Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books

Philip Nel is the author of “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature and the Need for Diverse Books,” a 2017 book that helped launch a conversation about racism in children’s books that led to a recent decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to stop publishing six of the prolific author’s books.

Nel, who is a professor of English at Kansas State University and director of the children’s literature program there, spoke with me about the book a few years ago. I republished the conversation here earlier this year when it was falsely reported that a Virginia school district had banned the books of Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel.

No, a Virginia school district didn’t ban Dr. Seuss books. Here’s what really happened.

Nel is back with this post, in which he discusses racism in children’s books and the way the issue has become politicized. At the heart of his piece is this:

“Why not break up with your favorite racist childhood classics? Maybe doing so will break your heart a little. But, to quote a line attributed to Rumi (but which is probably not him), ‘You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.’"

By Philip Nel

It is possible to cancel a culture. More than 300 Indigenous languages were once spoken in the United States. Only about 175 of those languages remain today. Colonization, genocide, forced assimilation have all been very effective at canceling cultures.

However, the “cancel culture” that animates professional grievance actors today refers to culture under no threat of cancellation. Dr. Seuss books. Muppets. Disney. White innocence. Because it’s hard to cancel a dominant culture. “Cancel culture” is a White supremacist fantasy that creates villains and then mobilizes anger against the villains it CONTINUE READING: Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic books - The Washington Post

Beverly Cleary, Age 104 | Live Long and Prosper

Beverly Cleary, Age 104 | Live Long and Prosper

Beverly Cleary, Age 104

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF MY READING INSTRUCTION

I taught third grade in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time the “teach to the test” trend hadn’t infiltrated America’s public school classrooms. We gave a standardized test, but it didn’t determine who went to fourth grade, didn’t enter into my evaluation, and didn’t have anything to do with how much money the school got. In fact, “teaching to the test” was considered bad pedagogy and limiting to the scope of the everyday classroom experience. We were, therefore, pressured NOT to “teach to the test.”

At that time in my teaching career, I considered my daily read aloud the most important part of my reading instruction.

If we had a fire drill, assembly, tornado drill, or any other interruption to the day, the only thing that I made sure I finished for that day was the daily read-aloud. I would do as much of the rest of the curriculum as I could, of course, but read aloud was sacrosanct. It was the one part of the day that I made a conscious effort never to miss. What are the benefits of reading aloud that make it so important? In his classic, Read-Aloud Handbook, Jim Trelease lists these five reasons for reading aloud…

1. it builds vocabulary
2. it conditions the child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure
3. it creates background knowledge
4. it provides a reading role model
5. it plants the desire to read

I was convinced then, and I still believe, that children who are read to, feel good about reading. Children who feel good about reading are motivated to read to CONTINUE READING: Beverly Cleary, Age 104 | Live Long and Prosper