Father condemns East Penn's 'filthy' reading list

The Morning Call ^ | 15 August 2007 | Randy Kraft

[HamiltonJay]

If you were reading Lord of the Flies in 10th grade, your school had some low expectations.

I read all of those books, but Lord of the Flies was required reading in 6th grade.

[CholeraJoe]

When I was a teenager, I would have rather taken a beating than read Beowulf or Hardy. Come to think of it I did both. I much preferred Michael Crichton's rendition of Beowulf, "The Thirteenth Warrior."

As for Dickens, there is plenty of violence, child abuse and class warfare in his stuff. What do people want their teenagers to read in school anyway? Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift hardly qualify as literature.

[wtc911]

My grandsons are in AP English. the one who will be a freshman has to read 'My Antonio' (or something like that) (the one who will be a junior also had to read it as a freshman - the topic or the author is 'a lesbian/ism').

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Your willingness to exhibit ignorance of one of the most important books and authors in American literature is astounding.

[Jonx6]

"Jones has three children in East Penn schools. He said all three went to a private Christian school until a couple of years ago."

There is the problem. If you use public housing, expect to be living in a slum. And, if you use public schools, expect your children to be steeped in filth and leftist indoctrination.

[Tax-chick]

What do people want their teenagers to read in school anyway?

That's a good question.

[wayne_b24]

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Psalms and Proverbs
Genesis, Exodus, Revelation
...and many more!

[Tax-chick]

Excellent suggestions.

[Xenalyte]

And let's not forget Michael Crichton's take on the Beowulf legend, Eaters of the Dead (on which "The 13th Warrior" was based).

[Xenalyte]

“Beowulf” is anything BUT worthless! It picks up quite a bit when Beowulf rips off Grendel’s arm and beats him with it.

[Tax-chick]

Public schools don’t have a Roman history curriculum. These days, they barely have an American history curriculum ... just “possibly-true historical background of modern leftist grievance groups.”

[Tax-chick]

I like the part where he fights the dragon best. Great descriptions!

Of course, the father in this article might object to the depiction of dragons. I know he’d never let his teenagers read P.J. O’Rourke ... I’m such a bad mother.

[BritExPatInFla]

“My grandsons are in AP English. the one who will be a freshman has to read ‘My Antonio’ (or something like that) (the one who will be a junior also had to read it as a freshman - the topic or the author is ‘a lesbian/ism’).”
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“Your willingness to exhibit ignorance of one of the most important books and authors in American literature is astounding.”

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Repeated “knee-jerks” have been shown to diminish brain cells. :)

[Drawsing]

Tom Wolfe is usually pretty even-handed in portraying the reality of all kinds of situations. I have not read the Electric Kool-Aid acid Test, but I would be interested to see if Wolfe actually glamorizes drug use as the aggrieved father states.

[StayAt HomeMother]

When one of the books he was having to read last year had bad language in it, I commented to his teacher. She has to pick material from the AP English website. She can't pick her own material (not that she would make different choices).

Not true.

At the College Board Web site you can download the description for AP English Lit. It specifically states, "There is no recommended or required reading list for the AP English Literature and Composition course. The following authors are provided simply to suggest the range and quality of reading expected in the course. Teachers may select authors from the names below or may choose others of comparable quality and complexity."

Here are SOME of the authors in the list; some modern authors are also listed.

Poetry: William Blake; Robert Browning; Geoffrey Chaucer; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Emily Dickinson; T. S. Eliot; Robert Frost; John Milton; Edgar Allan Poe; Alexander Pope; William Shakespeare; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Walt Whitman; William Wordsworth; William Butler Yeats

Drama: Aeschylus; Samuel Beckett; Anton Chekhov; Oliver Goldsmith; Henrik Ibsen; Ben Jonson; Molière; Eugene O’Neill; Harold Pinter; William Shakespeare; George Bernard Shaw; Sophocles; Oscar Wilde; Tennessee Williams.

Fiction (Novel and Short Story: Jane Austen; Charlotte Brontë; Emily Brontë; Joseph Conrad; Stephen Crane; Charles Dickens; George Eliot; William Faulkner; Henry Fielding; F. Scott Fitzgerald; E. M. Forster; Thomas Hardy; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ernest Hemingway; Herman Melville; Jonathan Swift; Leo Tolstoy; Mark Twain.

Expository Prose: Ralph Waldo Emerson; Samuel Johnson; H. L. Mencken; John Stuart Mill; George Orwell; Henry David Thoreau.

[dragonblustar]

Ain’t that the truth.

[Politicalmom]

You forgot lying. :p

[birddog]

My 11 year old son loves to read. He likes the sci-fi stuff, but I have gotten him to read My Side of the Mountain, Island of the Dolphins, Johnny Turman and other classics that I read as a kid. I just bought him Ender's Game by Card that is awesome, although I might have to read it again to make sure there isn't anything unapropriate.

[RainMan]

I would put my 3 copies of Beowulf up against any book written in the last 500 years. Beowulf, first off, was not written as a novel, it was written as a poem. A really big, long poem. A poem that took longer to recite than a Kevin Costner movie. It’s primary distribution was not in print, it was memorized and carried from town to town by bards and served up as entertainment, but also education, with lessons that needed to be learned, and morals. Show me any modern writer that could pull off anything of that scale.

It is also an interesting study in politics of the day ... why would a novel expounding the virtues and heroism of a Danish prince be written in Gaelic and found in England that dates back to being written less than 100 AFTER the Danes (Vikings) were driven from the British Isles?

It had as much excitement and drama for the 11th century villagers as a summer blockbuster does today for you. It was also not written in English (which is why I have 3 copies, they are 3 different translations). If you want to read a version of Beowulf that captures some of the original poetry, try my favorite, the translation by Seamus Heany.

Beowulf may not have been the original story developed and delivered in that form, but it is the oldest one that survived and that we know about. In English literature, it is story number 1, nothing is older. As such, it created a style and genre that was reflected in authors such as Shakespeare and Dickens. It not only survived the ages, it was the blueprint for English literature for the next 1000 years. Worthless? I don't think so.

Now ... who the h#ll is Tom Wolfe again, ‘cause I don't think he is in the same league?

[Huck]

Your 3 copies of Beowulf are proof that you’re on the extreme end of the Beowulf curve. I’m not saying someone can’t be a fan of Beowulf. People are fans of a lot of worthless things (NASCAR races, for example.) I’m saying it’s worthless to teens. It was to me and remains so. The best you can say for it is it’s really big and long (so is the phone book) and really, really old.(So is a rock.) Who cares?

[dooltotheend]

So, is it your position that students should dictate (1) what is important to teach and (2) what should be read to support (1). I don’t accept the premise that, in this “Game Boy” age, students can’t be required to read things of more substance than comic books and left wing sloganeering. School is supposed to facilitate learning about real life, discerning fact from fiction and thinking. Little or none of that is going on in most public schools today. When I went to school there was no requirement that I think a certain way. The only requirement was that I think. Of course, this did not apply to morality, civility and ethics. These areas, unlike today, were viewed to be absolutes—not relative to individuals or groups. There was a commom understanding of what these things meant; and a general concensus that they were essential for societal perpetuation. Of course, these are precisely the areas the left incessantly attacks. Why? To break down society and create the chaos necessary for it to emerge from the ashes with a monopoly on power.