Saturday, October 8, 2016

Books the Schools Ignores For the State

America talks incessantly about Bibles in schools and, frankly, we don't care all that much since the ones who carry them aren't going anywhere and the ones who are going somewhere don't carry them. The general idea is to convert all Americans to Christianity but they didn't even do much of a job converting themselves.  For example, they rarely know much of the theology and don't even go to church.  They say they represent something but it's not clear what.  As above, we don't care what they represent.  There are much more important matters in play in the educational curriculum.

Note:  this is not about cracking on teachers since they have almost no power in the curriculum and teaching below the university level is one of the most horrible jobs anyone could ever have.  They aren't allowed to teach, they can only recite.  The problem is usually the school boards which select textbooks, etc.  Such boards are almost always rabidly political and we have seen some of the prize fools Texas has elected to such positions.  Mary Lou Bruner is so much the textbook case you don't even have to know her name to find her.  You only need 'texas school board crazy ideas' and, pop, there she is.


These are books kids really need to read but we rarely hear of them after they were supplanted by idiot movies like "American Sniper" and other examples of jingoistic tripe from Clint Eastwood.  That made lots of money for Eastwood but so does selling coke and it's arguable which is most destructive to the species.

"Fail-Safe" (Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler) - the premise with nuclear weapons systems is there are so many fail-safe mechanisms that an inadvertent war is impossible.  That was fine until a system failed.

"Johnny Got His Gun" (Dalton Trumbo) - Johnny was sent to war and was blown all to hell with his arms and legs destroyed and most of his senses no longer working.  He wound up a body in a bed which was trying so hard to communicate.  In the end they finally realized he was saying, "Let me die."

"On the Beach" (Neil Shute) - the aftermath of a nuclear war leaves a cloud of radiation circling the Earth and it's coming to Australia but it's not there yet.  This is a story of the last days of the last people in the world.

"Catch-22" (Joseph Heller) - the best all-time reduction in the meaning of war as you can only deal with it if you're crazy.


The object isn't to present a comprehensive list but rather to show some representative examples to demonstrate the problem.

One element of propaganda is to classify these books and others with similar themes as 'anti-war' but that term presupposes the idea someone is in favor of war when there's no logical reason to be in favor of a war unless you profit on it.  These are obvious things but the state knows it can steamroller people by presenting the same things multiple times so these became anti-war books.

The most obvious propaganda is in making so much noise supporting a contrary position that all others are marginalized by it.  Hence we have the enormous publicity for "American Sniper" and we hear nary a word of anything opposing such behavior.  Similarly, there's so much hammering over idiocy such as the Pledge of Allegiance that kids are getting broken down into a jingoistic wormhole in which dissent is futile and resistance absurd.


Yevette looks constantly for conspiracy theories but there's one right under her nose in the effective censorship of books.  All of these books are available but you never hear a peep about them.  If you want a conspiracy, ask yourself why not and how did it get that way.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are about 40 years late on your reading list. 3 of those 4 books I read in one English or literature class in high school. I will grant you my school was absolutely no typical of general public education.
It was designed to send the brightest on to University and sought to teach the kids to think not what to think

Anonymous said...

Also te people you talk about no more represent tbe Christian co.munity anymore than Clinton to Democrats or Trump to the GOP.

Unknown said...

Neither of us is too late on reading them and I know they're ostensibly part of the curriculum but awareness of them seems minimal in educated adults. Unknown how they're handled in schools now but it doesn't seem they get much emphasis.

I know those people don't represent Christians but still they do by making decisions which affect all the kids and justifying it by calling themselves Christians. They make y'all look ugly.

Anonymous said...

Adding those books would be futile. As No Child Left Behind panders to the lowesr common denominator, so the next generation will be an even larger slice of lemmings. But at least they will probably have free college tuition

Unknown said...

It doesn't seem the LCD gets respect from anywhere when they're given no idea of the reality of a nuke war.

Not sure what to make of free tuition as my concern it will patch the system with vouchers or some such but won't do anything to fix it (e.g. lack of accreditation in universities). It sounds like a pre-election sound bite to me.

Anonymous said...

Wasnt meant to be political.
Just an observation of tbe sad state of the union

Unknown said...

I don't really see any politics when there's only one party and have almost entirely lost interest in their game