An Evening with Bruce Coville
May 11th, 2006 by Christopher Harris
One of my favorite programs our School Library System supports is our Visiting Author series. I love getting to meet so many fascinating people with such diverse life experiences. My predecessor had the brilliant idea of extending this to provide an evening where librarians and others could join together for a conversation with authors. The latest evening for our Chapters program involved author and audiobook producer Bruce Coville. I just finished listening to the Full Cast Audiobook production of Tamara Pierce’s Circle of Magic series.
Though everyone loved Bruce’s storytelling (and his jokes!), the best part of the evening was Bruce’s exploration of boys and reading. We have been focusing on boys and reading as a theme throughout the year, so this was a wonderful conclusion. And, let me tell you, this was a series finale to rival anything coming out of Hollywood these next two weeks!
The problem, Bruce began by telling us, is that our great American culture despises its children. Eh? This can be seen, he went on to explain in the issues we are facing regarding boys and reading. Males don’t tend to read because they learn from a very early age that reading is feminine. Boys learn this because almost all of the teachers, librarians, and other people they interact with when they are young are female. Why aren’t there more male elementary teachers? Bruce suggests it is because we don’t value teachers…because we despise our children. Since children have no power, there is no power gained through interacting with them. Therefore most males avoid the field. Most of the men that do enter elementary education are pushed to become principals. Our culture assumes there must be something wrong, Bruce explained, with a male who would choose to relinquish power and serve the greater good by educating children. Because…all together now…our culture despises its children.
He went into some interesting historical detail, discussing the three phases of childhood we have seen so far (very Postman-esque). The first stage lasted from the ancient days through about 1950 – it was a time when children were an economic concern. Families had children because more hands were needed for manual labor. The work these children did was real and their contributions critical to the very survival of their family and community. After World War II, however, things began to change. As our country began to become more urban and manual labor was mechanized children began to become objects of adoration. Not love, mind you, but adoration. They were placed on pedestals and admired, but not allowed any real contributions. Bruce explained that growing up in that time was fun, but not very meaningful. Now we are moving into a third stage. Children today are becoming consumers. The “Under 18″ demographic has some of the highest disposable income and is a prime marketing segment. Again, it might be fun to be a child today, but we have dropped through the bottom of the meaningful scale to the point where children are being harmed by constant commercial bombardments.
As Bruce explained, this complex thought can really be reduced to a single measurement. Is the work with which our students are engaged meaningful? Does it fulfill the needs of both the mind and the heart? In this age of testing, however, much of the work forced upon students is neither meaningful nor fulfilling. Filling in little bubbles so you can receive a meaningless score on a four point scale is just not authentic in any way…
So I ask, why do we as a culture despise our children so very, very much?