Posted on 05/22/2006 12:11:31 PM PDT by Borges
A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers.
Leslie Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000.
But Pinney said perusing the questionable parts of the books made it clear they weren't suitable for children and should be taken off Township High School District 214's proposed required reading list next year. The district is based in Arlington Heights.
Pinney was particularly offended by the explicit tales of masturbation and teen sex in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The popular novel, often described as a modern-day Catcher in the Rye, was among the ALA's top 10 most challenged books two years ago.
'Isn't there ... a higher level?'
"We talk about the steady diet of trans fat and sugar, and we know the result is obesity and diabetes. But what are we feeding the minds of our students? They're getting a steady diet of foul language, violence and sexuality outside the classroom by the media. But when it comes to the classroom, isn't there something of a higher level to feed the minds of our children?" Pinney asked.
Other books Pinney wants replaced are The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien; The Awakening by Kate Chopin; Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World.
Many of the texts have been used in the district's six main high schools before and were reviewed by the department heads before the lists were sent to the board for consideration.
"These aren't books someone just picked out of a bookstore one Saturday morning and said, 'Hey let's put them on the reading list.' These are books that have gone through the process and were selected for their educational value," Board President William Dussling said.
'It cannot hurt to be informed'
Dussling is willing to listen to Pinney's concerns when the board meets Thursday, but he doubts the books will be removed from the curriculum. The district has an "opt out" policy if parents don't want students to participate in an activity or read a certain book, he said.
Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor, can understand why some people may be uncomfortable with his nonfiction best seller, which correlates legalized abortion with lower crime rates. However, he said banning it for ideological reasons does not make sense.
"The book does deal with controversial topics like abortion, crime, guns and race. But we aren't making moral statements in the book about whether abortion should or shouldn't be legal, or guns should or should not be regulated. Instead, we try to look at the data and understand what impact legalized abortion or gun control has had on crime. I would think that whatever conclusion one comes to on the morality of an issue like abortion, it cannot hurt to be informed about the facts," Levitt said.
There were 404 challenges or written requests to have a book removed from a school or library filed with the ALA last year. There were 11 challenges in Illinois in 2005, compared with 10 the year before, spokeswoman Larra Clark said.
We could cut their names out of the textbooks.
Or, we could avoid the issue of their sexual proclivities in high school textbooks altogether. It seems our grandparents managed to learn much more history than children today, despite being deprived of this "crucial" information.
You would have if your school hadn't banned those books.
You clearly don't understand. The mere mention of reproduction, even in plants, sends teenagers into a frenzy of lust. That's why we no longer teach about the birds and the bees, you see. All that egg-laying and pollinating going on inflames adolescents and causes them to engage in wild orgies of sexual licentiousness.
Why, the simplest things can trigger this sort of immoral behavior in teens. A case in a city (unnamed for privacy's sake) occurred when a wind blew through the schoolgrounds. Budget cuts had prevented the lawns on campus from being mowed frequently, and the wind blew the seeds from all the dandelions on the campus all over the place. Within minutes, the students had all removed their clothing and were rutting mindlessly on the grass.
You can see how serious this all is, I'm sure.
Good point, I'm chastened at my lack of understanding of the seriousness of this problem. By all means, let's continue restricting such licentious inflammatory knowledge. Who cares if China and India take the lead in science, we'll have all the pure teenagers, their heads uncluttered by knowledge of plant reproduction!
I mean it's not like the school district is trying to put the Bible in the classroom or anything.
Probably so. That kind of language is suspect today, but common back then for friends.
The same trick is used of David and Jonathan in the Bible.
Sick tricks.
Shhhhh! You'll have the ACLU warming up their fax machine in a minute.
So can those seven books.
Irrelevant.
Every parent can't decide individually otherwise the school system is chaos.
The government schools are already in chaos in case you haven't noticed.
There have to be some shared criteria upon which all essentially agree
The thing we need to agree upon is that there should be some criteria and the school system must decide.
If you do, that makes this whole conversation irrelevant.
Ultimately, parents have the final say. If some imbecilic teacher told my child they had to read "The Complete works of the Marqui De Sade" I would tell them to shove it
We did the hippy-dippy Sixties poetry, not the real stuff. The book (I can't BELIEVE this neuron still fires) was called "A Gift of Watermelon Pickle." That would have been 69 or 70.
With a graphic artist.
Was it? Do you know that for a fact? Can you provide any evidence to back up that assertion? Please cite other 13th century French examples.
The same trick is used of David and Jonathan in the Bible.
Who lived 2000 years previous thousands of kilometers away in an utterly different civilization. I really don't see the parallel, unless your argument is that no historical figure has ever been homosexual.
I remember some boring stuff like: "Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony."
Since I never said that, it's probably safe to say.
If a class was the History of sexuality or French literature in general then De Sade may very well be on the syllabus. Plato's Symposium would probably raise a lot of cackles as well.
"Then they kissed each other and wept together - but David wept the most" - 1 Sam.
The above is supposedly "proof" that the 2 were gay. Much like the passage you quoted of Richard and Philip.
Who lived 2000 years previous
Exactly my point. Richard I lived 800 years previous to us. They used quite different language back then. And the gays will manipulate that to 20th century standards to "prove" he was gay.
People pushing the homosexual agenda tend to ignore the historical context when it comes to speculating that every major figure (including David of the Bible) who had a deep friendship with another man was therefore homosexual. It's one of the most destructive aspects of their agenda--they degrade male friendship with sexual innuendo.
Some school board SHOULD have made our teachers swap out that stupid Watermelon Pickle book for maybe some Milton or Donne. I can barely name any real poets because we did "Language Arts" instead. The next time I hit poetry was in college, where they stuck me (and the rest of the Electronics students, it was the only section that fit our schedule) with Sylvia Plath. I never did figure out why she called a poem about a dead snake "Medallion."
That's probably why I care so much about kids getting GOOD stuff to read, not whatever fits the current trend. I think poetry and literature are probably as important as visual arts and I think I was gypped. Reading it long after school ended is not the same as being taught it.
Good golly...does sarcasim need to be written in order for you to understand? Relax, bub.
Not to mention degrading a great crusader which of course has fed over the last decades into the Muslim agenda.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.