A Prediction

Freewrite alert: May infuriate logicians and grammar Nazis.

I just got back from my first Literature for Adolescents class and after finishing one of the books and hearing synopses of everything else we're to read, I'd like to predict a theme: Justification of all things that make teen-agers lame.

The books are claiming to be written for teens, kids in middle and high school, and the plots, characters are conflicts are certainly congruent with the stereotype of what that life entails. That's fine. Kids can't jump from The Polar Express to John Donne, it's good to have writing directed at them where they are. The problem comes in with this sense of trying to make those problems (and more importantly the characters' reactions to them) seem normal, acceptable. My roommate Neal is big on the "Is/Aught" fallacy idea, that just because something "is" a certain way doesn't mean that that's how it should be.

This gets back to the discussion I had with Sam about the poet being a creator, having the ability to construct things as they should be instead of just copying what he sees like an unmanned camera just snapping away at proper increments.

I think the problem is that people know that art has this ability and therefore tend to project that onto any and all art. They're expecting to be shown something other than what the world offers, some kind of instruction or alternate view of a situation that offers a better way. So when they see the world carbon copied into a paperback, they accept it as how it "aught" to be, even though the author is simply reproducing the scene.

My point is that instead of painting these kids in their situations getting beaten up, jacking off, lying, crying, and back stabbing as “victims of their environment,” and making everything excusable, show them how they can have a proper response to the mess that growing up can dish out. No one (much less a melancholic teen who’s getting his cues from tortured soul musicians sporting eyeliner and wails of loves lost) is going to think they should do something honorable about their situation if they are constantly reading about characters in the same situation responding with bitterness, anger, frustration, and depression.