Dear Editor,

I feel compelled to write about a crisis I fear we are now experiencing at epic proportions.

And while I believe there are many things I could enter into this statement at this point (human disconnectedness, loss of identity, fearfulness), I also begin to believe they are all connected to one greater issue.

Somewhere along our busy ways and technological advances on the way to a “better” life, we have forgotten how to think.

It starts in the schools, when we or our son or daughter begins with the ABCs and 123s.  Instead of giving them space and time to truly understand what these images represent and how they work, we hurry them along with memorization.  The quick students are held corralled and the slow students are hurried along, like a pack of animals all being led to pasture.  By the time your child reaches more advanced concepts, we just tell them 1+1=2 and play school-house-rock reruns to brand the brain with catchy tunes of the forms of “to be,” rather than introduce the actual concepts of addition and language.

“Why does 1+1=2?”  ”Why do you say ‘we were’ and ‘I was’?”

“It doesn’t matter.  Just get it right on your standardized test so our school continues to receiving funding.”

Now, don’t for an instant think that I blame the teachers.  We have entrusted an ENORMOUS responsibility to them at pay barely above the poverty level.

We expect them to develop the minds of our children.  We entrust them with shaping the contributing members of our upcoming society.  And somewhere along the way we’ve forgotten that we—as parents and other members of society—are supposed to continue this development outside of school.  Thank you TV.  I can see how impactful your examples of rudeness and disrespect for the sake of comedy, your violence and disregard for humanity in the name of entertainment has done so much for the world we live in today.

And don’t for an instant think I blame the entertainment industry.  In fact, I believe that all forms of entertainment have something to teach us.  It’s the reason for my rant today, and I’ll talk about it more later.

It seems it’s a question, really, of priority.  And priorities are measured by the only non-renewable tool we have—time.  Malcolm Gladwell does an outstanding job of looking into the learning systems around the globe in his book Outliers, and points out that when students are given the chance to ask questions and find their own answers…with the guidance of a teacher…they actually perform better, learn more and have less difficulty with even more complex concepts down the road.

That is, they learn HOW to think rather than WHAT to think.

And like anyone who has learned only what to think, we spend the rest of our time searching for self-fulfilling prophesies and being frightened of the things that challenge the very core of our knowledge.

Naturally I should turn to science here, because in it lies the answer.

However, I prefer to bring this debate to the national forefront by returning to entertainment, because as priority goes, we seem to rank it higher than education anyway.  Specifically, I’d like to focus on Banned Books.

Books were originally written as a means to share knowledge over great distances and time.  This knowledge came in the form of esoteric constructs as well as entertaining ones.  And whenever someone didn’t like something that was being said, it was destroyed.

That’s how the Bible was created.  But I digress…

Take Harry Potter.  Truly an entertaining book.  Also, very thought provoking.  Good versus evil.  Loyalty.  Respect.  Friendship.  Family.  Education.  Banned because it references magic, which itsn’t realistic.  It might frighten children and/or make them think they can fly.

I advocate for frightening children and making them think they can fly.  I advocate for even more “offensive” children’s stories—like Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Are you there God, it’s me Margaret and James and the Giant Peach and Terabithia and The Wizard of Oz series (all banned).  Of course, I advocate for all these books with the assumption that you’ve given your child the tools to learn to face their fears and to safely experiment with the flying…or other unrealistic things.  That’s how Amelia Earhart got started.

What about Atlas Shrugged.  Fantastic story about a group of innovative individuals during the time of the Industrial revolution, our country was never greater than when minds were free to challenge what they knew and create, I don’t know, automobiles and lightbulbs and record players and new forms of medicines and composites that made our lives more comfortable and safe. They didn’t get there by doing only what they were told, or running away from things that didn’t agree with what they knew.  No.  Quite the contrary, one hero from the epic novel boarded a ship and learned about the export business first hand, then the railroad business, etc. so that when he took over his family’s copper business he would know every facet of it.  He is my ideal man.  But the book was banned because the characters were selfish.

That’s right.  Can you believe the nerve of people who work hard, who take great risks, who challenge themselves to produce greater and more?  They actually were upset when the rewards of their hard work and innovation were forceably stolen from them by people who wanted what they had, but preferred to sit by and wait for their handout.   I want what they had too.  That’s why I learn from their example and work hard, ask questions, seek and engage the challenges that strengthen and refine my stances, rather than whine to a person with a gun to go take it from them.  Or cry in my soup “woe is me, that person had an advantage.”  That’s right they did.  And I have my own advantages if I chose to develop and use them.  So do you.

And where is the media in continuing to report on those stories, instead of reading off the police blotter every 6 o’clock in the evening?  At least the entertainment industry hasn’t forgotten that the underdog can do marvelous things if he believes and tries.  But I digress again.

Lady Chatterly’s Lovers.  Are we so afraid of a discourse on sex that we must ban it and label it evil?  Right.  Because that worked so well for the Catholic priests.  Afterall, isn’t sexuality core to our humanity?  Same is true for books banned because it deals with death.  Guess what people—it’s going to happen!  Why must we make it all seem evil?  Why must we hide it behind some vague notion of morality?  Wouldn’t it be better to explain what it is, its purpose, its nuances, and have an ongoing discourse about it so that we build understanding around this topic—rather than sweep it under the rug?

Instead let me refer you back to Harry Potter.  In every book of the seven-book series, Harry and Hermione stress the importance of not shrinking from fear.  ”Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”  Likewise, fear of an ideal increases the power and fear of the thing itself.

Did you know that most of the time a book is banned, its because someone wants to “protect” others from content that may be “difficult?”  Wouldn’t it just be better to explain our concerns and allow each person (or family, in the case of children) decide what’s best?  Do we really have so low a faith in each other?

Did you also know that most of the time a book is banned, the people calling for the banning have not read the book?  Do we really want to build our society on ignorance?

I give you Harriet the Spy. Banned because it might make children behave naughty.  As opposed to all the examples of exemplary behavior we see modeled on television?  And tell me, who teaches your child proper behavior?  As an etiquette teacher, I will tell you proper behavior died with the invention of the television…not because the television models bad behavior (which it does), but because no one eats at the dining room table so no one knows how to set the table let alone eat at it properly.

One more example to show you the path we’re allowing our great nation to follow.  Little Red Riding Hood.  Banned because in the original version, Red was taking a basket of food to her grandmother and it contained a bottle of wine, which as a minor Red shouldn’t have even known about, let alone carried.  No wonder we, as Americans, have one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world!  Everyone else gets to read Little Red Riding Hood and knows what wine is!

Instead of hiding knowledge in the name of protection, we would do better to expose ourselves to it.  In The Princess Bride, doesn’t Wesley—our hero—expose himself to the deadly poison that enables him to regain Buttercup?  Not to mention he taught himself how to fight—left handed—and to read.

Why don’t we learn from that?  Shouldn’t we embrace these same ideals so that we can decide what’s right and wrong rather than just have someone tell us?

Tell me, my fellow Americans, what are you so afraid of in the difference of thought and ideas?  Do you think we would have made it to the moon by only validating what we’ve been told?  Or even become a nation? Let alone have the land we call home discovered?

Hiding different thoughts is not the answer.  Nor will it ever be.

Someone once wrote that knowledge isn’t gold.  It’s milk.  If you don’t use it, it spoils.  I think we would be wise to remember this now.

Discourse, understanding, compassion.  These are the ways a better life.  And, no they are not easy.  But they are simple.

I turn to one of the humans who, arguably, reached full potential better than anyone—Leonardo daVinci.  Lucky for us, he left behind his guiding principles.  I believe they still hold more merit than most of what we learn, for they teach us HOW to learn:

1. Curiosity–developing and maintaining an insatiable curiosity.
2. Dimonstrazione–testing knowledge through experience
3. Sensazion–continued refinement of the senses
4. Sfumato–a willingness to embrace ambiguity
5. Arte/Scienza–developing a balance between art and science
6. Corporalita–cultivating fitness and poise
7. Connessione–recognizing and appreciating that all phenomena are connected

I encourage you to open a book, then open your mind to new possibilities.  I encourage you to challenge the things you hold dearest to you.  Most of all, I encourage you to instill in your child the importance of asking questions…and finding their own answers.  This is how we will rebuild our great nation.  It’s the only way.

Then “let us dare to read, think, speak and write.”

–Monica M. Wirick

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