We once read a book called "Feed" in high school - a ham fisted anti-capitalist book. Wherein citizens are 100% connected to an internet like service that only exists to sell them products. 90% of the class couldnt get it. Even when the teacher sat down and explained the entire plot of the book they still couldnt wrap their head around it.

  • SocialistDad [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    As we learn to interpret stories, we learn to tell stories from the disjointed facts of our own lives. I don’t think capital is super worried about their workers honing that particular skillset. And to all the parents of you kids, you can start doing reading comprehension discussion about the stories you read to your kids basically as soon as they can speak enough to respond.

    I also think there’s an element of this never being modeled for kids. Teachers would ask leading questions that I could tell they thought were obvious. But I’d never seen this social game played. I didn’t know what kind of answers were acceptable. My kids have seen me talking with a reading group and my partner doing class discussion for college. We are both very privileged to have the time and money respectively to do those things. I know I sure as fuck didn’t see my parents critically discussing stuff on tv, let alone literature.