Whingerama - but with a twist

[steepholm]

In their second year our students get the chance to do a year’s exchange with a university in the US. I was recently sent the list of courses they are able to take when they’re there. There are 38 of them, slicing up various taxonomies: the big authors (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton), the periods (British Literature of the Romantic Era, Victorian Poetry, Modern Drama), the provenances (African Literature, Caribbean Literature), the genres (Nature Writing, Introduction to Folklore), the theories (Feminist Literary Criticism, Lesbian Texts/Queer Theories) and the crossovers (Fiction into Film).

Isn’t it strange that, of all the 38 courses being offered to exchange students, one and one only carries the admonitory rider: “May not be used to satisfy the literature requirement of the College of Humanities and Sciences.”



Why, children’s literature of course!

In the sour mood engendered by this, I listened to Midweek this morning and heard (at least partly) Prokofiev’s grandson talking about Peter and the Wolf. Spoiling for a fight, I heard him say:

“Because it was for children he just didn’t analyze or think about what he was doing too much, he just let the music come out, and that’s maybe the secret of its power.”

Of course, this is deeply patronizing to people who write (music, books, whatever) for children, effectively reducing them to children themselves – people who succeed by being unaware and not thinking. And, by extension, this is pretty insulting to children too.

All the same, I wonder if it might not be true, at least for some people, that the consciousness of a child audience allows them to loosen up, much as a glass or two of red wine, or a shot of whisky, might for others?

Comments

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

My SLAC has an annual Children's Literature conference -- apparently a big thing. I mentioned that fjm might be approached about coming and presenting, and was rebuffed. Apparently, this is about the writers, and aimed at the people who deal with children -- the Ed degree people. No theory, nothing that requires difficult thought or an adult approach ... I know it's not what you're talking about, but the idea that Children's and YA Lit is, and should only be, the purview of the Education folk, rather than treated as its own genre, is something I find particularly irritating. It's a different kind of patronizing attitude, and in a way, also infantilizing, I think.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think it's all part of the same kind of patronizing attitude, or at least cousin-german to the other kind. A bit like saying the science fiction should be of interest only to scientists, fantasy to psychologists, historical fiction to historians, etc.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Of course, the responses I swallowed were all pretty patronizing, too. THe range from comments on the value of an Ed degree and the "expertise" one guarantees to one on the fact that the "conference" looks like a marketing boondoggle and a way for K-12 teachers to get 'continuing ed.' credits (they have to get a certain amount) by having children's authors pimp their books to the misleading nature of calling such a thing a conference when scholarship is clearly unwelcome...

I'll message you the link :-)

[jadelennox]

Where I did my children's literature degree, there is STILL bad blood with the library school at the education school that the children's literature program dares to think of itself as a literary theory program and refuses to be swallowed up by a more appropriate home. though I think the real reason for the bad blood is that the children's literature people are smarter about books than the education and library school people -- and I say that is somebody with degrees from both the children's literature AND the library school program.

[mraltariel.livejournal.com]

Maybe the idea of writing for children frees some people from the tyranny of the judgement of their peers, and allows them to express something of what they really think and feel. Which is sad on so many levels. Well, two levels. (Actually, I think I detected 5 levels...)

Anyway, I think it explains why children's literature, on the whole, is much better than what passes for modern adult fiction. About which I can grumble for Britain. But I won't. Promise.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

*nods head off*

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I was just discussing Roger Sutton's recent flag-waving with someone who's a professional in the US (and also a 'recreational reader' of YA - don't worry!), and she said that she'd seen people in YALSA and the like saying they only read children's and YA in the same prescriptive tone usually used to talk about literary fiction or 'non-genre' (ha). I still think it might be a lot of defensiveness, but it was interesting... (Though NOT related to the beyond-irritating fact that the children's lit courses can't apply to the lit degree.)

Anyway, a greater freedom to play with writing when writing for children might have something in it, though it wouldn't come close to being universally applicable, of course. But I did think of John Green, and couldn't easily imagine a very respected, prize-winning author of adult books* doing the equivalent of the Brotherhood 2.0 project not only publicly, but in a way which so completely involved his/her readers (including the not-just-recreational* ones!)

* Standard disclaimers apply, as I know you know.

[jadelennox]

Diana Wynne Jones has that essay on why she thinks her books for children are better than her books for adults, and well I think some of the things she says that are disingenous, she has some very good points.

In general, I just find that books written for children and young adults have more happening, because there is assumption, true or not, the young readers won't tolerate long passages of introspection or philosophizing. I don't know if its true young readers, but it is certainly true of me, so I hugely prefer the pace of children's and young adult literature.

Although Roger would say it's because I need to grow up. *is thankfully anonymous under this account so can be very huffy*

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I recall a Radio 4 documentary (on over Xmas?) which offered a pretty weighty analysis and set of interpretations in light of Russian history (allegory about Stalinism or something?) and tracking down the real Peter. I was only half listening so may be imagining parts.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

We used to get students who weren't doing too well at creative writing in year 1 and who proposed doing the year 2 Writing for Children module because they thought it would be easier. We always told them to do no such thing because it was in fact harder; if they couldn't keep adults interested there was sod all chance of satisfying a far more exacting audience. I'm glad to say we haven't had this problem for some years; they seem to have caught on.

Re the analogy, I write worse when I've had any alcohol and I suspect it's never actually helped anybody.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I think the connection with depts of Education makes a lot of academics suspicious of children's lit. Which is snobbish on the one hand, but you know where I'm coming from & that I speak sooth when I say some of the snobbery about the discipline of Education has a basis in reality. I know of at least one dept. of English which makes a lot of noise about its teaching and research in children's lit, and they, um, let's say, they lack rigour. Now, one lot letting the side down is no reason to be prejudiced against the whole field, but I think whenever people are sceptical (as they once were about, say, postcolonial literature), they tend to cite the worst examples, an there is no discipline without its share of fools. Certainly an utterly gruesome seminar in that dept. on The Lion King pops into my head whenever someone says "children's drama and film". All disciplines, even English lit. itself, have had their skirmishes with the forces of Canonicity, and Canonicity usually loses. So have courage!
There's another thing here though. I think children's lit. occupies a slightly different position from, say postcolonial lit. or even "genre" fiction, in that studying it threatens people's memories of childhood reading. Reading a beloved book as an adult (Puck of Pook's Hill is going very well btw -- I had forgot the gorillas, but remembered I never liked them) is always disconcerting on some level, and I think many people's response to that is I would prefer not to, because they have put away childish things, and that's that. On the one hand it's an oddly anti-intellectual attitude for academics to take, but I think its origins lie in the threat of disappointment, not in a snobbish perception of the low status of children's lit.

[jadelennox]

see, the funny thing is that I have never been to a children's literature conference that wasn't incredibly rigorous and intellectual. The Popular Culture Association conference and accompanying journals, on the other hand, appall me with their lack of rigor, where those papers seem to follow neither the standards of the social sciences nor of textual analysis. And yet -- speaking as someone who is in both fields -- I wouldn't say that either one "doesn't meet the qualifications for distribution requirement/degree". I would just insist that the class were taught with rigor if I were in charge of the program. And if it's not taught with rigor, why is it an academic program at all?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I do like the image of academics keeping children’s lit off the curriculum because they can’t bear to see Winnie-the-Pooh dissected on the critical slab! I have had this cited to me by potential students as a reason for being wary of the subject, but with academics it tends to issue snobbishly, whatever the underlying motivational anxieties.

I think you're right that there's a historical problem in terms of the field's origins in areas that some academics see as intellectually infra dig. But, as you point out, the fact that there’s some poor work in the field is irrelevant to the status of a course if there’s also enough good work out there to support it, which in this case there undoubtedly is. (We wouldn’t disqualify medicine as a rigorous subject because of its dubious origins in humour theory, or because there are still some quacks about.)

It’s also true that children's literature scholars are a mixed community. This has its good points and its bad. On the one hand...

... the teaching of children’s literature within Higher Education today draws on a variety of disciplines. The familiar approaches available from literary criticism and theory have been supplemented by cultural studies, childhood studies, developmental psychology, visual design, and educational and literacy theory. This multiple heritage is one of the subject’s strengths: children’s literature, long considered a marginal area of English studies, can rightly claim to be a paradigmatic example of the profession’s new commitment to context and interdisciplinarity. Moreover, many considerations that have only relatively recently come to prominence within the wider academy (the reception of texts; ideology and censorship; the ethics of writing; the problematic relationship between critics and readers; the status of books as commodities and cultural artefacts) have been fundamental to the study of children’s literature from the beginning.

On the other...

....the pedagogical implications of this diversity of critical practice, as of the multidisciplinary background of the subject, are a potential source of confusion for both teachers and their students. Teachers coming from one or other of the field’s contributary disciplines may find the aims, methodologies, and bodies of knowledge assumed by their colleagues unfamiliar and opaque; the opportunity to make innovative and fruitful connections may be lost; and the design and delivery of courses may lack direction and intellectual coherence.

Not my most scintillating prose, but I couldn’t face finding a new and fresh way to put it!