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Here's another article about book banning in Florida. I think the girl has grounds for a suit (which the parents are looking into) because she was treated in a spiteful manner (hostile school environment) by her teacher.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/saturday/news_f38cf14020fb32220039.html

When school administrators pull nonsense like this, don't they think that there will be some legal repercussions, especially in today's litigious society?
13 posted on 11/29/2003 5:35:27 AM PST by ladylib
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To: ladylib
Because of my own personal sensitivies, I would be very reluctant to use racially or sexually charged language--whether reading aloud, quoting verbatim, or whatever--in a classroom, maybe even at college level. If it were necessary for me to do so, I think I would give some explanation and possibly an apology.

Huckleberry Finn is a great book, but I would not like reading that ridiculous, tedious, distracting, poorly written, and quite unnecessary "dialect" (more precisely trying to read it) out loud, and the other racially charged material as well, even though Samuel Clements' message was strongly anti-racist.

The few racially charged passages in The Great Gatsby are also offensive, and I would not like having to read them aloud either. I would be tempted to censor them voluntarily. They have little to do with Fitzgerald's excellent novel. They do reflect the mindset of the times, including Fitzgerald's, and, in a larger context, suggest that the moral dilemma presented in the story was less a problem for Fitzgerald than it would be for many of us, a subject well worth exploring in itself.

19 posted on 11/29/2003 6:39:33 AM PST by Savage Beast (If Europeans have forgotten the price of appeasement, Americans are well qualified to remind them.)
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