A Report out of Colorado says a group of parents destroyed about two dozen copies of “Bless Me, Ultima,” a novel selected for a Norwood High School English class.
Norwood School Superintendent Bob Conder confiscated the books and released them to parents to be burned or otherwise purged.
“The book should be judged in its entirety. There is some strong language in strong situations, but there is no flippant use of profanity,” said Anaya. “Parents have the right to monitor what their children read, however they do not have the right to tell others what they can read. That is un-American, un-democratic and un-educational.”
excuse me but…
“Parents have the right to monitor what their children read, however they do not have the right to tell others what they can read. That is un-American, un-democratic and un-educational.”
They’re not. It was the teacher who is saying what the students *have* to read and the parents saying they didn’t and wouldn’t. It may be the teacher’s job to select the book but if they are going to be irresponsible about it then its up to the parents to fight back.
And what is this about “no flippant use of profanity”? When is profanity not flippant? People are tired of having everything around them automatically sink to the lowest level and they are pushing back against it. That’s far from being ‘un-American’, a phrase I thought was supposed to be taboo these days. Apparently liberals can use it just fine.
This is an old story
From Bookslut: And What You Sought to Do Will Undo You
Re:This is an old story
Thanks. It’s funny, when I posted that I thought it sounded familiar, so I double checked the date, and it said “Wednesday, September 27, 2005” in BIG BOLD letters right there in the middle of the page. So now I just went to double check, and today it says “Wednesday, September 28, 2005.”
It’s the story that never ages!
Apparently that date isn’t when the story was written, but rather the current date. Does that many any sense?
Re:excuse me but…
But by saying those parents had the right to destroy books and keep them from other children, then by that logic, other parents should be within their rights to tell YOUR child what to read.
Re:excuse me but…
This isn’t about what children can read but what students must read. If the parents were harassing the Teacher saying the kids had to read the Left Behind series you’d have a point but that’s not what is happening.
Re:excuse me but…
This is not ONLY about them getting the book taken out of the curriculum but ALSO about the fact that they allowed the parents to BURN all the school copies of the book.
Re:excuse me but…
okay the bookslut article clarifies that they were thrown away, not actually burned, but the effect is the same. Also, the teahcer did send home a permission slip offering an alternate title. So I think he or she covered their bases for parental control.
Re:excuse me but…
Oh, now there’s a nicy bit of hypocrisy. You know very well that phrase is among the first epithets hurled by the right-wing and that it is used with consistency by that group to attack anyone who expresses an idea they don’t like. Seems to me that left-wingers it use primarily to denounce attacks on civil liberties. Given that personal freedom and civil liberties are supposed to be the underpinning of the United States of America, then I would certainly say such attacks are in fact unAmerican.
Re:This is an old story
Yeah, I noticed that some news websites were doing that about ten years ago, when I was working at AOL. We’d put together a list of interesting and timely links for each of the “channels” (who knows what they’re calling them now). Some marketroid types at some news sites apparently thought the most useful thing to do with server-side processing was to make everything on their site seem to be fresh-off-the-press. I mean, sure, some folks were paranoid about caching systems not showing the latest version of a page, but THAT date-stamp is sent behind the scenes, in the HTTP status message. Stating “this page last updated [current date]” is just plain prevarication.
In this case, it’s really just bad style. The banner says “Archives”, but the date just above it is always the current one. The only clue anywhere about its archival date is in the URL “…/articles/2005/02/01/news/…”.
You have to be a little more observant than the typical web surfer to notice that. I figure this one is just sloppiness.
Re:excuse me but…
Actually it IS about what the kids can or can’t read. By allowing parents to destroy school property, which I’m assuming the books were, they are preventing other children from reading those books.
From what I’ve read an alternative text was presented. Why destroy the books unless they’re _censoring_ what others are going to read? Censorship–here’s a good example that has nothing to do with selection policies.