Reading Wednesday, 10/04

[liv]

Recently read: Two powerful pieces arguing that there is a systematic problem of violence in schools that needs to be addressed:

On Reforming Schools by slashmarks

violence is violence; the trick is making violence stop by drakkinabrarian. CW for discussion of many forms of violence against children.

I'm definitely mulling over siderea's recent post on [Marie] Kondo and the Bibliophibians. I haven't quite worked out what I think about all of it.

Some is reminiscent of that Twitter or Tumblr thread that kept being quoted all over the place about how Millennials and younger generations buy and hoard luxury items, because living frugally doesn't allow you to save up enough to afford decent and stable housing, so why not own stuff? (But ignorant older people may assume that the reason younger people are poor is because they spent too much money on pointless luxuries, hence the much-mocked 'avocado toast causes the housing crisis' takes.)

I'm not completely sold on blaming Marie Kondo for anti-intellectualism and the erosion of the middle class, and the idea of a Japanese woman being colonialist towards Americans doesn't sit well with me. Regarding books specifically, well, lots of people have opinions about whether you should or shouldn't own more physical books than you can read, but I didn't take that as the main point of the post. The bit that's striking to me is Section 6: Our TVs scrupulously taught us not to have sympathy for people of other classes, other industries, other ways of life. So I think it's not about books, it's about learning not to despise people from other cultural backgrounds.

Currently reading: Moonwise by Greer Ilene Gilman. I'm appreciating this book, but it's hard work; it's written in a strange language that is almost Anglic (it's not quite, there are occasional Latinate words in it). Reading it reminds me of being a ridiculously hyperlexic child, and reading all kinds of adult books and only forming vague impressions of what was going on. It's not just the language, it's about a fantasy world that blends with an intrudes on this one, and the narration builds atmosphere by not making very clear distinctions between dream and reality, secondary world and this world.

(I have read several articles about precocious readers being traumatized by reading stuff that they could decipher but where the emotions and events were beyond them, but I never really had that problem, I just felt confused a lot but still enjoyed what I could glean from my reading. I think the truth is I was never really gifted as a child; I was an exceptionally young reader and had a very good working memory, which led to measuring as gifted. But basically I accepted swimming in a sea of general adult weirdness and wasn't particularly bothered by it.)

Up next: Something written in standard English, I think! angelofthenorth lent me Conversations with friends by Sally Rooney, which is apparently about young poly people in contemporary Ireland.

Comments

[finch]

I don't know how I feel about that piece either, but that may be because I'm very tired of KonMari Discourse in general? XD

[flippac]

I have complicated feelings about that piece because I've always been too broke to be part of the class it describes.

That aside: I think "gifted" is one of those terms that's prone to the No True Scotsman fallacy as a way of breeding impostor syndrome. Because the entire concept's bullshit: there's some adult fantasy of the child prodigy involved (and it's definitely an adult fantasy), but in practice the idea mostly seems to've fucked people up.

I mean, I've been IQ tested because Cambridgeshire LEA once upon a time thought 5 Cs at GCSE a mark of success for me. If they'd got their way it would've crippled my mind: I don't pick that phrasing lightly. But I was a statemented special needs case, that whole experience was weird as hell. I suspect I'm partly as I am because even were I able to work, I've long since refused the cultural place that tech wanted of me.

But I should cut off short of where impostor syndrome starts to live for me: I think you might be able to take some guesses, but it's bitter and personal and here it's derailing.

[flippac]

I guess I should add: "I'd rather be able to afford to live with a partner" is a major factor for me. At some point I need to clear out and reorganise the parts left over from the bout of fightstick modding I've engaged in the last year and look seriously at how I should be organising my meds - I've been single long enough for "eh, I'm the only person on a king-size bed and I take everything getting in or out of it" to dominate!

[rosefox]

Those posts on school are intense. Thank you for sharing them. This stuff has been on my mind a lot as Kit approaches the age of entering the public school system.

[shreena]

I just finished reading one of Marie Kondo's books - I think what siderea says at the beginning, that she's all about getting rid of stuff, isn't quite right. I think Marie Kondo loves stuff and objects, what she wants people to do is to value their possessions and to keep the possessions that they value. Something which I think the TV show didn't really emphasise at all but which is quite prominent in the book is the way that she suggests that, if there are things that you really like and want to keep because you like them, you should find a way of displaying them - so, if you're keeping a hair clip because you like the ornament on it, even though it's broken, you should find somewhere to display the ornament that will make you happy.

I did think she let her personal feelings get in the way of a sensible chapter on books - it's kind of clear that she isn't realy into books and doesn't really get that books are not merely functional, they can be all kinds of things, symbols, mementos, etc.

[green_knight]

I think Marie Kondo loves stuff and objects, what she wants people to do is to value their possessions and to keep the possessions that they value.

That's my impression, too. I feel Marie Kondo asks us to be curators of our things, to look after them. She hates it when things are stuffed into boxes, piled in inaccessible places, shipped out to storage containers, and never looked at and never handled. And I do understand the impulse of 'but she's coming for my booooks' but I have to confess that I'm much happier owning fewer books than I did at my peak. (My peak was after my Mum's death. I gave away 2/3rds of hers, doubled my holdings, snarfed up all of her shelving, and filled my house to the brim. And then I looked around and went 'I can either give books away or not buy any more, because this is not sustainable'. I got rid of So Many books that didn't spark joy. What I've got left is a much better collection and makes me much happier.)

The other thing about Marie Kondo is that, to the best of my knowledge, she did not start out seeing books as durable (and from what I hear about the current Netflix show, she seems to be adapting to how Americans see books). Due - AFAIK, I'm happy to be corrected - a combination of book quality and climate, books-as-she-knew-them were closer in quality to those MMPBs with yellowing pages that fell apart after a few reads than what most bibliophiles in the West think of when we say 'book' - and in her book she lumps books and magazines together, which at least points in that direction.
When I mentally swap out 'books' (my acid-free, full-colour preciouses that I expect to outlast me) for 'magazines' her advice makes so much more sense and feels so much less of an attack on my bibliophile lifestyle.

[(Anonymous)]

"I think the truth is I was never really gifted as a child; I was an exceptionally young reader and had a very good working memory, which led to measuring as gifted."

I have had the same thought about myself. I have a friend on Facebook whose kids are gifted and the things she posts that they come up with! It's this whole different level of systemic thought from most kids. My 7 year old has been identified as cognitively gifted as well as gifted in reading and math. She makes these connections that I just don't see other kids making, but she doesn't really do anything about it. I didn't really get it until she started kindergarten, at which point my son was 2 1/2, and they tested her as cognitively gifted and I realized that the conversations we were having with her at 2 1/2 were a whole level above what we were discussing with him now at the same age and what our friends' kids were doing. But, there is also this level of gifted motivation or fire that I don't really see in her. To figure out this system, to come up with some new solution... All she wants to do is read ALL THE TIME. Which I think is similar to me at her age as well.

Now as for the actual issue, I'm sure I read stuff that upset me because it was too grown up, but most of it just went over my head. Honestly I think the stuff that bothered me most was adolescent fiction that I read as an actual adolescent that involved casual sex, which wasn't even so much a developmentally inappropriate topic as one that I personally wasn't anywhere near ready for.

[finding_helena]

Whoops, that was me.

[oracne]

Woo, Moonwise! I found it by accident in the library, and then bought my own copy. Years later, when I met Greer Gilman at a Readercon, she was flabbergasted that I owned a copy and had actually read it.

[monanotlisa]

"I'm not completely sold on blaming Marie Kondo for anti-intellectualism and the erosion of the middle class, and the idea of a Japanese woman being colonialist towards Americans doesn't sit well with me."

Hard same, as the kids say these days. In that vein, I think using her as a meme for whatever you think is wrong is silly, really; it happens on all sides of the spectrum. Ultimately Kondo has neatly (heh) identified a particular pain point in how modern humans deal with property, but why they do it -- or don't -- is not her fault.

[khronos_keeper]

>I have read several articles about precocious readers being traumatized by reading stuff that they could decipher but where the emotions and events were beyond them

I find this interesting, because as a tremendously precocious reader (i read Les Miserables when I was in the 4th grade), I was actually more affected by the contents of the "age-appropriate" traumatic books assigned in school. Eli Wiesel's Night was assigned reading for example in 8th grade, and in 7th grade we read of Mice and Men and I felt so furious that we were excepted not to grasp the emotional impact of the end of the book. I think I was angrier at the adults who were in charge of picking out books, because I felt that we should be reading these things in highschool rather than middle school.

Of course reading Game of Thrones at 12 was not The Best Choice, and I remember feeling distinctly nauseous over the more obviously adult portions.

[damerell]

I read Poe's _The Premature Burial_ at a tender age, and that left a bit of a mark; not that I think, overall, the de facto policy of letting me read anything I could physically get off the shelves was bad.

[damerell]

TBH, unless I'm missing something, what strikes me as odd about the Kondo-and-books discussion is isn't it all becoming moot anyway? I (curiously for someone who was buying ebooks in circa 2000) buy only print books; I think this means I am travelling, as time goes by, down a path from "curious" to "wildly eccentric". Increasingly people's books don't take up any physical space at all, and while cluttered filespace is a thing, I'm not sure Kondo gets into it.

(Maddeningly, this exacerbates my book space problem because all UK SFF publication has gone from normal-size paperbacks to those damn B-format ones, because when you buy a print book it's a special thing. Grumble!)

[silveradept]

Both of those pieces on school violence were strong and reminders of the conclusion that plenty of people studying education have determined - a student doesn't learn what they're supposed to in the classroom if they're concentrating on something more important, like surviving. I usually see this in relation to justifications for having schools help with food insecurity at home, but the conclusions are equally applicable to other reasons why students might not be able to give their all in the classroom. And when the perpetrators of violence are the instructors that cannot be avoided, it creates an environment that can't ever be conducive to learning, no matter how hard someone tries.

I'm also having thoughts about siderea's post, because I find the premise of books as class signifiers and the problem with KonMari being presented as "your identity is a problem and should not exist" a compelling one to work with.