According to a group called Parents Against Bad Books In Schools (PABBIS), in Fairfax County VA, EVERY McLean HS rising 11th and 12th grade English class requires the reading of Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow. PABBIS reports the book has a woman being dog whipped and whipped with a razor strap during sex; oral sex; and a scene, too graphic to describe here, of what happens when a man spies on a naked woman being massaged by another woman.
At Mount Vernon HS all International Baccalaureate (IB) 11th grade English students are required to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Again according to PABBIS, the two main themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a rambling dreamlike book from the so-called "magical realism" genre, are solitude and incest. One review said this book "has a lot of violence, much incestuous sex, and plenty of anti-capitalism and anti-clericism." Another said there is "enough incest to keep those with even the shortest attention spans turning pages." Raping your sister, sex with another sister, sex with your aunt, a "zoological brothel" where dog gives stud services to be fed, a child with a "raw back" whose grandmother makes her service 70 men a night for 20 cents each, a male prostitute with a huge sexual organ, balancing beer on his "inconceivable maleness," are all part of this required reading for these teens who are too young to see an R-rated movie.
In the AP Literature class at Hayfield HS the theme of this summer reading list is supposedly all "cultures." Books on the list are divided into various "cultures." According to PABBIS, there are many "culture" categories but glaringly no category for majority American culture unless if one counts the category of "The Effects of British, French, and American Imperialism" or the category for "American Popular Culture and the Vietnam War" or the category of "The American Dream in Reverse."
PABBIS does a lot of research. If you dont have time to preview personally every book on your childs summer reading list, take a look at www.pabbis.com.
And then school officials wonder why they have so many students sexually assaulting one another in their schools LOL. Not exactly a Great Books curriculum is it?
No The Good, The Beautiful and The True 4 U, kiddies!
OH MY! Those story lines are hideous! My son is currently going into 8th grade, but by golly I'll be keeping an eye on his assignments. Thanks for the link to PABBIS, never heard of them.
Thanks for the Pabbis info stay.