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> A school board in Alaska has got more than it bargained for after pulling classics including The Great Gatsby and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the sch

by msla 7y ago

> A school board in Alaska has got more than it bargained for after pulling classics including The Great Gatsby and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the school curriculum, with members of the local community offering incentives to students to read the books anyway – including $100 (£80) prizes and free mac’n’cheese. [snip] > The books remain in school libraries, but will no longer be taught. > According to a flier from the district’s Office of Instruction, Angelou’s memoir had been challenged over its “sexually explicit material, such as the sexual abuse the author suffered as a child, and its ‘anti-white’ messaging”, while Fitzgerald’s classic novel was pulled for “language and sexual references”. Invisible Man was marked for containing “language, rape and incest”, while Catch-22 was included for its violence, “a handful of racial slurs” and the fact the characters “speak with typical ‘military men’ misogyny and racist attitudes of the time”. Here's the full flier as a PDF: https://go.boarddocs.com/ak/matsu/Board.nsf/files/BNQSWL743B16/$file/English%20Electives%20Round%201%20Controversial%20Book%20Descriptions.pdf https://go.boarddocs.com/ak/matsu/Board.nsf/files/BNQSWL743B...

LyndsySimon 7y ago
The justification for removing "The Things They Carried" seems particularly weak: "Profanity and sexual references" Removing "profanity and sexual references" from high school curricula does not eliminate them; it only ensures that they will be learned through interactions within the prevailing culture - and likely never examined in detail by most. Placing context around things that are "socially unacceptable" is one of the most important parts of the transition between childhood and adulthood. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to allow that to happen incidentally?
- msla 7y ago
  > Placing context around things that are "socially unacceptable" is one of the most important parts of the transition between childhood and adulthood. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to allow that to happen incidentally? Because if you ask children to think about misogyny, homophobia, and racism in their fiction, they might apply those lessons to their parents, and We Can't Have That.
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    Of course. It would be uncomfortable. What's more, it would be the sort of "forced lesson" that I referenced elsewhere. That's exactly the problem that I've identified with my education: the goal shouldn't be "show children that their parents have flaws," but "expose children to material where people challenge the views of authority." The former caused me to approach things in terms of defending my own view of the world, while the latter would have had me examining it. Framing the conversation is important. If you go too far with it, you breed resistance to learning. If you don't go far enough, all you're really risking is that someone might take the "wrong" lesson away from it. Personally, I'd rather have someone who has more fully absorbed the material take away the wrong lesson than someone say the right things about it while never truly examining the work. In that case, at least they will have a broader base of knowledge and experiences to draw from later in life if and when their worldview changes.
  - gowld 7y ago
    More likely, someone will make an off-color-- er, non-politically-correct-- comment, which is guaranteed because one side or another will be offended by any comment on a sensitive topic, raising a media firestorm and calls to fire someone.
- fatnoah 7y ago
  >Profanity and sexual references I'll take a different approach on this. If I had to describe high school in general, that would be one of the first phrases I'd use.

by msla 7y ago

LyndsySimon 7y ago

The justification for removing "The Things They Carried" seems particularly weak: "Profanity and sexual references" Removing "profanity and sexual references" from high school curricula does not eliminate them; it only ensures that they will be learned through interactions within the prevailing culture - and likely never examined in detail by most. Placing context around things that are "socially unacceptable" is one of the most important parts of the transition between childhood and adulthood. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to allow that to happen incidentally?

msla 7y ago
> Placing context around things that are "socially unacceptable" is one of the most important parts of the transition between childhood and adulthood. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to allow that to happen incidentally? Because if you ask children to think about misogyny, homophobia, and racism in their fiction, they might apply those lessons to their parents, and We Can't Have That.
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  Of course. It would be uncomfortable. What's more, it would be the sort of "forced lesson" that I referenced elsewhere. That's exactly the problem that I've identified with my education: the goal shouldn't be "show children that their parents have flaws," but "expose children to material where people challenge the views of authority." The former caused me to approach things in terms of defending my own view of the world, while the latter would have had me examining it. Framing the conversation is important. If you go too far with it, you breed resistance to learning. If you don't go far enough, all you're really risking is that someone might take the "wrong" lesson away from it. Personally, I'd rather have someone who has more fully absorbed the material take away the wrong lesson than someone say the right things about it while never truly examining the work. In that case, at least they will have a broader base of knowledge and experiences to draw from later in life if and when their worldview changes.
- gowld 7y ago
  More likely, someone will make an off-color-- er, non-politically-correct-- comment, which is guaranteed because one side or another will be offended by any comment on a sensitive topic, raising a media firestorm and calls to fire someone.
fatnoah 7y ago
>Profanity and sexual references I'll take a different approach on this. If I had to describe high school in general, that would be one of the first phrases I'd use.