The universal tedium of Richard Scarry

Helena Iara loves Richard Scarry books.  I remember loving the stories of Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm when I was a kid, too... but I have to confess that while Dr. Seuss has aged well -- which is to say, I continue to enjoy his books as I read them to Helena -- Richard Scarry now seems a complete bore.  Nothing actually happens, there is little narrative, no rhyme or play with words.  In fact, the book she likes so much only relates the events of a normal day, no different from the cooking and playing and driving around that we experience in our lives.

There the tedium.  More interesting, I think, is what happens when kids read these sorts of stories, see their lives writ large on the pages of a book.  Over the last couple of months, I have been thinking very intently about how people -- especially children -- on the margins of society conceive of knowledge.  Last year, we did a major research project in Recife, looking at the causes of, and possible solutions to, violence in the favelas of that city.  After four months of interviews, mapping, movie-making, and writing, the book was finally done: a toolkit for foundations and government agencies that want to reduce violence.  Adriano had been the first of the four young researchers to arrive at the closing party for the project, and as he read the first pages, a look of amazement filled his eyes.  "It's true," he said, almost stunned.  Several more lines down the page, with even more wonder, "That's just how it is."  As he continued to read, the expressions of surprise only grew.

Words about the favela too often sound like a police report: so many dead, so many arrested.  Those news stories might be strictly accurate, but they aren't really true; they leave far too much out.  We never see the motivations of kids who join a gang or the ethical struggles of kids who don't; the joy of a party on Saturday night or the pride of a old woman watching her grandkids play in the alley.  Our research took the deep experience of living in the favela seriously, seeing it as a possible source of solutions.

Adriano had been a part of every stage of the research, and many of the theories in those pages were originally his, so the surprise didn't come from new ideas or perspectives.  No, I think the real shock was that the written word could express the truth, that a description of his community could be honest to what goes on there.

"Knowledge," with the weight and importance that word implies, always seems to come from outside the favela, from teachers and books and the TV.  But as Adriano read the book, he suddenly came to see that words could reflect the world, that his experiences were important, enough to justify or even demand action.  For the first time, I think, he came to see what knowledge meant, and the power it could have.

Richard Scarry is the complete opposite of the experience of knowledge in the favela.  Instead of seeing their lives as exceptions or spectacles, Scary shows the lives of ordinary, middle class children in the US as universal.  This is how everyone, event cats and worms, lives.  The implicit message to children: "Your life is universal, your particular experience counts as universal knowledge."  Children from the favelas feel frightened to generalize the events of their lives into a word as big as "knowledge," but thanks to Richard Scarry, American TV programs, and other manifestations of US middle class culture as universal reference, kids here don't run into that challenge.

Now, we can easily find a solution in an attempt to universalize other experiences: Sesame Street, where a street in a mythical Harlem stands in for the universal, is an excellent example.  Maybe we should write a Richard Scarry for the favela... to a certain degree, the work that Rita and I do professionally with films made by marginalized kids strives for that.

However, I think there is a real virtue in the way kids from the favela see the relation of their particular to the universal.  Because they aren't convinced that everyone -- even cats and worms -- had their experience, they aren't convinced that they know.  For that reason, they are less invested in their epistemological errors, more willing to change, grow, and learn.  Socrates insisted that the first step in philosophy was to know that one knows nothing: people from the favela have that one down pat.  At that point, perhaps we can all learn together.

And maybe I won't have to suffer through more days reading about the Cat Family going to the grocery store.