drmasonsclasses.com
http://www.drmasonsclasses.com/archives/6229
Push, Precious and the treatment of Language and Nurture One of the most interesting facets of the novel Push and the movie Precious is the conversation it provokes about the roles of language, literature, and nurture in human development. Sociologist believe that human beings develop their humanity through a process of parental nurturing and language development. In simple terms, we learn how to be human as we grow in a society that trains humans how to conform to its perceptions of humanity. The definition of humanity changes from civilization to civilization and from subculture to subculture within a society. Subcultures can peacefully coexist within a culture to the extent that the views of humanity within those cultures have sufficient overlap. When the differences between the definition of humanity in a subculture and its host culture become too extreme, conflict is the inevitable result. In Precious this conversation highlights two important aspects of cultural difficulties. Is the definition of humanity in Precious’s subculture so desparite from the mainstream culture that the two cultures can no longer operate peacefully in the same spheres? Do Precious’s problems coping with and adjusting to life outside of her home stem from the lack of nurturing and language in her relationship with her mother? The interesting deciding factor in this discussion is Precious’s choice for what she wants for herself when she develops sufficient language comprehension and conceptual dimension to allow her to concieve of a living situation different than her life with her mother. Precious decides that the subculture within which she resides is neglectful and abusive. She rejects her mother’s teaching on what constitutes humanity. Considering Precious’s choice to adopt an alternative view of humanity from the one taught to her through her childhood suggests that all definitions of humanity are not created equal. Precious chooses the larger societal definition of humanity which she begins to discover after her discovery of literacy and the expansion of her vocabulary beyond that of her subculture. The larger societal definition of humanity in the case of Precious is developed using access to thousands of years of collective wisdom through literature, language, and medicine. Precious’s subculture is limited in its resources to the point of near self reliance. Precious the movie, like Push the novel, shows the results of childhood under a societal subculture that does not value nurturing, language development, and education. Walking into the alternative school Each One Teach One, Precious walks into a new societal culture with its new definition of humanity. Precious must relearn what it means to be human in a similar process to that of an infant. Precious thrives under this new culture and the results she achieves highlight the importance of collective views of humanity gained through nuture, reading and writing. The dialog started by Push emphasizes the importance of language, literature, and the arts in providing the container in which we hold our collective humanity. The literature of our culture along with the language it contains is the collective wisdom and knowledge that defines humanity for our culture. The importance of literature and education in defining our humanity is irrefutably on display in Precious. Interestingly, a story about life in Precious’s subaltern subculture reveals the importance of education in language, literature, and the arts to the often assumed survival of cultural views of humanity.