Posted on 08/15/2007 11:16:07 PM PDT by napscoordinator
An angry parent has blasted the East Penn School District for requiring its students to read books he said are "full of filthy vulgarity."
Richard Jones of Upper Milford confronted the school board Monday about some of the books on his 15-year-old son's 10th-grade summer reading list at Emmaus High School, saying they're trash.
Following its standard practice, the board limited Jones to three minutes and didn't respond to his criticism during the meeting. But later, board President Ann Thompson said, "We listened carefully and it is being investigated carefully."
(Excerpt) Read more at mcall.com ...
I didn't. I got a degree in English Literature. A degree in American Lit is something very different. =]
The author of My Antonio did indeed live with women and therefore probably was lesbian, but she was also a political conservative who won the Pulitzer Prize in the 1920s. My Antonio is about the struggles of a family in Nebraska and is not about lesbianism or feminism.
This is in a district that I would consider more conservative than most. I’ve never even heard of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and I took a college course on young adult literature last year. There’s such wonderful literature out there. Including Beowulf, if I may say so. The problem should be having a hard time choosing which books to put on the list from so many excellent choices.
..."A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," contained "the F-word" 17 times on one page.
Jones told the board some of the books are the equivalent of R-rated movies, which his son isn't old enough to watch. He said his son would be sent home if he used that kind of language in school.
and...
Jones said he found the name Jesus used as an adjective with the F-word in one book. He found it ironic that schools allow such books, but not school prayer. "Guess you can only use God's name in a profane way," he said.
i had one other very "stand out" teacher in fourth grade... she had us memorizing large selections of poetry and literature... everyday after lunch we would spend about 20 minutes as a class memorizing... i can still recall many lines from Longfellow, including all of Paul Revere's Ride, Robert Frost, Poe... and, of course, "Twas The Night Before Christmas." she did this with all her students--no matter what their reading level...
It’s because most of their teachers have never read the classics. You’d be shocked to see how publik skool teachers are educated.
My bad. Posted too quickly.
English Literature is the study of all literature written in the English language, including by American authors. You may well hold a degree in this area but not knowing the basics of Willa Cather’s works or life is not a ringing endorsement of the quality or value of that degree.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. =]
I tended to concentrate more on the dead white guys, Renaissance and Restoration lit, and then again on contemporary writers (live people of various colors and genders). I might easily have read Willa Cather, but she just didn't happen to appear on a syllabus in a class I was taking.
I find your indignation funny.
Hwaet?
If you think Beowulf is worthless, it is because you didn’t understand it. Beowulf tells us, among other important things, where we came from.
Literacy is about more than typing skills.
Indignation? My degree is CompLit from Fordham. It’s broader than English Lit but we managed to delve deeply enough into American writers to know about Cather and her work (those damn, thorough Jesuits). She was an important writer, not some second rate hack who should be ignored. I am genuinely surprised by your lack of knowledge of her...surprised, not indignant.
Hello Oberon! How are you doing?
And I LIKE reading.
She should be, if only for “Anthem.” “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” would need two years of an English Lit class to fully analyze.
Antonio Banderas rocked in that movie! He played a totally believable "good Muslim" before it was PC.
For me (1970 or so) it was Catcher in the Rye and Summer of 42.
There are plenty of important writers I've never read, and no doubt the same is true of yourself. That's one of the great things about literature...there's just way too much of it to master.
What the lifelong student of literature can achieve, with dedication and hard work, is a sort of survey, with a working knowledge of his or her specific field of study.
Clearly you believe that every student of literature in English should have read Cather. I think every student of literature in English should have read Kipling. I'm not sure either of us has exactly cornered the canon, if you will.
I still owe you a piece of writing, don't I.
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