Thread: When does it become unacceptable propaganda?

Originally Posted by garza

We might say then that the work becomes objectionable propaganda when the reader deems it so. Thus in my mind To Kill a Mockingbird is a skillfully written story evocative of a place and time which I know well, while to Dudester it's 'in your face propaganda'.

Explain to me how a story about a black man in an Alabama community in the late 1950's applies to kids in late 1970's in a western ranching/railroading community ? It's comparing an apple to a potato. It completely misses the mark.

The Principal in our Junior High thought it would be a great idea to show the entire Junior High the movie Red Sky at Morning, because the movie was about the area we grew up in. The movie does have a non erotic nude scene that lasts all of two seconds. After the seventh and eigth graders saw it, the decision was made to stop. The ninth graders had to walk out of school in dispute. It was just a bad decision all the way around.

Originally Posted by garza

In short, there would be nothing to expand our minds. While I was in high school I was a fan of Truman Capote's writing. .

Funny you should mention Capote. My First Grade teacher thought I was an idiot-literally. She sent me to Special Education class. It turned out that my reading comprehension level was already at high school level and I couldn't deal with "See Dick, See Jane."

So, when I started Second Grade, the teacher didn't know what to do with me. She was reading Capote at the time. She gave me The Onion Field Murders and In Cold Blood and made me read them while she did "See Dick, See Jane" with the other students.

Actually, I could've done book reports on Capote instead of that crap my high school teacher forced on us.

Propaganda becomes unacceptable the moment it encourages harm to others for their opinions.

Originally Posted by Olly Buckle

Of course every author presents their own view of the world and in some way propagandises propagandizes it. “To kill a Mockingbird” is ‘good’ propaganda, “Swallows and Amazons” is subtle propaganda, John Buchan is Imperialist propaganda, George Orwell, socialist, we all choose which story to present and that is part of what makes a classic book, but at what stage does it stop being a good yarn and become unacceptable propaganda?

The short answer, when it becomes propaganda. You would either be fool to accept it if they knew it were that, or ignorant otherwise.

There is no such thing as 'good' propaganda.

But if all we ever read were the books of our own choosing, there would be little or no point in going to school at all. Our minds would never have to face different ideas, different opinions, different ways of thinking. In short, there would be nothing to expand our minds.

I would dispute this, garza. The impression I have is that children are naturally enquiring and exploring, left to themselves intelligent minds go looking for different ideas and opinions. It is the reining them in to the ordered structure, that all too often takes place in school as well as outside, that restricts them.

Some themes are universal. L’Étranger, The Stranger, by Albert Camus, was required reading in a high school French class. It is the story of a Frenchman in North Africa. What does a Frenchman in North Africa have to do with a 15-year-old in south Mississippi? The alienation of the individual from society is a universal theme. Often such themes can be best understood when seen objectively.

With To Kill a Mockingbird there is a personal relationship. The setting, the characters, the events are all familiar. The people in the story are like the people in my old neighbourhood. The events are of a sort that could easily have happened in my hometown. In L’Étranger there are strangers in an unfamiliar place following the customs of a culture far different from my own.

The trial of Tom Robinson and the trial of Meursault illuminate some of the same ideas about prejudice, alienation, familial relationships, but from different angles by writers with different philosophies. Both lead to critical thinking, and that is the point of such writing. 'The human heart in conflict with itself', as Faulkner put it, and that conflict is universal.

Olly - As a small child I had two favourite authors - Jack London and Albert Payson Terhune. Left to my own devices I would not have strayed far from those two. My grandfather insisted I read other books, and when I started school I was forced to confront other ideas, though my confrontation with Dick and Jane was as unpleasant for me as it was for Dudester. I short-circuited that problem by finding the back stairway that led from the children's section of the town library on the ground floor up to the adult section on the first floor.

Being forced to look beyond my original limited interests led me to climb those stairs and led me to explore my grandfather's library, so put me down as very much in favour of required reading so long as the list covers a broad spectrum and is not designed to restrict the child to narrow channels of knowledge or belief.

Edit - Did you cross out the correct spelling of 'propagandises' in your post and substitute the incorrect spelling? Or did someone else do that?

Not me, some other person Americanised it.

Yes garsa, it was me.

Garza spelt with an ess rather than an ezed makes it easier for a norteamericano to see how it should be pronounced.

Esto es bueno, pero no sobre el tema.