Books

How do schools with disadvantaged populations beat the odds? England’s Chief Inspector of Schools just released a report examining a group of schools that do and analysing what they have in common:

* They excel at what they do for a high proportion of the time
* They prove constantly that disadvantage or not speaking English at home need not be a barrier to achievement
* They put students first, invest in their staff and nurture their communities
* They have strong values and high expectations that are applied consistently and never relaxed
* They provide outstanding teaching, rich opportunities for learning and encouragement and support for each student
* They are highly inclusive
* Their achievements happen by highly reflective, carefully planned and implemented strategies
* They operate with a very high degree of internal consistency
* They are constantly looking for ways to improve further
* They have outstanding and well-distributed leadership.

This is exactly what you’d expect from the school improvement and effectiveness literature. I’ve been reading a lot of this lately, and what is surprising is how much convergence there is on this. You might think that having achieved such a high level of consensus it would be easy to move into some sort of policy promoting such schools. But it’s not so easy.

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Among the many sources of inequality, unequal access to books for residents of the Southern hemisphere is not among the most important. But it has delayed my entry into this event, so I hope I will be forgiven for writing about things that others have already looked at. In addition, I come to this complete uncontaminated with any previous knowledge of Cohen’s work on this topic, or of the existing criticisms and rejoinders or even of anything in Cohen’s book after Chapter 3. If that doesn’t worry you, read on.

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Rereading a much-loved book from childhood is a bit like meeting an old childhood friend. There’s doubt, until you finally meet, whether the magic of friendship will still be there and I imagine that it can be quite a disaster (though this has never been my own experience, in fact I’ve found that the people I liked as a kid and have encountered since have turned into quite delightful adults). So it was with some trepidation that I read The Otterbury Incident (out of print, but available from US amazon here and UK amazon here) to my oldest girl a few years ago, especially because the edition that was in print then lacks the lovely Ardizzone cover from the Puffin edition (the original Ardizzone illustrations are all inside though and here are some more). My dad read it to me when I was 8 (it was published when he was 8) and I loved it so much that I reread it several times, the last well into my teens. But, who knows, perhaps the magical world of bomb sites, spivs, boys brutalized by their guardians, and one kindly teacher, would no longer have any hold on me, let alone her.

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I have acquired a copy of R. Wilmott’s English Sacred Poetry of The Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1861) for the Dalziel brothers engravings. Which I am moderately pleased with. The book itself is fantastic looking. Comically heavy-bound and smoky-dark object. Zoë (age 7) got to see the thing before I did and her reaction shows she understands me well: ‘Daddy is going to love this. It even has water damage.’

And now I would like to report that the book contains the single worst argument against atheism yet devised. I present “The Atheist and the Acorn”, by Anne, the Duchess of Winchelsea. Complete with an engraving of the young PZ Myers by H.S. Marks: [click to continue…]

The Little Professor points us to the forthcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

She then suggests some additional titles. I can’t believe she left out War and Peace and Zombies, however. Now 50% longer! And you’d have these great contrasts between the command styles of the Prussian and French and Russian and zombie generals. (Writes itself.)

But Marvel comics is ahead of the literary curve, as always, with Marvel Zombies. They specifically explore one possibility that Miriam sees as needing careful treatment: what if a vampire became a zombie? A vambie! (In related news: witchaloks!)

UPDATE: Come to think of it, this old literary mash-up post – continued here – is even funnier than zombies. In all modesty.

Science fiction is, more than anything, a literature of ideas. And Charles Stross has more ideas than is probably healthy for one man. How many writers truly grapple with what it is to be human, with or without post-human technology? Accelerando bravely risks alienating you from the characters by propelling them off into multiple iterations far removed from the original meat-space versions. It reminded me of the second half of Wuthering Heights, when the original cast of characters is dead or unrecognizable, and a set of translucent copies play out the same drama. Less satisfying emotionally, but it makes you grasp intuitively the big questions beneath; what is free will? Am I the same person I was before puberty, when I left home, or even this time last year?
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In honor of Manfred Mancx, Charles Stross’ venture altruist/seagull/submissive/catspaw/posthuman protagonist in Accelerando – who tries to patent six impossible things before breakfast, or something like that – here are a couple of possibilities to start things out. [click to continue…]

I’ve mentioned Nancy Rosenblum’s _On the Side of the Angels_ a few times here; for those who are interested, Jacob Levy has organized a “seminar”:http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/search/label/Rosenblum-symposium that will be hosting responses to the book from Jacob, Melissa Schwartzberg, Maria, Marin, Andrew Rehfeld, Patrick Dineen, Nadia Urbinati and me (some are up there; others, including Rosenblum’s responses, will be posted over the next day or two). I will also be contributing to an entirely separate seminar on the book at _Cato Unbound._ Jacob mentions in his introductory post that CT helped pioneer this way of discussing books (nb the word ‘helped;’ doubtless there are others out there who had the same idea) – it’s nice to see that it is beginning to take off among academics more generally. While I don’t think that blogs and similar forms of online publication will ever replace conventional journals, I could see them replacing traditional academic book reviews, given their advantages of speed, dialogic component etc.

I’ve been out of the blogosphere for the last week or so; one of the things that I would have written about if I had been around are the persistent and well sourced rumours (see e.g. “Scott’s post at _IHE_”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/blogs/intellectual_affairs_the_blog/shutting_down_the_washington_post_book_world ) that the _Washington Post_ is considering shutting down their weekly _Book World_ supplement. Editor Marcus Brauchli (whom, if rumor is to be believed, is pushing the change) has prominently failed to deny the reports, merely stating that “We are absolutely committed to book reviews and coverage of literature, publishing and ideas in The Post” (which I suspect, if decoded, translates to something like “we may still stick in the odd book review as filler when we’re running low on Paris Hilton stories”). The closure of _Book World_ is something I’d take personally; when I first came to DC in the 1990s, it was a surprise and a delight to see pieces that took, say, John Crowley seriously, interspersed with the more usual reviews of biographies, political books and so on. And Michael Dirda should be declared a Living Treasure. I understand that this decision isn’t set in stone – if you want to tell the Washington Post that this is a bad idea, you can do so “here”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/feedback/index.html#tellusBox. _WP_ subscribers are especially encouraged to make their feelings known.

Disclaimer: oddly, given my interests, I’ve never read much G.A. Cohen before picking up Rescuing Justice and Equality for this little event. (I understand his friends call him ‘Gerry’, but I won’t presume, on such slight acquaintance.) This matters only because my reading of the book is still preliminary and a bit scattershot. I’m not sure I get it. Also, I typed this post out like a maniac, just for the exercise of it. Also, I’m writing this post without access to my Rawls books, which I forgot to bring home, so I can’t quote. Well, I’m sorry about that. So stuff I say that is just plain wrong should be corrected in comments, without anger if you please. And we’ll just do our best, shall we? Also, I’m about to go on vacation for a few days, but I promised to participate. Also, I’m about to embark on an internet-free weekend getaway. Hence will not be very helpful in comments myself. Best I can do.) [click to continue…]

“John Crowley”:http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/ has a lovely essay on Thomas Disch in the new “Boston Review”:http://www.bostonreview.net. The essay isn’t on the WWW yet (I’ll link to it when/if it does appear), but I wanted to quote this bit about Disch’s _334_ as soon as I read it:

… why did he need the scaffoldings of futurist fiction? We might guess that if he were beginning a writing career now, with dozens of writers taking up and inventing personal worlds in irrealistic modes and nobody minding, he wouldn’t need science fiction. But I think that he was always haunted – and vivified – by the awful and the apocalyptic. In creating the world of _334_, he had the grand sweep of decline and fall, featuring numberless populations and quick-time disasters, that would allow him to admit a competing tendency to generosity and humility in dealing with individual hurt and longing. Posit a future that is cruel enough to be convincingly the future of this bad present – a hard shell for the tender snail of self – and you can bring out from it what matters most to you: the shortened version of things in the world.

When I wrote an “irritated piece”:https://crookedtimber.org/2008/12/16/they-bellow-til-were-deaf/ in response to Benjamin Kunkel’s “silly essay”:http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1308 last month, I mentioned _334_ as a counter-example to Kunkel’s claims. But Crowley’s summation of Disch (perhaps because it isn’t a polemic or counter-polemic, instead being a sympathetic analysis of a particular aesthetic) says what I was trying to say far better. There isn’t any necessary reason why a particular set of literary tropes and themes _have_ to overwhelm character in dystopian or apocalyptic novels. Instead, as _334_ exemplifies, you can use the tensions between dystopia and the everyday lives of people as a source of art. Which is what _334_ does so well, and why it is a minor masterpiece.

Hollywood is poised to make a Tintin movie, apparently, so we have two recent think pieces about comics’ greatest boy reporter in plus-fours. Matthew Parris declares that he’s obviously gay. The Economist somehow manages to take an exquisitely Economistesque line, getting digs in at the French while backhandedly praising Americans for their peculiar issues, while allowing that the Brits are probably somewhere in the middle. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Tintin has never fallen foul of the 1949 French law on children’s literature [making it illegal to portray cowardice positively]. He is not a coward, and the albums do not make that vice appear in a favourable light. But he is a pragmatist, albeit a principled one. Perhaps Anglo-Saxon audiences want something more from their fictional heroes: they want them imbued with the power to change events, and inflict total defeat on the wicked. Tintin cannot offer something so unrealistic. In that, he is a very European hero.

The Parris piece is mock-serious, otherwise I would have to ask: is he serious? But he sort of seems serious, so I’m wondering whether, on some level, he thinks Hergé really meant to imply that in the world of the fiction (oh, never mind, I’d just wander off into philosophy nonsense about true-in-the-world-of-the-fiction. Parris is obviously taking the piss.) So the question we’ve got to ask is: are Tintin and Haddock sex jokes likelier to be funnier, on average, than the corresponding Batman and Robin jokes, which we have certainly all heard by now? (Obviously it’s much funnier to make jokes about Tintin and Haddock being Batman and Robin.) But Parris makes some interesting observations. What do you think?

Let’s turn the question around: are there actually such things as old-fashioned adventure books for boys that don’t seem vaguely campy, hence homoerotic? Because all you need is: no women. (Except for mom, maybe.) A bunch of males doing things together that don’t quite make sense, but it’s all very urgent. The male characters talking funny.

I do concede that the Tintin books are far more exclusively male-populated that even the standards of healthy boys’ adventure would seem to demand.

One thing The Economist claims, in passing, which I’m not really sure about, is that Tintin is almost unknown in America. Obviously you have to judge by the standards of comics not, say, Paris Hilton. If you show the average American a picture of Tintin, will they not know who this kid is? I’ve have noticed that Tintin is oddly missing from some ‘best comics’ lists. Wizard’s list is hopelessly capes&tights, so no surprise there. But here’s another. No Tintin. [UPDATE: nope. He’s there, after all. I missed him because I searched for his name spelled correctly – Hergé – rather than minus the accent. Ahem.] I read Tintin as a child. Didn’t lots of other people?

A short but intensely felt recommendation for Felix Gilman’s first book, _Thunderer_ (“Powells”:http://www.powells.com/s?kw=Felix%20Gilman%20thunderer&PID=29956, “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=felix%20gilman%20thunderer&tag=henryfarrell-20&index=books&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325) combined with a query – why haven’t I heard about this book before? It’s _exactly_ the kind of sf/f novel that I like – a brooding, post-Mievillian fantasy set in a decaying city of uncertain extent and boundaries, with a keen ear for politics, character and language. But that’s not how it’s been marketed – cover, blurb etc suggest a generic quest fantasy of the more or less inept and badly plotted variety. I think this misses its core market (hell, I think I _am_ its core market) – people who are looking for a standardized post-Tolkien ripoff are liable to be quite upset while people looking for a more challenging read, who would have bought it, if they knew what it was about, won’t. I can sometimes understand these kinds of marketing decisions. For example, I’ve quite enjoyed Sarah Monette’s Mirador books, which are very nicely written indeed, but are marketed to the romance fantasy/mildly titillating slash market, this, presumably, being rather more lucrative than the literary fantasy market that folks like myself inhabit. But this seems downright odd to me – I don’t see what the publishers are getting by chucking it out into the generic fantasy market without some pointers that it should also be of interest to people who have different literary tastes (Monette’s books, in contrast, _have_ been cross-marketed as best as I can tell). Gilman’s book should be getting highly approving reviews in _Locus_, nominations for major awards etc, which could allow it to straddle the split between the more and less literary ends of genre but, to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been, and I suspect Bantam/Spectra’s marketing folks are at fault. Or is there something relevant about the publishing trade that I’m just not getting here?

On X-Mas I gave good ol’ PZ a visit. He had up a quote from Rick Warren:

I believed that evolution and the account of the Bible about creation could exist along side of each other very well. I just didn’t see what the big argument was all about. I had some friends who had been studying the Bible much longer than I had who saw it differently…Eventually, I came to the conclusion, through my study of the Bible and science, that the two positions of evolution and creation just could not fit together. There are some real problems with the idea that God created through evolution… My prayer is that you will have this same experience!

The Bible’s picture is that dinosaurs and man lived together on the earth, an earth that was filled with vegetation and beauty…man and dinosaurs lived at the same time…From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs.

After that, I decided to give my X-Mas presents the attention they richly deserved. The adverb that describes the way my mother-in-law shopped for me is ‘awesomely’. [click to continue…]