Angry Letter: ‘Eragon’
As we skip merrily toward Christmas, here is an angry letter to bring warmth to your heart. It relates to my review of the movie “Eragon,” and I heartily recommend that you first read the review and the comments that have been posted after it. Some of them are as good as any ol’ angry letter, especially the guy who defended home-schoolers as being normal yet misspelled every other word in his post and got angry at public schools for teaching evolution.
Anyway, here is the e-mail I received from one Andrew:
Hey Snider, maybe you should read the book before you bash the author.(Concerning Eragon) The movie sucked [swear word] and thats all there is to it. You could tell the books were written by an adolescent, but they were not that bad.
Merry Christmas
I replied: “Agreed that the movie sucked. But unless the book had a completely different story and characters, it must bear at least partial responsibility for the movie’s suckiness, mustn’t it?”
And Andrew said:
Well the book had an almost completely different story line, and the only thing that was the same is the characters. The books were not the best but the movie made Paolini look
absolutely horrible. He deserves more credit thsn that.
Where were you at when you were 15.
Where was I (at) when I was 15? Same place as Paolini: writing really bad literature.
Oh, and I should clarify something else. I made a crack in the “Eragon” review about home-schooled kids, and some people posted comments criticizing me for that, while others came to my defense. I surely appreciate folks sticking up for me, but let me just say for the record: I do think home-schooled kids tend to be social misfits and weirdos who don’t know how to relate to regular people, and many of them have been indoctrinated with whatever peculiar beliefs their teacher-parents chose to emphasize, at the expense of the child’s well-roundedness and social well-being. There are exceptions, of course — and my experience is that every home-schooled person I’ve encountered, while acknowledging the tendency, believes he or she is just such an exception. So stuff that in your stocking!
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:55 pm
It seems the only type of schooling that has completely escaped criticism here is private schooling. Anyone want to take some pot-shots at them?
December 23rd, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Private schooling sucks. Why would you pay for something that you can get for free? Except that public schools aren’t really free. Hmm… I guess I need to work on this a little bit.
December 23rd, 2006 at 5:21 pm
I am surprised that this is the only angry letter you have received about the craptastic “Eragon” movie and/or book. Considering the amount of fervor demonstrated in the comments for the Eragon review, I would have thought you would be flooded with misspelled, nearly incomprehensible emails.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:24 pm
The thing that bothered me most about the comments was that only one person mentioned the most obvious ripoff of all: Anne McCaffery’s “Pern” novels. Don’t geeky people read Science Fiction anymore?
Star Wars doesn’t count, because the movies came first. This is the difference between “SF” and “sci fi.” And yes, I know that I just branded myself a geek. Hey, I’m proud of my youthful fascination with the genre.
It has also occurred to me that I no longer read much SF/Fantasy because, after one reaches a certain age, EVERYTHING is derivative. In other words, people like Eric and me are probably too old for this movie.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:48 pm
I did a report once on home-schooled kids. The data showed that the average home-schooled kid is well adjusted socially and more than competent in academic areas.
That being said, I’ve never met one. Every home-schooled kid I’ve met has been a social retard. My thinking is this: non-mormons home-school their kids for the sake of education, whereas mormons do it to hide their children from the evils of the world. Thus those who try to hide their kids cripple them socially, while the ones who do it for education let their kids go out and experience the world. Parents who don’t let their kids watch tv or play video games tend to be socially retarded too (again, the hiding from the world idea). That’s my non-scientific opinion.
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:16 pm
I’m a homeschooled senior in high school, and I’ve no doubt I’d be considered weird by some people. But isn’t that true of everyone?
And the test scores certainly don’t hurt.
I did read Eragon, and I honestly don’t remember much about it. I found the book rather dull, and the cliched elements a bit excessive at times (An elf princess? Oh, that’s new…).
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Actually, John Doe, I learned an interesting statistic in the film “Jesus Camp”: 75 percent of home-schooled children are evangelical Christians. I think your reasoning about Mormons still holds true much of the time, though, i.e., it’s often done not out of concern for the quality of the education they get in public school, but because of the political/religious/philosophical beliefs they’ll be exposed to there.
December 23rd, 2006 at 10:47 pm
I’m a bit irritated at John Doe’s idea that “Parents who don’t let their kids watch tv or play video games tend to be socially retarded, too.” I was not homeschooled, but I am a college student with parents who almost never let their five kids watch tv, and who never owned any video game consoles. Instead my family read books! Lots of them! Then we would discuss and analyze plot lines, character motivations, and other literary elements of these books at places like the dinner table. In the end, all of my parent’s children ended up educated, able to move well in social circles, and constantly picking up on cultural literacy references and jokes that flew over the heads of our peers. A lack of tv doesn’t make someone “socially retarded”. Saying so implies that the converse is also true: TV provides quality social education. That makes perfect sense, since we all know how well movies and television reflect reality…
December 24th, 2006 at 2:02 am
I have met one, singular person who was homeschooled and who was in no way socially inept. She’s one of the most amazingly intelligent, funny, compassionate, with-it people I’ve ever met. It’s, like, one in a million.
December 24th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Homeschooling was a plus for me because I was able to learn things at my own pace and in my own way, but it did exacerbate my natural reclusive tendencies. My mother always taught us to be proud of how “different” we were, like being normal was some kind of plague we had been spared from by the grace of God. I still think like that to a certain degree. If I had to go back and do it again I’m not sure what I would choose: home, private or public school.
December 25th, 2006 at 10:23 am
John Doe said: ” Parents who don’t let their kids watch tv or play video games tend to be socially retarded too (again, the hiding from the world idea).”
If that is true, it is because of the parents’ overprotective tendencies and not because of the lack of TV and video games. After all, the human race survived thousands of years before TV and video games were invented.
December 25th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Yeah, what Argus said. Again, the point of ‘no tv and video games’ was merely in my experience and in no way reflects society at large. But Argus said what I meant: the ‘hide them from the evil world’ mentality is what does it, not home-schooling or no tv, in my opinion.
December 26th, 2006 at 11:51 am
I think that it’s interesting when people go around saying that home-schooled people are socially weird. I think it’s socially weird to go around calling people socially weird. So there. (By the way, I am not home-schooled.)
It really seemed like a lot of the comments on the Eragon movie thread were basically people calling each other weird. Yes, we are all weird to different people in one way or another. All of us. So, if we’re trying to categorize one demographic of society and say that they’re weird or not weird, chances are that the demographic will be categorized as weird if they don’t exhibit behaviors, customs, or conversational tactics that we do. It’s like people are trying to proclaim what is the right or proper way to behave socially, and that is, in many cases, subjective.
December 26th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I’m outraged and appalled to discover this is identified as an angry letter…where’s the drama? Where are the many spelling errors? Where are the personal attacks?
Now as for socialization…children tend to end up similarly to their parents…nerd have nerd babies, normal people have normal babies. This seems to be universal despite their schooling. Perhaps many weird people homeschool? What is socially backward? Is not having tried pot backwards? how about tatoos? Is it socially backwards to not watch the latest tv show?
December 27th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Mommy said: “Now as for socialization…children tend to end up similarly to their parents…nerd have nerd babies, normal people have normal babies. This seems to be universal despite their schooling.”
This is a completely false generalization. There are six boys in my family. Both of my parents have bachelor’s degrees and spent some time in the military (my mother in the Army, my father in the Air Force Reserve). Both of my parents are intelligent and well-read. The oldest boy in our family was a juvenile delinquent who eventually went into the Navy. The second oldest dropped out of high school and is now a diesel mechanic. The third oldest became a severe drug addict and no one in the family has heard anything from him in years. I did well in school, served an LDS mission, got married, and got a Bachelor’s degree. The fifth son was pulled out of public school to be homeschooled and is now socially retarded, living at home, and unemployed. The youngest son was pulled out of public school, where he did nothing, then was put back into public school where he became a starting offensive and defensive lineman for an undefeated AAAA high school football team, then proceeded to not graduate and is currently living with his girlfriend in her parents’ house.
So tell me, how does this situation fit the “…children tend to end up similarly to their parents…nerd have nerd babies, normal people have normal babies. This seems to be universal despite their schooling” generalization at all?
December 27th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Hmm, what was the first thought that hit my brain while reading this, Nature vs. Nurture with a smattering of prejudice and steryotyping…
One, Most every steryotyping that I have encountered has fallen flat under a little scrutiny. There are plenty of examples contrary to the steryotype (Smart blonds, strong little kids, an amazing artist under that cold hard buisness suit. [actually that last one isn't really one of them but whatever]) The simple fact is that you can’t just generalize that home schooled kids are socially retarded, you can say something like “All of the home school kids, that I knew were home schooled, were socially retarded” and get away with it without any inteligent being jumping down your throat about it. (There will be some which will miss read you and still jump down your throat about it but we will ignore these people.)
But Nature vs. Nurture is a very different matter… one which I definitely haven’t looked up enough on. But that has never stopped me before. “Nerd have Nerd Babie” screems for the nature, Education, Friends, and general teaching of the parents all screem for nurture. But then we get to this funny thing called Rebellion.. Which seems to slip out of either catagory but ruins the whole mix of nature and nurture. If Rebellion is in full force a child will probably not become the nerd baby of the nerd, he will become the anti nerd whatever it may be, (be it punk rocker, artist extrodinare whatever..) But when there is less rebelion, then the child is more likely to pick up some of the things from the parents…
But I digress for I have gone way Way off topic.. where was that darn topic again? Oh yes, would all those homeschoolers be social retards or not? Well since I am not one to be a steryotypest, I will try to answer this in as variable (if not convoluted and cloudy) way. Those homeschoolers would be getting a lot more influence from there Parents then kids who go to public schools, (I think it is safe to say this.) Depending on wether or not the kid is rebelious will determine how much the kid will be receptive to what the parent’s tell them. Nope, nope. The problem is too big for my tiny little mind.. (Or atleast I would be rambling for atleast another hour, which time I don’t have. And I would bore you people.. so for a closing.) All I can say is that there are Far Far too manny verriables to be taken into account when concidering how the kid becomes Socially retarded, to make a generalization about what group becomes socially retarded or not.
-Vas
P.S. I find that a lot of the extreem Eragon Fans that I encounter (The kind that would be more likely to send angry letters) are rather not up to par with grammer, spelling and whatever else is involved in the english language. And that when they do post angry comments the grammer and spelling get even worse because the “anger flowing through” them gives them spasms which inadvertantly screw up their typing more then usual. little tidbit of thought process.
December 27th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
“I find that a lot of the extreem Eragon Fans that I encounter (The kind that would be more likely to send angry letters) are rather not up to par with grammer, spelling and whatever else is involved in the english language.”
Must… fight… urge… to… point… out… irony…..
Sigh. I lost the fight. Your post has 19 spelling errors (by my count), and at least 30 punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors. And yet you are not an extreme “Eragon” fan writing an angry letter. What a surprise twist!
December 28th, 2006 at 7:14 am
Meh… I never said I was good either. But at least I “don writ lak dis”.. because that is what I am refering to when I speak of the extreem eragon fans, who’s angry letters are barely even inteligable. (also I hate to mention the fact that I have disgraphia, and will not use that as an excuse to why I have a lot of common spelling errors.)
Maybe If I cared enough I would write this all out in a Word document and let it catch more of my mistakes. But alas I don’t really care that much.
Thank you for pointing out my atrocious writing errors which occour more often when I am in a rush. Oh, and thanks for the Ironic laugh Snide.
-Vas
December 28th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Adamondi…saying that babies tend to grow up like their parents is nature heavy. It is absolutely a generalization…much like saying all homeschoolers are weird. I am saying that it could be that homeschool parents are weird. A parents personality could have as much of an impact on how their children grow up as their choices in education. I think that relates to the motivations for homeschooling thing Eric talked about. Parents who homeschool for the eduation tend to get well educated fairly normal children, and parents who homeschool for the avoidance of all that is bad, sick and evil…tend to get social misfits. To be fair they probably didn’t want their children to fit into society, so they succeeded.
The main point of my letter was that this is a sad angry letter. I am shocked and appalled, or sad and amazed, or something…
December 28th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Firefox 2.0 actually has spellcheck built in to the browser, so any time you are typing a comment on a blog (or anything else in a text field in a form), misspelled words are underlined in red, and if you right-click, it gives you options to correct them. Basically, it works just like Word, but it’s built in to the browser.
December 28th, 2006 at 11:19 am
Thanks for the info… I’ll keep that in mind when I get my own computer. (far future goal.)
December 30th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Personally, I don’t believe many of you get out enough. For those who haven’t found many “socially adequate” homeschoolers out there, you oughta try getting outside, meeting new people. I’m not saying all homeschoolers are not shy, but I’d say its about fifty fifty. I’m staring at my computer screen with my gloriously hansome facial features and laughing those who are prejudiced against homeschoolers. I have people who will not believe that I am homeschooled when I tell them because of the same prejudice and bias. Even if a homeschooler is shy, he will get a better education than a public schooler who has to honestly TRY to fail to get below the F average (or what ever it is) that it takes to pass a grade. The deal of being socially adequate doesn’t boil down to being home or public schooled, it comes down to being happy and confident, which almost anyone can acheive.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
I have been fascinated to learn that homeschoolers always receive better educations that public schoolers. It’s especially enlightening when it comes from someone who is upset about stereotypes, because I KNOW that person would never fall into the trap of assuming that parents, regardless of their level of education and motivations, are always better educators than people with college degrees in education.
December 31st, 2006 at 6:45 pm
An honest question to those who denigrate home educators: How many of you actually *know* parents or students who are participating in home education? Do you not realize that when you stereotype any particular group as ‘weirdos’, you are revealing your own bias – and that says far more about you than it does about them?
I am a teacher, have been teaching for more than 20 years, and I have also known families engaged in home education for about that same period of time.
I have found that home-educating parents are willing to make sacrifices and work hard at providing a quality education for their children, whereas I can only dream to have such parents involved with my students. Unfortunately, those parents tend to be terribly apathetic and disconnected, and a higher income only seems to only exacerbate that tendency.
If you think that only home-educated students exhibit anti-social tendencies and behaviors, you are ignoring a whole body of evidence which has been available to all for quite some time. For example, was the Unabomber educated at home? No. John Wayne Gacy? No. Eric Rudolph? No. You name any serial rapist/killer, and then check the stats on that person.
As for TV and video games: Do you seriously think those cause kids to be well-adjusted? If so, what is your rationale? Are kids who vegetate in front of a TV or a video game interacting with others, be it peers or otherwise, on a meaningful basis which will enable them to become stable adults? If you think this is true, where is your proof?
OTOH, what of kids who don’t spend much time watching TV or playing video games? If they are public-schooled, does that make it all right? Or not? If they are in private school, ditto those questions? If they are being educated at home, what’s the difference?
I look forward to your answers.
Oh, I must add this: You might be surprised to know how many colleagues / teachers make multiple grammar and spelling errors on a regular basis. And it’s only getting worse the younger they are. Our public schools are simply not doing a good job, not even an acceptable job, and the few teachers who truly care about the kids and work hard are usually frustrated with apathetic bureaucrats in the superintendents’ offices who are only there for a paycheck – and those paychecks are commonly exorbitant. My hat’s off to any parent who realizes s/he can do as well, and without spending nearly as much money.
January 1st, 2007 at 9:05 pm
May I just say that this is a delightful discussion?
I know quite a few people who have been homeschooled, and I think that their spelling is mostly terrible, as well as their uses of apostrophes. I also know quite a few people that have gone to public school who have horrible spelling. Poor spelling appears to be a universal weakness.
January 4th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I think you’re right about poor speliing, Card. It appears to be getting worse all the time, and part of the problem is the popularity of text and instant messaging. Most people tend to be grammatically lazy when they are using those programs, and I think it spills over into the rest of their lives. I wonder, though, about the current standards in education. It has been some years since I was in school, so I don’t really know what goes on nowadays, but I was never taught a lot of grammar basics and to this day couldn’t diagram a sentence to save my life. Has the situation improved any?
January 5th, 2007 at 10:28 am
You know what? I went to public school and it didn’t help me; I feel I’m just as socially maladjusted as if I had spent those years of public schooling living in a hole, so I don’t buy the line of reasoning that public school helps kids socially.
January 11th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Just a short addendum here: I thought this link might be of interest, as it’s about the accomplishments of the quarterback of the NCAA National Champion Florida Gators team, Tim Tebow, who was educated at home from K-12.
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/osusports/osusports.php?story=dispatch/2007/01/05/20070105-F1-04.html
January 12th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
This movie was mediocre at best. And we were supposed to be excited about the sequal?
http://www.nelsonguirado.com/index.php/reviews/2006/12/24/lord_of_the_rings_lite_eragon_review