Anonymous Cowards

So, I just googled my real name (for slightly random reasons that are partly to do with a career workshop I was just at) and discovered that

1) most of the first page is not about anyone with my real name, but about an actress that shares my last name who played a character who shares my first name.

2) The first real mention of me was of an award I forgot that I had received. What makes it extra cool is that it's from grad school - which I dropped out of - which actually makes it good to mention because it helps to show that I simply refined what I wanted to do rather than completely changed course or completely flunked out.

CLA also reminded me that I keep forgetting to put down that I've presented a paper at a conference before. Which is part of what made this conference kinda of a weird experience. I've never been to a conference for work before, but I've been to a couple similar things for school, I've tagged along with my dad to one of his before, and with my mom to a couple of hers*, I've presented a paper at one myself before (as a student) and I've even helped my dad and the team he was working with teach full day workshops. I realized once it was all over that I wasn't at all nervous about what to expect, which is weird for me when I'm going to public things like this for the first time. But, really, it wasn't the first time, which is why I was so very not nervous at all.

2) The second is also from grad school - and includes a really bad picture of me.

3) The third is from undergraduate. (Not so) Boring school stuff. A better picture of me. I actually really wish I could share this. It was lots of fun. :)

4) My real name is in no way connected to this blog. Except in the google search I just did. Heh.

5) My alma mater finally deleted my first web page. Written all in html - text only - and uploaded using pine and FTP transfer. I hope I have a copy somewhere.....

One last question. Because of #1, I'm guessing any prospective employer googling my name will add stuff to it to try to find me and not the actress. But I can't think of what - any ideas?

*Yeah, I know you aren't technically supposed to be able to do that. When I went with my dad, it was being held at the Anaheim convention center. We parked at the convention center, I went to Disneyland, he went to the convention, we met for lunch, etc. I wasn't actually "at" the convention, but I spent some time wandering around the convention center and peeking into meeting rooms while I was there. When I went with my mom, it was for a kid's lit conference that's held every year at a local private college. One of her co-workers wasn't able to make it to the dinner, so I got the co-worker's ticket.

Games Good, Books Bad?

In a recent discussion over a Feminist Gamers, the topic of controversies over books versus controversies over games came up.

(pretty much, someone said something to the effect of "books never get treated this way!" and I called bullshit.)

Might Ponygirl replied with

But I think that videogames just don’t enjoy the sort of support in their controveries that books do.

Which is true, but "books have it bad too!" really wasn't the point I was trying to make. But then I wasn't really sure what my point was at the time, and my point wasn't the topic of discussion. The good news: I figured out what I want to say, and I have my own blog to say it at.

And really, I did say it in my comment over there, I just didn't explain it very well.

[P]eople rarely see “bad” books as evidence that books are bad, even though that’s exactly what they do when it comes to TV, movies, and games.

The flipside to this - the one that people rarely see - is that this also means that you now have the issue of what qualifies as a book. Most often, the debate is phrased as whether something is "really" literature. In my line of work the question often becomes whether it's something the parent will accept as fulfilling the requirement that they "read more and goof around less." (Needless to say, graphic novels rarely count, despite their growing popularity.)

Like a lot of common misconceptions, this doesn't seem, on the face of it, like a bad thing. And it isn't always. Parents should push their kids to to challenge themselves, and I don't believe that kids get as much from reading Goosebumps as they get from reading Bridge to Terabithia.

But there's the catch, the requirement that they get something out of it. Pleasure apparently doesn't qualify as "something" in that sentence.

(And now my ADD brain is remembering a conversation I had recently with someone about how we don't get enough vacation time. Back to the topic at hand....)

Whenever I suggest a book, and the kid says yes but the parent says no, it's almost always because it's not "serious" enough. Whenever a kid asks for a book, and the parent says no, the most common reason given (aside from cost) is that it's not "what they should be reading" - as in, you should be reading something that isn't called Captain Underpants and isn't full of pictures.

Now, I'm not saying that books have it worse than games. They don't. (Recent library workshop aside) Games can only dream of qualifying as worthwhile in their own right, rather than as a way to trick kids into doing something worthwhile. Even TV, which I think is much more limited in possible educational value than video games are, is more likely to be labeled as educational than any video game. What I'm saying is that the problems that books do have overlap with the problems that games have, so displays of sibling rivalry are hardly helpful.

Lauren wrote at Feministe that

The part that’s insidious for me is labeling the [Baby Einstein] videos “educational” when “entertainment” is clearly more honest. When parents start scheduling them into the child’s day, they’re doing so in their children’s best interest, but potentially to the detriment of the child’s education. Especially when a parent who is interesting in helping to further the child’s education might have better tools available to them for a similar price.

And I have to agree. But the problem is that you aren't supposed to give anything to small children that isn't explicitly educational, so there's really no other way to market them except to say that they are good because they are educational. And the AMA's dishonesty about why such videos are bad for kids** gives the companies even more incentive to lie about their product than they would have otherwise. Disney can't make ads simply saying that they are the best entertainment videos for babies and toddlers (even though I think they are) because such things are not supposed to exist.

One thing I do disagree with Lauren about is the type of educational value the Baby Einstein's videos have. Supposedly, it's all in rote learning - people seem to think the videos act like flash cards. However, If you watch the videos it's clear that kids mostly learn from them by processing the stories, the same kind of learning that we supposedly encourage when the stories are told through other mediums. To me, this confusion implies that the value we place on storytelling depends highly on the medium through which the story is told. Which, in turn, suggests that the greatest value we place on storytelling is on it's ability to familiarize children with the "right" kinds of mediums - or facts and skills. Stories themselves have dubious value, perhaps because their intent is to entertain as well as teach. The perception seems to be that, once kids can read, unless they are clearly "reading to learn" something specific, reading is not always good for them.

****************

Books are challenged and banned for all kinds of reasons, but there is a common thread running through all the challenges to books for children*** - and no, it's not religious beliefs or sexual content. It's whether or not the book counts as "literature." Controversial topics are usually considered ok, so long as the book is clearly lecturing at them. That's why books are more likely to get support when they are challenged. Since it's the actual message itself that's being debated and not the basic content, you have an easier time finding people who agree with the message strongly enough to fight for it.

The children's novels that made it to the ALA's top ten challenged books for 2006 are the Gossip Girls series, the Alice series, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, the Scary Stories series, Athletic Shorts, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The Chocolate War****. The adult novels are Beloved and The Bluest Eye. So, sex, obviously, is a big no-no. And anything that suggest that the white, heterosexual man is not the center of the universe.

But apparently, kids having fun isn't really a good thing either.

(In fact, I'd say this is a big part of why sex is a no-no. Sex without procreation has no value other than fun.)

While there are plenty of books that kids ask for by name because they have to read it, there are fewer that kids ask for because they want to read them. Yet, out of all seven of the kid's books on that list, there are only two books that I've never been asked for by name, by a kid, who wanted to read it for fun. I'm not going to count the hundreds of thousands of books in the store and library to do the math, but fairly certain that 70% of the books in either place don't fit into that category.

Even more than that, four of those books are ones that reluctant readers - several, in fact - have asked for by name. I don't need to do the math to be absolutely certain that the number of books in the store and library that fit into that category is much, much lower than 50+ percent.

Now, again, I'm all for parents pushing kids to challenge themselves.

Still, I find it telling that the Gossip Girls is number two on the list of most challenged books for 2006, and yet the CW started a new series based on the books this fall. (Presumably aimed at a similarly aged audience.)

The contrast between the Harry Potter movies' sucess and book challenges made more sense, because it tends to be just a select group of people who dislike Harry Potter so much that they think kids shouldn't read it. But nobody likes the Gossip Girls. Well, no adult anyway. So while I'm sure that there are lots of kids who will be told that they can't read or watch Gossip Girls, I'm sure there's also a great many whose parents and teachers and librarians try to talk them out of reading Gossip Girls but whose parents won't care about them watching Gossip Girls any more or less than any other TV show.

Now, parents don't hate these books because they are fun, they just see fun as having extremely limited value.***** There's this idea that's taken root in our collective minds that, unless something is explicitly educational or healthy, it's probably bad for kids.

Or maybe it's that, if kids are having fun, they can't possibly be learning as well. So it's one thing for them to watch Gossip Girl, it's another for them to suck all the educational value out of reading by reading trashy books.

I think it's probably both, depending on the situation.

We need to educate people on the health and educational benefits that video games have. The internet and TV too. But we need to advocate for kids' right to have fun as well. Even if for no other reason than because the idea that fun is a privilege, not a right, leads us to cut off kids access to things that are explicitly good for them. Like exercise (ie, recess) for grade schoolers, or books for reluctant readers. Even the dynamic that Lauren decries in her post is one in which parents choose to have their kids watch Baby Einstein videos rather than play in healthier ways because the supposed rote learning they get from the videos is thought of as more educational that the learning they get through play.





*That and we think kids are really stupid - Baby Einstein couldn't possibly teach through stories because babies are too young to process stories. Never mind that they do so all the time. (I let go, it falls.)

**All kinds of studies supposedly say that any time watching TV lowers vocabulary, but I've yet to see one that doesn't make some stupid decision, like not control for time spent talking to parents or lumps kids who watch TV and play with books with kids who just watch TV.

***Children's books that children are meant to read themselves, rather than books like And Tango Makes Three which is primarily meant to be read to them.

****The common perception is that The Chocolate War is literature, but it's placement on the list is a holdover from when this was not the common perception, back when it came out and, along with The Outsiders and other peers, created the YA genre.

****We also think kids are excessively stupid. Like, kids who will be able to vote in two years are completely and totally unable to distinguish fact from badly written wish-fulfillment fiction. Have I mentioned that yet?

Confused

Can someone explain to how this doesn't violate Title IX i just about every way imaginable?

(via Pandagon)

And "are you on your period?" ?!?!?!?!

ven aside from obviously being a sadistic control freak, it would really help if the people in charge of creating and implementing this policy knew more than your average high school guy does about menstruation. I don't know about you, but even though I am now on an almost textbook 28 day cycle - I wasn't back in my teen years. And I'm still not when I'm under a lot of stress. Ergo, there is always a small pad in my purse/backpack/whatever for emergencies.

(Course, I'm also trying to figure out how they carry lunch money around. Loose change doesn't work the way loose books do, and not all clothes have pockets, to my everlasting dismay.)

ddr in schools

Just in case anyone hadn't heard this story yet, one of the bits of information given to us at the workshop I went to today (on Gaming @ Libraries) is that Virginia middle schools are using Dance Dance Revolution in PE classes.


Apparently, the kids love it.

So far.

:)

Things They Don't Teach in High School

When the teachers and the books were talking about the connections between the Suffragettes and the banning of alcohol...

(which, is it just me, or does anyone else feel like the vast majority of the reasons given in high school for the passing of the 19th Amendment was chalked up to either "men as benevolent leaders" or "women as moralizing whiners"?)

...why, oh, why were we never told that better statutory rape laws were advocated for and passed due to the hard work of the Women's Temperance movement? And that the age of consent before then was 10.

10!

No, I didn't learn this until today when I began reading The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. Which I'm finding both frustrating (see below) and illuminating (see above).

Resolved, not to talk about myself or my feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self-restrained in conversation and actions. To not let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself in others more.

(from the diary of a 19 year old, 1892 - emphasis mine)

The one thing about the book so far that I really question is how the author keeps characterizing such statements as indicating that girls in the past cared less about appearance. This passage in particular seems to me to indicate that what has changed has been which part of themselves girls focus on cutting down to size, not that girls in the past were more focused on improving character than girls are now.

This may be true in the sense that there's less focus today on girls being good and on society being moral than there used to be, but when "improving character" is defined mainly as being selfless to the point of silence, it seems to me that the biggest change is the way in which girls are pressured to be objects, not in the reasons why girls do things.

Damn

Now I actually have to do one of these things.

OK, here goes.

1) My first crush was on an anime character. And since I'm not that young it was - of course -

Rick Hunter!

(My little brother teased me about that for years, the little snot.)

ROBOTECH RULES!

As does Fraggle Rock, The Gummi Bears, and Voltron.

Power Rangers and that stupid purple dinosaur can kiss my you know what. Children's librarian be damned - I only have to pretend they're cool when the kids are around.

2) I like to drink pickle juice.

Not all the time, but I really, really like pickles. Not the big ones that you can barely fit in your mouth, but the thin wedges that let the juice dribble along your tongue. Once I start, I have a hard time stopping. And if my craving isn't satisfied when the jar is empty, I'll pour a couple shots worth of pickle juice into one of those itty bitty jam glasses and sip it slowly.

3) I am currently watching Reminington Steele.

(Well, technically, I'm currently at work, but you know what I mean.)

Earlier this week, I picked up seasons 1, 4 and 5 (which, from what I can tell looks to be only a single episode) for a total of less than $40. It is soooooooo my new guilty pleasure.

Yes, the pseudo-early 80's-feminism is grating, the storylines are just awful for the most part, and Remington Steel can be quite the dick (sigh - yes, pun intended).

However - it's Pierce Brosnan! A young Pierce Brosnan!! Who runs around getting into fistfights with mob hit men after falling into overly large water harzards at miniature golf courses!!! And occasionally gets his ass handed to him by his (inconsistently) competent female boss/partner/....whatever!!!!

God I love technology. What would I do without the internet and TV shows on DVD? Read even more novels, I suppose.

4) I didn't get my driver's license until I was 24.

And yes, I grew up in southern California.

Somehow the whole fascination with cars and being able to drive on our horrendous freeways completely passed me by. I don't think it really helped that my physics professor father would explain physics to me using the relative momentum and stopping time required for various vehicles at typical speeds. Neither, I'm sure, did the fact that I was perfectly capable of grasping everything he was trying to explain to me.

I also failed my first driver's test because I didn't wait for a pedestrain. Now, it should be noted that said pedestrian was about to jaywalk and was obviously doing the sensible thing and waiting for me to continue on my way. But it was still a stupid thing for me to do during a driving test.

5) I almost got a perfect score on the logic portion of the GREs.

(and I knew which two questions were wrong when I turned the test in, but I didn't have time to fix them, dammit!)

Not, of course, that you'd know it from my blog posts. But then my score had everything to do with my doing logic puzzles for fun in junior high and in no way reflected my abilty to string words together persuasively and coherently.

BONUS!

I usually hate these things - and love them at the same time. Generally, I hate chain letters, and these things are kinda like chain letters. I especially hate figuring out who to pass them onto, so I usually don't. Except these memes are fun - but too fun because I keep wanting to go off on tangents and add more stuff.

But I had to do this one either way bc it was 100littledolls that tagged me, and I feel bad for not emailing her the words of support that wouldn't post to her blog for some reason.

So, I did it! But I'm not passing it on yet. I'm going to wait for that. And I may. Or may not. You can drop hints if you want to be tagged. Or I may decide to keep it all to myself. I'm weirdly anti-social that way.