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.
ROTFLMAO!!!
This thread has some incredibly odd twists and turns...
I am proud to say I caught your sarcasm.
That's not answering my question. You made an affirmative statement -- I tend to be skeptical of affirmative statements in general unless backed by evidence.
Then you won't be hoodwinked by the gay history-revisionist propoganda.
You misunderstand my point. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying I don't know and you haven't attempted to prove why you're right. I'm not going to believe what you say, just because, unless you can provide a compelling argument.
Even as late as Melville's "Moby Dick" Ishmael and Queequeg share a bed and no one to my knowledge has accused them of homosexuality.
Utterly irrelevant. You made a statement about what royal culture was like in France in the 13th century. American whaling culture in the 19th century is irrelevant to that. There may be similarities, or there may not be, but you have to inform the latter before you go off spouting authoritatively on the 13th century.
You may be just slightly ahead of the curve on that one. ;-)
You really might want to consider investing in some sarc tags. ;-)
Of course you're not. You'd rather believe the gays' so-called "compelling argument". LOL.
The Moby Dick example was to show that men simply sleeping in the same bed wasn't an issue until this century. If you can't understand that, you will if you get to know your history better.
I think you're being a bit silly.
Let's take a step back.
You claimed that it was common for royal men in 13th century France to share beds. I asked you for evidence. You haven't provided me with any.
Provide me with some evidence and I'll believe you. This has nothing to do with gays, and everything to do with making sound arguments based on solid facts. Don't be a liberal and say it's true because you feel it should be.
All the Moby-Dick example proves is that it wasn't an issue to Herman Melville when he wrote Moby-Dick.
I resisted the urge to talk about the more than slightly obvious homoeroticism in Shakespeare's 20th Sonnet, which Siena brought up earlier. This thread has enough tangents as it is.
She's not supposed to be a simple 'role model'. Is Hester Prynne a role model? Emma Bovary?
SoS is hot enough to help give a high-octane boost to the preaching career of
Tommy Nelson (friend of a friend).
http://www.tommynelsononline.com/Default.asp
IIRC, Nelson said that SoS was considered Adult Material by historical Jews...
and locked away so the kids wouldn't read it.
>>The book was "re-discovered" in 1969 by the counter-culture and promoted in schools. The "hero" left her husband and children for a younger man. When that fell through, she committed suicide rather than return to that dreadful family stuff. Yeah, a great role model for kids....<<
Do all characters in books need to be role models? What about the bad characters?
Solely based on the fact that he slept with his law partner because they couldn't afford 2 bedrooms. They had success with the Richard I myth so now they're expanding it to Abe Lincoln.
Opposite sex siblings also commonly used the same bed until recent times. No sexual connotation there either.
You want specific examples of men sleeping in the same bed from the 13th century. Why would you want that when Richard I lived in the 12th?
>>Solely based on the fact that he slept with his law partner because they couldn't afford 2 bedrooms. They had success with the Richard I myth so now they're expanding it to Abe Lincoln.<<
I'm not saying I believe the conclusion but that isn't nearly the only evidence they cite.
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