Howard, that's never *not* been true, at least in my lifetime + personal experience. (I'm in my late 60s.)
Being from a small, mostly working-class town, i was constantly ridiculed for *reading books* by my peers and even by one of my teachers in elementary school. Many years later, i read a brief account of how an immigrant boy's father …
Howard, that's never *not* been true, at least in my lifetime + personal experience. (I'm in my late 60s.)
Being from a small, mostly working-class town, i was constantly ridiculed for *reading books* by my peers and even by one of my teachers in elementary school. Many years later, i read a brief account of how an immigrant boy's father (a steelworker) used to literally kick books right out of his son's hands whenever he "caught" him reading. The person who went through that is Michael Dirda, former editor of the Washington Post's Book World Sunday section. (It was killed some years ago.) While i grew up in a family full of readers, and am female, I'm about Dirda's age and i get what he went through.
I grew up hearing great disparagement of "book learning" throughout my childhood and adolescence, though thankfully not from family members. I think many people saw our family as eccentric b/c of how much we read, but they were either kind enough or polite enough to avoid mentioning it.
Howard, that's never *not* been true, at least in my lifetime + personal experience. (I'm in my late 60s.)
Being from a small, mostly working-class town, i was constantly ridiculed for *reading books* by my peers and even by one of my teachers in elementary school. Many years later, i read a brief account of how an immigrant boy's father (a steelworker) used to literally kick books right out of his son's hands whenever he "caught" him reading. The person who went through that is Michael Dirda, former editor of the Washington Post's Book World Sunday section. (It was killed some years ago.) While i grew up in a family full of readers, and am female, I'm about Dirda's age and i get what he went through.
I grew up hearing great disparagement of "book learning" throughout my childhood and adolescence, though thankfully not from family members. I think many people saw our family as eccentric b/c of how much we read, but they were either kind enough or polite enough to avoid mentioning it.