Ah, the 80s. How memorable they are!

[heidi]

matociquala has put together an amazing collection of 80s music videos here, which led to me looking for

Watch on YouTube

and caused me to create the following poll:

[Poll #1101876]

Oh, and speaking of the 80s, Slate Magazine asks the question, "Should children read Philip Pullman's trilogy—or the incest classic Flowers in the Attic?"

I guess people can't read both? There's a limited number of words one's brain can read in a month or a year or a decade? Huh.

The article is definitely not perfect, and there's some apples-and-avocados comparisons, but I found this paragraph of particular interest given recent actions by 6A:

At the same time, when I think back to my own preteen reading, I'll admit that the whole point was to read books that I wasn't ready for, without my parents' approval. Is this kind of illicit read damaging to kids, or is it an inevitable excursion into pseudo-maturity that beats a lot of the other likely avenues? Better a disturbing, too-adult book than an indelibly horrifying movie or Internet game or video (or, it goes without saying, an encounter with real scary people)?

Comments

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

Having not read the article, I'm not sure that sentence was intended as an either-or... standalone, it struck me as being more a question of whether kids should have access to either.

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

And, TBH... I had friends and classmates who definitely read and watched media that were 'beyond their years.' But was I considered one of 'the smart kids' and I think that because my classmates were all their parents' special snowflakes they were given fewer boundaries.

The stuff with 6A was pretty bizarre- the deletion of pretty harmless comms and journals I thought was MAJOR overkill. It would have been better to give everyone a chance to change course before pulling the rug out from trusted longtime members.

But as to 'allowing' kids to get into stuff... there's a big difference between what people encourage their children to do, and the limits they would ultimately set if they could reasonably expect fulfillment of all possible negative consequences.

My parents were very conservative and 'overprotective' of some things which to them in hindsight seem a little silly, but which at the time bore the keynote appearances of threatening influences- things with occult references (Buffy), things with secular or 'moral relativist' themes (Boy Meets World)... my parents raised me a certain way, because they wanted me to become a decent, Christian human being.

Instead what they got was a decent, liberal atheist. But they're happy with the result. Granted, I never suffered any intentional detriment at their or anyone else's hands; but I'm not sure that being super-restrictive is any better than setting no boundaries at all.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

It's the subtitle of the article, and it may be that you can read it that way, but the writer seems to be considering that FitA is something that pre-teens and young teens should read.

I actually never read it - I shied away from 99% of all horror (other than Scream) until Supernatural so FitA freaked me out because it was a "horror story", or so I was told, not because of the sexual content. But I read Forever and Wifey when I was 11, at camp, so...

[cadetsandkings.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense.

I never read either. Maybe I should? I was more a child of the '90s, so they were probably a little before my time, even though I devoured books as a kid. I did attend Xian school until I was almost 10. :P