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.
Well, actually not all the wicked are punished. Chaucer pretty much lets Alison off. The carpenter, Absolon, and Nicholas all are punished somehow, but not the woman.
And I think The Merchant's Tale is even baudier. I think Chaucer just liked to tell a good dirty joke.
This attitude of book banning or whatever you want to call it is so alien to me as to seem exotic. There is almost something touching in it since it seems they are trying to shape a world that has probably never existed.
Yep. There is nothing new under the sun.
I've read the book and seen the movie. If this movie had come out when my daughters were 14 or 15 I would have had to accompany them to the movie because it is R rated. I probably would have let them see it if they had wanted to and we would have probably had discussions about it afterwards, but that would have been my choice, as their parent. I wouldn't have taken someone else's child to the movie or allowed them to read the book without their parent's permission.
When my daughter was 16 her school health class had a sex-education day with a special guest teacher. They sent a note home telling us about it, but it didn't ask for our permission. I sent a note telling the principal that I wanted my daughter excused from this class. I was the only parent that did and my daughter had to spend the class time sitting in the principal's office.
My daughter told me later that her friends told her that the students had to get up one by one at the end of the class and demonstrate that they could put a condom on a banana and they made jokes about it, but they were all upset that they had to do this. My daughter told me, "Mom, if I ever need to put a condom on a banana, I'll just read the directions on the package first."
Chaucer doesn't punish the airheads.
Good job with that clarification! Mega dittos!
To paraphrase Harry Truman -- the only things we don't know is history we haven't learned.
The schools, on the other hand, should stick to the hundred year rule, and let the parents decide whether or not to allow their kids to read the new stuff.
My objection is not to what the kids read - my own policy was to recommend that my kids avoid certain books that I didn't feel they were ready for yet, but if they wanted to read them that was o.k. - they felt free to discuss them with me, and that's what counts.
The point is that I don't want the schools slipping my kids THEIR trash on school time, without my knowledge.
That was never a problem, because I would as soon throw my kids into a snake pit as into the local public schools here. I homeschooled my son rather than do so, until we could find him a private school placement.
I've enjoyed your part of this discussion more than anything I've read in weeks! Good literature is so much fun, isn't it?
People always have to be consistent in fiction? Really? Where did you get that idea? It is news to me. You just stated that you read "Moby Dick." Did you notice in "Moby Dick" the narrator changes. Ishmael's voice does not narrate every chapter. The Ishmael's voice also changes from 1st to 3rd person in several chapters. You would also notice that Ismael starts off as a limited 1st person narrator and at times becomes a third person omniscient narrator. Ahab and Starbuck or Stubb also narrate a couple chapters if I recall. I believe it is around Chapter 40 when Ahab throws his pipe in the water, that he is also narrating. I have not read this book in years though.
The fact is, there are no rules for great literature in terms of narrator voice. Your criticism of "Cathcher" is probably political in my opinion because you have stated that it is okay to ban a book if it for reasons you like, but it is not okay to ban a book if it is for a reason you don't like.
Part of the problem is that most teachers don't know the difference between good and bad books. And all the parents know is that some books sounds vaguely subversive or have bad words in them.
Ha!
No, just the first explicit one.
Look, if you're not willing to put in the effort to find filthy passages in a book, then all I can say is that you'd make a darned poor book burner!
But when someone sets out to write a novel with a single narrator, as in "Catcher", and his own voice keeps poking through inadvertently, it's fatal.
Melville was attempting something quite different and far more complex than Salinger. Melville I think in large part succeeded in holding it together for almost 1000 pages . . . Salinger failed -- even in a very short novel, just over 200 pages IIRC. He's not just not in Melville's league - it's another one of those comparisons it's almost too embarassing to make.
I almost cross-majored in English lit, but wound up in History because I had a good thesis topic . . . I still love to read.
. . . ya think maybe he was afraid of her? < g >
- Everybody who disagrees with you belongs at DU?
Yes, I would have to agree. The "you belong at DU" response to every disagreement is tiresome. Quite frankly, those who issue the charge are just intellectually lazy.
And GSHastings, this has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. I haven't registered an opinion because I don't know the book Girl Interrupted. I am pretty comfortable in guessing that many here who are reacting with utter horror have no idea what the book is about or what lessons it teaches themselves. There is getting too much assumptiveness on FR - and no, I don't belong at DU for making this observation.
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