Kat's comments (member since May 30, 2008)

Kat's comments from the Banned Books group.

The difficult bit about the Bible is how to teach it- as a piece of literature or as a holy text. Some religious people wig out if it's taught as "just another book" and some non-(or other)religious folk wig out if it's taught as "Truth". It's hard to stand on the fence when a person has strong opinions on the matter, and the Bible is one of those things people get touchy about. Sometimes it's safer just to avoid it. Then there's the issue of which version of the Bible is it? Whose translation? Which books? (which may or may not be in other versions)...

It's always been my opinion that most of the people have not read the book they are complaining about. They might have read a sentence or two (usually out of context), but they probably read that sentence or two while purposely searching for something offensive. Just look at all the tripe published about the "evils" of Harry Potter and its supposed advocacy of devil-worship, etc. Good grief.

I teach at a public high school. I also teach "regular level" classes that are required for all students to take before they can graduate. Granted, it's in a middle class suburban neighborhood, so we do have SES and a lot of parent involvement on our side, and the school has long been well-known for its academics. We've been awarded status as a National Model School and have several other accolades. I know I'm lucky to be where I am, and I've taught at the same school my whole career- I even student taught there.

Some of the books I'll be teaching next year in my senior English course that my teacher committee discussed and adopted:
The Joy Luck Club
Night
Persepolis
Tartuffe
Othello
A Long Way Gone

In my experience, saying "teachers...do what the schools require of them" as a means of saying they teach what they're told to seems a bit off when one considers the whole curriculum development and textbook adooption process. In an accredited school, the teachers essentially ARE the ones who make the decisions as to what is going to be taught, and through what texts. So, what is required of them is to look for books and compose lessons based on them. Yes, there is a parent committee who also gives suggestions and approves the texts; yes, the school board must also approve the curriculum---but all of this originates with the teachers. At least that's the way it is where I teach. I do what is required of me- I sat on a committee of English teachers this year, looking for texts that we think will help us teach the state standards (that we are bound by law to teach), but also teach students to think for themselves. We were all part of the process- some more than others, as is the way of group work, but we all were part of it.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this at this point, so I'll close, but let me just say that the teachers I know are generally more worried about the kids' education than they're getting credit for right now. I know it's not that way everywhere, but this is my experience.

There's the issue, though- people are overly sensitive. My uncle is severely mentally handicapped, and I had no problem with Lenny. I have no problem with a lot of stuff, as long as it is read in proper CONTEXT with lots of EXPLANATION for those who don't understand what's going on. Most of the people wigging out don't take things in context and definitely don't usually understand what's being said by the text that so offends them.

Having just gone through textbook adoption at the school where I teach, I can definitely see the different views on canon. We've included some contemporary stuff and some canonical.

The trick with schools is that it's just as much about money sometimes as it is about content. Works in the traditional canon tend to be cheaper to put into anthologies (having gone beyond copyright) and so those are the books schools get. The more contemporary works require buying more books, sometimes more expensive than anthologies, and often in paperbacks that get destroyed and have to be replaced before the next adoption, costing yet more money. Fortunately, I work at a school where we have the money to include contemporary works like Persepolis and A Long Way Gone, which I'm totally excited about teaching, but not everyone has this luxury.

There is also a certain fear of the unknown. You have teachers who've taught the same thing for years and they don't want to have to do all the work to invent new lessons. You have new teachers who have read the classics, feel comfortable stepping into the classroom with them, and are nervous about confronting potentially hostile parents who could very well cost that new teacher her job.

And, frankly, some of the classics are just that- CLASSIC. We like them so we want to teach them. :)

In a nutshell, it's complicated.

In Of Mice and Men a mentally handicapped man is portrayed "badly" and is shot by his best friend. Advocates for the mentally handicapped go nuts over that one...

At the end of The Grapes of Wrath the daughter (I forget her name) breastfeeds an old man after her baby died. CLEARLY (sarcasm) this is a disgusting sexual thing.

Heh. The school where i teach just adopted The Joy Luck Club for our senior English course. Now I'm REALLY looking forward to teaching it... :)

When I was a child, my parents found this series of abridged, illustrated classics for me to read. I had several dozen of them and had read them all by the time I finished elementary school. For me, it was my introduction to real literature. Reading those as a child is what made me want to read the "real" versions as I got older. We're talking Dickens, Twain, Shakespeare, the whole gamut of literature.

Now, I'm totally against abridging books marketed to adults. The utter ridiculousness of that is inexpressable. But those children's versions were pretty cool as far as I think.