“The board of directors for the South Texas Independent School District is expected to decide tonight whether to ban two books — Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land — from the high school’s 10th grade English Advanced Placement curriculum.”
Ya see, a couple of parents of students at a freakin’ SCIENCE ACADEMY think Heinlein and Huxley are too freaky for their kids.
The school district is fighting to keep the books in, and I applaud them.
But what the fuck sort of parent places their child in a school like that, and freaks over a little non-erotic discussion of sex in futurist novels? Oh, yeah, the kind that didn’t even read the books!
True enough, although the thought strikes me that if any of these kids is whacking off to the sex in Brave New World or Stranger in a Strange Land, they’ve got more problems than banning books can take care of. I mean, sure it’s sex, but neither book strikes me as erotic in any way–and I was an inappropriately aroused young teen when I first read those books. (I could concentrate pretty well as long as I closed the windows and turned off the fans.)
Sooner or later you have to accept that a teanager will come across views you disagree with, and need to be taught to consider things, and not automatically believe everything thing read in fiction.
I mean, do they realise A Brave New World isn’t *pro-*Dystopia…?
She (Julie Wilde, one of the complaining parents) has a vastly different definition of pornography than I do. Generally I don’t condone sending the goatse pic to ANYONE, but I do believe that she would be improved by viewing it. Or at least she’d have a much better idea of what pornography REALLY is.
I wonder what would happen if she read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and/or Job, A Comedy of Justice? Do you think her tiny little mind would explode?
Doesn’t anyone else think “ban” is the wrong word here, and is being used because of its inflammatory nature? These parents want to remove the books from the curriculum. Is any removal of a book from the curriculum an act of “banning”? What if, say, A Tale Of Two Cities were on the curriculum, and it were replaced with Oliver Twist because the latter was found to be better at teaching SAT vocabulary and critical thinking? Would they be “banning” A Tale Of Two Cities? The article makes no mention of students being forbidden from reading the books on their own, nor of the books being removed from libraries.
In any event, Brave New World is great, but Stranger In a Strange Land sucks so bad it deserves to be banned. Most. Overrated novel. Ever.
This looks like pretty clear evidence that Heather isn’t intellectually ready for the Science Academy. Maybe it would be kindest to free her from confronting all those nasty ideas.
Does she realize how many people are laughing at her?
I can just imagine the crushing dissapointment of these students. Nothing makes you want to do something more than if your parents tell you it is full of filthy dirty pornography. I foresee a lot of outraged skimming while they look for the naughty parts.
I’m not sure what the difference is; both books contain some (incredibly mild by 2003 standards) sexual content, none of which is even remotely erotic.
As Lynn said, this silly Wilde bint doesn’t have the first clue of what pornographic literature really is. Now if the high school AP English class were reading Justine by the Marquis de Sade, The Story of O by Pauline Reage, or Fanny Hill by John Cleland, then she might have a reasonable basis of complaint. As it is, she sounds like yet another illiterate fundie mooing about the scary world outside the cozy confines of her church.