So how about a disciplinary hearing to determine if they should fire the principal? Oh, wait. Here in America, itās only the peons who do real work who get screwed, and worthless bureaucrats and functionaries of all stripes are completely immune to any consequences for abusing their power.
Wonderful news!
Iām relieved that it ended this well.
It amazes me that we still have to have these fights. People are still trying to ban books, and others are still risking their personal well being to defend freedom. Great job by this teacher.
Better than a unicorn chaser. Cory you inspire me when you take the high road to disagreements.
Amazing. Itās stunning that here, on my briefest of summer breaks, Iām looking out at a beautiful and serene dawn coastline, and absorbing the idea that the machinations of man can so utterly, repetitively, mess around with the clear and distinct, the sensible and stabilising principles of modern society, to the extent of a teacher needing to risk so much.
Why a principal can be sideways corrupted is beyond me. A world of fools, ignorant of the simple knowledge needed to create balance and harmony, bound up in their petty cantankerousness, toying with concepts and methods that brilliant and far-sighted people have recorded after so many generations of deep intellectual effort.
The contrast is simply stunning.
So. Aside, @doctorow, I wondered if the title āLittle Brotherā was inspired more by Orwell, or Asimovās early essay āLittle Brothersā. Iām leaning to the latter - whaddya say?
Iām reading The a Foundation trilogy - as these things work, steered there by a comment of Robin Williams. Itās the Everyman edition, and has a wonderful commentary prior to the stories.
Asimov was so young when he wrote this, but seemingly utterly capable of threading together so many deep and fundamental strands of the weave that forms the nature of humankind.
How dare insidious administrators toy with the transmission and education of such ideas. If they fear @doctorow, let them writhe in anxiety at the collection of radical authors composing their orthodox reading lists. Yāknow, like Shakespeare.
More Orwell than Asimov, definitely.
Cory, would you consider releasing your notes and outlines on books as a āDVD extrasā style value add?
As mentioned on a previous thread we have all heard about Neal Stephenson cutting an unfinished future timeline from Cryptonomicon, what interesting unfinished extras or alternate scenes/scenarios are we missing from your books? I imagine you have an edit history so we could rollback like wikipedia edits to observe the changes.
Since we live in this dystopic future adventure at least let the literature be more interactive than in the past.
(edit)
Also, hooray for cool teacher wins and eff that principal, what a douche, is this an election stunt or is the school board a pile of asshats?
My notes are pretty thin, Iām afraid ā Iām more of a plot-as-I-go, revise-later guy. I do have git repos with all my work saved in 15m increments, though, which are to be archived longterm at the Merril Collection in Toronto after I croak.
āAnti-authoritarian themesā is such a phony reason. Virtually every YA book contains that - otherwise no kid would read them. Hunger Games, Divergent, Percy Jackson, not to mention those who-knows-how-many āTreehouse Kidsā stories where the kids lie to their parents and go fight the Civil War or visit Pompeii, etc.
The principalās objection shows how much he has internalized what many suspect is the actual rationale behind public schooling (creating order). Thankfully reality intervened in this case - the kids who are reading books are almost NEVER the problem and will be OK.
On a side note - my HS library had Mein Kampf (it was 1982). It had been checked out a handful of times. I wonder if they still doā¦other than as a honeypot of course.
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