Posted on 04/25/2006 3:06:30 PM PDT by NCjim
RALEIGH, N.C. -- The Wake County Board of Education could vote next week to remove three books from the school system's required reading list.
Called2Action, a parents group, objects to Alice Walker's "The Color Purple," Robert Cormier's "The Chocolate War" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved," saying the novels contain vulgar language and graphic sexual content.
"The Color Purple" won the Pulitzer Prize for literature, and Toni Morrison's "Beloved" won a Nobel Prize. Still, the group says the books are not appropriate for middle-school and high-school students.
"I couldn't read these excerpts over the air (on television)," said Steve Noble, a member of Called2Action. "You'd be in trouble, I'd be embarrassed, but yet, you can hand it to a 13-year-old and say, 'Here, you need to read this.' It's wrong."
Noble said many parents are unaware of the graphic content in the books.
"There's innumerable good works of literature available to the school system, so why these?" he asked.
At the same time that the books are being challenged in Wake County, they are also being celebrated this week at Duke University's Festival of the Book.
"People will always want to ban books," said the festival's director, Aaron Greenwald. "And we should always question that."
""The Color Purple' and 'The Chocolate War' are classics that tell remarkable human stories," Greenwald added.
The school board is currently reviewing the parents group's concerns.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
NC Ping
Parents fighting back ping.
There's vulgar language in Chaucer and Shakespeare.
One thing you might want to question, Mr. Greenwald, is why, when books are required reading, part of a program of compulsory exposure of middle school students to disturbing, aberrant and perverse sexual themes, that asserting a moral right NOT to read offensive literature is called "Book banning."
Once again, for the ten millionth time, this is not a question of "censorship." It's a question of "sponsorship."
I read The Chocolate War. It was boring, but not all that offensive. I kept trying to get my teachers to let us read Tom Clancy stuff.
Required reading? We don't have a required reading list. Why are they micro managing the student's reading choice? I understand required reading i.e. science or some history pamphlet, but these are fictional works.
Do you think students should make their own reading list? Out with Shakespeare and Dickens in with Harry Potter and Goosebumps?
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
"Wake Parents Group Challenges School System's Reading List"
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, this IS NOT CENSORSHIP, this is removing books from a required reading list.
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To be included in or removed from the MORAL ABSOLUTES PINGLIST, please FReepMail wagglebee.
I don't see where it matters. Some kids like the classics, some like more contemporary stuff. So what?
Book Burners!
Well we should strive to teach literature of highest possible quality. As Matthew Arnold said (and Lynne Cheney often quotes) 'propagate the best that has been said and thought'.
All this fuss could turn out to be the best that could happen. Imagine how many kids will tear themselves away from their Playstations to actually READ simply because of the controversy.
You don't think some works of fiction should be required reading in an English course?
Whether it's Tennessee Williams or Steinbeck or Orwell, I think there are certain books that ought to be required in order to give students an adequate education. Granted, I wouldn't put these three books on the list--there are a lot more worthy choices--but there ought to definitely be requirements.
Dad started me off with Pippi Longstockings, Reader's Digest and Mad Magazine. Use to toss them on the bed when I was like 7 or 8 and say "enrich yourself". I loved Mad Magazine and read it and all it's competitors from cover to cover every month. Then they bought a story from me when I was 16.
My point is if they love to READ, they'll read all of it. The classics and the contemporary. I read Leon Uris when I was really, really desperate once on a bus trip. I hated war stories. Now I'm a big fan and eventually minored in History.
The problem is getting them to read at all. If Harry Potter makes them read, great. I'll wait and present Dickens later. Toss it on the bed and say "enrich yourself".
But as people get older, they have a lot less time to read--I like to read, but I might be able to read one book a month or so. Chances are that if they don't read it in school, they won't read it at all.
Teachers aren't doing their jobs if the kids are satisfying their reading requirements by reading "ESPN the Magazine" or "The DaVinci Code."
If there is a child in this country that, upon high school graduation is asked about F. Scott Fitzgerald and his response is "Who?" then teachers aren't doing their job. Full stop.
How does a teacher teach if all the kids are reading different books? Where is the discussion, what do you test?
I love to read, so I understand what you're saying. But I think the English teacher needs some structure.
My tenth-grade daughter just finished her required reading of The Great Gatsby so yours is a timely comment... *g
Ok, taking your history example, why is it ok to have required reading in history and not in literature?
Lord knows there is plenty of history that schools don't cover, so why can't kids pick their own history ciriculum? If I want to read about the English Civil War instead of the 1960s civil rights movement, under your theory, why shouldn't I be able to?
The reason is because schools make value judgments about the most important events in history and teach these events--and we do the same thing with literature. Animal Farm, for instance, is an important book, so we make kids read it.
Moreover, it exposes children to different types of literature that they may not otherwise have discovered. I don't particularly like poetry, but I can still, to this day, recite R. Louis Stevenson and Tennyson--why? I was required to memorize poetry by my freshman literature teacher at my high school. I'm a more well-rounded person for having known it, and it broadened my world.
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