| Posted on September 29, 2010 at 12:00 PM |
An interesting, thought provoking, blog article for banned books week.
I confess that both books mentioned are/have been on our reading lists (most banned books are). For our family, the solution is to be widely read with plenty of informal discussion about historical context and biases in books. Author studies really help with this since you learn about the society/context within which the author is writing their stories. I think the problem comes in when you read only the biased books and nothing to counterbalance them. This is one reason I include plenty of modern literature with our (more typical CM) classic readings. We sometimes read both the original and the revised versions and discuss the reasons for the changes. For every biased book you can usually find another book to counterbalance it. I rarely cut or ban my kids from reading biased books but I often add books to balance out their readings. As I've mentioned in past writings, when my daughter was interested in Little House and the Prairie (mentioned in this article's comments) we also read the Birchbark House books as a way of balancing the racial biases.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic!
Categories: Living Books, Literature, Interesting Links
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