maelorin | ray bradbury

CENSORSHIP

There is more than one way to burn a book.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

...I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from [Fahrenheit 451]. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. ("Coda" 1979)

EDUCATION
The main problem is with our education, of course. First-grade teachers for many years now have not been teaching reading and we have to encourage them to pull up their socks and begin to pay attention so that the whole school system doesn't go to hell. People are getting into high school who can't read. It's stupid, isn't it? It's crazy.

With computers, kids can connect and search libraries and the Encyclopedia Britannica, but if you don't teach them to read in the first place, they're not going to [log on], are they? (Speech to National School Board Association, 1995)

THE FUTURE

People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better. (from "Beyond 1984: The People Machines")

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Censoring Faherenheit 451-- oh the irony.

Have you read any of Spider Robinson's books? (SiFi) I am particularly fond of "Time Pressure" and the line "God is an iron." A rough paraphrase of the explaination:
If you comit a felony you are a felon, if you practice gluttony, you are a gluton. God is an iron.

i haven't, but i might give them a read.

Something went terribly wrong in the education system a long time ago.My daughter is 16 now but when she was in primary school I went to help out at the school re; reading - they had a class for parents who were intending helping out. What shocked me then was the number of parents who did not read - when asked what books they had in their homes, 1 out of 10 had a novel, 3 out of 10 had a women's weekly magazine. :( That was it.

laziness is a social disease.

my ex and i read voraciously. our son has no hope ;)

i could go on about what's going wrong in education ... i did the teching diploma last year. so disillusioned that i'm still trying to motivate myself to finish it ...

One housing inspection had the manager comment that nobody could possibly read all those books and demanded I got rid of them. After all why would I want to keep them if I'd already read them. My comment was they were all neatly shelved, and a polite "no!" Admittedly I've probably got well over 150 linear metres of books, but some people aren't bibliophiles.

Actually it's interesting to see the effect of what the phenomenal rise in the price of books over the last decade is having on young readers. The price of books is no longer exactly trivial.

<jealous> [the mundane did what!! >_<]

it's not just the price of books. reading is hard work. tv is easier. we are working hard to break hans' preference for tv over reading.

laziness is a social disease.

Although it is probably too late for Hans, a good method of motivating children to read books is to read to them when they are very young (pre-school). This can encourage the child to want to unlock the treasures contained in the books for themselves. Of course, it does require you to find the time to do so and to be an entertaining reader. Just think of it as being a ham in front of a captive audience...

Illiteracy breeds illiteracy.

oh, he's gonna learn to read. unfortunately, the school method bores him witless. endless repetition so everyone else can get the idea. but we soldier on.

besides, his parents are far too litereate to let him miss out on reading.

ray bradbury

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