escapism as a luxury

[intertribal]

I've been off conducting research in the field for my job - we investigate "needs improvement" schools - and one of the places I visited was a school on a reservation.  This is rural Nebraska, so things are isolated enough as it is, but it felt even more so that way at this school.  Most of their teachers are white and live across from the school building in a little row, friends only with each other, without access to ambulances or police departments (except for the FBI, if it's an emergency).  They have massive amounts of administrative turn-over - one principal walked into the school after he was hired and walked right back out.

The teachers are frustrated that they can't do much to get students out of abusive home environments.  Most of the family set-ups are always in flux - cousins moving in and out, grandparents taking over for parents, students moving from house to house.  Alcohol and meth abuse is a huge factor - some students start using in 3rd grade.  A 2nd-grader recently committed suicide.  Students are often out of school because of funerals in the community (the road you take to get to the school is a dangerous bendy road with lots of crosses on either side).  Teachers say students don't see the point in doing well.

Students at this school much prefer non-fiction to fiction.  And the genre they dislike most of all?  Science fiction and fantasy.  A couple reasons were offered for this (who knows what the real reason is):

• Those are not "their" stories.  Lack of relevance.
• They don't want to escape into fantasy, they want a better reality.  Like there is a certain stress point at which real life difficulties make fictional escapism totally irrelevant.

Of course, there is escapism going on - into alcohol and meth.  Part of what these answers show is what the staff thinks science fiction and fantasy (fiction in general?) are "supposed to do."  But I found it interesting that sf/f was the genre singled out as the least appealing.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-(

Yeah, if second graders are committing suicide, maybe fictional escapism does seem irrelevant...

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

When you grow up fast and hard, kiddie bullshit feels like just that, especially when someone is trying to "help" you by making you read it.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

This doesn't really surprise me, although I think I'd sound lame trying to explain why. Some of my students here are actually similar. I guess stories are like what people who have the luxury to think about things not immediately relevant to their lives do, not what people who are never going get anywhere by thinking about it do. Sci-fi especially (and fantasy?) seem so much to be about grand causes or human advances, the sort of human striving that forgets the people on the low end unless it uses them as fodder. I think students here haven't historically taken a liking to sci-fi, either. Dunno if anyone's tried fantasy. But they're always thinking in terms of business/politics, if they're thinking at all and not more concerned about lunch or being one of the guys or buying new shoes or whatever. It's like being in public school again, with the constant question of, "But why do I need to know this?" every other lesson. And why do accountants need literature? Why do translators need philosophy? Yeah.

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

When you're talkin natives, you're talkin about a buncha people who been put in a box that was built for them by white folk who say, "you don't like the nice box we made fer ye? here - we'll cut off yer arms and legs to make you more square-shaped to help you fit inna the box better." then when that don't work, the white folks take to filling the box with more and more stuff to try and make the box liveable and, when it still ain't, say: "oh, here's some nifty stories by white folk that'll help ya take yer mind offa the box and all the bad shit we put in there with ya."

Kinda like forcing people to subsist on McDonald's food and, when they ask for a change, giving them Alpo.