school reading material

[Teejay]

Just to add to my earlier stuff about my child in Middle School: she is in a "Challenge" advanced readers program, and this week the novel they had to read was all about bullfighting... :(

Since she had to read it, I talked through with her the fact that even though we don't like it (and it made her cry at one point in the reading, when she read about a bull being lanced) these things will come up at school & if she is reasonable and respectful of other people, she can put her point of view in a class discussion without it getting nasty. (The discussion turned out fine, by the way.) It was about a boy having to face the bullfight when he was scared of it or reluctant -- his grandfather had been a matador, etc etc. My child said the book turned out not to be greatly for or against the fight, just looked at the different aspects of it. This book was a Newbery medal winner so I guess that recommended it to the teachers.

She also has to read a lot of "survival" stories, you know, kids in the woods or wilderness left to fend for themselves, which inevitably include lots of animal killing. She said she wishes someone would write a story like that about girls (!) -- they do exist, but most are about boys, at least that she has to read -- and about kids who don't kill animals. So maybe there is a market niche, a vacant spot on the kids' potential bestseller list?

I would be interested to hear how other parents & kids have faced reading matter like this at school. Her school is very supportive of her and seems very tolerant of her choice to be different. But it's still upsetting sometimes to face stuff like that. On the other hand, at least she will be informed and know some facts about things like bullfighting...

[Mystican]

I'm not a parent, and it's been a while since I was in middle school... but I do occasionally think back to instances of my life before I decided to "go vegan" (early this year) when it most likely would have been difficult, or at least quite interesting, to maintain my beliefs against expected or required behavior.

I think you bring up a good issue with this thread. It seems like we sometimes concentrate so much on how differently we eat from the majority that we don't discuss how differently we live, or how frequently we see things that jump out at us simply by virtue of our outside-of-mainstream perspectives.

The longer I live with vegan principles guiding my heart and mind, the more aware I become of injustices where I never expected to find them. I also become much more aware of an often subtle and usually unintentional exclusion of anyone who is different in some way from the majority. Like sexism and heterosexism, speciesism pervades our society in many different ways and presents itself in many different forms... I'm not really sure that's the right "-ism" to describe what we encounter, though. Speciesism is more descriptive of what the animals exploited by humanity encounter. Any ideas on what you'd call our -ism? ;)

Anyway, to reply a bit more directly to your post... I read a book this summer, "Where The Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls. I thought it was a good book, but I couldn't help but think afterwards about the differences between my beliefs and those of the author, at least with regards to the hunting of animals just for the sake of hunting. (You can find out more about the book at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385323301/qid=1039668573/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/104-6223863-6457562 ) And yet... the book as a whole had some good messages, and it opened my mind to another point of view and to the life experiences of someone very unlike myself. ...

I think that's something we have to accept. There will be many works of art (whether they be books, films, paintings, or even comic strips) that move us when looked at as a whole... but that will remind us of our different perspectives and beliefs when we focus on specific details that represent a point of view not as concerned with animal and environmental exploitation.

I also do think that it's a good thing that she is at least informed and knows the facts. IMO, the more informed and aware we are, the better off we'll always be.

... Sorry for the length of the post. Hopefully some of this actually made sense :)

Erik

[CarlaJ]

In High School, I read "The Elephant" by George Orwell (who by the way I think is an amazing author). I really didn't "get" it until reading it recently.

[sophie]

It is amazing how many childrens' books have non-vegan elements, whether it involves food items (which is very common) or farmyard-type scenarios. My daughter is 3 and a half, and when her dad reads her books he always changes things that are non-vegan, for example in The Hungry Caterpillar story he changes all the food items to vegan ones. When the characters are eating meat in a story it makes me very uncomfortable. We had a book from the library this week and it had a picture of someone spearing a fish, my daughter was quite upset by it. My son is 6 and is an independent reader now who brings home a wide range of reading books from school. He had one the other day about a girl who goes to collect seafood from the beach with her grandfather, followed by a recipe for fritters using seafood. Luckily, he is quite objective, and able to realise that this is the way things are done by some other people. if it were a book about, eg, bullfighting, I would maybe see this as a learning experience, concentrating on how cruel this practice is, depending on the age of the child.