News From New Hampshire, where A teacher who got fired a decade ago for assigning controversial books to her classes is facing a fresh complaint.
Penny Culliton was fired from Mascenic High School in 1995 after assigning three books with homosexual themes to her English classes. She fought the decision and eventually was reinstated.
Now, the school’s Curriculum Committee is considering a parent’s complaint about a book being used in Culliton’s tenth-grade class. The parent says “Dangerous Angels� by Francesca Lia Block is disgusting.
for the children…
That phrase became a joke because it was being used in issues that affected everyone but somehow saying it was for the children was supposed to give it more weight. Everything from environmental issues to tax legislation.
However the joke gets a little tired when used on issues that do actually involve kids directly.
What do you expect?
“Dangerous Angels� is included in a course on modern and contemporary multicultural literature.
Does one really expect pablum from “modern … multicultural literature”? Let’s see… How about assigning Rohinton Mistry’s Such a long journey, or oh… anything that Margaret Atwood’s written in the last fifteen years. That oughta get them riled up.
i agree
I have to wonder what’s going to be taught in a class with that name that some parents wouldn’t object to. Practically by definition, all of those books ought to be stretching comfort zones, for good or for ill.
Dangerous Angels is an interesting choice for that class, though. It certainly has non-traditional families (though it’s more pomosexual than gay), and if I were the type of person who believed in protecting children from anything in a book, and shared what I assume are the family ethics of the protesters, I’d be more inclined to protect them from the non-traditional family structure (children having children; at least one threesome which is probably repeated) than from the rather incidental homosexuality.
But as a multicultural book … I’d love to be a fly on the wall for the discussions in the classroom. I rather think the book and the Caucasian main characters exoticize otherness in a — shall we say borderline? way. Coyote, Valentine Ja Love, Ping Chong, Angel Juan … I’m not sure Edward Said would quite approve. I’m not sure he wouldn’t, either.
Like I said, I’d love to be a fly on the wall.
Re:What do you expect?
The Bear: Marian Engel
The Horseman: Confessions of a Zoophile: Mark Matthews
The Happy Hooker: Xavier Hollander
In The Beginning…:
Isaac Asimov
The Monkey Business: Niles Eldredge
Science and Creationism: Ed. Ashley Montagu
Dangerous Angels
Link to book:
Dangerous Angels