WEEKLY WARNING WORDS
September 8, 2004 - Week 51 - Reading, Writing And __ __ __
BY DR. BRUNO J. KEITH
What President Bush continued reading when he should have claimed immediate leadership on 9-11-01, was naïve childishness like Christian Anderson's fairy bunch. If such stuff could induce a little one's will to learn to read, even this low-brow approach to basic skills would have redeeming value. It certainly is more of an introduction to our Kultur than Lynne Cheney's astonishing smut-pornographic attempts to corner a politician like the present vice-president of hypocrisy.
As a Liberal, I never censured a student who tried to learn to read, spell & write a little, too, by using trash as learning tools. But when eager youngsters, in the hippie realm, swallowed science fiction as concocted by Tolkien & Von Daniken, they also acquired those irrational convictions, almost religious dogmas, of the impossible to be the truth. Our computerized minds have learned little since the invasion by Martians (thanks to H.G. Wells & actor Orson Welles) & the daily U.F.O. visits from outer space by little green robots speaking English.
The computer wisdom could have been our salvation if used for educational purposes & practical shortcuts for difficult work. Clever idiots with rags-to-riches selfishness made children use this learning device like a toy for the bored. Japanese terrorists unloaded millions of expensive "zapp" machinery on our spoiled brats & thereby made almost all our youngsters killers by pulling a handle or pushing buttons. As though Hollywood's Wild West violence hadn't already made our youth most violent.
Adolf Hitler's respect for Viking violence had once affected Swiss creativity. Presently, ex-teacher Rowling made her millions of £'s by using good English to massproduce best-sellers for which millions of "good kids" pay any price to read & to learn how the murder of savage ghosts is a blissful use of time & money. Couldn't we do better & use nice books to learn to read, write, spell, think & be amused? May we dare to list a few more decent, smarter & highly educational old-time volumes which, over ages, could make us again a wiser, more creative, more human & less aggressive nation? Excuse our ignoring the hundreds of other scribblers of so-called children books.
If a mother doesn't remember the good name of Alan Alexander Milne, she should read to her little one the basic, short volumes of Winnie-the Pooh. Christopher Robin would still delight parents & their pre-schooler. After-effects might be mild benevolence & a will to read or hear more.
A little more - understanding child would learn to love every word & idea by tutor Charles L. Dodgson (Louis Carroll). His Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is cute, humorous & highly educational. Parents & children can draw zest for life, literature & deeper appreciation of sly & meaningful wit & sagacity. Add the Dodgson letters to his beloved little student as a basis for learning to become a good correspondent, a true reporter of life without lust without being called a pedophile at heart.
If your child is almost ready for wider readings, hand to him, or her, all the works by the multi-talented Rudyard Kipling. As long as the young one asks for guidance, advise to begin with the author's Jungle Book(s). No normal child will stop reading the words of the humanized animals as though they tried to understand by looking into their eyes & reading their minds. Even the writer's prejudices can provoke smiles of understanding. That goes for Kipling's many Just-So Stories & wonderful ballads of greatest educational or refining mastery. It is no enigma to educators why his Recessional gives commencement exercices their solemn dignity in spite of its open racism. Only Kipling could make colonialism almost civilizing.
Even if your worthiest offspring has found the way into the best writings of old & new library value, the reading of all the sentimental & sensuous poetry, even in prose form, in many most exciting volumes, created by Oscar Fingal O' Flahertie Wills Wilde, can make humble life more meaningful. Neither child nor adult can fight the great inducement to greater intelligence, lively attention & enforced creativity in the wake of this often humiliated poet if one can disregard all controversy about his imprisonment in Reading (pronounced like redding) Gaol (English for jail), one can ingest many wholesome lessons from the sadly sighs of a tortured soul.
Thusly influenced, any true student can easily fathom the social & political criticism of Robinson Crusoe, Don Quijote de la Mancha, Gulliver's Travels and Treasure Island, all masked as kid-stuff. If the great Russian and French novelists have exercised some cultivating appeal, our wonderful Massachusetts Unitarians, if not Deists or outright atheists, can make rational gentlemen & women out of street rascals. The typical American Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, stands out as a popular Socialist & Atheist.
Among the giants of world literature, Charles Dickens & Joseph Conrad might also be character building. They could also prevent developing moron minds given to violence & other negativisms. Our surviving hippie heads never understood that it was Hitler's & Himmler's respect for Nordic monsters of Viking heritage which created their Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings & the entire childish sequences of Rowling's Harry Potter ghostly violence. Even if the good monsters defeat the bad ones, the evil Wild-West idiotology keeps making our little savages big monsters & ever more irrational believers in witches, criminals & most violent thinking & behavior. Such readings make life purposeless. Those books lead to the multiplication of morgues & a soulless hell this side & ever after even for the grandest nation. It seems that our loudmouths are leading us from Tombstone, Arizona, to the heartless desert of Midland and Crawford - cult; instead of culture, arrogance, slandering, lying, killing & perversion of the true, the good & beautiful to ensure huge material profits & the certainty of an imminent self-destruction. Yet, it seems that many of our huge corporations indulge in, & make billions from, the spread of pornography, piously supported by our Second (non) Lady & the Viagra Senator.
To be continued…..
Week 52- September 15, 2004 - __ __ __ Reading & Arithmetic