I've been taking stock in the long dark of the winter solstice, as the year's end nears. What a year of horrors it has been on the world front, one unbelievably awful event after the next. In a BBC radio comedy programme recently, someone quipped that on quiz shows of the future the questions will begin, "In what year did..." and the winning contestant won't wait for the rest of the sentence but will buzz in with '2016', and be right every time.
The view from Canada seems to be that at least here in the north, things could be worse. People look south over the US border at the regime change in the offing, and east across the Atlantic to a Brexiting Europe, and treat themselves to some hand-wringing but also to a bit of modest self-back-patting. The ether holds a pulse of national pride. "We are nice," people think. "Just like our reputation. Good for us. Sure, we've got some issues, but really, it could be worse." This is true, in so many ways. But the other thing about Canada, I'm learning, is that 'it could be worse' is more than an expression of contentment and self-gratulation. It's a reminder and a warning: things could be worse!
There seems to be a need to remind themselves just how bad things could get, to conjure up some misery and prepare for it, sort of like a fire drill. 'In the case of real misery, act this way.' Moreover, the powers-that-be inculcate such thinking into their youth, mainly via the education system. Things could be worse! I've written before about the nation-wide, largely school-based annual commemoration of the unfortunate cancer victim, Terry Fox (who died in 1981), which so terrorized our youngest child shortly after we arrived. The Toronto District School Board's curriculum, in line with the provincial Ministry of Education, incorporates the 'it could be worse' mentality into numerous contexts: equity studies, health, 'novel studies'. This last requires middle-schoolers, kids aged 11 to 14, to consume Canadian teen literature that is, in my parental experience (third time through), unflinchingly dark and discouraging. It is an apparently flourishing genre I might call Northern young-adult misery lit. Unlike the ubiquitous dystopian young YA fiction (e.g. The Hunger Games), these novels depict the here, the now, the kids next door or at the next desk. You. Your friends.
An example is the novel that my 13-year-old daughter is currently reading for school: The Beckoners, by Carrie Mac, an author who, according to her website, lives in Vancouver with her partner and children. In her photo, she is smiling and happy. Meanwhile, the teen protagonist in her tale both experiences and commits bullying on a horrifying scale. For example, the girl is forced to brand herself with a burning fork in order to join a cool gang at her school. She eventually displeases these new friends and, in response. they hang her beloved dog. My daughter has created detailed, well-rendered drawings to illustrate the various plot points. I admire her artistic skills. I'm just unsure where in the house is a good spot to display a picture of a dead dog. The living room?
The view from Canada seems to be that at least here in the north, things could be worse. People look south over the US border at the regime change in the offing, and east across the Atlantic to a Brexiting Europe, and treat themselves to some hand-wringing but also to a bit of modest self-back-patting. The ether holds a pulse of national pride. "We are nice," people think. "Just like our reputation. Good for us. Sure, we've got some issues, but really, it could be worse." This is true, in so many ways. But the other thing about Canada, I'm learning, is that 'it could be worse' is more than an expression of contentment and self-gratulation. It's a reminder and a warning: things could be worse!
There seems to be a need to remind themselves just how bad things could get, to conjure up some misery and prepare for it, sort of like a fire drill. 'In the case of real misery, act this way.' Moreover, the powers-that-be inculcate such thinking into their youth, mainly via the education system. Things could be worse! I've written before about the nation-wide, largely school-based annual commemoration of the unfortunate cancer victim, Terry Fox (who died in 1981), which so terrorized our youngest child shortly after we arrived. The Toronto District School Board's curriculum, in line with the provincial Ministry of Education, incorporates the 'it could be worse' mentality into numerous contexts: equity studies, health, 'novel studies'. This last requires middle-schoolers, kids aged 11 to 14, to consume Canadian teen literature that is, in my parental experience (third time through), unflinchingly dark and discouraging. It is an apparently flourishing genre I might call Northern young-adult misery lit. Unlike the ubiquitous dystopian young YA fiction (e.g. The Hunger Games), these novels depict the here, the now, the kids next door or at the next desk. You. Your friends.
An example is the novel that my 13-year-old daughter is currently reading for school: The Beckoners, by Carrie Mac, an author who, according to her website, lives in Vancouver with her partner and children. In her photo, she is smiling and happy. Meanwhile, the teen protagonist in her tale both experiences and commits bullying on a horrifying scale. For example, the girl is forced to brand herself with a burning fork in order to join a cool gang at her school. She eventually displeases these new friends and, in response. they hang her beloved dog. My daughter has created detailed, well-rendered drawings to illustrate the various plot points. I admire her artistic skills. I'm just unsure where in the house is a good spot to display a picture of a dead dog. The living room?
Recently, my daughter and a friend of hers who attends a different middle school compared notes on their Novel Studies assignments. "In my book, the girl kills herself," the friend says, matter of factly, describing the dark, depressing, and Canadian-set circumstances that drive the character to suicide. I asked both children, is this what it's like in your schools? Girls, do such things happen to you or to people you know? No, they said. Of course not! They look at me as though I've asked whether they have wings. These are children who watch Disney animated films and YouTube clips on how to apply makeup. They have spats, they make up. Their friends are diverse in their family structures, ethnicities, religions, abilities. Relationships ebb and shift and small dramas occur. These are interesting to them, they are absorbing without being tragic or terrifying.
I don't mind what my children choose to read. I don't censor their reading. (Though I do limit, or try to, what television and movies they watch.) But to me, allowing them to read what they choose is different from choosing something for them and assigning it. That's a message. Things could be worse! Feeding them a literary diet of misery and woe as part of their school curriculum seems wrong. But what do I know? I'm a stranger here myself. I asked the girls whether these stories made them cry or feel sad, and they answered, "No," in unison, and definitively, even witheringly. Maybe something about this Northern misery-YA genre is helping them, helping the whole of Canadian society, to be more empathetic and kind, like an inoculation. Maybe it's toughening them up, preparing them for troubles arriving from overseas or over the border. But maybe not.
Things could be worse.
I don't mind what my children choose to read. I don't censor their reading. (Though I do limit, or try to, what television and movies they watch.) But to me, allowing them to read what they choose is different from choosing something for them and assigning it. That's a message. Things could be worse! Feeding them a literary diet of misery and woe as part of their school curriculum seems wrong. But what do I know? I'm a stranger here myself. I asked the girls whether these stories made them cry or feel sad, and they answered, "No," in unison, and definitively, even witheringly. Maybe something about this Northern misery-YA genre is helping them, helping the whole of Canadian society, to be more empathetic and kind, like an inoculation. Maybe it's toughening them up, preparing them for troubles arriving from overseas or over the border. But maybe not.
Things could be worse.
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