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Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder (reread)
While reading Kaufman and some of the other authors on education and literacy, memories of the Little House books were continually called to mind: Eliza Wilder teaching Laura and her sisters; Laura teaching; difficulties with stoves, boarding, and keeping order in the classroom (order being defined variously as absolute silence, asking permission before doing anything, and just not killing each other).
While recollection is at times sufficient, I felt a reread was called for, as I had not read these books for several years, and carefully, never. It is proving to be very rewarding. For one thing, foods I thought were new to me (through the Northrop clan) I had in fact read about (watermelon rind pickles, for example). The details of Mr. Corse's teaching and the boarding routine near Malone matched Kaufman's book nicely. We are shown when Almanzo began school (age 8) and when he was allowed to skip school and what he did instead, as well as how much work he could do and at what age. We see both parents involved in economic transaction: Mother trades rags for tinware and sells butter ($.50/lb, 500 lb); Father sells a pair of colts and potatoes ($1/bushel, 500 bushels). We are shown the extensive nature of Almanzo's mother's textile work (she hired out the carding, but that was all -- even made her own carpets, tacked down a la David Owen's house in The Walls Around Us). This novels illustrates the importance of learning connected with doing, a la Holt and Illich. All the same, it is clear why I reread this fewer times than other books in this series: the narrative thread is sporadic, and the interest of the details is increased by greater understanding of their importance. I highly recommend this one for a second look by adults.
An aol user has put together some information about Laura and Rose. And here's a bit transcribed from a handwritten autobiographical statement of Rose's.
I'm somewhat curious about the July Fourth story of the horse race in which an Indian on foot paced the winning horse in the mile long race: according to the author he ran that mile in 2 minutes 40 seconds.
Women Teachers on the Frontier, Polly Welts Kaufman
Nice documentary women's history. Kaufman uses a diary (Arozina Perkins'), letters, manuscript census data and other ephemera to draw a portrait of the evangelical single women of the East who went West to teach in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Her research is excellent. Her conclusions are supported by her data. While stylistically restrained, her prose is readable.
Women's history, and growing independence and economic options are her concerns. She notes religious, educational and economic influences on the women but does not lose sight of the fact that few women in like circumstances did this, ergo, personal factors -- attitude, desires -- matter.
Arozina's diary reveals a tract distributing (the Jehovah's Witnesses would grow out of the non-ecumenical portion of this movement) schoolmistress, increasingly isolated in religious pursuits. She attends a large number of meetings (going to as many as three churches on Sunday). She dislikes socializing "to no purpose", and thinks sewing societies a hotbed of gossip. Missionaries inspire her. Her behavior is more and more constrained by a desire to maintain an appropriate image as a teacher (Illich and Holt would find here an early instance of what they despise -- of course, it originally was to enable them to teach, rather than being for the benefit of the scholars). (Arozina's diary contains one reference to a man's bump of amativeness, indicating she had some passing knowledge of phrenology. It also contains a description of a head-on carriage collision resulting in the death of the other driver.) Traveling through Pella, Arozina notices some sod houses.
I noted some amusing parallels between her attitudes and the attitudes of some present-day evangelicals: condemnation of ornaments as unchristian, an interest in history as it demonstrates the fulfillment of prophecy, a fascination with the features of the Holy Land and relevant archaeological finds. La plus ca change, le plus ca meme chose.
Some of the letters are used to illustrate why women stayed and why they moved back home. Footnotes are consistently used to provide additional information on persons mentioned in the diary and the letters (generally from manuscript census data, directory, town and church records of their home towns in the East).
Would I recommend this? I don't know. If it sounds interesting to you, get it from the library. It is a very well executed instance of what it is.
Before Novels, J. Paul Hunter (first 30 pages)
This one I didn't finish -- got it from the library, fortunately. Very pedantic, poor historical perspective. He asserts that novels are concerned with loneliness and contribute to solitude, ignoring the practice of reading out loud so common from the 18th to the earliest 20th century. He further ignores the background of shared experience novels provided to many social groups (well documented in novels themselves!). He asserts that novels prior to the 1950s were not really racy, incendiary or shocking (apparently he doesn't think these three things are culturally defined, and conveniently ignored or misinterpreted what it means when you throw an author in jail or ban a book). He confuses the credibility novels get from describing the possible from the credibility that derives from describing the probable. All in all, a spectacularly foolish point of view. Don't waste your time.
Education and the Industrial Revolution, E.G. West
A book review by David Friedman used to be available. A paper using this book as a source is available.
It showed up at the library! On loan from Vancouver Public Library -- appears to be a Canadian printing. David Friedman keeps recommending this. West uses for his data census and interview sources. He shows how impressionistic contemporary sources (novelists and newspaper reporters) created a skewed view, and suggests some reasons why. West's use of parliamentary record to show how contemporary policy makers interpreted the data and what they intended to accomplish by their reforms provides a plausible basis for West's conclusion that the resulting state control of education was a minority choice, accomplished through bureaucratic rather than democratic means.
Little time is spend on gender. Several passing comments indicate girls as well as boys were schooled. It seems possible that they spent less time in school. Some of the confusion in the basis of years of schooling may have derived from gender differences, and while West focuses on confusion in the basis as a source of statistical confusion, he does not address possible causes of the confusion (beyond implying intentional deceit). There are interesting sidelights on dame schools (nursery or pre-schools), head count (teacher-pupil ratio), kind of education sought by parents (3 R's, rather than specifically religious) vs the state and other thinkers (who were clearly interested in social control).
The data is mostly clustered in the first third or half of the book -- the rest is increasingly obscure analysis of an economic nature, further and further divorced from my interests. In no way does the book display the imaginative use of sources I so enjoyed in Grendler and Barber, altho West uses his traditional sources in an careful and responsible fashion.
The Enneagram in Love and Work, Helen Palmer
The standard problem of essentializing applies to this as to all typing systems. This one has a more spiritual basis which aims to regain lost purity, will, courage, etc. Stress and security cause one's outlook and behavior to move somewhat between types, which contributes to the richness of the typing. Each type is seen as a bias which helps one cope at the expense of introducing difficulties in comprehending other.
There are several traits which define types as similar: fear, anger. Other cross-type similarities contribute to the richness and descriptive power of this scheme. But it is difficult to see how much of the insight comes from Palmer's idiosyncratic acuity, and how much may be attributed to the power of the system.
The second half of the book is a directory of relationships which takes some slogging to get through. Ultimately, the use of this book lies in its incidental insight into interacting patterns of relating, and what can be done to make these less destructive.
The Haunted Woman, David Lindsay
I finally read it! This one is more reminiscent of George MacDonald in many ways than Voyage to Arcturus. There is a stairway that is only sometimes there, and it leads to a place where one is tested spiritually, and where what one learns is only partially available upon return to Reality. Of course, that's only if one survives. There are some interesting sidelights on money, relationships and how they interact in the surface plot. In some ways, the connection felt between Judge and the titular woman reminds me of Lessing's SOWF.
The ostensible plot is minimal: a young woman, engaged to be married, visits a weird house with her Aunt, her fiancee and two friends, also, the owner of the house. An effort is made to talk the owner into selling the house to the Aunt, but Judge resists, until our young heroine applies some pressure. The house is weird because at certain times, for certain people, an old, ruined part of the is accessible in its original condition, via a stairway that isn't there. When you go up the stairway, you face three doors, to rooms that are all somewhat mysterious: one has a mirror, another a couch. Outside the window in another is another season and a musician who sometimes plays an Elizabethan tune, and at other times sleeps. If you go up the stairs, you will not remember anything that happens up there when you return, altho it you go twice, the memory will return while you are there. And so Judge and our young engaged woman live a separate life unknown to even themselves, until one of them thinks to intentionally leave a written record.
You could really have a field day trying to do a modern psychological interpretation of these events: repressions galore, personalities unable to manifest themselves wind up sublimated in weird and ultimately fatal ways. I think it would be a mistake -- I suspect Lindsay had a larger, more mystical meaning in mind, altho I couldn't tell you waht it was.
I expect I'll reread this at some point. I kept thinking throughout that I usually really hate women like that, but for some reason I didn't. And the crossovers -- the scarf transfer, the notes written, dropped, picked up and returned -- were all handled exceedingly well. I do not, however, understand the sleeping musician.
Strata, Terry Pratchett
Another Pratchett -- this one an elaborate spoof of Larry Niven's Ringworld. Kin Arad is a wonderful female protagonist. While this one has a flat earth, it is not Discworld, nor is it as silly as the novels in that series.
Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia, Robert Fishman
From 1750 (or a bit before) to the present day, Fishman charts the evolution of residential/few-use spaces outside but near and dependent on urban centers -- and their devolution into edge city, or what Fishman describes as technoburbs
Fishman's analysis is of England and the U.S. (suburbia on the continent remained poor as the middle-class stayed in the central urban areas as a result of extensive government sponsored development of middle-class communities along new boulevards). He provides a guide to understanding the world of Anthony Trollope: elucidating the role of Evangelicals in assigning women and the home to the sacred and men and work to the profane. He notes how dramatic a shift in thinking this was (women used to be seats of sin). (He does not say anything about how this is a cyclic reaction to Restoration secularity.) Also nice background to Austen and Heyer, Alcott's Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom. I'll need to reread Jane Jacobs' Death and Life in the context of this book; her dealings with Great Cities are explicitly post-suburbanization, which implies she was attempting to stop a process already in motion. It is interesting to note that the feared "walled enclaves" already existed in 1830s Manchester. Virginia Scott Jenkins' The Lawn also nicely fits in, for its exploration of lawn culture, that private public space phenomena so important to creating the "houses in a park" which were the defining characteristic of suburbia.
The end is somewhat weak. Fishman's technoburb is seen as a new kind of city only beginning to find its form and aesthetic.
Daughters of Isis, Joyce Tyldesley
I got this at the library when I was attempting to investigate literacy (a difficult project, as it turns out). Tyldesley's overview of Egyptian medicine is woefully unfair and very "this is what they thought, ha ha, here's what was really going on". There is much better work in the field of comparative medicine. Textile work is, imo, underemphasized and not treated as economically important work dominated by women. She interprets tomb painting of women with light skin as a gender and class convention, noting that this is not racially accurate. This contrast strikes me as confused. I think she should have noted the class convention, the gender convention deriving from indoor vs. outdoor employment (high class male administrators frequently shown with pale skin also). She notes that fat is shown in stereotyped ways as an indicator of high status in males, but calls this a "weight problem", not understanding that fat is important for survival of many serious diseases and the cardiovascular threat only becomes important if you survive that long.
The whole book is based upon conventional archaeology -- no Barber-style imaginative use of linguistics, research in minimally catalogued collections, that would allow one to correctly identify and interpret household tasks. Instead, Tyldesley applies a view informed by household-as-consumption unit to a world in which the household was primarily a production unit.
An interesting approach might be to research Egyptian and other jewelry, pottery, smithing, perhaps adding further research into midwifery. Rather than dismiss as "women's work", it might be nice to determine the economic importance of these household tasks first. I don't recommend this book altho it is an interesting survey. The author has only imperfectly passed beyond the ridiculous presuppositions of old-style orientalists and egyptologists.
Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett
This one's about a girl who will be a wizard, whether anyone likes it or not. Best turn-a-child-into-a-pig sequence outside of Lewis Carroll. Pratchett's female characters tend to be well executed, and his children are smart but missing important bits of knowledge, which is as it should be.
The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett
I tried to read this a couple years ago, unsuccessfully. It just struck me as a little too fluffy, which probably says more about my mood in those days than about the book itself, as I'm enjoying it a lot more this time around. The traveling shop was particularly cute, as was the imp in the camera. Nice take on the end (but which one?) of the world.
It occurs to me that I've plowed through seven books, one of which was a bunch of cartoons and very short essays, but not one of which was fiction, properly speaking.
Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich
I went to the downtown library Tuesday evening to continue my search for information on the history of education. I failed in that, but did pick up other books, including this one, which inspired Holt. Even as Holt influenced Kohn, who did not accept all of his subversive conclusions, so Illich influenced influenced Holt. Where Kohn was research sociologist, Holt was a social observer. Where Holt was a social commentator, Illich is engaging in polemic. Alas, I find I agree with a lot of what Illich has to say. In particular, I find some of what he says spookily reminiscent on the Internet -- I say spooky, because this book is copyright 1970. Holt described the way libraries should go; Illich's description of peer-matching is eerily reminiscent of the Internet. Take a look, in particular, at pages 19-21 and 93-96 in the Harper & Row World Perspectives edition. The latter, in particular, addresses many of the current objections to on-line communities. While the prose is polemical, the ideas are interesting, and, imo, very relevant.
Instead of Education: Ways of Helping People Do Better, John Holt
I went to the library on Saturday to do searches for books on literacy and education, because I have grown extremely suspicious about how little I know about what education was like prior to this century. While Holt himself is not interested in history, and therefore does not answer that question, I turned up this book in the course of my research (which is by no means finished). Kohn quotes Holt briefly in No Contest, but does not otherwise reference him, which I now find somewhat odd. Kohn's opposition to competition, his dislike of behaviorist systems of reward and punishment, and his opinions on human nature are all covered in Holt. Because Holt is primarily interested in the here and now, the number and kind of scholarly references in Holt is qualitatively different. On the other hand, Holt takes that last step in the sequence of reasoning as presented by both Kohn and Holt: reform cannot occur within a compulsory school system. Needless to say, Holt's a lot more subversive. I liked it a lot, and expect I'll be digging around for more of the same, and probably some Illich while I'm at it.
Better Dead than Red, Michael Barson
Jon Konrath loaned me this one. It's described on the cover as "a nostalgic look at the golden years of" the cold war. While at times depressing, Barson's got a firm sense of the ludicrous: the tactics of HUAC and Hollywood, and the truly inane propaganda produced by various right-wing Christian groups. Lots of pictures, and the text is full of entertaining asides along the lines of "sort of trips off the tongue, doesn't it?".
America's Dumbest Criminals, Daniel Butler, Alan Ray and Leland Gregory
Another purchase with gift certificates for the mall bookstore. This is a compendium of the kind of thing I get in email from Brian Chin. The authors were looking to counter the dangerous, scary, predatory, glorifying image of crime and criminals they felt "America's Most Wanted" and "Cops" presented. They wanted to show the reader that crooks are just dumb fucks like the rest of us. Scott finds the book despressing; I find it conveys several probably unintended messages. Several of the "dumb" criminals are victims of property crimes, in which the stolen property was drugs. In other words, people who (almost) confess to consensual crimes in the course of attempting to report a property crime are "dumb". I don't buy this. The vast majority of the stories are entertaining, however, in a silent-movie slapstick way: the crook who displayed a stolen driver's license to the older brother of the proper owner; the fleeing criminal tracked in the dark by the lights on his shoes. And all those people who sold drugs to cops in uniforms who just asked for them.
Female Problems, Nicole Hollander
I bought this with some gift certificates for a mall bookstore which were surprisingly hard to spend. Ah, well. My favorite bits were on female condoms, the glass ceiling and recanting feminists. Altho the woman on the diet where she can have two bits of anything was also entertaining, as was the woman who worries too much. Highly recommended, unless you are conservative, male, or extremely satisfied with life, the universe and everything.
The Walls Around Us, David Owen
I bought this several months ago at Half-Price and read a couple chapters, only to put it on the shelf and ignore it for a while. This time, I can tell why: there is a chorus of grunting, reminiscent of Home Improvement throughout the book. It shows up when Owen talks about the erotic beauty of power tools, used to commit ugly projects on his 100 year old home. It pokes its nose in when he states that women's fears of going to the lumber yard do not count, not like a man's. It crescendos in his paean to joint compound and the wonderful buckets it is sold in. Owen also partakes of Dave Barry's ironic self-deprecation, which makes up for many sins a la Tim Allen. A reasonably funny explanation of framing, siding, roofing, electricity, plumbing, and other aspects of the house. Read at your own risk.
The Mismeasure of Man, Steven Gould
I finally picked this up at the bookstore after eyeing it for a long time, and recollecting having enjoyed Gould in jr hi. Like Galbraith's A Short History of Economic Euphoria, Gould is describing the remarkable persistence of a phenomenon across time and space. With Galbraith, it was skyrocketing and crashing markets beginning with Tulips and continuing into the contemporary stock market -- the periodic, apparent insanity of people in a capitalist system. With Gould, it is the effort to rank individuals and groups by a single number on a unilinear scale, from cranial capacity and frontal index, to 20th century ponderings of a g-factor of intelligence (particularly in its innate, general, cognitive formulation). Gould points out bad science in many cases, special pleading in others, reification in all. Gould popped up in The Bell Curve controversy on r.a.b., because he wrote a critique of the book. Me, I didn't read any of that stuff -- I'm not that interested in statistics in any form, as I find a lot of them highly suspicious. I'm going to extend this feeling to the general rule that, generally speaking, all 700+ page tomes which are mostly statistical in nature are mostly not interesting to me.
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This file recreated from The Internet Wayback Machine in January 2002. Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created January 8, 1996 Modified January 10, 2002