YA : Ban on Banding
The vexed subject of what's appropriate for kids to read has come up a lot here. I didn't know until shewhomust posted this morning that there is an organized movement against the age-banding of books.
I'm coming at this from the point of view of a teacher of 20 years' experience. (Somewhat as a parent, though not so much with respect to books...neither of my kids was much of a reader as a child, despite being read to from day one. My daughter has been making up for lost time since her late teens, and I don't think my son is ever going to be a reader. Though he could surprise us one day.)
A lot has been said already about how each child is at a different level reading-wise. Those bandings are a convenience for where books are placed on shelves, but really, print size and cover art and so forth are better clues. One thing I haven't seem brought up much is one frustrating effect: a reluctant reader who is already feeling self esteem issues over not being able to read as swiftly or as comprehensively as classmates can be devastated by that 8-12 marker on a book. "I'm fifteen! This is for eight year olds! Do you think I'm stupid? You do!" A book the kid might otherwise enjoy is already just one more proof of inadequacy, just because of that label. I had to spend a lot of effort climbing past that hurdle as a teacher.
Generally, though, in discussions about getting rid of banding, the first thing concerned parents bring up is the possibility of their child encountering inappropriate sexual material. It's seldom violence, almost always about sex, especially parents of girls.
My answer is complicated because I've always tried to shape it to each parent, and his or her particular concerns. There are so many landmines possible in discussing this subject: parental control versus "the world", what the word "innocence" means, values held by the family, the pain kids feel when they hit something they weren't ready for. The thing is, you can't always predict that, I've discovered: an otherwise innocuous book that has one reference to sex will mostly zoom right past young readers who just aren't very interested in what adults do behind closed doors. But I've dealt with kids who felt utterly undone--betrayed--by "dead animal" stories, which are a firmly established subgenre, many of award winners. "I stopped reading after that horrible book The Yearling they stuck us with in fifth grade"--how many times have I heard that over the years? Too many to count, and I don't mean just from kids, but from adults when the subject of reading comes up, and why they don't.
That said, parents are still going to bring the subject right back to "We have certain values in our family, which includes keeping sexual content away from them until an appropriate age." I'm not going to slamdunk parents who want to protect their children, though I have witnessed the struggle to control information build walls between adults and children in families, but after all these years, I've come to suspect those walls would have been there anyway, due to a lot of factors of emotional complexity among which knowledge about sex is just a small part. It was definitely that way when I was young--the heavy emphasis on girls being "young ladies" meant a great many of us had to act a hypocritical part at home or deal with horrendous punishments meant to keep us "innocent" (ignorant). But that was a different time, and a different social climate.
Now what I see are families who feel they are beset by rapid change that is not always to the good. They want to inculcate good morals and ethics in their children, and that means limiting the flow of entertainment into the home. Including books.
So my answer to them--actually, to everyone--is:
Read the books yourself.
Talk them over with your kids.
How can that be a losing proposition? Family reading! Book discussion! Talk that leads to every subject under the sun--history, language, philosphy, food, who we are and how we fit into this universe.
I'm coming at this from the point of view of a teacher of 20 years' experience. (Somewhat as a parent, though not so much with respect to books...neither of my kids was much of a reader as a child, despite being read to from day one. My daughter has been making up for lost time since her late teens, and I don't think my son is ever going to be a reader. Though he could surprise us one day.)
A lot has been said already about how each child is at a different level reading-wise. Those bandings are a convenience for where books are placed on shelves, but really, print size and cover art and so forth are better clues. One thing I haven't seem brought up much is one frustrating effect: a reluctant reader who is already feeling self esteem issues over not being able to read as swiftly or as comprehensively as classmates can be devastated by that 8-12 marker on a book. "I'm fifteen! This is for eight year olds! Do you think I'm stupid? You do!" A book the kid might otherwise enjoy is already just one more proof of inadequacy, just because of that label. I had to spend a lot of effort climbing past that hurdle as a teacher.
Generally, though, in discussions about getting rid of banding, the first thing concerned parents bring up is the possibility of their child encountering inappropriate sexual material. It's seldom violence, almost always about sex, especially parents of girls.
My answer is complicated because I've always tried to shape it to each parent, and his or her particular concerns. There are so many landmines possible in discussing this subject: parental control versus "the world", what the word "innocence" means, values held by the family, the pain kids feel when they hit something they weren't ready for. The thing is, you can't always predict that, I've discovered: an otherwise innocuous book that has one reference to sex will mostly zoom right past young readers who just aren't very interested in what adults do behind closed doors. But I've dealt with kids who felt utterly undone--betrayed--by "dead animal" stories, which are a firmly established subgenre, many of award winners. "I stopped reading after that horrible book The Yearling they stuck us with in fifth grade"--how many times have I heard that over the years? Too many to count, and I don't mean just from kids, but from adults when the subject of reading comes up, and why they don't.
That said, parents are still going to bring the subject right back to "We have certain values in our family, which includes keeping sexual content away from them until an appropriate age." I'm not going to slamdunk parents who want to protect their children, though I have witnessed the struggle to control information build walls between adults and children in families, but after all these years, I've come to suspect those walls would have been there anyway, due to a lot of factors of emotional complexity among which knowledge about sex is just a small part. It was definitely that way when I was young--the heavy emphasis on girls being "young ladies" meant a great many of us had to act a hypocritical part at home or deal with horrendous punishments meant to keep us "innocent" (ignorant). But that was a different time, and a different social climate.
Now what I see are families who feel they are beset by rapid change that is not always to the good. They want to inculcate good morals and ethics in their children, and that means limiting the flow of entertainment into the home. Including books.
So my answer to them--actually, to everyone--is:
Read the books yourself.
Talk them over with your kids.
How can that be a losing proposition? Family reading! Book discussion! Talk that leads to every subject under the sun--history, language, philosphy, food, who we are and how we fit into this universe.