Fiction, unfortunately. This is fine reading for young people: exciting, subversive, relevant, and extremely motivating with real-world ideas about things they can do to change the world they live in.I'm one of Cory Doctorow's 1,000 true fans. The man shames me; he's written the most patriotic book I've read in years – a veritable pæan to the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. constitution – and he's Canadian. It wasn't easy for me to leave my country of birth, and it is all too tempting to turn my back on it; this book reminds me that the United States once stood for principles worth fighting for, and with work, it could someday again.
The book is available for sale as a dead tree and as a DRM-free audiobook, as well as a freely downloadable CC-licensed text|html|PDF file – and if you downloaded it, liked it, and want him to get paid for it, donate a copy to a library or school.
5 comments:
I've been wanting to read that, but unless it's in audio format, I just don't have time to flip the pages. I'm sure someone (maybe even Starship Sofa) will do it soon enough.
When I was about 13, one of the most formative books for me was the Orwell classic 1984. It's scary how much of it rings true today.
The book was given to me by my school librarian for helping her restack books. I still have it, and it's the only book I've read multiple times.
Oops, I forgot to mention: it is also available as a DRM-free audiobook.
suh-weet! now I have something to "read" on the plane ride home!
Hey Chuck, thanks so much for donating 3 copies of Little Brother to the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library. It's very much appreciated and it means we'll be able to put a copy in each of our branches.
With every passing year I find it increasingly difficult to teach my students and my own children to think critically for themselves. The School has become a modern-day Ministry of Youth Indoctrination. Children are first perplexed into silence, then ridiculed, and finally punished for openly questioning this idiocy-as-humanist-gospel crap they are being taught.
I, too, just finished Corey Doctorow's, Little Brother, in which he does a beautiful job of exposing a lot of this. Though I personally disagree with some of Corey's personal philosophy, it's written in the spirit of Voltaire (let everyone think for themselves) and I applaud it!
I find that audiobooks are an underutilized means of introducing great and dangerous ideas to young people. Lately I've enjoyed giving 6th and 7th graders a taste of Ayn Rand (Anthem), George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm), and Ray Bradbury (Fahrneheit 451). The older kids get fired up about "Lord of the Flies," the U.S. founding documents, "Das Kapital," "The Prince," "Candide," "Areopagitica," "The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom," "Common Sense," "Great Expectations," "Huckleberry Finn," "The Prince and the Pauper," "Moby Dick," and just about anything by Leo Tolstoy or
If you really want the kids to question authority, give them controversial literature. The best part of all of this is that, as a math teacher, I'm allowed to offer them ANYTHING as extra credit--and a lot of them are great at writing a critique or giving a 2 minute "report on the dangerous ideas in..." various books. It keeps the class fun and I manage to get everyone excited about math when we talk about totalitarian and oppressive topics like credit or taxation (or any of a vast number of other lies, legends and legacies which we've inherited from our forefathers, owners and kings).
The only problem is that I face a lot of ostracism from my colleagues in the social studies and English departments. They become annoyed for introducing topics with which they are unfamiliar. At present the principal has affirmed my extra credit policies (basically a student can get a full grade bump in my class by doing 6 of these per quarter (of which there are three because the word trimester confuses the innumerate.)
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