Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Quote of the Day
"The poor and the affluent are not communicating because they do not have the same words. When we talk of the millions who are culturally deprived, we refer not to those who do not have access to good libraries and bookstores, or to museums and centers for the performing arts, but those deprived of the words with which everything else is built, the words that opens doors. Children without words are licked before they start. The legion of the young wordless in urban and rural slums, eight to ten years old, do not know the meaning of hundreds of words which most middle-class people assume to be familiar to much younger children. Most of them have never seen their parents read a book or a magazine, or heard words used in other than rudimentary ways related to physical needs and functions. Thus is cultural fallout caused, the vicious circle of ignorance and poverty reinforced and perpetuated. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble."—author Peter S. Jennison
Written at 9:20 AM by Lynne.
2 comments
2 Comments:
Blogger Deb said...
Reading was an escape for me, a haven from the prejudice of being the only black child in the whole school. I loved books, I could go anywhere. My father read (porn, and boy did I learn stuff), and my mom read westerns to teach herself English.

I will occaisionally hear a rap song and am always impressed by the language they use, some of it is very sophisticated. That being said, reading is not emphasized enough and the competition from tv and video games will make it difficult to change the culture.

We are being groomed for Rollerball. Entertain and distract the masses. Maybe we should ask the Romans what they think of the idea.
9:08 AM  
Blogger Lynne said...
I completely agree with the "being groomed for Rollerball". Our "soma" is in an electronic form. There are many days when I would like to drop out of the 21st century alltogether. I used to do colonial reenacting. Could probably get by that way if I had to.
10:40 AM  
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