I'm not expecting the coming new regime in the USA to welcome my books, which are mostly about science. My books don't endorse or even respect the views of many of those who will be making policy, or pushing local-level reshaping of communities and education. The coming years might be a hard time for publishing about science, and a harder time for children who want to read about science. And the decades after will be a hard time for American science and technology if that's the case. I want to talk about two concerns here. They are not party political. You will find nothing intended to offend you if you are right-leaning, but I hope you will consider them because I'm concerned about children, knowledge, the fate of humanity, and truth.
One is fragility and openness. Suppose you sincerely believe that evolution is a lie, climate change a hoax, the Moon landings were faked, Covid was deliberattely engineered or non-existent and/or that vaccines do untold harm, and you want your children to believe that too. My books will not be on your preferred reading list. Not for yourself, not for your children, and not for your school. But they should be, in particular for your school. Books should be available for children to choose, and books you or they disagree with are as important, or more important, than books that reinforce your views.
If you want someone to believe something, you need to be able to defend your position. You need to be able to say why you are right and other people are wrong. If you shield children from counter-arguments, you don't give them the resources they need to defend their view, either to themselves or to others. Why would you ban books? Don't you trust children to weigh up arguments and make a choice? Don't you think your view *can* be rigorously defended? (in which case you might like to reconsider it.) Why do you think your views and your children are so fragile? This is not an assualt; it's an invitation to learn how to strengthen your position if it is genuinely viable.
If our ideas are good and strong and well-founded, they can be tested against dissent and will stand up to the challenge. I can defend the science of climate change and of evolution precisely because I can counter the claims against it. Listening to arguments and considering if a position remains valid makes that position stronger, not weaker. It's not, ultimately, about teaching your child that either Noah or evolution is true. It's about teaching your child to work with evidence, to learn how to think, to come to the right conclusion, whatever that is.
About five years ago, I was at a college dinner (this is in Cambridge, UK). Some students cornered the head of the college and protested that he was allowing a visitor they disagreed with to speak to students. I no longer remember what the topic or objection was, only that it was a speaker whose views I personally disagreed with, but it was an issue of politics and not about personal offence. It would now be couched in terms of de-platforming. The head of the college told them the visitor held legal views that he was free to express and students were free to listen or not listen as they chose. Were they so insecure or so incapable of rational thought that they couldn't countenance challenge? He made it clear that their perception of their own weakness, or the weakness of their view, was not a reason for expecting people with different convictions or opinons to be silenced. I agreed with him. We need to hear dissenting views and respond to the challenge, even if only internally. Children need to learn to do this. It is a crucial life skill. It is ironic that it is the right wing that loudly proclaims the value of freedom of expression, yet is most eager to ban books that offer different views of the world.
The second point I want to make is about the future of the USA and its world-leading science. There is massive cognitive dissonance at the heart of a regime that denies and limits scientific education and information on the one hand, yet hopes to succeed in a world that is increasingly dependent on science and technology. And in an administration that attempts a forced marriage between science-deniers and technocrats in office. I have no respect for Elon Musk, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't think Earth was created in six days or the Moon landings were faked.
If you want to support the economics of fossil fuel use, of course you deny climate change. But where will future American scienists come from if they aren't taught science or if an inquisitive and exploratory pattern of mind isn't encouraged in young people? Decent scientists aren't going to move into the USA under the conditions that are coming. I know several scientists who have moved out of the USA in recent years because, whatever the funding opportunities for research (about to go down), they don't want to bring their children up there. They don't want to have only six weeks off work when their babies are born. They don't want to send them to schools where they have to consider the possibility of a shooter. They are human beings before they are scientists. So if America wants a future generation of Elon Musks and their ilk, they will have to be home-grown, and that means teaching some science.
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| Who says science is scary? |
A few years ago, the Chinese Communist Party realised that Chinese scientists were not innovative. They were good at copying and even perfecting things thought of in the West, but they were not good at coming up with new ideas. One reason, it appeared, was because Western scientists had grown up reading science fiction. Science fiction plays with possibilities, it encourages dreaming in scientific and technological landscapes. A very large number of the technologies we enjoy now had their genesis in fiction and were later realised by readers who had grown up wanting the stuff in the stories they had read and the movies and TV shows they had seen. So it's not even just books about actual science that children need access to. They need books that spark their imagination and desires, books (or movies, or computer games) that raise possibilities.
Finally: when Copernicus published his model of Earth going around the Sun in 1543, he left it until he was dying because he anticipated trouble from the Church. (Plus ça change...) But the Church did not ban the heliocentric model of the solar system then. They allowed and even used it because it was a helpful mathematical model that gave results no worse than those they already had. It might not be true (they still thought the Sun went around Earth), but it was mathematically valid. Could America at least do this with science? Use the models that show us how to limit climate damage, improve food supplies, combat diseases, even if you see them as imperfect representations of how the world actually is? (Science is likely always going to be such an imperfect representation — all we disagree about is precisely how imperfect.) Then American children can operate within a framework that the rest of the world recognises and uses, they can grow up to continue to make scientific discoveries that will improve lives, the USA will not slump to the bottom of the world league in a mire of science-denial and fear. Banning useful things because of ideology never leads to a good place. Seeking to understand them gives you power, even if you take the view of "knowing your enemy". Science doesn't care if you believe in it. It will get you anyway, so you might as well see what's coming. You might as well be equipped to partake in the future.
Out now: Weird and Wonderful Animal Facts, Arcturus, September 2024; illustrated by Ro Ledesma
11 comments:
Very interesting post.
Thanks for saying all this, Anne. A very welcome post!
And we currently have a "Misinformation/Disinformation" Bill before our Federal Parliament which, added to the new "social media ban" for those under age fifteen, is also designed to prevent people from accessing anything apart from government approved information. I find this very, very worrying indeed.
This is a brilliant post, Anne. It expresses eloquently and succinctly exactly what I feel. I shall be buying multiple copies of your book to give to my grandchilren, all of whom are either at university now or will be later this year because I think thery may have hard rows to hoe. I was appalled by your Cambridge experience but pleased with the Head's reaction. The students' attitude is sad. They will one day regret it.
I have little truck with creationism, nor am I formally religious, but it does seem to me that at the heart of most of the well known religions, there is something that addresses human needs rather better than the often arrid language of science and technology. Perhaps you'd understand more if you spent some time away from the Cambridge bubble, biotech friends, and closed minded views on religion...?
Interesting view, Andrew. I haven't set foot in a college since before the pandemic; Cambridge is just where I live. Most of my friends are writers and illustrators, lawyers, or work for the NHS. Don't jump to conclusions. There is nothing in my post to criticise religion as a source of comfort in life, or whatever else people may find in it. But if you only teach religion and deny science, you aren't going to get very far in a world that (whether for good or bad) relies on technology and science. I don't see anyone stepping in to mulitiply loaves and fishes into eight billion portions by miracles. As for the 'arid' language of science and technlogy — there is plenty of wonder and majesty in scientific writings from Sir Thomas Browne onwards. There are religious scientists: the two are not mutually exclusive but have their appropriate domains. The American religious right wants religion to take over the domain of science, while I am suggesting that if they taught both their children would be equipped to make an informed decision and their society equipped to partake in the wider world
Well said Anne!
Brilliant, Anne. But how to get it in front of the people who really need to read it?
The extremists won't read it or won't take any notice. The people we need to read it are the other people who sit on school boards, who don't feel particularly strongly but perhaps lack conviction or arguments to fight against the extremists. But still, I doubt many American school governors or school librarians read ABBA....
Excellent piece, Anne! I wish the right people would read it and think about it...!
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