Actually yes — but unsarcastically. In reality, it’s not going to be one teacher — good, bad, or otherwise — who sets a district’s curriculum or reading list. It’s content / curricular experts.
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Huh? Because of the actual crazy list at the top of this thread, Walton county pulled 24 books off the shelves. It’s being willfully obtuse to not see such an action for what it is. It has nothing to do with trying to select the best materials or keeping subpar literature out of the schools. These folks aren’t even trying to hide their biases - their quotes are out there for all to read.
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So the point here is that the Board convened a committee (members of the public,educators, doctors, etc) who read the books and decided,with input welcomed from the public, whether to pull or not, and decided to pull some. I don’t really care if the impetus was this liberty group or some parent or some aggrieved student. A transparent process was followed, and I would suggest that parents should know what books kids (particularly young kids) are reading. I did not have anyone in K12 during the pandemic, but apparently many parents were surprised by learning more about what their kids were actually learning. They shouldn’t have been surprised. The school should be ready and able to defend any book it has, and the content of their curriculum, to parents and to anyone else who asks. They won’t always get unanimous approval, but the school board understands that, and should be ready to deal with that.
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I don’t think Beloved should be required reading for any age, high school or college. I’m sure there are plenty of high schoolers that can handle it, and plenty of college kids that can’t.
I haven’t read the book because I don’t read books. But isn’t rape and killing a child involved?
Rape and killing a child are included in the Bible. Shall we ban the Bible and the Torah from school libraries?
Rape and killing children are a part of all kinds of historical events. Should we ban any mention of them in required reading?
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I’m OK banning the Bible in schools. Is it not already?
This is reading class we’re taking about, isn’t it? Surely there are plenty of options for teaching reading skills that don’t involve rape and killing kids.
No. The Bible is not banned from public schools. At least in my state.
We are talking about school libraries and curriculum. Not reading class.
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I wonder if the text and word usage is different? Perhaps someone could post an excerpt from the Bible and one from Beloved?
Sorry, but I think since you are quoting from an obvious source that it might be best to share the link and have others decide how it’s written. Your “quotes” are confusing at best and might be taken out of context. I, for one, have no idea who this group is. Maybe others do.
You don’t read books but you feel certain books should be banned? I remember reading Native Son in 10th grade and the rape/murder and anger in a book was incredible to me, a small town girl. My world widen as to other people’s experiences. I learned that the whole world didn’t look or act like mine. Did my parents complain? Nope, they encouraged us to read everything in both the school and the town library. I doubt they even knew what we were reading. High school kids, especially those college bound, need to read books that are different from their lives. And kids who aren’t college bound need to read them too.
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It is not at all surprising that some of those calling for Beloved to be banned haven’t read it.
A.P. American lit is not “reading class,” and context matters. Yes, there is rape and infanticide in Beloved, but literal and figurative rape and murder were very much part of the context Morrison is addressing.
Students in AP Lit don’t read just read the disturbing excerpts from Beloved, they read the whole book. Context matters.
As for the Bible, context matters there as well, but it is often read in bits and pieces, so how about Judges 19:22-29, which features the threat of homosexual rape, a man offering his daughter to be raped, the rape and abuse of a concubine, and her subsequent murder and mutilation.
22 While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”
23 The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. 24 Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”
25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. 26 At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
27 When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. 28 He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
29 When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. 30 Everyone who saw it was saying to one another, “Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Just imagine! We must do something! So speak up!”
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So where is the rape passage from Beloved?
In every public school I know of you are free to pull your child from reading any book you don’t want them to read.
You shouldn’t be able to decide what other children can’t read in a public school.
My ps boy read Beloved - as did his whole class (Honors English) - and he wasn’t ruined from the experience. If you google the book, 78% of Google users like it with several giving it 5 stars (as of this typing).
It’s very, very helpful if students can learn about life outside of their realm.
You may not like the book simply due to perception, but plenty of others disagree with you and you shouldn’t be able to get it banned from classrooms because you don’t want your kid to read it. Pull your own kid, not mine.
FWIW, mine have read the Old Testament too.
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Then homeschool. Everyone has that option if leaving the education to others is too risky.
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Thanks. Well, I’ve read many of those books and so have my kids. Watching season 2 of Outlander now and it’s great.
A review of books choices predicated on a report by a group that has an obvious agenda doesn’t bother me. There are lots of groups in schools with agendas these days on both sides of the fence. These books cited in the article are widely available. What I find more concerning is the lack of ability of people to thoughtfully disagree. Someone who doesn’t want their kid exposed at a certain age shouldn’t be called names because someone else thinks anything goes.
I do think parents have the right to discern what is appropriate for their kids. They also can add their voice to the school communication in a thoughtful way without name calling. And the school can review and respond. Not an issue. I also think that some books bother some people. So what. Don’t read it.
The disagreement seems to be what belongs in the classroom. It’s the culture wars, I want to teach it and you must read it. Instead of let’s pick a book you’re interested in from this list. When there are no choices that’s when folks get mad. IMO, less about banned books and more of an argument about what belongs in the classroom.
Pushback isn’t bigotry BTW. My kids didn’t read 50 shades or if they did, I don’t know about it. But they did read some books maybe too soon, The Hunger Games is one that comes to mind. It bothered one of my kids. And neither one of them could watch the movies all the way through.
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Again, context matters, and AP Lit students aren’t just assigned passages, so I’m not going to feed the flames by posting out-of-context bits and pieces here. If you or anyone else wants go gain a better understanding of the role these themes play in the book, I highly recommend you read it yourself. It is truly a seminal work on the American experience.
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As a (perhaps former) public high school educator, I always told the kids, “School’s purpose is to prepare you for real, adult life. Everyone should have some basics for each subject, math, science, history, English, etc, to get experiences outside of what you get in your family. My own parents were music teachers. Without school I’d have never learned much about science or math - and those are what I, personally, love. I learned that I loved them from school. If I’d had to follow my parent’s footsteps and be a music teacher it wouldn’t have been pretty. They let me quit piano lessons in first grade!”
But it’s not just subjects kids need to know about. It’s many other things about life too, good and bad. They need to know others struggle - they aren’t alone in their feelings if they’re struggling. They need to know evil exists - more than just our teaching how to try to deal with school shooters. They need to know the good and bad points in history. There’s a lot many don’t get within their own houses, but it’s still very real out there in the world. An educated person should know about it.
Books can help with all the above.
Having a subset of parents decide what can/can’t be used in schools in order to shield the eyes of their snowflakes reminds me of places like Afghanistan where the Taliban decides who can learn and what can be learned about in school. I don’t want anything like that in the US.
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Seems clear that posting that passage would show that equating it to content in the Bible is kind of off
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It’s been so long since I read it, I don’t recall the specifics–just that parts were disturbing.
I hope the rape scene in Beloved is as disturbing in the text as it could be.
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