Posted on 11/17/2010 12:11:20 PM PST by atomic conspiracy
Edited on 11/20/2010 3:22:40 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Something 10th graders at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle did was so upsetting to a student and her mom that it's resulted in a curriculum change at the school, and apologies from the principal.
What were they doing? Reading. Reading Aldous Huxley's Brave New World as part of their language arts curriculum.
(Excerpt) Read more at mynorthwest.com ...
For those who don't know, Brave New World portrays a totalitarian society in which everyone's life is completely planned and there is no personal freedom at all. It is that society that regards the Native Americans, who still live freely in the west, as savages. The book's portrayal of Native Americans is the exact opposite of what this stupid and dishonest whiner claims.
What kind of example has the school's craven surrender set for their students? That ignorance and half-truths are a perfectly legitimate means of exercising power over others?
While they're cringing, the administrators may as well ban every book about World War 2 that accurately portrays the racism and bigotry of the Nazis. They can change the name of the school too. Glorifying an old white guy who was lawfully hanged? Oh, the horror! Think of the children!
Moron educators who don’t know how to read a book.
Ping!
Well, I can sympathise with her. In tenth grade, I had to read "The Possesed" by Dostoevsky.
It was SOOOOO long and boring and it had about a million characters who's names all looked like bad scrabble hands.
I never got an appology though.
“There’s a book I have to read in my class and it portrays Indian people as being savages and living on reservations,”
Everyone knows that Indians live in casinos.
When a society bans Brave New World it has become Brave New World.
These morons who want to ban the book, and they can try to couch their language otherwise, but they want to ban the book, are too obtuse to understand the "Savage" in the book is the damn hero in the novel! What nitwits!
Welcome to the totalitarian Brave New World. It’s called ‘political correctness’
Also, that emotions trump substance.
I guess the Seattle school has no sense of irony that they are banning a book about a socialized future where everyone is happy and completely PC.
“I can't see the forest! There's a tree in the way. If we only get rid of all these trees, we can see the forest once again.”
It's amazing the mother didn't find a way to blame George Bush.
OMG Literally busting a gut laughing over that comment. Bravo!
The book's point is to demonstrate that these so-called "savages" are the last free people of culture and humanity left alive - only in their world is Shakespeare preserved, for example.
Ridiculous.
So the kid is a high school junior and she’s reading Brave New World and the ONLY THING that jumps out at her is its reference to natives. Savage natives. Nothing else strikes her as interesting and significant. That kind of a chip on a kid’s shoulder can only be installed by a parent.
Precisely right. The new totalitarians seek to ban a book about the dangers of totalitarian control and the abolition of personal freedom. The irony here is off-scale! But they do not get it. Or maybe they do.
It is speculative fiction set in the future. How does anyone declare it to be "inaccurate"? At least until we reach that year?
As tv psychic Criswell predicted, "Can you prove that it didn't happen?" < /Plan 9 From Outer Space >
****Sarah Sense-Wilson’s daughter was required to read the novel for a class at Nathan Hale. She is Native American, and her heart started to sink as she turned the pages to find more than 30 references to “savage natives.” ****
Oh for heaven’s sake! The book opens with the finding of a white boy raised by the indians who have resisted change for over 500 years! In the year this takes place the people of the future will consider us all “savage natives”!
The book ends with the white boy resisting integrating into the new world by....Well. read it and see.
“only in their world is Shakespeare preserved, for example.”
In the original Inuit.
It's the same low-wattage brain power that goes:
“Look at the racism inherent in the system! They call Jim a nasty name in Huck Finn. Burn the book! Lock the school until every shred of the works of racist Mark Twain is burned. He changed his name (if THAT isn't suspicious)to avoid is discrimination charges, you know.”
They entirely missed the point that Jim is the purest, most sympathetic character in the whole story. Twain is on Jim's side.
They. Just. Don't. Get. It.
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