"Censorship at it's finest"

[sagira]

Her blog post reads like a Lifetime Movie.

 

:lol:

[Storm Bay]

Here's the thing - when you are teaching other people's kids you DO need to be censored because you have a responsibility to the "group". Period. I could think of a hundred other books which would excite a teenager into reading which would not have caused this controversy. She really should have known this when she began the book club. If she didn't - she was very naive.

 

As homeschool parents we don't have this consideration - if you want your teens to read Lessons from a Dead Girl by Jo Knowles - more power to you. But my son has better things to do than "explore the world of children sexually abusing other children" during our literature time together.

 

There is nothing wrong with parents wanting their teens to avoid destructiveness and dark truths in life for as long as possible and one way of doing this is to be selective in their reading lists.

 

:iagree: Different dc are able to handle different things, and when it comes to things like this, people are not all comfortable with this. I do not think that this is appropriate so young, particularly for sensitive dc who would be so upset by this and feel violated from reading it.

 

That said, there may be times when this subject needs to be discussed with a young child, but there are so many was to handle it. There needs to be a balance between hiding this type of topic and overdoing it, and a novel such as this crosses the line into too much for many dc at that age.

 

What disturbs me about society in general is the fact that most modern literary novels are dark. That said, I know that when my dc leave homeschool the will have professors/teachers assigning books I personally see as inappropriate. My dc will have to be able to handle it if they choose to go to ps.

Edited October 8, 2010 by Karin

[In2why]

Sorry - most teen boys don't need to read a fictional story to understand not to rape their girlfriends. And whitebread neighborhood? This disturbs me. If the children are non-white then it is OK to expose them to these books but it is not OK to exposed them to those who ARE white?

 

Considering that most teen boys who commit date rape don't even realize it is rape I would say, "yeah a gripping book about it might not be such a bad thing". I have worked with Sexual assault victims for over 15 years so that is the reality. Nuance is a interesting thing. So are mixed messages and what it means to be masculine and virtuous.

Whitebread doesn't mean white....it means whitebread. Nothing to do with race. Not bred.....but bread.

 

 

You're telling me that there aren't hundreds of books that could fit the bill (create interest, discuss literary themes, be exciting, explore relationships with language which does not involve sexually explicit verbiage) that would not have been a better choice? I'm sorry - that teacher must be pretty dull if she can't get a kid interested in reading books without using those about sex - abusive or otherwise. I'm mean - that is just laughable.

 

Sure there are thousands of books that could do a better or equal job. But if the kids aren't reading them, which is what I took away from her post, then it doesn't matter if there are millions. As someone else said this is about meeting the kids where they are, and sadly the majority of kids are exposed to these things in their lives way before they read about them in books. Music, TV, movies, real life, the mean girls in public school. If this is their reality, and it often is in public schools and teenage life, are they really going to care about Wuthering Heights or the Great Gatsby?

 

I never said we should go back to never talking about sexual abuse. My point that you highlighted was meant towards teens, not small children. It is important to talk to kids about what is and isn't appropriate but having your teens read books about oral sex, children abusing children, and other topics is in no way necessary to either prevent or discover abuse.

 

 

And just to clarify - when did it become the job of a literature teacher to take on the psychological health of students? Perhaps a student was exposed to sexual abuse as described in the book - perhaps it caused them to fall into a depression or worse? The thought that exposing these evil things is always a "good or productive thing" is naive. Bringing up this type of emotional trauma has serious consequences that she is ill-equipped to handle as a literature teacher and that is why it is not her job.

 

I agree it isn't her job to take on the psychological health of her students, and I don't think that it is always a good or productive thing to read YA with gritty themes. But I don't think it is a good or productive thing to avoid them like the plague either. I think the adults in the situation were losing their innocence more than the teens who chose these books to read. The Twilight series freak me out since they are so hugely popular to the teens and adults reading them, but if you take the average AP student in the public school system this is what you can get them to read. I think the obsession, possessiveness, and dying without you crap is dangerous, but again it is getting teens who never read anything that isn't assigned, to read. Plus I totally believe that most of the assigned reading isn't read at all, just skimmed through and/or they pick up the cliff notes, or worse watch the movie and think they know the literary themes.

I think she had good intentions, that she didn't think through her decisions (or perhaps felt it was her place to shape these young adults in the way SHE felt best and not their parents) and then had a hard time dealing with the consequences of her mistake, thus deciding to blame everyone but herself via a very public blog. It's a big character flaw in my opinion, that she took this story to the depths she did, while refusing to admit she brought it on herself.

 

Her job is to teach LITERATURE. If she wants to psychoanalyze school children and search their psyche for potential abuse (and I don't think she does - that was your take on her situation) she should have become a school psychologist.

 

I inserted my own emotional baggage in our discussion and it wasn't the time of place. I don't think that was her intention either, but I tend to have a knee jerk reaction to people saying that kids need to have their innocence protected when I believe that very few of them still have their innocence at all. But in a perfect world it would be great if teens could keep their childhood, and it is a huge factor in why we home school. Yet at the same time I see kids who are having abortions and their parents still think and insist they are virgins and I want to scream. But again that is my baggage.

 

Moreover - it is her job to teach literature in a way which is acceptable to the parents of the students so she should suck it up, regroup, perhaps talk to a therapist (because she sounds like she REALLY needs one) and move on with what the parents, school, and principal want her to do.

 

I agree it is her job to teach literature, but it is also her mandate to get test scores up. She was doing that, and she described kids excited about being in her class, and excited about the "Moo Moo book club". That is half the battle, and in that situation if reading YA books were a way to get them reading,the committee approved her selections, and the majority of the parents and kids were fine with it, I don't understand, and never will understand, why the few vocal parents in opposition were able to shut her down. It seems to me that she followed their rules and they just kept changing them. If the parents who didn't want their kids in her class removed them that would make a lot more sense to me then ending a program that was working for other kids.

[In2why]

Does it interest anyone that her voluntary book club grew from 15 member to 130 members in a year?

 

That the kids discussed, negotiated and chose the books that were ordered with grant money, not school money?

 

That 2 parents were able to overturn the commitee rulings on which books were appropriate and at what age levels?

 

That the rest of the parents and letters to the editor and what not were written by people who didn't even have children in her book club, classes, or even their high school?

 

I admit that this is a one sided account of her experiences. But I haven't seen anything that disputes her assertions. I guess the final question in the entire matter is, are the kids more or less educated now? Are the kids actually reading the classics they weren't reading before? Have they somehow became enamored with them, when they previously weren't? I wish I knew the answers to those questions.

[angela in ohio]

I admit that this is a one sided account of her experiences. But I haven't seen anything that disputes her assertions. I guess the final question in the entire matter is, are the kids more or less educated now? Are the kids actually reading the classics they weren't reading before? Have they somehow became enamored with them, when they previously weren't? I wish I knew the answers to those questions.

 

And we won't. The school board is not allowed to tell their side of the story on a blog.

[Guest Alte Veste Academy]

Does it interest anyone that her voluntary book club grew from 15 member to 130 members in a year?

 

Yes. I would say she would make an incredible book club leader, or even a perfect YA librarian. That's obviously where her heart and teaching gifts are.

 

That the kids discussed, negotiated and chose the books that were ordered with grant money, not school money?

 

I think it is irrelevant to the issue of whether they were appropriate selections for an AP class. If they had been strictly used for the book clubs, I think that's lovely.

 

That 2 parents were able to overturn the commitee rulings on which books were appropriate and at what age levels?

 

Well, we all know how few parents pay attention to what their kids are reading in school. I imagine that the majority of parents were probably completely unaware of the material. My parents didn't know what I was reading for class. They didn't ask and I didn't care to discuss it. As I said in another post, it could have been disappointed students who initially alerted their parents to the fact that they were reading YA fiction instead of the classics they had signed up for.

 

That the rest of the parents and letters to the editor and what not were written by people who didn't even have children in her book club, classes, or even their high school?

 

Not so much. I think it's great for a community to get involved in school issues since the graduating students are going to be part of that community.

 

I admit that this is a one sided account of her experiences. But I haven't seen anything that disputes her assertions.

 

Again, the superintendent and other school administrators aren't going to be allowed to tell their side. They have lawyers who tell them not to. ;) It seems pretty likely this could end up in court.

 

As far as her assertions go... She asserts that she got the kids excited about reading. Great! She asserts that test scores went up because of her teaching. Great! She asserts that the kids in her college-prep class couldn't handle classics. Not great, lady. It is your job to prepare them for college-level work! If your pupils can't handle the classics and you accept that and stop making any effort to lead them in the way they ought to go, I assert that you should not be teaching that class.

 

I guess the final question in the entire matter is, are the kids more or less educated now? Are the kids actually reading the classics they weren't reading before? Have they somehow became enamored with them, when they previously weren't? I wish I knew the answers to those questions.

 

Well, I'll put it another way. They're not educated appropriately for the class in which they enrolled and for which they expected to receive credit. If I take Calculus, I don't expect to be taught Math for Social Sciences. The two bodies of knowledge do not equally prepare me for the same level of continuing education. It would be a disservice for me to receive a credit for Calculus if all you had taught me was Math for Social Sciences.

 

As I said in the beginning, she would probably make a great book club leader or YA librarian but she was obviously not a great teacher of AP English (and all that entails).

[debbielong]

Her blog post reads like a Lifetime Movie.

 

LOL! I couldn't even get past the excruciating first three paragraphs of her blog. It was WORSE than a Lifetime Movie (which I can also not sit through:)

 

But, this thread - now THAT is fascinating. But, that is because you people know how to WRITE:)