Posted on 12/14/2006 7:14:02 PM PST by Artemis Webb
ATLANTA - The Georgia Board of Education voted Thursday to uphold a local school board's decision to leave Harry Potter books on library shelves despite a mother's objections.
The board members voted without discussion to back the Gwinnett County school board's decision to deny Laura Mallory's request to remove the best-selling books.
Mallory, who has three children in elementary school, has worked for more than a year to ban the books from Gwinnett schools, claiming the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft.
"It's mainstreaming witchcraft in a subtle and deceptive manner, in a children-friendly format," said Mallory, who is considering a legal challenge of the board's ruling. "The kind of stuff in these books — murder and greed and violence. Why do they have to read them in school?"
Gwinnett school officials have argued that the books are good tools to encourage children to read and to spark creativity and imagination. Banning all books with references to witchcraft would mean classics such as "Macbeth" and "Cinderella" would have to go, they said.
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have been challenged 115 times since 2000, making them the most challenged texts of the 21st Century, according to the American Library Association.
The challenges most often claim that the series encourages children to question adult authority and promotes witchcraft, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the deputy director for the association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.
is*
I pointed and laughed uproariously.
Just my small contribution.
Fundies need to get the hell out of public school decisions.
I wonder if this lady has even bothered to read any of the Harry Potter books.
Umm, it's called getting children to want to read a book larger than a comic book.
Huck Finn pulled after parent complains.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061103/NEWS05/611030322/1006/news05
Don't know if it's true.
potter ping!
My brother wasn't going to let his children read these books. I told him it is all just harmless fantasy; I told him I tried to do the magic spells and none of them worked. It's all just made up.
I'd seriously doubt that she actually has...
She's probably only seen the movie promos....
I hope her kids sneak into their witch costumes on Halloween and then run into her room brandishing live black cats.
ban Wile E. Coyote because he makes our children think you could survive a fall down a canyon wall
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Every kid knows you can't survive a fall down a canyon wall...unless, of course, you are wearing your patented ACME springs!
and you probably have to be able to read at the sixth grade level to understand them.
These books are the children's classics of the next century. My wife is a teacher and all of her kids love these books. The kids do know the difference between fantasy and reality.
"Fundies need to get the hell out of public school decisions."
Guess your "free thought" doesn't extend to "fundies" huh?
Well I hope he accepted your first hand account! ;o)
I have read all of them at least twice, except for "Half Blood Prince". For some reason, I just got busy and never read it again. Will have to do that after Christmas, when I'll have a little more time.
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