This year's Banned Books Week ends today. I wrote about Banned Book Week before, from the perspective of having Russian kids (who are now no longer kids, or even teens; they are adults--time really does fly).
I'd written about where our kids finally "got" the meaning behind Banned Books Week, and the fear each of of us has of being silenced, of not being heard. An a-ha! moment, indeed (in English...and Russian).
Though I'm no longer teaching my daughters to read English books (or begging them to read their Russian ones) I do wonder about a form of communication that was in its relative infancy when we adopted--digital communication--and how I would have handled having such widespread access. (Confession: I'm thankful I didn't have the issue to worry about.)
By relative infancy, I mean that there wasn't so much ease of communication by the masses on the web. Today, as Banned Books Week draws to a close, I wonder about all the comments on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and all those blogs (blogs, blogs and more blogs) that are accessible to kids. Some comments are so mean. Bully-mean. Somewhere along the line the comments (not the interviews, not the articles, but the comments) have become more the news than the news. Many a site explodes with comments that begin by attacking the writer and deteriorate into comments attacking commenters. What all this accomplishes, I'm not really sure. At best, an optimist would say it's to remind us that we have the freedom to speak aloud (and write online), period. This freedom is a key issue around Banned Books Week.
But how does it square - or does it? - with what parents want to teach their kids about, or rather, how this all reconciles with what you are trying to teach your child about being kind to others, about not taunting, about not bullying? Do you think this online comment frenzy is a phase--like puberty or something? There has to be a way that all this squares--doesn't there? What, parents, have you found?
Our daughters are grown up now. They decide for themselves (thank goodness!) what they will read online, and what it means for them. Someday, they might become parents, and they will have to make the tough choices about what to allow or not allow, how to explain all those comments their young ones (if they have them) will read online.
That job will not be easy. Ask any parent. It never is.
