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.
Second, the book tells a compelling story based on a real-life story of a young girl who was committed to a mental hospital in the 1960s for her sexual escapades. It debates the double-standards of sexual activities of young men and young women. There is no actual sexually explicit material in the book.
Finally, are these parents THAT naive to think that their precious children are being exposed to sexual topics for the first time in 9th grade? This is just another Christian pro-concorship group trying to get publicity. Get over it! Biology books are more explicit than Girl, Interrupted
I don't know about that. Maybe second-rate compared to "Huck Finn", but I personally wouldn't call "Catcher in the Rye" second-rate to any book.
What the parents should do is have their kids alert them when the "novel" is going to be discussed in the class, and all of the parents should show up in the classroom that same day to "monitor" the discussion, and exercise their free speech rights in class to voice their opinion of the book that is being force fed to their children. Do as the leftists always do, protest loudly in the class that day, and any other day that the book is to be discussed, until the school gives up. Unless the school wants to call the cops and have all of the parents in the classroom arrested. Won't that look good splashed all over the town's papers the next day? Fight their free speech with the same thing, and do it loudly and vocally.
Rated R. Why?
And you have some problem with censoring what children are exposed to?
I'll bet FIFTY bucks you have not read one line from the book.
what happened to reading the classics? Leave novels like this in the library for students who chose to read it...
What the parents should do is have their kids alert them when the "novel" is going to be discussed in the class, and all of the parents should show up in the classroom that same day to "monitor" the discussion, and exercise their free speech rights in class to voice their opinion of the book that is being force fed to their children...
You can't buy entertainment like that!
Yeah. Shakespeare has something to do with fishing rods, right?
Just out of curiosity, what would you say is the other greatest American novel? I would have to put "Tom Sawyer," "The Great Gatsby," "Lord of the Flies" and various works by Hemingway and Faulkner on the list.
"Finally, are these parents THAT naive to think that their precious children are being exposed to sexual topics for the first time in 9th grade? This is just another Christian pro-concorship group trying to get publicity."
And that's why your name is Lunatic Fringe, because you are on it.
When are people going to pull their kids from PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
What are YOU waiting for?
It doesn't matter to schools what YOU think!
"The Orono School Committee recently voted to retain the controversial novel Girl Interrupted in the ninth grade English literature class at Orono High School."
Give me a break...I was making the point that it's out there. It was a movie, was it not? Teenagers probably saw it, am I wrong? And as far as the DU thing....can't you at least be original if you're going to accuse me of something?
Oh please! If you think that a high school student is not a child, you must be a child.
Think this book is bad? Go to your local public library and check out some of the pornographic material available there. Ask if they have anything by Anne Rice. The library is highly recommended by most school teachers, as well as parents.
don't know about that. Maybe second-rate compared to "Huck Finn", but I personally wouldn't call "Catcher in the Rye" second-rate to any book.
Seriously, try Stop Time by Frank Conroy. Vastly superior to Catcher in the Rye.
They are not adults but they are NOT children, no matter how much you wish it was so.
Having a book available is very different from making it a requirement.
Thank you.
These threads rarely have anything resembling a voice of sanity and reason. Thanks for yours.
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