Content notes
How much attention to what children read is too much? Andrew Doyle writes:
Yet perhaps it is unsurprising that activists who are convinced that language causes real-world “harm” should be troubled by the reading habits of children. After all, it’s hardly a fringe view: the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Cambridge this month suggested that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series ought to come with “content notes” (a substitute phrase for “trigger warnings” given that the word “trigger” connotes violence and might therefore induce trauma).
Ok hang on. It’s clear that Doyle disapproves, but lots of books include content notes, including novels written 50 or 100 or 200 years ago. It can be good to know what a barouche landau is, or how entailment worked, or the background of the Reform Act. I feel this somewhat sharply in the case of Wilder, because I loved her novels as a child, and read them over and over, and as an adult I’m aware that there are things that need explaining. The one that sticks out is the fact that Pa tried to steal a piece of land in an area set aside for Native Americans who had already been brutally expelled from the eastern part of the country. Needless to say that’s not how Wilder puts it, and children don’t just naturally know the facts. That kind of thing forms how and what people think, so yes, it should be annotated. Why not? (Don’t get me started on Gone With the Wind, which should be thrown out rather than annotated.)
Doyle doesn’t agree but I think he skates over the “children don’t just naturally know the facts” problem.
This fear that children might be morally corrupted by “problematic” literature might explain the sudden deluge of progressive children’s books on the market: just as children are deemed so malleable that they might transform into bigots if they read outdated work, it is assumed that they can be indoctrinated in the “correct” way if their reading materials are layered with messaging that reinforces the creed of social justice.
It’s not necessarily a fear that children might be morally corrupted by “problematic” literature though: it can be an awareness that children might learn factually false or incomplete history.
Indeed. My understanding is that there’s a huge difference in how Germany and Japan treat and teach the history of WWII. The Germans, from what I’ve heard, do a pretty good job of teaching about the Holocaust. Japan apparently skates over the aggression of thirties and most of the war until it comes to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Exactly. It’s not the case that children just naturally learn True Correct history, and that’s all there is to it. They only know what they’ve been taught, and there’s no law of nature that says everything they’re taught will be accurate and fair and true.
I share Doyle’s dubiosity.
Literature isn’t for teaching true and correct and fair history. And anyway even well-meaning editors can be wrong. Maybe we should be explaining that to children.
I remember one of the first assignments in my first university history course was to do a book review. We were to point out the books strengths and weaknesses, particularly any mistakes, errors, or distortions. I was shocked. Mistakes? How could it be wrong It must have been true! It was printed and everything!
Ah, to be so young and naive.
Not Bruce, one of my first assignments in my master’s program was to review a peer-reviewed article and determine whether the research was correctly done, the correct statistics were used, the conclusion matched the results, etc etc etc. I thought, wait. I just barely finished my bachelor’s degree, and I’m supposed to be reviewing an article written by Ph.D.s and reviewed by five Ph.D.s before it was published? Insane!
I found quite a few problems with the article. I wonder what else I might find if I reviewed it again, now that I actually have had stats classes, have a Ph.D. of my own, and have done research?
Well, “literature isn’t for teaching true and correct and fair history,” but that doesn’t mean there can’t ever be editions with notes does it? And does all fiction count as “literature”? And so on. I’m still not convinced that it’s a bad idea to have an introduction or end notes or similar for Laura Ingalls Wilder novels – not least because her daughter had a much larger hand in writing them than anyone would guess from the absence of her name. I share some of Doyle’s dubiosity but I don’t think No Notes Allowed is reasonable.
I’m not against having content notes at all. I think it’s a good idea, just as it can be a good idea to have explanations of the historical context of ‘problematic’ statues rather than pulling them down.
But as I was thinking that, I was also thinking “but who’s going to write the content notes?”
latsot, yeah, that’s part of my problem with them.
Historical context is important; that together with definitions of hard words or outdated objects is reasonable. But Doyle’s conflation of “context notes” with “trigger warnings” makes me think that’s not what he’s worried about.
I know that some fictional content can be distressing, and I agree that it’s good to help children (and teens) learn to process such content.
I don’t trust the current crop of self-appointed moral arbiters to do a good job it; that’s my main problem with the project. Though I admit Cambridge’s description of what they’re doing doesn’t sound bad.
I have an (admittedly vague) idea that teachers should address the issue in the generic as well as the specific, by emphasizing critical reading skills so that children can learn to contextualize fiction for themselves. Maybe that’s too much to ask of a ten year old.
But I didn’t say anything about fictional content that’s distressing. I said anything about historical accuracy. Granted I think accuracy about, I don’t know, what fashionable color people liked during the middle of Victoria’s reign is interesting but less needed than setting the story straight about Pa Ingalls’s theft of land, but even that isn’t because of distress but rather because it matters.
You didn’t, but Doyle did. I was reading you as if you were disagreeing with Doyle’s point, which was really about trigger warning-type content notes, instead of as “But content notes in themselves aren’t a bad thing,” which I see now is all’s you meant. My inner Devil’s Advocate was working overtime.
*Emily Litella voice* Never mind.
Hahahahaha what would we do without the Litella “never mind.”