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.
"that prohibiting it would amount to unconstitutional censorship."
Wanna bet it's a homo teacher or person of influence demanding this book be used to recruit children?
"Wanna bet it's a homo teacher or person of influence demanding this book be used to recruit children?"
Wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
Stop posting to me. You are an imbecile.
BINGO. Anyone see that special about child molesters on prime time? These guys thought they were talking to a 12 year old boy or girl and traveled to her house with the idea her parents were not home. The content between these MONSTERS AND WHAT THEY THOUGHT WAS A CHILD WAS HORRID. The MONSTERS were people who are in contact with children every day teacher,rabbi,homeland security etc. Our kids have been sexualized so much and now the school has to play their part? Every time this subject comes up I wonder to myself if the people involved are part of this MONSTER mentality. The school is to prepare students to go out in the world and find jobs and make sure they can count, read, and write letters to the government and let them know they don't agree with what they are doing!lol But teaching does not mean yet again pushing someones agenda! Parents had better wake up. This country can't even get a mandatory sentence for child molesters and yet it happens over and over again and childrens lives are destroyed.There was this teacher here in Kentucky who was teaching one of her students the finer points in having sex.They had planned to run off together and the boy was afraid his grandma would wake up while they were leaving and the teacher emailed him and told her JUST HIT HER IN THE HEAD WITH A HAMMER. In todays world teachers have to be looked at a different way now just as a priest, rabbi,cop, anyone who can be left alone with a child. How many teachers in just a couple of years have been molesting kids? Slowly the rights of parents are being taken away and I for one am grateful my children are out of school and adults now. Let's give the students insightful books to read they have plenty of time to read trash!
Coincidence of coincidence. It's long been on my list to for my homeschooled children to read at the 10th grade level.
This is just one more example of how our liberal, psychotic school administrators are sending inappropriate and mixed messages to our children.
It is insane that a book like this is allowed in the library.
It is also insane that sexual harassment laws are working to criminalize 6 year old children for inadvertant touching while playing on the play ground.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/02/09/sex.harass.ap/
Even a look is punishable under sex harass laws if it is deemed unwelcome by the perceiver, and makes the perceiver uncomfortable. Clearly, our schools are treating all young male children as if they are criminals, or "criminals waiting to happen."
How can a book about a promiscuous, crazy girl (given today's sex harassment laws), help the healthy, heterosexual developement of young children?
IMHO, parents should start banning together and start jailing liberal, psycho school administrators who apparently have lost all connection with sound moral values and guidelines.
LOL! I annihilated your pathetic argument, so you call me names. Sweet.
Get used to it, newby. Until you sharpen your skills you are dog meat here.
You may have won your Straw Man argument in your own simple mind. I made my point several times. You just have a childish mindset in which you think getting the last word is winning the argument. I see no need to debate somebody who intentionally distorts other people's statements because he or she cannot refute the actual content of what that person is stating. I want you to furnish the post in which I stated that the presence of sexual content in Shakespeare meant that there should be absolutely no standard for what is taught in high school literature. Furnish my specific quote that stated that.
What makes your entire point even more idiotic is that your basic premis is based on an assumption that "Girl Interrupted" is the literary equivalent of some porographic oral-sex book that you read as a child.
OK.
Let's start over.
Hello, sangrila. I'm Skooz.
Nice to meet you.
Maybe they want something that will interest the students. People have wanted to ban "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Huck Finn" from schools also. I doubt "Girl Interrupted" is on the same level as these books, but I still don't think people should complain every time there is language or sexual content in a book. What book doesn't have sexual content?
This is the post you replied to.
Shakespeare's plays and poems....may not be as explicit in language as modern literature, but the themes are very explicit. I think incest, rape, and adultery qualify as sexual content by any standards
You replied.
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.
I honestly don't follow the logic, but I think we stop this debate. I should not have called you names, but you are being rather difficult here. I am not angry or anything though. I just get worked up.
Nice to meet you.
The more I read through your posts. The more I cannot understand what your position really is. If you’ll bear with me for a bit while I attempt to explain some of what I think about this and some related issues, then I want to ask you to further explain some of your thinking.
In American life we elect our leaders. Then, for the most part, thinking people then keep an eye on how those leaders perform their duties. Sometimes we agree with what our leaders do and sometimes we don’t. We often consider what will the impact of said leaders decisions be in the short term and in the long term. Sometimes we consider an issue to be just a little important, sometimes very important, and sometimes extremely important, while sometimes not even important enough to store in our memories for five minutes. Issues of mild to moderate importance often influence how we will vote in the future without meriting any immediate action. Issues that are just a little more serious up to extremely important sometimes or often times merit actions. There are many and varied actions that can be included in this. Maybe you’ll write a letter to a media source or to a member of the legislature. Maybe tons of people will rise up and attempt to impeach an elected official. It all depends on just what level you place the issue you are concerned with. Do the people considering an issue see it affecting them personally or their children? Do they see it affecting future generations and the overall makeup of our society? And to what extent? Do they care about our society or the future? Some people do and some don’t.
Throughout most of America, school boards are elected. And since the early days of public education the school boards have routinely been confronted with parental concerns over their decisions, sometimes leading to changes but more and more in recent history not. Do you feel that school boards should be exempt from this type of review and possible action by parents or other community members? Do you acknowledge that some parents care about their community and the future more than others while some don’t care about anything? Do you see that what affects our children impacts our decision making process just as much as what impacts ourselves? Would other school board decisions be up for review, in your opinion, such as school closings and lunch program changes? Is there something sacred about everything in print that causes books to be off-limits for people to object to? Or is it just that people who have strong religious convictions ought to be disallowed from the political processes of our republic? Maybe all of these questions are beyond the scope that went into your reaction to the article and you simply disagree with the particular book the parents objected to or the particular bit of reasoning mentioned in the article? This barrage of questions is not meant as anything negative. I am simply trying to understand what you have been trying to communicate. It has in some places sounded like a knee-jerk reaction to the great evil of book banning with all of that camp’s inherent lack of regard for the reality of some things in print being inappropriate choices. But you have also said some things that seem to claim that you do see limits to what is appropriate for public school curriculums. And there were a few other inconsistencies in what I read of your posts, (notice I didn’t say “what you wrote”) So I am trying to weed through whatever miscommunications there may have between what you were thinking and what I thought you said.
My position has been based on my view that the parents had every right to object to a book, even to the point of thinking it had no place in the curriculum at all, just as I continue to think that parents can and should constantly review what is going on in the schools today. If I were a parent with a child in that school I would have been more likely to get my own child exempt or pull them out of the school, rather than to go against the school board, but that is based more on my own pessimism about just how far gone most school boards are, not on a problem with any parent’s right to try to influence the school board. In fact, I can say that based on my own personality, that if the school board had relented and removed the book from the curriculum and I happened to disagree with that, I would have only proceeded to have my child read the book anyway, rather than make a stink about book banning as if the public schools ought to be a great bastion of free-expression. Plenty of people object to plenty of different types of things. The schools can still educate even if they don’t teach a particular book. Many parents wouldn’t do it, but they all ought to be taking full responsibility for their children’s education, possibly presenting their children with reading material that the school is neglecting. Those who skip merrily along trusting to the schools to bear the full responsibility, will end up teaching their kids apathy and nannystate=a good thing mentality.
Well, I’ve been enjoying this discussion as I am wont to enjoy most lively discussions. So now I am off to the library to check out the book in question, in spite of the fact that I disagree with the assertion that you have to read this entire book in order to have an opinion on the article. In fact I don’t even agree that a person should not put down offensive reading material, but rather read the whole thing in order to be allowed to have a negative opinion of it. As to any agreement over the parents' view of the particular book, Girl Interrupted, that remains to be seen.
Oh, maybe you were thinking of the scandal with Cerf and Kitty Carlisle and that satan worshipping S&M cult financed by white slavery and Chinatown opium dens.
If a dirty old man walked up to a 15-year-old girl on a streetcorner and said one tenth of what is in this book, he would be thrown in jail.
Why is it better to have a dirty old man English teacher assigning it as reading?
"However, do a small group of parents have the right to determine the reading material kids (who no doubt belong to other parents)can and cannot read?"
This point seems a little irrelevent to me. Do you have further knowledge of this situation? What can be read in the article posted gives the reader no real grasp of what portion of the parent whose kids were asked to read the book were involved in this action.
Let's assume for a moment that it was a "small group" of parents. If banning the book can only be done by a majority of parents agreeing, how do you account for the role (or lack thereof) of the nannystate parents who wouldn't care if their kids were forcefed kiddy porn? Do they effectively equal a referendum that there will never be a good reason to oppose the school board, so that parents who have standards should not allow their children to be in public schools? I think that homeschooling is fabulous and private schools a good, viable option for some, but I hate to think that just because most of the world of academia has gone the way of the leftist, all right wingers need to abandon the public schools, rather than take a stand on issues where they disagree with the school board, simply because a lot of lemmings won't stand with them. And I don't mean this book in particular, I'm speaking of the principle. Can parents take their concerns to the school board? Can they publicly disagree when they don't get their way?
"Catcher in the Rye" is sophomoric. It was one of the earliest examples of the whining liberal who never grows up. Probably "Boy Clinton" modeled himself on it.
I can't think of anything worse than making a bunch of teenagers read a book about a boy who never grows up and blames the universe for his whining personality. At least "Peter Pan" is a comical satire on not growing up.
Not to mention that it's very uneven in dialogue and writing quality. Sometimes Caulfield sounds like a whiny little boy, other times he sounds like an adult (although he's still whining).
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