I think, instead of being forced to do assigned reading in school, which tends to make people end up as adults who never read, teachers should alternate between two options:

1. Give students a curated list of books from which they can choose to read and do book reports that focus on giving their honest opinions of the books, guided by a list of suggestions for things to talk about. Did you like the book? What did you like about it, if anything? What did you dislike? Did you dislike one or more of the characters? Something about the plot? What critiques and/or praise would you give the author? What suggestions would you give the author? Did you connect with / relate to any of the themes of the book? Did you relate to any of the struggles or joys of any of the characters? Etc etc. (Encouraging the students to think about what they're reading.)

2. Same as above, except this time with books of the student's choosing from anywhere -- libraries, personal collections, web fiction, fanfic, etc. These would also have suggestions for the students to try to convince others that their book of choice is good literature worth reading, and if they hype up the book well enough, the book stands a good chance of being added to the curated list mentioned in option number 1.

I especially think this is important because academics tend to have these insular ideas of what counts as good literature and what doesn't, ideas that usually end up mostly promoting dead old white men with books that are so old that the modern reader struggles to read them -- even the readers who enjoy reading books like that.

That tendency of academics, including teachers, having such insular notions of what constitutes good literature also excludes a lot of not just modern literature in general but entire genres like science fiction, and also excludes a lot of minorities like LGBT folks and black people, indigenous people, and others.

I don't think doing things this way is going to be very quick at getting that kind of conservative, classist, and racist insularism out of academia in general and especially the upper echelons of academia, but I think it's very important that we introduce this technique into public schools as a requirement for at least the middle school and high school levels of English class to kind of counterbalance these insular attitudes as they've been taught to the teachers, and introduce children to this technique before they can have their love of reading beaten out of them by the more rigid and outdated white patriarchal system. It would also serve the function of introducing that broader spectrum of literature and appreciation for it to future teachers at a young age.

Oh, and of course it would also serve a much needed broadening of students' perspectives about the world in general at an early age which can only be good for the country especially when it comes to discouraging racism and fascism. Especially so if you alternate the curated lists for option number one to include various themes that would help broaden students' perspectives.

Like for instance: yes, there is "The Grapes of Wrath," but under that book's themes of poverty, classism, the failures of capitalism, etc, there are likely other books that may be more accessible to younger readers and readers of the modern era that might eventually lead them to want to read "The Grapes of Wrath" instead of it being forced on them. And it's so very much easier to learn something when you are interested in it, and it's entertaining or at least engaging, than it is when you're being forced to do something.

For instance, "The Murderbot Diaries" series by Martha Wells has very strong anti-capitalist themes to it, but it's also really fun, really funny, and very entertaining. Or how something like "The West Side Story" could get kids interested in the story of Romeo and Juliet.

I say all this not just because the US education system is churning out a lot of students that once used to love reading and now only read if they absolutely have to, but also because even though I never lost my love of reading, I still hated virtually everything that the English teachers forced on us. Occasionally these books turned out to be pretty decent, but more often than not I just had no interest in any of those books, they were waaayyy too much effort to get through, and in retrospect I was able to see how if even someone who loves to read can struggle that much with the assigned reading, that it's really no wonder so many other students are just getting so fed up with that bullshit that they just give up on reading entirely, and I think this plan of mine that I've laid out in this post would go a long way towards fixing that. It wouldn't take care of it entirely because there is a lot of other reading required in academia, but I think the above technique paired with a great reduction in the homework would be a really good combo, especially since study after study after study has shown that homework doesn't really help with anything, it's mostly not merely useless, but actively counterproductive. It's mostly just busy work that accomplishes nothing but creating burnout in students, and is a function of the capitalist desire to forge students into good little worker robots.

But that attitude of turning students into worker robots is severely outdated, since that was started at the height of the US's manufacturing industry, which doesn't really exist anymore in the information age. So that is not the world we live in anymore, and what we really need in the world is for people to be as intelligent as they can be, as flexible and open-minded as can be, as creative as can be, and with a willingness (and even love) to read even into adulthood. So very many things about modern society could be fixed if people would actually take the time and effort to read and to be able to do it well, with the time and effort they take being willing enough on their part that it is just a habit and not something people have to force themselves to do. Which can only happen if we find some way to teach literature in a way that retains people's love of reading.

This is of course only one small part of the problem and one small solution for that part, because just everything about Western education standards beats the creativity and desire to learn about the world out of children, and a great many of them just never recover from that. But I don't want to write an entire book about this on here, so that's all for now.

YouTube video: What event in your life still messes with you to this day? | Askreddit

I left this comment there:

My best friend ever, who I was in an on-again, off-again romance with because it took me ages to realize I'm basically asexual, died in 2019. I've never been the same since. I already had chronic depression long before that, and she was a massive bright light in my life. So bright that I moved halfway across the country to be with her after years of us being online-only friends. The move was the best thing I ever did in my life, it made my quality of life go up dramatically because I was able to be myself and be free in Portland, since I couldn't be that in Iowa. Having Lily there with me as well, super close friends the entire time whether we were dating or not, made it even better. She was unerringly, kind, compassionate, accepting, loving, intelligent, interesting, delightful, and her weird matched mine perfectly and balanced out many of my character flaws. (Such as my being a pessimist who is distrustful of strangers, and her being an optimist who trusted people easily.) Every discussion we had was fascinating and engaging, her laugh was like an antidepressant that worked instantly, we could spend hours entertaining each other with bad puns and worse jokes.

When she died, unexpectedly in her sleep from a seizure (she had epilepsy), an important part of my spirit died with her. Despite having not been much of a crier since before puberty, I couldn't go more than an hour without something reminding me of her and setting me off crying. I had to stop listening to my favorite musical artist because Lily had introduced me to them, and so music that used to comfort me when I was overstimulated would make me start crying uncontrollably even in public, and I hate crying in front of other people because I used to get bullied mercilessly for being a crybaby. I used to be a very spiritual person, not religious, but I would sing as a spiritual experience and even dance around for the same reason. I haven't done much of either since Lily died. Even writing this, now, I have to fight back tears. Without her brilliant positive nature, my negative nature just keeps pulling me in deeper, making me a more miserable person, and the rise of fascism in my country is just making it even worse. I feel like I could maybe be coping and more hopeful in these trying times if she had never died.

I still have dreams about her, where she has either come back from the dead or never died to begin with. I still fight tears when I wake up from these dreams, because it's almost like losing her all over again.

A few weeks ago, just when I thought it couldn't get worse, I found out the answer to a mystery that had plagued me ever since she died: how can a seizure kill someone? Well the answer is simple: flailing around in bed from the seizure, the victim can suffocate in their bedding. Given Lily was prone to sleeping on her stomach under a massive pile of blankets and comforters, I'd say it's 99% likely she suffocated in her sleep because of the seizure. And that just messed me up even more than before.

I've been coping a bit with my writing. I have a whole arc for this one character who, like me, loses her best friend ever very suddenly (her friend was murdered) and even almost a decade later, she's still a wreck about it in various ways. So I explore my grief through that character. But it's a bandage on a gaping wound. A wound that's scabbed over, but any picking at the scab makes it open up again. I do it sometimes anyway.

I've also named characters after her, and gave one new character epilepsy in her honor. One of the more prominent side characters in some of the books has a variant of her personality. Wait, correction: two of them do.

The worst part? I didn't even get to go to her funeral. Her mom didn't invite me or tell me where it was, and I still don't know why. I'm basically taking everyone who was there at their word that she died, which is probably why I keep having dreams that she's still alive... like my brain still can't quite believe it because seeing is believing. Though at the same time, I don't know if I would feel better or worse if I could have seen her body. Probably a lot worse, though.

I get through it by walking through the world with proverbial blinders on, dissociating when it's too much to bear. I do laugh, quite often; it's another coping mechanism, one I learned from years of depression. Laughter is a lit match against the darkness, bright but fading fast.

~ End quote ~

The character who's dealing with the grief of her best friend being murdered: One of Vedya's multiverse doubles, Sarah's double being the murder victim. This double first appears briefly in book 4, and becomes a major character in book 5. She goes by the nickname of Naga.

The two characters who have variants of Lily's personality: Acorn Bonewits (a wood nymph) and Caligo (a kind of faery in the story called an Aeventyrichor). I think it's fitting that they're both faeries. I guess there's also a bit of Lily in Cally (Calandra Metaxas, a human).

The character I gave epilepsy to: Mia "Lenore" Green, one of Ashkii's friends, also human. She also has some of Lily's personality in her. Ashkii's first encounter with her is her having a seizure in art class. I only just now realized that her preferred name, Lenore, is canonically named after a famous dead woman from Poe's writings. Like, even in-universe that's true, since she's a major Poe fan.

Donald Trump is trying to use the National Guard to take over Washington DC, and now he intends to go after Democrat controlled cities and states. So he's full on Hitler at this point, he's not even trying to pretend otherwise now. Here is the link: https://shorturl.at/ssaPb (It goes to Yahoo News)

If you are in the National Guard and you follow this extremely illegal order from the fascist orangutan infesting the white house, you would be a traitor to your country, and the punishment for treason in the US is execution. Be a true patriot, refuse any and all illegal orders from Fuhrer Trump. Then please arrest Trump and arrest everyone in the Supreme Court and his cabinet and every other government facility who has been helping him, so that we can convict them all of treason.

I keep hearing people -- even people who are supposedly history educators -- saying that people only lived about 40 years back in the day. That is NOT true! That is a MYTH caused by a failure to understand how averages work! Yes, the average life expectancy was about 40 back then, but that was because so many children died back then, it drove the average down. Very few children made it out of childhood alive, which is a large part of why people used to have so many kids. If you didn't count the kids when doing the averaging, people generally lived just as long as they do now once they made it to adulthood, assuming they didn't die in a war.

Or put into meme speak: "Old timey kids were the 'spiders georg' of dying back in the day, and 'should not have been counted.'"