Hey, Censors! Leave Those Kids Alone

Authoritarians often try to present themselves as reasonable, common-sense types who just want to be left alone by all the woke leftists.  Google News referred me this morning to an excellent example of the pattern, a letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald Tribune.  It's semi-paywalled, and the site nagged me to shut off my adblocker, so if you click through be prepared to deal with that.

The writer was indignant that the Herald-Tribune had run an op-ed opposing "book bans."  The headline, he declared, "shows your paper's dislike of the USA."  According to him there are no book bans in Florida, only restrictions on materials in middle-school libraries.  This is a distinction without a difference, aside from being dishonest: as far as I can tell, the activists involved don't merely want to "restrict" access to materials, they want to remove those materials from the shelves.

"Young people should be shielded from harmful material, be it in books, films, audio or on the internet."  Here we have the faux-reasonable stance.  Who decides what is harmful?  The most reactionary, authoritarian elements of a community, of course. 

"Parents are the people responsible for their children, not the state or activist college students." If the state shouldn't be involved, then why is the state of Florida intervening to decide what materials children should not be allowed to see?  The reference to "activist college students" is a nice evasion.  Activist adults want to decide not only what their children will see, but other parents' children as well.  

And not only children, but other adults: "If the parents want their children to read something, they can easily purchase it on Amazon or at another location (i.e., a flea market)."  Here the underlying agenda peeks out: this writer's illogic, followed to its conclusion, would eliminate public libraries altogether.  If I want to read something, I "can easily purchase it on Amazon or at another location (i.e., a flea market)", right?  One of the reasons public libraries came into existence was because people couldn't afford to buy everything they wanted to read.  It's why public libraries and other public services are so popular with most people, even when they're a bit uneasy about some of the content they provide; it's also why authoritarian scum hate public resources - those who can't afford to pay should just go without.  Censors of literature have always been happy to shield adults from "harmful" material, though as far as I know there's never been any good evidence on what is harmful, or how, or why. 

"Columns like this one by Emily Bowlin do not add to the educational process; they merely mislead individuals. I did not read 'Slaughterhouse Five' in middle school – I read it much later – and I seem to have turned out mostly OK." That last bit is open to question.  The writer is the one who wants to mislead, by confusing material available in school libraries with material assigned in class. Is Slaughterhouse-Five really being assigned in middle schools?  I admit I've been surprised as I've followed the controversy, to see what apparently is being assigned at that level.  

Maus, for example, Art Spiegelmann's graphic memoir about his parents' experience in Auschwitz, was attacked for showing in drawings the nakedness of mouse-headed human beings in a concentration camp.  Supposedly it was assigned reading for middle-schoolers in some districts, and that brought even me up short - not because of the nudity, but because of the overall disturbing subject matter.  I wouldn't forbid a middle-schooler who wanted to read Maus, but it's not a children's book any more than Slaughterhouse-Five. Not because it's "harmful," but because it is upsetting; I'd encourage such a kid to talk to me about his or her reaction. 

I wondered if Maus was being assigned, if it was, because of an assumption that it's a "comic book" and therefore kid stuff.  I wouldn't be surprised, though that very question was discussed amply when it first appeared in the 1980s.  I'd like to think that teachers and librarians would know better, but I'd never assume that.  The bigots and frothers who are at the forefront of book restrictions do not know better, though: they simply want to control what others see.  Significantly, they never seem to recognize that in reviewing these materials, they themselves have been harmed.  It's only weaker vessels they pretend to worry about, and let me stress again that they want to keep other adults from having access to these and other materials.

I was lucky.  At my request, my parents gave permission for me to explore the grown-up section of the public library when I was in second grade.  I wanted to read an encyclopedia, as I recall (this was more than sixty years ago), and I didn't venture beyond that for a long time.  I didn't read Slaughterhouse-Five in middle school because it hadn't been published yet, but I did read Nineteen Eighty-four in sixth grade.  That was on my own initiative; I'd already read Orwell's Animal Farm.  I didn't understand the sexual parts, but I did understand the parts about controlling one's own memory, about the misuse of language, and about resisting political authority - which is more than can be said of many adults.

The role of parents is, I admit, difficult to define.  By custom and law they're given a great deal of power over what their children can read or watch or do.  This isn't always good for the children.  Even today there are parents in the US who don't think girls need schooling past the sixth grade, and not all of them are Amish.  Many parents try to exert authority over their kids even long after they're adults.  The older children grow, the less of a veto their parents should have over their lives.  Material about sex/gender and sexuality must be available once they reach puberty, because their parents can't be relied on to give them accurate information, and it is definitely harmful when a middle-school kid gets pregnant or catches a disease because they don't know how to protect themselves.  Right-wing religious parents are no help at all.  They'd rather children - their own, or other people's children - die rather than get the information they need.  An informed child is a threat to adult authority; that's why right-wing Christians have opposed laws against child abuse, it's not because they want to protect children - very much the opposite.

Take Your Medicine!

I should have posted this several days ago, but I don't think it's outdated yet.

As everyone probably knows, Pfizer's vaccine for COVID-19 has been approved for emergency use by the FDA, and the inoculations have begun.  (The Moderna vaccine seems poised for approval within a day or two.)  Not without some glitches, of course, especially as our rulers and betters have tried (often successfully) to jump in line ahead of unimportant, disposable people such as frontline healthcare workers.  And there have been some mixups in shipping sufficient numbers of doses, at both the Federal and state levels.  But it's okay, everything will work out eventually, we have to trust the experts and other authorities, especially now that Joe Biden has been elected and Science will save the day.

Once again, NPR's Morning Edition gave me food for thought, with indigestion, three stories in one day.  This one, for example, though it began by giving me a laugh when the host, Rachel Martin, said that most of the patients served by her interviewee are "first and second-generation Latinos."  Yes, I know what she meant, and it isn't entirely her fault since American discourse on ethnicity stinks to high heaven, but still.  She's using "Latino" as a racial category opposed to "whites," which is problematic for many reasons.  Imagine if she'd said "first or second-generation whites."  Really, Rachel, "first or second-generation Americans" would have done the job admirably, and it's what you meant anyhow.

Anyway, the physician Martin interviewed, Eva Galvez, gave this example of inadequate information among her patients.

It was a family who came in to get care for their children. And so the visit really was not a visit for Mom and Dad. But Mom asked me if the vaccine was safe, and she had heard some information on a social media platform that the vaccine had long-term side effects and that the vaccine was actually risky. And then she asked me, how can you ensure that this vaccine is safe? And then what I told her was that we had done very many studies, and it had gone through a rigorous process and that, based on my reading, that it was safe. And what I conveyed to her was that all vaccines have side effects, but that the risks of the side effects generally are less than the benefits of getting the vaccine. And that was how we ended up leaving the conversation. So she didn't tell me that she was going to get the vaccine, but she certainly seemed open to the vaccine. And so it's really fighting two battles here. One is trying to convince people that the vaccine is safe and that it is important, but at the same time is also trying to rectify all of those messages that they have been getting from other sources. So these conversations really do take time.

This is good, because instead of telling the woman she was stupid and anti-science, she took her questions seriously and tried to answer them.  But look at the bit about hearing on a social media platform that the vaccine had long-term deleterious effects.  That's not unreasonable or alarmist, though it's unavoidable given the rush to produce and certify the vaccine.  It should be remembered and stressed that the approval is for an emergency situation.  (It occurs to me also that flu vaccines, which must be revised each year, also don't get long-term studies before they're approved.)  The discussion I've found always focuses on immediate effects, such as pain at the injection site for a day of two afterward.  That, if I recall correctly, is also a possible effect of the flu shot and other vaccinations I've gotten in the past several years, though I've never experienced it.

So I appreciate Dr. Galvez' candor with her patients.  I'm not so happy with the next doctor Martin interviewed, Anthony Fauci.  Martin began with a typically dumb reporter's question, if the first inoculations "feel like the beginning of the end to you?"  Fauci responded with some vacuous platitudes.  Martin then asked wouldn't it be terrible if people refused to get the vaccine, and what should we do?

It isn't only African Americans. It's Latinx and many white people feel the same way. We've got to get the message across and explain to them what their hesitancy is and what their reluctance is and try and reason as to why they're understandable, but they're really not based on facts. If you look at what goes on historically with vaccines, overwhelmingly they are the safest and most effective interventions in medicine when it comes to infectious diseases. We've got to keep trying to get that message out because it's to the benefit of the individual, but to the benefit of the entire society.

I haven't been impressed by Fauci as a spokesman for Science.  There's no reason why he should be any good at it, I guess, but communication is part of a physician's job, and on top of that he has been anointed by the media as the Anti-Trump of the pandemic.  So it's not good that he says here that "we" should "explain to people what their hesitancy is and what their reluctance is and try and reason as to why they're understandable."  This is authoritarianism, understandable in a physician of Fauci's generation but unacceptable.  First you have to listen, to let them tell you what their hesitancy is.  Even if their hesitancy is irrational, as it often is; sometimes it isn't, though.  

After all, Fauci has been saying that Santa Claus "is exempt from this because Santa, of all the good qualities, has a lot of good innate immunity," a line that sounds as if it were composed by Pete Buttigieg's platitude AI.  USA Today explained, "But with millions of Americans already sick with COVID-19, children have been worried about Santa, especially this Christmas Eve when he visits millions of homes. And there's no denying that Santa, because he is older and overweight, would at first glance appear to be at higher risk of developing severe disease from COVID-19."  Speaking of "not based on facts," this is the trouble with impressing children with the reality of a mythical being: when something goes wrong, you have to come up with crap like Fauci's reassurance. But grandfatherly Dr. Fauci knows what's best for you.  

And today he told the nation that he'd given Santa the vaccine; even that he "measured [Santa's] immunity," which is how you say, not a thing.  I know he's a grandfather in private life, but Fauci comes across as the kind of patronizing adult who neither understands or likes children very much.

The fictional Santa is safe from COVID, it's true, but unfortunately he's not the only Santa.  On that same morning, Rachel Hubbard reported on Morning Edition that her parents play Santa and Mrs. Claus every year.

My dad is not a mall Santa. He and my mom live in Cordell, a small town about 100 miles west of Oklahoma City. Working in rural Oklahoma, my parents spend their time visiting with people at community events, in nursing homes and at schools. Most years on Christmas Eve, dad is visiting people in their homes. People just expect to see him around town.

"They've always seen Santa, and he's always been around when they need him, and he can just come by their house," my dad said. "It's just not the same this year." 

NPR is not usually kind to religious people and others who don't want to give up their traditions because of the pandemic, but apparently Santa cosplayers have special status.  However, as Hubbard acknowledged, Fauci's claim that Santa is immune isn't true.  I wonder if it even occurred to him that there are real people out there who have to cope with children's beliefs about them.  But Doctor knows best.

Stephen Arnold is president and CEO of the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas (IBRBS). He says at least three of the organization's 2,200 members have already died from the coronavirus. (One in Florida and two in Texas.)

"That has created consternation amongst ourselves. Whether we cancel the season altogether, whether we ignore the warnings or whether we find a compromise," Arnold said.

Many of these men rely on the Christmas season to supplement their income, so it isn't just a matter of self-regarding ego. 

According to an informal survey IBRBS did of its membership, about one quarter has decided to proceed with Christmas appearances without masks or social distance. Another quarter has canceled their seasons altogether, and the rest have landed somewhere in the middle.

Hubbard and her siblings are properly concerned about her parents' health.  Santas around the country have been creative in coming up with creative alternatives, and even Hubbard's parents have had to bend to reality.  If they are valuable to their community, and they clearly are, they need to be around next year too.

In a recent digital event, children were able to ask Santa questions. While there were questions about what kind of cookies Santa likes (sugar cookies with lots of sprinkles) and whether Rudolph always leads the sleigh (yes, his nose lights the way), kids also expressed anxiety about what was happening.

My dad told them this: "I know some of you are having to do school at home, and your parents might not be working right now. I just want to let you know that Christmas is going to be OK. Everyone is going to make it; we're going to make it through this."

I don't say this because I don't care about kids, but because I do.  It is a pity that Fred Rogers isn't with us anymore: he could have helped find ways to explain the pandemic to children without condescending or lying to them.  He's dead, though, so the rest of us must grow up and be helpers ourselves. Where children are concerned, Fauci isn't helping.

Resistance, even antagonism, to authority has its upside and its downside.  I think we've made a lot of progress in the past half-century when it comes to holding authorities accountable, requiring them to explain and justify themselves.  They still don't like it, and NPR is on their side, along with most corporate media.  We have to be responsible about it, not just yelling "No" like two-year-olds; we have to exercise critical thinking, as difficult and unpopular as that is with authoritarians.  There's no easy way to do it.  

I myself intend to be vaccinated when it becomes available to me, which will probably be in a few months.  But I'm glad for the interval, so I can wait and see how it goes in the meantime.

Situation Critical

I've been seeing more talk recently about "critical thinking" by secularist liberals, and it gives me more evidence that the people who rely on that slogan don't know what they're talking about.

Last weekend a friend posted a link on Facebook to a People for the American Way post about a right-wing radio host who'd been ranting against contraception.  It set off a flurry of comments bitching about the "media."  One person wrote:

The real problem is that no one in the media wants to "take sides" even when one side is based in reality and the other is a bunch of nonsense. So we treat both sides of a "controversy" (which is usually something long ago settled in scientific circles) as if both points of view were equally valid and people should "make up their own minds."

He (and some of the other commenters) reacted as though the radio ranter had been given a platform by CNN or the New York Times.  As far as I could tell, he was talking on his own radio show, and if anything, People For The American Way probably brought him more attention than he would have ever gotten if they'd just ignored him.

One of the warning signals of irrationality is riding your personal hobbyhorse and ignoring the actual situation and context you're reacting to.  While this commenter had a valid point about the way the corporate media handle controversy, it was irrelevant to the case he was talking about.  In doing so he revealed a disturbing authoritarian streak that I've often noticed among liberals and progressives.

It's part of the rationale for freedom of speech, press, and religion that people should be free to express even nutty, discredited, and hateful opinions, leaving others to "make up their own minds."  That the commenter chose to put that phrase in quotes implies to me that he doesn't think people should be left to make up their own minds.  It sounds like he thinks that if something was "long ago settled in scientific circles," there's no need to discuss it anymore, and the media should just ignore anyone who disagrees.  Which they do, on subjects they consider settled, like the importance of eliminating the Federal deficit, Obama's obligation to move to the center, the benefits of privatizing and corporatizing everything, and the necessity of going to war, and other such commonsense positions.  That the corporate media are willing to be one-sided about issues like these shows that they aren't quite as wishy-washy or dedicated to specious balance as many people think.

It's even arguable that they don't need to be balanced.  I think we'd all be better off if more people recognized that the corporate media are not unbiased, but present the news from the perspective of the investor class; the list of issues on which they feel no need to present "balance," compared to those they do, makes that clear enough.  The audience does need to "make up their own minds," because the First Amendment forbids the government to make up their minds for them.

Often, when a question has been long-settled in scientific circles, it's due for shaking up.  But that's not my point here.  The point is that people like creationists are generally well aware of the scientific consensus on the origins of life; they simply disagree with it, which is another matter altogether.  They generally don't understand the science very well, but neither do most of their lay scientific opponents.  So why not teach them?  Most students will never use the science that is drummed into them in class -- much of it will be outdated by the time they reach adulthood anyway -- but what they learn about the conflict will be useful to them throughout their lives.  Besides, teaching the conflict entails teaching the science: students will learn just as much, and probably more, as they would from the standard classroom method.

A disturbing number of people who favor critical thinking object vehemently to teaching the conflicts, and they often object in exactly that term: even to refute that nonsensical position is to give it too much respect.  For example, this citizen-activist has waged war against the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008, which the writer of the article calls "an insidious piece of legislation that allows teachers to bring in their own supplemental materials when discussing politically controversial topics like evolution or climate change."

Soon after the act was passed, some of his teachers began to not just supplement existing texts, but to rid the classroom of established science books altogether. It was during the process to adopt a new life science textbook in 2010 that creationists barraged Louisiana's State Board of Education with complaints about the evidence-based science texts. Suddenly, it appeared that they were going to be successful in throwing out science textbooks.

"Evidence-based science texts"!  The article goes on:

And indeed, Kopplin is a passionate defender of scientific inquiry, and vociferously rejects the notion that creationism and evolution should be taught side-by-side.

"Creationism is not science, and shouldn't be in a public school science class — it's that simple," he says. "Often though, creationists do not, or are unwilling, to recognize this." Science, he argues, is observable, naturalistic, testable, falsifiable, and expandable — everything that creationism is not.

As you can see, those teachers who chose to "rid the classroom of established science books altogether" are not teaching the conflict.  And instead of simply declaring the faults of Creationism, why not demonstrate them in the classroom? Since its faults are so glaring, it should be an easy task.  I have my differences with the late Carl Sagan, but I applaud his willingness, in Broca's Brain, to devote a chapter to refuting the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky.  It's significant, though, that he felt a need to justify the enterprise against critics who opposed criticizing a position that was long settled in scientific circles.

Kopplin is trying to make his position seem reasonable, but it's not.  There are other reasons to object to teaching the conflicts: lack of time, teachers who aren't competent to present the material, and the like.  But simply asserting your position and demanding that everyone else accept it is authoritarianism, and it doesn't matter if your position was reached originally through observations, tested, and could be falsified; the question is how you're going to teach it.

I'm trying to figure out what is "insidious" about the LSEA permitting teachers to bring in their own materials on controversial issues.  I thought teachers did that already: cutting out magazine clippings, making bulletin board displays, and the like.  Would Kopplin and the Guardian writer object to a teacher bringing in his or her own outside material on same-sex marriage, the Civil Rights movement, drone warfare?  Maybe there's something about the law that privileges only certain viewpoints, but I can't tell from the article.  True, it's apparent that many Louisiana teachers are abusing the law to advance their own position, but why shouldn't they?  On Kopplin's assumptions, there's no need to cover a variety of views in a class, just the right one.  Creationists agree with him.

Science, like most school subjects, is taught in an authoritarian way.  Yours not to question why you're reading Shakespeare or dissecting a cat, yours to do the assignment.  That's not necessarily a bad thing -- critical thinking doesn't play a role in learning to play the piano or dance ballet either.  But there shouldn't be any pretense of teaching the student critical-thinking skills in that case.  I’m with Gerald Graff: “I’m a believer in the pedagogical and civic value of bad argument. I think a culture of crude and crudely polarized debate is an advance over the Eisenhower era I grew up in, where conflicts were mushed over in a haze of evasive rhetoric.”

Today another friend posted a link to a Paul Krugman column on critical thinking, which concluded:

In her parting shot on leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton said of her Republican critics, “They just will not live in an evidence-based world.” She was referring specifically to the Benghazi controversy, but her point applies much more generally. And for all the talk of reforming and reinventing the G.O.P., the ignorance caucus retains a firm grip on the party’s heart and mind. 

"Evidence-based"!  That's as annoying as "reality-based," because it's just as bogus.  Democrats also believe what they want in defiance of the evidence: that Barack Obama is as different from George W. Bush as day is from night, that he is the great liberal / progressive hope, that he wants to protect "entitlements" while reforming them just a little, that he is a supporter of democracy the world over, that he ended the wars, that he stands firmly with ordinary Americans against the bosses and the banksters, and so on.

My friend wrote this comment on his link to Krugman: "Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach 'critical thinking skills,' because, it said, such efforts 'have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.'  Well, that much is true.  I remember how in the 1970s, the Christian Right in Indiana opposed bills against child abuse because they would undermine parental authority, and they were right too.  And how many teachers want their students exercising critical thinking in the classroom?  Critical thinking undermines all authority.  And the Right has no objection to doing so when authority is being exercised by liberals and Democrats: stories about simple Christian students who easily defeat and embarrass their smart-aleck infidel professors are popular folklore, for example, and students who petition their schools to allow prayers at Commencement get support from conservative parents and civic leaders.  (But compare this story about a student who blocked prayer at his commencement.  "'They just wanted to be able to attend their commencement without feeling like an outcast,' ACLU NC legal advisor Chris Brook said."  I suppose I sympathize, but the First Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right not to feel "like an outcast" -- rather the opposite.)

Critical thinking cuts both ways.  (Or rather, all ways.)  It's supposed to.  But what bothers me is that many of the people calling for teaching critical thinking haven't mastered the skills themselves, and turn out not to know what they are.  Critical thinking doesn't mean dismissing absurd unfounded views; it means engaging with them.   If they really are so absurd, it should be easy to refute them.  It takes some time and work, but that's part of the price of living in a hypothetically free society.