Posted on 06/29/2004 10:55:24 PM PDT by kattracks
LOL!
The first thing I thought of was Langston Hughes. We had some of his poetry held up as a shining example of social commentary, especially 'A Dream Deferred', throughout my government school education. (Which I've since recovered from...) Yesterday on the radio I heard some info about Hughes, how he was a full on commie atheist. Didn't surprise me a bit.
Now that was a great movie!
Michelle knows how to get directly to the heart of the matter! She is my favorite cultural columnist.
I like the "old school" kind of resources. ;o)
My daughter (she'll be a junior in HS this year) has classics on her reading list: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, Frankenstein, and if I recall correctly, Native Son (yes there are black-penned books that I consider classics). None of this Six-pack or 40 Ounce business, or whatever the heck his name was...
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
Members of the Fairfax County, VA, school board should get up in front of everyone and read excerpts from some of these fine books:
http://63.220.28.231/booksag.htm
According to a group called “Parents Against Bad Books In Schools” (PABBIS), in Fairfax County VA, EVERY McLean HS rising 11th and 12th grade English class requires the reading of “ Ragtime” by E. L. Doctorow. PABBIS reports the book has a woman being dog whipped and whipped with a razor strap during sex; oral sex; and a scene, too graphic to describe here, of what happens when a man spies on a naked woman being massaged by another woman.
At Mount Vernon HS all International Baccalaureate (IB) 11th grade English students are required to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Again according to PABBIS, the two main themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a rambling dreamlike book from the so-called "magical realism" genre, are solitude and incest. One review said this book "has a lot of violence, much incestuous sex, and plenty of anti-capitalism and anti-clericism." Another said there is "enough incest to keep those with even the shortest attention spans turning pages." Raping your sister, sex with another sister, sex with your aunt, a "zoological brothel" where dog gives stud services to be fed, a child with a "raw back" whose grandmother makes her service 70 men a night for 20 cents each, a male prostitute with a huge sexual organ, balancing beer on his "inconceivable maleness," are all part of this required reading for these teens who are too young to see an R-rated movie.
In the AP Literature class at Hayfield HS the theme of this summer reading list is supposedly all "cultures." Books on the list are divided into various "cultures." According to PABBIS, there are many "culture" categories but glaringly no category for majority American culture unless if one counts the category of "The Effects of British, French, and American Imperialism" or the category for "American Popular Culture and the Vietnam War" or the category of "The American Dream in Reverse."
PABBIS does a lot of research. If you don’t have time to preview personally every book on your child’s summer reading list, take a look at www.pabbis.com.
It's for the kids, you know. /sarcasm
And then school officials wonder why they have so many students sexually assaulting one another in their schools LOL. Not exactly a Great Books curriculum is it?
No The Good, The Beautiful and The True 4 U, kiddies!
Errrrr, yuck! What age group are we talking about here? I myself probably wouldn't read any of these, and I'm 40-something.
*shivers*
When I was a kid, back in the dark ages, we didn't have a summer reading list, except what we chose ourselves. We had to read a fair number of books during the school year.
Here is the PABBIS site. It covers K-12:
http://www.pabbis.com/
One is led to suspect that Muslim children get a better education in the typical madrassah school than is provided to some of our inner-city students. There is certainly no more indoctrination going on.
More dumbing-down of kids who already are living in a Third-World environment.
We homeschool, so we choose what books we use. What I would like to know from Freepers with middle schoolers or high schoolers in government schools is, are books like this commonly required reading? Are they in most libraries? What do you do?
Hokt on Eboniks B workn 4 me
OH MY! Those story lines are hideous! My son is currently going into 8th grade, but by golly I'll be keeping an eye on his assignments. Thanks for the link to PABBIS, never heard of them.
Tupac is caput.
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