An "artist's" personal life has a great deal to do with whether I expose my children to the "artist's" work. I cannot imagine why anyone, much less children, should be exposed to Mapplethorpe's bullwhip photo. You do as you please as to you and yours. I will do as I please as to me and mine. If you don't like that, toooooo bad! If it is self-righteousness to resist your knee-jerk adherence to liberal standards in the arts, even daring to call them "objective" standards, that is your problem and not mine.
I believe that I attended the Nutcracker when I was about seven years' old. I don't remember it advertising sexual perversion. We did not ask. Tchaikovsky, to the best of , my previous knowledge, did not tell. He is dead and no longer available to babysit but, given your revelation, I would have rejected him as a babysitter for my children or as a teacher since, if he was lavender, he did not even knew what ought to go where. I knew that Hitler favored Wagner as a composer but I had not heard that Wagner "helped set the socio-political agenda for the Third Reich." If so, that is very bad news and he won't be modeling for babysitter either. Somehow, I doubt that, whatever Wagner's political views, he was secretly meeting with the Nazi High Command to map out the fine points of Nazi ideology. Speaking of hyperbole!
Anyone familiar with my efforts here knows that I am no fan of either anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism (being Catholic myself) or xenophobia or border moonbattery for that matter. I had the privilege of being personally acquainted with the late Professor Leslie Hotson, a Shakespearian scholar at Harvard and his wife, the late Professor Mary Hotson, who served in a similar capacity at Radcliffe. One or the other was T. S. Eliot's first cousin and both were enthusiasts. Neither was anti-Semitic and, if somehow T. S. Eliot exhibited anti-Semitism, he should be viewed in the context of his times. I did find him then and now an annoyingly turgid excuse for a poet although those more familiar with his work than I suggest that he was quite responsibly conservative. Maybe. Maybe not. The turgid nature of his work impels me to not recommend him to my kids. Life is short and ought not to be wasted on The Wasteland or other such "work."
Ezra Pound!!!! His broadcasts were for Mussolini not for Hitler or Tojo. He was the victim of a little scheme in which his government appointed attorney pled him not guilty by reason of insanity for his treasonous broadcasts (think Axis Sally/Tokyo Rose only for Mussolini). He was "hospitalized" at St. Elizabeth's in Washington where the political prisoners were sent. Eventually, courtesy of a petition to President Eisenhower by Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners headed up by poet Robert Frost demanding that Pound be tried for treason or released, Ike ordered him released or caused him to be ordered released. Pound pronounced his experience as a victory for fascism since he had made the government fascist in its treatment of him and then he retired to his villa in Italy. Pound is also dead and not on my list of role models for babysitters and, like Tchaikovsky, Wagner, D. H. Lawrence, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Pinter, Albee, Ginsberg, and Eliot, not particularly necessary to my children's education or that of anyone else's children although they will have to decide that for their own respective children. Letting Pound go was one of Ike's rare bright moves. It suggested that Pound was not quite up to a mental standard (mens rea) capable of treason. Very nice touch.
I attack what needs attacking. I probably fail to fully attack what needs attacking much less practicing hyperbole. Sarcasm is in the eye of the beholder. Self-righteous???? If I am righteous, should I be "other-righteous????"
If you think Whitman is "needed for any coherent study of 19th century American verse" (assuming arguendo that study of any sort of 19th century American or other verse is necessary in any event), fine, inflict it on YOUR children. Leave what is necessary to the education of other people's children to the decisions of their parents individually. No one died and left you in charge of setting standards for mine or theirs. As to what constitutes "ignorance", you fail to impress me as a source of any definition.
What the author meant to say when the author wrote the precise opposite is the shoddy shopworn stock in trade of each and every presumptuous hack literature teacher. If you imagine otherwise, you should be more honest with yourself. You are apparently the victim of the "intellectual" incest of the professoriate even if only in their classrooms.
Transparent???? I certainly hope so. Was I supposed to be devious? What you see is what you get.
The Arkansas Antichrist gave a copy of Leaves of Grass to Monica. Fat lot of good that did her.
You are obviously making the mistake of imagining that, having experienced your opinions here, I would give a feather or a fig for them. I don't but I can keep this up as long as you can, if I choose to do so.
While I agree with your general approach, I would like to add the following exceptions.
At the high school level, some "bad guys" can and should be read critically. As long as the material itself is not indecent, reading Dewey and Kant and Marx and O. Holmes have their place.
One of many problems with public schools (and some private ones) is that they feel obliged to treat most lefty and perverse authors and writers in a (supposed) value-free way. The stidents are free to read Ayn Rand or Karl Marx and come up with their own conclusions. Since real philosophy is no longer taught in these schools, those students are thrown in way over their head without realizing it. Most just memorize what they have to memorize and spit it out. The bright ones sometimes glom onto some "bad acid" (Descartes or Locke, for instance), buying into a false premise (sometimes unstated, and wind up with bad metaphysics or teleology, which messes everything else up). It might be useful to teach Dewey or Holmes or Mein Kampf as long as the teacher is willing to show the problems with these writings.
I will also add the "blind squirrel" exception to Elk's analysis. I loved the negative utopias of 1984 and especially "Brave New World". While Orwell was the relunctant and unhappy socialist who died before his cure, A. Huxley did not fall far enough from Humanist father Thomas's family tree. I read other material by both authors. Orwell is simply an excellent writer. A. Huxley is completely self-indulgent and egotistical, painfully so at times. But, "1984", "Animal Farm" and especially "Brave New World" are great literature (even where they all lack the really deep textures of a Doestoevsky) because the stories reveal hidden truths. These works, Animal Farm for all ages, maybe a lightly censored version of the others for early high school, are great reading.
Of course, all this really misses Elk's deeper point. The state does not have primarily responsibility for the proper instruction of children, parents do. Walt Whitman himself did not have to read Whitman, Orwell did not have to read John Barth to be a great writer, and my kids don't have to read Albee to learn how to be nihilistic narcissists (in fact I'd rather they not).
No school has the time to teach children all that is worth reading. The prep school I went to varied in material with the teacher's taste. What's essential to Borges or MI5 or BlackElk or the Kansas Dept. of Education will vary. We must presume that parents that are good enough not to belong in jail care more about the well-being of their children than the state, which has repeatedly made them the guinea pigs in the educational theory du jour. Since there were excellent thinkers before the 19th century, it cannot be said that 19th or 20th century reading is essential to make a whole person. Since the parents have the greatest commitment to the child's well-being, the parents have the final say.
Pressure and coercion from well-meaning but amateur "parents" is most unwelcome.
Dude, calm down. I'm only arguing against the assertion that the teaching of Whitman, Lawrence, etc. is inherently immoral. People are perfectly free to teach their kids what they want and I wouldn't have it otherwise. Opinions are only worth the empirical support they are given. I stand by my assertion that leaving out Whitman makes much subsequent American poetry and prose for that matter (Wolfe, Faulkner) devoid of context. He was a much greater figure then any contemporary British poet (Tennyson, Browning). Therefore it has to be done regardless of his personal pecadillos. I don't know why you keep bringing up non-entitites like Maplethorpe. And the question is about teaching their work not having the authors come over to act as babysitters.
Wagner's essays about 'Da Jews' and crackpot racialist theories flow right into Third Reich ideology. T.S. Eliot was a conservative Catholic. Tchaivkosky mentioned his proclivity obliquely in his letters as he had to since in the Tsarist russia of his day homosexuality was a capital offense.
P.S. Thanks for the info about Pound.