Recently, I joined an expedition to hunt enormous cetaceans. Then I secretly impregnated a member of my congregation before tricking my friends into painting a fence.
It’s been a busy week.
Oh, wait. I did none of those things. Boats, never mind whaling ships, make me seasick. I am not a repressed New England reverend, nor have I misled my peers into doing my chores.
Although I did dutifully read every paragraph—including the 12 pages tediously describing the different kinds of whales—of Moby Dick, bumbled through Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and enjoyed all of Mark Twain’s work from Tom Sawyer on.
Subsequent to taking a “Hawthorne, Twain, and Melville” course as an undergraduate, I have read every Raymond Chandler story. Yet I have never exhibited any interest in pursuing a career as a detective. I don’t have the spatial ability to make a living as a shamus. Indeed, I frequently get lost in my own home. Whereas Phillip Marlowe never missed a turn as he pursued clues, perpetrators, and femme fatales in the hills above Los Angeles.
That I read everything that is not tied down from cereal boxes (again, I have no desire to become a cartoon tiger) to non-fiction is not particularly remarkable. My wonderful book group stretches the scope of what I read. My older son and my two best friends from high school recommend volumes that I would otherwise miss. But I am hardly the only 67-year-old who would prefer to be addicted to fiction rather than narcotics. What I can’t completely wrap my head around is the recent emphasis on censorship. Reading improves and expands the mind. Reading does not make you into someone—a whaler, a horny clergyman, an adolescent in 19th century Missouri—who you aren’t.
My understanding is that there are a small number of vocal parents who want to restrict not only what their children are assigned to read, but also the availability of paperbacks in the school library. I read Moby Dick but never once gave any thought to picking up a harpoon. If my kids read a book about a same-sex couple having children, it seems unlikely that my offspring will immediately transform into gay adults speeding to the adoption agency.
That the feline is no longer in the container should come as no surprise. Every word that has ever been published and many that have not is available on these pesky computer-thingies that every child seems to have access to. No matter where you stand on the subject of censorship, your kids reside a few clicks away from every combination of words and images imaginable. Across Germany, in May of 1933, thousands of books deemed to be ‘un-German’ found their way into bonfires in dozens of cities. The days when fascists could enforce what people shouldn’t read are gone. (And whose team do you want to be on? We knew nazis were on the wrong side of history even then.)
So once again, it is up to loving parents to prepare our child for the path rather than preparing the path for our child. Because “there’s always somebody tempting, Somebody into, Doing something they know is wrong.”
Parents can try to limit what their kids are exposed to. Moms and dads can also grab a teaspoon and head to the beach to direct the waves to come ashore elsewhere. Kids rejecting that of which you do not approve has to be internal.
One of my clients—good kid, good family, known them for generations—was recently cut from a sports team at a university whose name you would recognize. (As always, what you are about to read is truthful but not factual.) Turns out all the athletes from the women’s lacrosse team were taken by their coaches into the woods where the players were directed to drink alcohol and pose for inappropriate photos. Those who refused to participate were kicked off the team. There is tremendous pressure to belong. The student didn’t want to lose her scholarship. She felt close to some of the others on the team. But she said to herself, “this is wrong”–and left.
Currently there is an investigation, several lawsuits, and some interrupted educations as shares of guilt are determined and distributed. But my young friend isn’t a part of the ongoing inquiry because she wasn’t there. Some coaches will likely get fired, some students will probably be expelled. Not her monkey, not her circus.
Can we agree that her parents deserve kudos for their part in raising a child who knows right from wrong and has the sense to say, “this is wrong” and go back to her dorm.
To my knowledge, these parents never restricted what their daughter could read about or think about. There are all kinds of books in their home. But I was proud that this student made a sensible decision. Unlike the other young women involved in the guzzling and photography, this kid just left. Now, instead of being deposed as part of the proceedings, she can focus on her education. Maybe she’ll even get to take an enlightening literature course in Hawthorne, Twain, and Melville. If so, I’m convinced she will not, as a proximate result, sign up for a whaling expedition, become a randy preacher, of get her friends to paint fences for her.
