Bibliopath ping.
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Some background:
A San Antonio-area school superintendent has pulled a critically acclaimed novel after a parent complained it was sexually explicit and offensive to Christians.
Judson school district superintendent Ed Lyman pulled "The Handmaid's Tale" by Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood from the district's Advanced Placement English curriculum.
In doing so, he overruled the recommendation of a committee of teachers, students and a parent. The committee is appealing the decision to the school board, which is scheduled to meet tonight.
The 1985 novel is a story of an environmentally blighted United States after a coup. Civil war rages as a fundamentalist Christian regime revokes all women's rights and presses the few who remain fertile into sexual slavery.
Lyman says he found some of the descriptions in the book too sexually explicit for high school students. That -- he says -- doesn't support state efforts to encourage sexual abstinence outside marriage.
March 23, 2006 Judson Pulls "The Handmaid's Tale" from Curriculum
If books, plays and short stories presented characters without blemishes — and life without hardships — the great libraries of the world would be warehouses for the innocuous.
In the Judson Independent School District, some enlightened students and school board officials realized that, and they stood up on Thursday night.
School board members voted to reinstate a novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," which the superintendent had removed from the Advanced Placement curriculum after a parent condemned its "sexually explicit" content.
The science-fiction novel depicts a harsh future in which "handmaids" are used for breeding.
Cindy Pyo, the parent who complained, was right to express her concerns, but by removing the book from the curriculum, the superintendent placed the complaints of one individual above the students who endorse the novel.
March 27, 2006 Editorial: Judson makes right call, restoring book to class
I've not read the novel. If it reads anything like the movie, I would not have finished it anyway.
Of course sensitive Margaret would never write anything so intolerant about Islam.
Atwood had the women in her novel wear burquas. I just remembered.
Well aren't you the clever girl?
Of course the book shouldn't be banned. It should be used in classrooms as an example of shitty feminist polemic selling itself as high-minded literature.
Even as a mere sci-fi dystopia, it still sucks. It's just not good.
If this jewel of the "All men [especially Christian men]are pigs" genre hadn't made it to the big screen, it would be a series on LIFETIME TV for Women.
Another feminazi whiney whiner.
A few weeks ago it was G A Proulx whining about losing the academy award for her Brickhouse Mountain.
The premise of the book can easily be countered. I don't think it's too political for AP English. However, I think there are many better choices.
As what someone once called me "A First Amendment fundamentalist," I get so weary of these self-righteous writers who leap to claim the label of "Banned!" to grab some attention.
I would not have pulled this book from the school, but it's amusing to me how liberals like Atwood call parents deciding what happens in THEIR SCHOOL SYSTEM "banning books". If I were to teach a class and decided I didn't like the message or tone of this book, would I be "banning" it? No--but I would be The Teacher, and thus I have the Holy Power to "ban" as I see fit. Have parents make that decision for THEIR kids in THEIR school? Censors! Book banning!
Atwood can't pull off the "Who, ME? Ha Ha Ha!" pose as well as she thinks. Her book was meant as an attack on the Christian Right as she perceived it then, and the move to restrict abortion. Her coy "you see yourselves in this mirror" crap is annoying and if I were a parent I'd toss her books out of my school just because she's being just another Canadian lib wagging her finger at those silly American middle class folks, the favorite sport of the elite. Maggie's social calendar was probably a little barren before now but she can look forward to getting invited to all the right parties starting this weekend, yeah!
Her artsy books may be stylistically right for her social set, but in my experience the women who love her books have massive problems relating to men. From her silly little note, Margaret has problems relating to anyone without her narrow view of the world.
P.S. The book is awful, I bailed on it partway through and rented the movie. Wish I hadn't wasted my time seeing Bob Duvall play a wacko Christian.
Someone needs to tell Ms. Atwood about the dangers of hyperventilating like this.
Then she needs to be told that the excludion of a book from a particular coarse is not censorship, or book-banning, or book burning. There is no end to the number of books in the world; only a few can be examined in any course.
I have not read Ms. Atwood's novel; but if this sample of her writing is any indication, there are probably good reasons not to include her book.
Bibliopath ping.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
The academically well-respected Marxist historian and authority on New World slavery, Eugene D. Genovese, exposed this old wives' tale as pure propaganda decades ago.
Thomas Sowell has already destroyed this argument. These "banned" books can be bought in any bookstore. They will be happy to order it for you if they do not have a copy in stock.
When the left says that a book is banned, what they mean is that some annointed elites in education choose a book for school and parents objected and overruled them. More generally, what they are saying is that parents should not have a say in educating their children. Leave it to the annointed (and the government).
You ever read this one? Sounds like one of those bad Tepper or Kingsolver screeds.
}:-)4
I have not read the book or seen the movie.
It might have been helpful to tell us why you feel that way...
The novel is a colossal, hate-filled bore, IMHO. Let the kiddies read it and make up their own minds.
As far as being offered to AP classes, I agree with others on the thread--there are much better examples of good literature out there. This book qualifies as tripe.
Box Office Mojo: The Handmaid's Tale Cinc Week of March 9, 1990 Gross sales: $738,578 - ranking: 117 - Per Theater: $6,312 (Its first and last week it made $738,000 gross)
It's worth 99 cents at a flea market, a six pack, and a few hours to laugh at one of the worst feminist rants in the past 25 years.