Conclusive Proof:
Posted on 05/22/2006 12:11:31 PM PDT by Borges
A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers.
Leslie Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000.
But Pinney said perusing the questionable parts of the books made it clear they weren't suitable for children and should be taken off Township High School District 214's proposed required reading list next year. The district is based in Arlington Heights.
Pinney was particularly offended by the explicit tales of masturbation and teen sex in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The popular novel, often described as a modern-day Catcher in the Rye, was among the ALA's top 10 most challenged books two years ago.
'Isn't there ... a higher level?'
"We talk about the steady diet of trans fat and sugar, and we know the result is obesity and diabetes. But what are we feeding the minds of our students? They're getting a steady diet of foul language, violence and sexuality outside the classroom by the media. But when it comes to the classroom, isn't there something of a higher level to feed the minds of our children?" Pinney asked.
Other books Pinney wants replaced are The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien; The Awakening by Kate Chopin; Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World.
Many of the texts have been used in the district's six main high schools before and were reviewed by the department heads before the lists were sent to the board for consideration.
"These aren't books someone just picked out of a bookstore one Saturday morning and said, 'Hey let's put them on the reading list.' These are books that have gone through the process and were selected for their educational value," Board President William Dussling said.
'It cannot hurt to be informed'
Dussling is willing to listen to Pinney's concerns when the board meets Thursday, but he doubts the books will be removed from the curriculum. The district has an "opt out" policy if parents don't want students to participate in an activity or read a certain book, he said.
Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor, can understand why some people may be uncomfortable with his nonfiction best seller, which correlates legalized abortion with lower crime rates. However, he said banning it for ideological reasons does not make sense.
"The book does deal with controversial topics like abortion, crime, guns and race. But we aren't making moral statements in the book about whether abortion should or shouldn't be legal, or guns should or should not be regulated. Instead, we try to look at the data and understand what impact legalized abortion or gun control has had on crime. I would think that whatever conclusion one comes to on the morality of an issue like abortion, it cannot hurt to be informed about the facts," Levitt said.
There were 404 challenges or written requests to have a book removed from a school or library filed with the ALA last year. There were 11 challenges in Illinois in 2005, compared with 10 the year before, spokeswoman Larra Clark said.
Maybe it's the title that turned them off....
Ummmmmmmmm...I didn't say he wasn't.
Someone forced people to not read things? If they used force to stop people from reading something, it was censorship, if not, it wasn't.
"well its nowhere in my city for the same reasons cited."
I do not believe you. Name your city and I will contact the public library there and tell you what shelf it is on, so you can check it out. I have never seen a public library that did not have several copies of the Bible on its shelves.
If you are correct, I will work to get the Bible on that library's shelves.
Sez whom? Please provide evidence to back up your statement.
And a lie can't be perpetuated for 50 years?
Lots of lies are out there. Check out the communist agenda. They've been putting their stuff into our education system for quite a while now.
When a reading list is established, somebody decides what books will be on it, and by definition what books will be left off. If there are 50 books on the list, that means many thousands or millions of books have been "censored."
Somehow, once a book gets onto the list it becomes untouchable, with nobody (not even a school board member!) allowed to venture an opinion that a particular book might not be appropriate and should be considered for replacement by some other book.
In actual fact, of course, this generally only applies to books criticized for sexual content, especially from a conservative point of view.
Books critical of homosexuality or trans-genderism never get on the list in the first place, so there can be no controversy over their removal.
Conclusive Proof:
I was raised in a house where my reading was never censored in any way. My parents didn't keep any books away from me; they figured if something was too "old" for me, I'd just pass over those parts.
Of course, my parents didn't fear books; I grew up in a house with a few thousand of them. A lot of kids today don't grow up with books or reading, so of course it's perceived as something to be wary about.
Uh, "The Botany of Desire"? Where the most salacious thing is the sex life of plants? A disclaimer - I'm only half way through it, but since it is about plants, not sure what he could put in the second half that would be non-plant graphic sex. And if teenagers want to read about the sex lives of plants, more power to them!
Ummmmmmmm....there's actually quite a lot of graphic VERBAL sex, in Shakespeare. If you'd like an explicit example, from THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, I'll tell you about it in private.
The 12th century priest who attacked Richard for being a "sodomite" was a Communist? Who knew?
You seem quite confused for a Senator. LOL
My understanding of this incident is that it wasn't quite this specific.
The King publicly confessed to some unspecified sins of the flesh and was absolved.
However, given the remarkably randy family he came from, it's difficult to see what else could have been at issue.
It's also a fact that, unique in his family, he apparently left no bastards, and that his marriage fell apart.
True.
Richard I was a good king? Um...
You can read that into it, if you like. But it never states so explicitly.
That's just moral relativism. First you start telling your kids that sex isn't evil, the next thing you know they'll be turning tricks for dime bags.
I didn't say he was a good king.
Geesh. Read my earlier post to a likewise confused poster.
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