Posted on 02/20/2006 5:01:05 PM PST by wagglebee
(AgapePress) - A school district in Maine has reaffirmed its reinstatement of a sexually explicit book several parents want removed from the local high school's curriculum. The Orono School Committee recently voted to retain the controversial novel Girl Interrupted in the ninth grade English literature class at Orono High School.
Girl Interrupted, a novel written by Susanna Kaysen, was affirmed for use in the high school curriculum over the objections of parents and local residents who take exception to the profuse profanity and sexual content in the book. Michael Heath, head of the Christian Civic League of Maine (CCLM), says this graphic work of fiction has no place in schools where impressionable young people will be exposed to it.
"It's a book about an 18-year-old," Heath explains, "who ends up in a mental asylum and has a number of conversations with mentally disturbed people -- conversations of the most graphic sort, especially sexual. The f-word [appears] 30 times in one page, and this is being given to freshmen in high school as literature. It's absolutely horrifying."
School board members argue that using Girl Interrupted in the classroom honors free speech and that prohibiting it would amount to unconstitutional censorship. However, the CCLM spokesman feels the board members are making a spurious claim when they cite First Amendment freedom as a justification for obscenity.
The Civic League's representative at the board's meeting contested that idea from the floor, Heath points out. "When one of the school board members said to not have the book in the curriculum would be the practice of censorship," he notes, "our representative objected and said, 'Look, you censor Playboy. You don't allow people to read Playboy in the schools, so that's a non-issue. You're lying.'"
The Orono school board has the responsibility to make decisions about content and does in fact make such decisions all the time, Heath contends. He feels parents and pro-family citizens in the Maine community have every right to be outraged over the school committee's decision to retain a sexually explicit novel in Orono High School's ninth-grade English literature classes.
I finally got around to reading my dog-eared old copy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" - about the 3rd printing, sometime in the 1870s. Somewhere I think I have one of the original volumes of the first printing when it was issued as a four-part series.
Now I don't think that my vocabulary is all that shabby for a 20th Century Yankee, but I had to put a dictionary beside the book in order to look up all of the words that I did not have a clue as to what they meant.
I have a small collection of books from the mid 19th Century, as part of my interest in Civil War Reenactment.
And you don't have to read them long to see that the English language was generally a whole lot more sophisticated back in the Victorian era than it is now.
"Uncle Tom's" for any of you who may have yet to read it, is indeed a powerful work. I can see why Abramam Lincoln accused it's Author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, of starting the Civil War with it.
Were anyone to write a similarly compelling book about the practice of prenatal infanticide, we just might get us another one.
Gotcha.
Nice Straw Man argument. That is a good substitute for refuting what I actually said.
So, because some of Shakespeare's plays deal with sexual content, any and all books with sexual content should be required reading for 14 year-olds.
Gotcha
How could that not amuse you?
Yes, I agree. "The Bear" is a great story, and the early Hemingway stories are his best. As his career progressed, he went sadly downhill.
I had a friend who taught Faulkner and Hemingway at NYU and wrote several books on them. I once asked her how she could stand teaching Hemingway, and she confessed it was pretty hard. But I guess she just couldn't let it drop. I would have dropped him like a shot and done the Great Gatsby instead. Or added Light In August to the list. Or something. Have you ever read "Across the River and Into the Trees"? It makes "Franny and Zoey" look like a work of art. Gag.
No, he just described the actual act in really crude terms.
Shh. We're the propagandists, remember?
I suppose they need to read this because they've already read Melville, Shakespeare, Twain, and Harper Lee as well as any number of other classics that would improve their vocabulary and give them the basic literary reference points. Right?
I agree on the Sci-Fi, especially the stuff done in the early sixties. Phillip Dick is probably my favorite of the genre. Unfortunately, in the movies, it seems to have been hijacked by the new-age movement, as there's little science left in it. Most of the recent Sci-Fi books I've read seem to be westerns with phasers or light sabers. I'm open to any suggestions, though.
But really the books can't be validly paired as "banned books" - not only because they aren't in anywhere near the same league from a quality standpoint, but also because people sought to ban them for entirely different reasons.
My daughter's school is pretty good. They don't make the kids read fourth-rate chick lit, anyhow. If I haven't read what they assign I read it to see what's up, but they tend to assign the classics so I'm usually good to go already. Catcher is about the worst book they've given out (thank heavens they don't make the kids read Silas Marner anymore - as they did when I attended the same school 30 years ago. My, how we hated that book! I think we read it too early - 9th grade - because I love The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. But I still can't stand poor old Silas and that simpering little blonde - Ellie? Eppie?)
In the words of a great legal mind from Boston..BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Well then maybe they should try to find another book. i still don't think so-called "profanity" should be the reason to ban a book from being taught. It is the teachers' job to put some material in a context, to say "just because a character does this doesn't meant the author thinks it is cool or right."
I read Starship Troopers for the first time last summer and I absolutely loved it. What Heinlein book would you recommend reading next?
"So if a group of parents can override the school board and ban ... If parents can overrule the school board than the whole decision making process becomes chaotic"
I just reread the article after reading your reply (#109). The book was not banned. The article was about parents bringing a concern before the school board and the school board deciding to go forward with the problem in spite of the parents objections. The process is at the same level of chaotic that it has been for decades. People elect a school board. They do what they want. People bring concerns before them. They review the concerns and sometimes change what they are going to do and sometimes don't change it. Is your postition that parents should have no part in the process? never bring anything up to the school board once it is elected? I guess school boards across the country would like that. They could do their jobs in half the time and then go fishing the rest of the week.
"On the Waterfront" was also a great film with Brando, made by the same director (Elia Kazan) as "Streetcar Named Desire."
What's wrong with "Catcher in the Rye," which I just reread?
Here's three more: The Kite Runner, Ahab's Wife, and "The Lady and The Unicorn."
Excellent read...intellectual read...and fun and intriguing.
except The Kite Runner has some bad sexual content...so strike that one.
Certainly sparks an interest in trains.
Very amusing.
Remember that Miss Harriet was Lyman Beecher's daughter and Henry Ward Beecher's sister. Immensely learned family (her father was a Yalie and well known religious firebrand). I THINK it was her dad who taught her Latin and Greek and wished she had been a boy -- but that may have been Delia Bacon. I'm not sure. All those 19th century Bluestockings look alike to me . . . < g >
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