneeling down with a sad expression, adverts have only mixed-race families, transsexuals are stars..
Every child has to have a laptop where they can watch endless videos and usually watch anything despite the concern of their parents.
Every child seems to have a smartphone and communicates with other children in Pidgin English.
Every child goes to school and mingles with hundreds of schoolmates who all try to be as trendy as possible.
Why is reading so important?
The problem nor answer is found in books, it’s found on TikTok.
The problem nor answer is found in books, it’s found on TikTok.
A question: In a world where…..
All TV channels are woke. Before every football match you have to watch the ridiculous footballers kneeling down with a sad expression, adverts have only mixed-race families, transsexuals are stars..
Every child has to have a laptop where they can watch endless videos and usually watch anything despite the concern of their parents.
Every child seems to have a smartphone and communicates with other children in Pidgin English.
Every child goes to school and mingles with hundreds of schoolmates who all try to be as trendy as possible.
Why is reading so important?
Honest question: are you sure these books, like Raichik’s, are not satirical? Who is the intended audience, clearly the adults. Isn’t she just mocking a certain subgenre in children’s literature?
Honest question: are you sure these books, like Raichik’s, are not satirical? Who is the intended audience, clearly the adults. Isn’t she just mocking a certain subgenre in children’s literature?
Ordinarily would agree, but we are long past the time when forbearance and subtlety are of any use whatsoever. The foe is literally pouring its poison over our children’s heads and it’s time for full-bore fighting back.
Ordinarily would agree, but we are long past the time when forbearance and subtlety are of any use whatsoever. The foe is literally pouring its poison over our children’s heads and it’s time for full-bore fighting back.
The smarter kids are going to see through this indoctrination. A volume of the “Tuttle Twins” slipped into our house once. My lot would not touch it. Equally, they are horrified at the bowdlerization of Roald Dahl – as are their classmates. I’m not too worried about the bright kids – they will be fine. But I do feel sorry for the rest of the kids, who will swallow all of the faddish ideological nonsense out there, hook, line, and sinker.
The smarter kids are going to see through this indoctrination. A volume of the “Tuttle Twins” slipped into our house once. My lot would not touch it. Equally, they are horrified at the bowdlerization of Roald Dahl – as are their classmates. I’m not too worried about the bright kids – they will be fine. But I do feel sorry for the rest of the kids, who will swallow all of the faddish ideological nonsense out there, hook, line, and sinker.
the world is not short of children parroting favoured political attitudes to the delight of their parents — “so proud of this kiddo for coming out to the pro-life/anti-abortion [delete as appropriate] rally with me, and even making her own placard!” etc
////
I think a more salient example would be Greta Thornberg.
I do love observation bias.
I do love observation bias.
the world is not short of children parroting favoured political attitudes to the delight of their parents — “so proud of this kiddo for coming out to the pro-life/anti-abortion [delete as appropriate] rally with me, and even making her own placard!” etc
////
I think a more salient example would be Greta Thornberg.
Let me get this straight. Liberals (the woke) control publishing houses, the arts, most media, the education system, Amazon, and nearly all independent bookstores.
And the problem we have is right-wing political propaganda making kids not want to read?
Kathleen is deep down the rabbit hole today.
Let me get this straight. Liberals (the woke) control publishing houses, the arts, most media, the education system, Amazon, and nearly all independent bookstores.
And the problem we have is right-wing political propaganda making kids not want to read?
Kathleen is deep down the rabbit hole today.
“Paws Off My Cannon? Is this about the perils of excessive masturbation or the importance of the Second Amendment? (Answer: the latter)” – led to a shout of laughter which gave me a second look at a mouthful of my breakfast. Worth reading for that alone, IMO.
The parents pushing their offspring into pet projects and causes of no natural interest to children is well satirised in Private Eye’s “From the message boards”, with periodic posts from Tim The House Husband, usually concerning his child Poppy (who mainly identifies as recreationally transgender). For those who’ve not come across it, Tim regularly beats himself up for being so unenlightened on current cultural obsessions, typically signing off his posts with “Am I wrong to be proud?”.
It raises two points for me: firstly, how much of the agenda was originally set by the children themselves, and secondly, why are the adults in the room so afraid and so ready to be instructed by the children?
Odd social inversions are afoot. I don’t see it ending well.
“Paws Off My Cannon? Is this about the perils of excessive masturbation or the importance of the Second Amendment? (Answer: the latter)” – led to a shout of laughter which gave me a second look at a mouthful of my breakfast. Worth reading for that alone, IMO.
The parents pushing their offspring into pet projects and causes of no natural interest to children is well satirised in Private Eye’s “From the message boards”, with periodic posts from Tim The House Husband, usually concerning his child Poppy (who mainly identifies as recreationally transgender). For those who’ve not come across it, Tim regularly beats himself up for being so unenlightened on current cultural obsessions, typically signing off his posts with “Am I wrong to be proud?”.
It raises two points for me: firstly, how much of the agenda was originally set by the children themselves, and secondly, why are the adults in the room so afraid and so ready to be instructed by the children?
Odd social inversions are afoot. I don’t see it ending well.
How is being taught that your parents should be trusted as the primary arbiters and defenders of your welfare, qualify as an ideological challenge beyond the grasp of young minds?
The real point here is that things ARE. That children should grasp that there are dangers they cannot understand, but should be able to identify in the general sense.
Keep it up.
How is being taught that your parents should be trusted as the primary arbiters and defenders of your welfare, qualify as an ideological challenge beyond the grasp of young minds?
The real point here is that things ARE. That children should grasp that there are dangers they cannot understand, but should be able to identify in the general sense.
Keep it up.
I love Stock’s oblique message of hope!
“And helping the whole process along will be books about non-binary giraffes and communist ice-cream sellers, written by axe-grinding political obsessives, killing off childish excitement at the written word one heavily pointed sentence at a time”
Not necessarily. But I think laughing at some of this absurdity, rather than rising in somehow still-shocked outrage, has become a more tenable response of late. Nicely expressed in any case.
Hope is the triumph of nostalgia over expectation.
You’ve modified Oscar Wilde: “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience”.
You’ve modified Oscar Wilde: “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience”.
How about wiling cart-horses cynically worked near to death and then sold for dog-meat? About pigs becoming indistinguishable from humans, and cynical (one might even say “eeyore-ish”) donkeys?
Hope is the triumph of nostalgia over expectation.
How about wiling cart-horses cynically worked near to death and then sold for dog-meat? About pigs becoming indistinguishable from humans, and cynical (one might even say “eeyore-ish”) donkeys?
I love Stock’s oblique message of hope!
“And helping the whole process along will be books about non-binary giraffes and communist ice-cream sellers, written by axe-grinding political obsessives, killing off childish excitement at the written word one heavily pointed sentence at a time”
Not necessarily. But I think laughing at some of this absurdity, rather than rising in somehow still-shocked outrage, has become a more tenable response of late. Nicely expressed in any case.
These books kill the imagination and must be kept from children. Read fables, fairy tales, legends, myths….
These books kill the imagination and must be kept from children. Read fables, fairy tales, legends, myths….
Good article and I could not agree more that the focus should be on any book that children actually want to read.
On indoctrination – and generalising wildly from my own experience – I suspect we all like to think we were independent minded even when young but, in reality, we underestimate the cumulative effect of being forced to read books with a particular angle.
It is true that I can remember thinking even as a nine year old (in 1968) that Our Island Story – and even more the map on the classroom wall with much of the world still coloured pink – was outdated BS. But more recently I have noticed uncomfortably that, when arguing with young woke relations, my passionate defence of free speech, debate, etc coincides almost exactly with the Cold War mentality one absorbed from reading George Orwell et al a few years later.
It makes arguing that the woke are brainwashed as teenagers tricky since it appears the same is often true of ourselves. As one recent graduate of the extremely woke Cambridge SPS course took great pleasure in pointing out to me.
I still have a copy of Island Story and while of its time and with an anti-Catholic bias, it tells an optimistic story with enthusiasm and good pictures.
Wasn’t it called OUR Island Story, or what that a different book?
Yes, to be correct. Our Island Story. Our Empire Story has perhaps aged less well.
Yes, to be correct. Our Island Story. Our Empire Story has perhaps aged less well.
Wasn’t it called OUR Island Story, or what that a different book?
I had also noticed the long-term effects of reading Orwell at secondary school age, a habit I have continued through life.
However, and its a VERY big BUT, Orwell was a very talented writer. He was also a very shrewd observer and a man of considerable personal courage; he had, after all fought in the Spanish Civil War and become deeply disillusioned by his experiences. Note also the writing of John Steinbeck in this regard – especially the cynicism and absolutism of the Communist Party union organisers in “In Dubious Battle”.
Orwell also managed the considerable feat of accurately describing much of what went on in the USSR (note the writings of Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov in this respect) without actually seeing it first-hand.
Orwell’s description of “Oligarchical Collectivism” is remarkable for its prescience.
He isn’t a “Cold War” writer – he didn’t live to see it. The everlasting pseudo-war in “1984” has no nuclear dimension and is a “hot” (ie consisting of actual combat) War to the extent that it exists at all, which is never fully made clear. There can be no “Cuban missile crisis” in Orwell’s world view, no Klaus Fuchs, no Philby, Burgess and McLean – who, let’s remember were real people who sent real SOE operatives to their very real deaths for ideogical reasons.
I still have a copy of Island Story and while of its time and with an anti-Catholic bias, it tells an optimistic story with enthusiasm and good pictures.
I had also noticed the long-term effects of reading Orwell at secondary school age, a habit I have continued through life.
However, and its a VERY big BUT, Orwell was a very talented writer. He was also a very shrewd observer and a man of considerable personal courage; he had, after all fought in the Spanish Civil War and become deeply disillusioned by his experiences. Note also the writing of John Steinbeck in this regard – especially the cynicism and absolutism of the Communist Party union organisers in “In Dubious Battle”.
Orwell also managed the considerable feat of accurately describing much of what went on in the USSR (note the writings of Koestler, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov in this respect) without actually seeing it first-hand.
Orwell’s description of “Oligarchical Collectivism” is remarkable for its prescience.
He isn’t a “Cold War” writer – he didn’t live to see it. The everlasting pseudo-war in “1984” has no nuclear dimension and is a “hot” (ie consisting of actual combat) War to the extent that it exists at all, which is never fully made clear. There can be no “Cuban missile crisis” in Orwell’s world view, no Klaus Fuchs, no Philby, Burgess and McLean – who, let’s remember were real people who sent real SOE operatives to their very real deaths for ideogical reasons.
Good article and I could not agree more that the focus should be on any book that children actually want to read.
On indoctrination – and generalising wildly from my own experience – I suspect we all like to think we were independent minded even when young but, in reality, we underestimate the cumulative effect of being forced to read books with a particular angle.
It is true that I can remember thinking even as a nine year old (in 1968) that Our Island Story – and even more the map on the classroom wall with much of the world still coloured pink – was outdated BS. But more recently I have noticed uncomfortably that, when arguing with young woke relations, my passionate defence of free speech, debate, etc coincides almost exactly with the Cold War mentality one absorbed from reading George Orwell et al a few years later.
It makes arguing that the woke are brainwashed as teenagers tricky since it appears the same is often true of ourselves. As one recent graduate of the extremely woke Cambridge SPS course took great pleasure in pointing out to me.