Before I delve into the response for this chapter, I should mention a legitimate citation for the book I'm responding to:
Beers, Kylene, Probst, Robert and Linda Rief. Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2007.-note on this book: the chapters are all written by different authors so their names will be acknowledged, but they all come from this source.
Now that my conscious has been cleared for the present moment, I would first like to comment on the title Teri Lesesne uses- Of Times, Teens, and Books as well as the first sentence. She, like the previous author uses Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin" as a primary thought to describe the current status
To be honest, the first three pages were read with the opening of Zach Snyder's film "Watchmen" playing through my head. Bob Dylan has that effect. This song represents more than political and social distress during the mid 20th century. In an age where everything is being--regretfully--digitalized, no medium can escape this fate. Books sadly do not possess the higher authority to transcend this new medium and have become slaves to a textually impaired youth. Even now as I'm writing, I am reminded of the chore reading for classes has become. This is half due to the quantity of reading that 19 credit hours implies, but also because I have become so ingrained in the power of images: websites devoted to captioning pictures, manga (which will be discussed later), movies, television, and even instructions for how to use tissue paper. On that last one, the package of tissue wrap came with image instructions on how to unfold, and then fashion the paper into the gift bag, making me fear even more for the fate of humanity than the hype of such mundane things as a Kardashian wedding/72 day reception.
Back to the topic at hand: Books. Lesesne goes through each new segment of young adult literature that has become popular in the past decade. Stop One: manga. During my high school years where I was the idealistic hopeful future English teacher that saw books only to be used with words and few images. Since then, it has taken the acquisition of a boyfriend who enjoys manga and a relatively open mind to see that manga does possess some literary merit. While they can be seen as easy reads, they provide a challenging element that few books printed in English offer: you have to read them completely backwards. The frames inside the pages alone are daunting enough. The fact that they also have to be read from right page to left page is enough to make a person catatonic if they aren't adequately informed prior. Beyond the science fiction and fantasy genres, manga has expanded to an educational plane with historic fiction. They are particularly helpful for students who work best with a visual aid. I enjoy manga because I get a taste of another culture and can later watch the anime television show to see the full cohesive movement of action that the books create.
We have reached the pinnacle of young adult literature in the past two decades. With a multitude of material never created, authors have leapt on the YA bandwagon to reach all types of teenagers. Some lean to the masses with flat plotted vampire craze- so-called books while other tackle legitimate issues teenagers are undergoing. Lesesne lists a massive amount of current books--most of which I have heard of but never had the chance to read. If you noticed my disdain for the vampire world, you should already know the answer to how I felt about her mentioning Twilight in more detail than Harry Potter. If not, return to the phrase "so-called books". Beyond that, however, the availability of books has expanded to offer almost any genre, plot, or outcome that a reader could hope for.
Her section on taboo books and censorship makes me consider how I would approach both topics. I do not believe in an all-consuming censorship on sensitive subjects because of the sole fact that many of these books depict what real teenagers are dealing with. While it's great to sugar coat the world in candy mountains and rainbow ponies, the reality is that many students go to school with fear, doubt, and truly traumatic experiences that they have to undermine for the sake of the many. If we exclude these books, their legitimacy as people is diminished even further because we are saying that their situations are something to be kept a secret. Christian teachers are not allowed to share their faith with the class for fear of making a student feel unequal; how is that different from a book being censored for sensitive situations that an actual student may be going through? Protecting the majority by making the minority feel unequal. While the two are not established under the same laws, they represent fundamentally the same thing.
I am not advocating a total recall in censorship, but I feel that there needs to be a maturation of school systems and parents. Hermione Granger's famous quote "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself" comes to mind. Fearing the taboo topics and censoring books such as "Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger will only desensitize the educational world into nothing more than a holding cell for young adults until they enter the adult world and realize that they were being sheltered from the fundamental truths of the world. We're already hurting students by limiting their educational potential by standardizing everything based on a test, what is there to gain by adding censored icing on the cake?
Again, well said! Hmm, in response to your thoughts on censorship, first, I agree - we cannot turn a blind eye to the issues that permeate the classroom by nature of working with adolescents. What is trickier, however, is proving to parents that we are providing a safe environment for students to talk about issues that matter to them and are often personally relevant.
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