Review of The 1619 Project

The US’s “birthday” just happened earlier this week on July 4th, and many people celebrated our “freedom” by grilling meat, shooting off fireworks, and playing yard games. I had some friends over to grill, yes, but then we played a bunch of board games such as Perpetual Motion Machine, Wingspan, and Lords of Waterdeep. All games I enjoy!

Growing up, I always loved celebrating the 4th of July because my parents told me it was to celebrate our nation’s independence day…mainly, though, because I LOVE fireworks so very, very, very much. I remember growing up and learning about all the cool things our nation’s founding fathers did for our country and how they were all awesome. It wasn’t until, at least, high school (possibly even college), that I started to learn more about our founding fathers, our earliest colonies, and how many wealthy white people enslaved people (primarily) from Africa.

When The 1619 Project book by Nikole Hannah-Jones was published in 2019, I purchased a copy right away. As with many of my purchases, I put it off to read. Partly because I have to be in the right mood to read nonfiction especially, but also because I was intimidated by how long it was. Then 2020 and the after years came along, and my brain went elsewhere…so when my summer grad class had it as an option to read, I jumped all over it! Even better when the LMS at my building mentioned that we had the audiobook version through MackinVIA, so I ended up listening to it during walks. This helped break it up into chunks which makes reading any sort of nonfiction easier for me to read.

Above is a picture of my cat, Gizmo, with my hardcover copy of The 1619 Project. One thing I really like about the physical copy of the book is that it titles each chapter, tells who wrote it, and shares what the supplemental material is. With the audiobook, it just jumps into each next part without titles or authors or anything like that which was definitely frustrating to say the least. While I’m sure many of you have heard about the original project and possibly listened to the podcast, some might have no idea what I'm talking about. According to The 1619 Project website: “The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America”.

I definitely think every (white) person should partake of The 1619 Project in some format whether it’s as the podcast, Hulu series, book, audiobook, etc. There is so much to learn and relearn about this nation’s history and how many things still impact laws, regulations, and the lives of Black US citizens. I definitely would like to bring this book to my building’s equity team this fall as part of our work. The truly hard part is not just in reading about the history and truth of this nation but in taking action in response to what we learn. I struggle to get out of my feelings and thoughts parts of my brain and move into the action phase…not because I don’t want to but because I don’t always know where to start. That’s completely on me, and I need to do better.

Things I liked or enjoyed:

• (audiobook version): Each section, poem, short story, etc, was narrated by different people. I liked this as it gave life to what was being read.
• The supplemental materials that connect the past with the present and just gave us examples of art were compelling. They also gave me some ideas of new pieces to bring into my own classroom.
• (print version): Each section had an overarching title/idea as well as the creator/author, so I knew what the focus was going to be.
• Super digestible chunks throughout, so we could pull out a section here or there to dive into more deeply.
• Love that there are many “versions” of the work, so people can digest it however they please
• (print version): The notes section at the end where we see where information came from in case we want to go deeper
•  

Things that I didn’t like:

• In the MackinVIA app, I couldn’t change the speed of the book, and I wanted to push it up to 1.25x speed.
• Also in the app, if I closed out of it, when I opened it up again, the book would error out…or sometimes stop playing just randomly.
• (audiobook version): Sections weren’t labeled and, at first, I didn’t know if the supplemental materials went with the previous or next big sections.
• (audiobook version): Because sections weren’t labeled, just numbered, I was definitely overwhelmed with the 90+ sections of the book.
• Not just a sit and listen book…which isn’t a bad thing, but I had to go back and re-listen at times to parts (which was hard to find the parts I was looking for) to understand.
• I didn’t have anyone else reading the same book, so I didn’t have anyone to bounce my thoughts off of when I was chewing on something.

Some average thoughts on a book about averages

Hey y’all…so, as it happens with many of us…I had a great idea of what was going to happen this year, and then things took a bit of a turn. Nothing horrible, but I was too caught up in other things to put time and effort into writing posts; I also struggle with putting my voice into the space. This seems to be a common belief amongst many other people I know: we want to do something, but we “don’t have time”. Which is something I could totally blog about, but I’ll save that for a different time around.

Between my first blog post and this one, I finished up my first class for my LMS license and am in the middle of my second class. One of the cool things about this second class, called “Teacher Leader Scholar”, is that we were able to pick two books to read: one from an innovation standpoint and one from an equity standpoint (super bonus is that I already owned books from both lists and had at least two I hadn’t read yet!). When we’re done with our books, we’re supposed to write a blog post about the book, and, since I already technically have a blog, I thought I’d share my thoughts here.

The book I chose to read from the innovation list was called The End of Average by Todd Rose.

I chose The End of Average as a former student recommended it to me a few years ago, and I snapped it up right away. While I definitely try to read books that students recommend, I specifically was looking forward to this book as I respect this student’s outlook and beliefs. I find myself, though, in moods about what books I can sit down and read, and I hadn’t found the right time to read The End of Average. I’m glad I saved it until now!

Okay, so, what made The End of Average a decent read? Why might you want to check it out?

Here’s a quick list of my thoughts. Think of this as the tl;dr version:

Pros

• Chapters broken down into smaller sections for easier consumption
• Historical significance before and after the idea of the “average” xyz
• Visuals that helped to punctuate the science or beliefs
• Referred back to previous information without going over it all again
• Reinforced my thinking about many things in education
• Was able to talk about real life examples from this book with a variety of people already

Cons

• Needs to be read in chunks to process (not just a sit and read through it all book)
• While each point isn’t super long, some parts felt repetitive by the end of the book
• Wasn’t quite what I was expecting when I first started reading it (had a different idea of what it was about - tends to happen for me when I get book recs)
• Not really a solutions book so left me feeling slightly “hopeless”

One of my challenges oftentimes with reading nonfiction is that the author tends to beat the information into the ground. I don’t need eight million examples of the idea in action to think it’s a good or not so great concept.

The End of Average did a decent job of holding my attention and building off ideas vs being too repetitive until we neared the end. Then I skimmed just a bit, looking for solutions.

Part of how it helped hold my attention throughout was through short sections with bold titles that built on each other, at least in the beginning, chronologically. I was able to read the book then in chunks which is what I have to do with a lot of nonfiction. I love to just sit and read, but I can’t do that with nonfiction as I have to stop and think about what I just read. Also, the information can start to blur together and feel repetitive if I read it for too long in one sitting. I think I was getting to that point towards the end of the book.

One of the first ideas we learn about is “Norma…the ‘Ideal Girl’”. (Rose 7) I looked at the picture of Norma on page 6 and was what I think of as the average female body, but, as the book tells us, “Norma is a misguided ideal” (7) as very few to no female bodies actually look like her. As someone who has body dysmorphia, this section was helpful for me to read as it highlights a lot of what is wrong with Norma and any ideal body.

Instead of going on about Norma for an entire chapter, Rose talks about her creation and what that meant for the world and then went on to the next idea. He did come back to the various ideas as the book progressed which then led me to having a-ha moments. I appreciated the historical applications and scientific breakthroughs. Just because one person decided that focusing on an average human in one regard doesn’t mean the world would or should do that in another field. This is just one example of how the book is laid out.

While I don’t feel like my fellow educators should read the whole book for a PD, I feel like parts of it would be relevant especially if we are interested in changing up and rethinking how we “do education”. Chapter 2 “How Our World Became Standardized” and Chapter 8 "Replacing the Average in Higher Education” would be the best bets. Both of these chapters reinforced a lot of my thinking around how standardized tests and one size fits all educations do not do our students justice at all. Then again, I do not know if a huge overhaul of our system is possible at this point as people (outside of education for the most part) still believe that our system is working even after we learn that a lot of what we do is to help set up a standardized worker who can move and stop at the sound of bells, complete repeat tasks, etc,

I do recommend this book for people that want to know a bit about the history of average-ism as well as those that want to know a bit about how that idea isn’t a good one. I talked about this book with a friend of mine, Nikki, and we’ve already had some great discussions around the book, especially around the brain sciences and how doctors that focus on the average can really hurt people. I can’t wait to talk with her tonight during our workout on the rest of it now that I’m done with it.

…update to original post after my workout with Nikki…

I was talking with Nikki during our workout last night about The End of Average and other things going on in the world, and I realized that there is another book out there that I think would pair well with this book: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. While Mediocre focuses on the inequities in many practices that favor the “average” (see mediocre) white male, I feel that the book touches base on a lot of the other issues that are wrong with having a focus on the average. If we focus on just the average and not all the individuals, then it could be easier to allow for systems and people to be just meh. The individual or the exceptional is scary and an outlier. Obviously, Mediocre primarily focuses on systemic racism which is a huge deal and feeds into…everything.

Just a brain tangent I went on. *shrugs*

…another update after going to the park with my niece and nephew…

I was talking with my sister-in-law today about babies (my niece was born on mother’s day this year), and how every baby develops differently. We talked a bit about how, with my nephew, she hears people talk about how “kids do x by y age” which isn’t actually always true. I mentioned a bit about how in The End of Average, the author talked about how children will move in the best ways for them: rolling, scooching, crawling but the “average” is to crawl by x and walk by y which can freak new mothers out

a ton especially when their child does things differently.

Well, here we are...so why are we here?

Welcome to my little corner of the internet

Even if you've stumbled here by accident, stay and check things out. I haven't blogged since LiveJournal was huge in the early 2000s, and even then, I never really thought of it as a blog. It was a place to rant and rave about...everything. 

Here in Clare's Corner, I want to keep notes on how my new licensure program is doing as well as book reviews and what ever else is going on. I will never claim to be the expert on any one thing, but I do like to explore and learn new things and share them with whomever wants to listen.

As the header of my blog states, I named this after my maternal grandfather, Clare. He was an engineer and knowledge-seeker for most of his life. He was always reading and learning new things and was able to tinker with and fix almost anything. His passions for learning and doing and growing were passed along to me even if was muted for years due to the negative voices around me. I would consider him an expert, so that's why he gets first name billing here. 

Next week, I start my first class (Information Studies) of my School Library and Information Sciences graduate program at MSU Mankato. Ever since I started teaching ELA 17 years ago, I've wanted to also be able to be "the school librarian". As a colleague recently quipped: I like to try and gather all students into a safe & welcoming place. What better place to do that than a school media center? Don't get me wrong, I still love teaching HS English even if "things have changed" (don't we always say that?), but one thing hasn't changed: the students make me want to keep going back to my job. 

Again, welcome to this little corner of the internet. Hopefully, I'll see you again soon. 

Until then, what is something you want to learn more about or how to do in '23?