Infected Echos

Why did God create a dual universe? So he might say, Be not like me. I am alone. And it might be heard. —–- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves.

I was today years old. That is disgusting.

No Child Left Behind is one of the worst things to ever be incentivized in schools. It was signed into law when I was 14. Reading Rainbow was my show as a kid. LeVar Burton played a big part in why I became an avid reader to date. The joy of it. It's an adventure around the globe and through different time periods without stepping on a plane or time machine.

Children parrot behavior. In grade school, I always wanted to read the same amount of books as my teachers (50 books) and managed to double that each year. Before No Child Left Behind, book fairs and Scholastic catalogs were a serious matter like your grandma's Fingerhut catalogs. Libraries were (and still are) a wonderland.

This concentrated schools and other education programs entirely on those tests, especially schools with students who were already struggling, at the cost of art and music programs, home economics and shop type programs, and any in depth exploration of pretty much anything that wasn't on the test, which were pretty narrowly focused. Reading Rainbow was a relaxed encouragement to be imaginative and curious. It didn't teach kids the answers to questions on the test. So it didn't make the cut.

This widened the gap between public and private school educations significantly, because students in public schools learned mostly how to regurgitate information, while students in private schools learned how to understand it, analyze it, think critically about it, and apply it - in short, if you could afford to go to private school, you still got to have agency over your education. And sure, many public school teachers were dedicated and still taught their students more than the curriculum demanded, but they were under a lot of pressure and scrutiny and their hands were often tied. Many of them couldn't sustain the effort it took (and how little they got paid) and changed careers. Meanwhile basic necessarily skills disappeared when arts and non-academic budgets were slashed into oblivion - you used to be able to learn how to sew, mend, cook, budget, do woodworking, fix a car (hell, build one), paint, draw, do pottery, and so much more in elective classes. What's mostly remained is performing arts programs, which struggle to continue existing, but since you can charge admission to performances they've had a better chance than shop class and home ec.

You have no idea what it's like to have watched all that happen under the Bush administration and now see the second emerging generation of young people who were deprived of the education they deserve and don't understand critical thought or media analysis. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Bush era are frustrated, but not at all surprised to see how reductive and binary fandom discourse is, or that critical media analysis has diminished significantly and turned into fandom discourse instead (ie. that being a child during the "what you feel is more valid than facts" Bush administration has led to the second emerging generation of people who struggle to separate their personal feelings about a piece of media from the idea that fiction is social commentary, who struggle to understand nuance and are more concerned about judging others for their even slightly divergent political views than about what makes for effective activism, or that fandom has become a way for people to judge and condemn others).

You have no idea how terrifying it is to have watched No Child Left Behind unfold in your early 20s and have thought "this is going to lead to generations of kids who will be ripe for manipulation by propaganda" and to now watch how hard it is to get Gen Z and Alpha to understand the ways they're being manipulated by fascists. Believe me when I say the very real purpose of forcing education to focus on tests instead of knowledge was to create generations of people whose brains are trained at an early age to accept information unquestioningly. That's what I see when people reblog screenshots without sources and base their political opinions on tumblr funnymen.

I grew up an avid reader, and I was that kid who checked more books out of the library than I could carry. My mom would bring tote bags to shove them all into. We’re talking 30 books at a time. I think they had to establish a limit on me. And I read them all.

And when I talk to my nieces and nephews or my friends’ kids… they don’t know how to read for fun. Some of them can barely read.

I just want to cry, because I don’t know how to fix it, I can’t do what my mom did, which is read Dr Seuss and fall asleep so they’d have to finish the story from memory. I can’t show them Reading Rainbow or WishBone. There’s no scholastic book fair anymore and even Sesame Street is going the way of the dodo. They won’t be able to escape into other worlds hidden in the wardrobe on a quiet rainy day, they’re not going to know the cunning of the theif Eugenides, or the frustration Matilda felt at the world around her bubbling out telekinetically. Why the giving tree gave up everything or where the sidewalk ends.

They can’t even find the monster at the end of the book.

And it’s just so Orwellian and wrong, and it scares me so much that they’re going to grow up with tv and internet just spoon-feeding mush into their brains.

They’re being shut off from the magic and the joy of reading, and it’s completely purposeful. The republicans don’t want them reading, and they don’t want them thinking.

Roles of the Ages ~

This is one of my favorite photoshoots because Amy with her mug is such a mood.