They are, but how can anyone be expected to pass up such a wonderful opportunity to shit on liberal arts majors?
Anyways, the second chart at this link implies that median income is pretty close for all majors. STEM is somewhat higher but the chart doesn’t control for what portion of people went on to get a master’s degree which I presume would be higher for STEM. There certainly isn’t a very significant difference between liberal arts and business.
And that brings us right back to the thread topic!
I’d suggest that modern fiction for kids deals pretty heavily in death, from Harry Potter with its multiple traumatic murders, to A Series of Unfortunate Events where “die in a fire” is the first in a long series, to Sal and Gabi Break the Universe where the MacGuffin is primarily a way to explore the grief of losing a parent, to Percy Jackson where kids are killed in the course of fighting against Titans.
Disney is its own thing, and I got all the feels (well, all the salty feels) about Disney’s effects on children’s stories. But outside of Disney, in the world of middle-grade fiction, traumatic death is alive and well.
For the most part, people don’t seem to be that concerned when it comes to books. (Ignoring the current cultural war over the acknowledgment of gay people or racism in anything a kid might read.) Almost ever book I read as a child had more mature content than I woud have seen in a typical episode of GI Joe or He-Man.
Well, I was singing hymns in Latin before I could read in English. No idea what I was singing exactly.
Just finished a book about Val Lewton, and the final fifth or so of the book was about movies and moviemakers influenced by Lewton. One film he mentioned was Invaders from Mars, and that was one movie that did a number on my head when I was little. I think it was partly because no matter where that poor kid ran he found danger from adults.
That’s interesting. It certainly wasn’t my experience. For example, I remember a cassette tape about the Noah story I had as a child, and it didn’t mention the part where Noah gets shitfaced and passes out naked, then one of his sons makes fun of him and gets cursed forever while the others walk backwards and cover him up.
True–but the movies based directly on books don’t tend to soften them. Ignoring travesties like The Tale of Despereaux, which is based on the book in the same way that Alpo is based on foie gras, most kids-book-adaptations go hard. I think all the deaths in the Harry Potter series show up in the movies. A Series of Unfortunate Events showed up on Netflix very much like it showed up on the written page. I’ve neither read nor seen Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, but from all accounts the film doesn’t soften any of the emotional rockiness of the book.
Yeah, there are turkeys out there. And yeah, Disney’s gonna Disney. But I don’t think kids are avoiding trauma in the entertainment they enjoy.
I absolutely have censored the Bible for my kiddos. My older one is old enough that she can take the rapes and the impersonation as a prostitute so your father-in-law will impregnate you and offering your child to be gang-raped and the mass murders etc., but my younger one… yeah, we don’t do that stuff. On a different non-traumatic note, we’re doing the Pauline epistles right now and there’s a lot of heavy theology in some parts, some of which I also “censor”/take out, because younger kiddo is not gonna get anything out of that at all. (I’ve kept in things like, “Wives, submit to your husbands,” just so I can then talk to kiddos about how this is not a thing that I do or believe in.)
Wouldn’t you daughters be well served to understand the Bible. So when some idiot tells her “The Bible say so” she can say “The Bible was written and translated in very different times, and those rules are generally not applicable in this situation”. Instead of- “my Mom says she don’t believe that”
Do your kids need to know the teachings of Quetzlcoatl so they can say something similar?
Couldn’t hurt.
Being well read is the secret to knowledge. Understanding many belief systems and cultures helps you make informed decisions.
Or the Hunger Games. JFC. I read that as an adult and I couldn’t believe how brutal it was. No sex, of course, heaven forfend, but a sixteen year old being devoured by dogs? No problemo.
You’re in luck! The Felix Salten book entered public domain in 2022 - go nuts! Just be sure you’re not lifting any characterizations that are identifiably Disney-specific, and you’re good to go.
I don’t remember when exactly I first heard it (and paid attention), but it’s not like my parents kept me at home during that parsha reading & sermon. There’s only 54 parshas so roughly every year the entire Torah was read to us.
~Max
Not only did I go to synagogue as a kid, I went to synagogue as a kid in Israel, where everyone actually understands the parasha being read. And I can guarantee you that not one kid was actually paying close enough attention to what was being read to pick up on that part of the story.
Starting in 2nd grade I actually had a Bible class in school, starting with Genesis; and we definitely didn’t talk about this story.
I actually remember noticing at the time that we were skipping around, but at 7 even if Hebrew is your native tongue you’re not making any sense of these passages unless the teacher is talking through them.
It wasn’t until my teens, when I started to get bored in synagogue and read ahead, that I actually started coming across these sorts of stories while paying enough attention to internalize them.
I highly doubt that American preteen kids who don’t speak Hebrew are playing closer attention to the Parsha reading than I was.
And the material that’s actually directed at kids is absolutely sanitized.
With respect, we don’t live in a society where Quetzlcoatle, continues to feature prominently in our culture. You’re presenting a false equivalency here.
Fine - how closely do your kids need to know the teachings of Muhammad? What about L Ron Hubbard? Or Joseph Smith?
Honestly, I think it’s a pretty good idea for children to get some idea of what the religious teachings of major religions are. Islam is a fast growing religion here in the United States, and it’s probably a good idea for kids to understand what some of their major tenants are. I’m not sure if the same could be said for Mormons or Scientology but maybe.
I agree - it’s good to be a good neighbor.
I think the same applies. They do have a lot of rules that you could accidentally insult by offering soda, coffee, alcohol, etc.
It’s useful to know to avoid a cult that wants your money.
Spouse Weasel was a Catholic school boy and he learned about all this stuff. I, however, did not. Public school education for you. I think it left me at somewhat of a disadvantage. For one thing, I was an evangelical Christian for a good chunk of my adolescence, and one of the things that prompted me to start questioning my beliefs was learning, quite late in adolescence, that there are more people on the planet who believe something other than Christianity than there are people who believe in Christianity. That kinda blew my mind. I’ll go out on a limb and say you can’t properly engage with your own faith unless you can contextualize it with other religions. Now how/when those subjects are introduced during childhood is another matter… my kid’s not learning about Jesus or the Bible until he has a much firmer grasp on abstract concepts.
Maybe we have different experiences. My synagogue - in Florida - had very few children. Nothing was specifically directed at the children except certain songs (in Hebrew). Also, our rabbi followed each reading with an English-language sermon on the themes. One of which, I distinctly remember, was that the ‘heroes’ in the Torah all had major flaws. For example Moses threw down the stones in rage, and Aaron worshiped the calf, and Noah got himself drunk.
There were three students in my shul including me and my younger brother. I remember the old rabbi would only instruct us in Hebrew specifically, not theology. The rest came from paying attention to services and talking with members of the congregation, though when it came time for my bar-mitzvah the new rabbi worked with me on my parsha. I think I was the first bar-mitzvah in the twenty-first century.
~Max