My comment on 12th grade was not directed towards this girl, but to a specific instance Susan mentioned. It wasn’t about sex. If you read back, I had commented on a teacher feeling the need to protect our 11 year old minds from the word ‘shit.’ Susan mentioned she was required to do the same thing with the same book for 12th graders. I thought it was ridiculous to ‘protect’ 11 year olds that way, but it is even more ridiculous to do so with 18 year olds.
Well yes. I trust my son’s teachers. I think generally they do a very good job, one which they have received training for. If they think a book is appropriate for him, they are likely to be right. That’s what they do for a living. Now if my nine year old came home with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and told me that was required reading, I would be a little disturbed. It might turn out the teacher had good reason for it, but I doubt that. However, the teacher hasn’t ever required him to read anything like that.
In my example the course was basic freshman English. I think the compromise reached with the school was a far better option than having her either fail the course or leave the school. I suppose the teachers and administrators were more apt to be flexible in her case because her objections were on religious grounds.
Not entirely joking. The teacher is in loco parentis. When it comes to decisions regarding the curriculum, I am pretty willing to defer to them, because that’s their job.
Hopefully you’d come to realize that maybe this is a young person who still has a lot of growing up to do. Just like millions of other young men and women who are going to be in college soon. Perhaps this young lady will benefit greatly from a college education that would help open her mind. Nah, let’s use this single incident to completely judge her and bar her from going to a good college. That’ll teach her!
I’ve seen one of my kids through college already and the second just started, so I certainly appreciate that they are not all grown up when they start college. But I also know that they cannot get far in the process by refusing to hear that which they are against or that which makes them uncomfortable. If I was an admissions dean I would be more interested in selecting tan individual who has adequate grades and tests scores but demonstrates that (s)he is intellectually curious than an immature individual who expresses a desire to hide from material (s)he did not like even if the GPA and test scores of the latter individual were far superior.
I knew this girl in high school. I’ve known several of her over the years. She’ll be bent over in the back parking lot of a dive bar, taking it up the ass while high on cocaine by the time she’s 22. Later she’ll cry to her remaining old friend that her parents were doing all her thinking for her “back then.”
As someone else mentioned, there seem to be two issues here:
Should a student be able to opt out of reading a book that makes her uncomfortable?
Is this particular book appropriate?
To address what you wrote – certainly there are some books that we would all agree are inappropriate for high schoolers – “Compare and contrast the literary value of Penthouse Letters to works by Faulkner” for example. Intellectual curiosity aside, some things are not appropriate for high schoolers.
My answer to my own questions above:
No, not really. Of course, this is predicated on the assumption that schools will pick books appropriate for high schoolers (so, no pornography, no Protocols, etc.)
No, not really. That book doesn’t strike me as a must read, and it is really much more adult than what I would expect from a high school course.
To further elaborate on (2), just because it’s an advanced course doesn’t mean the material should be more adult, just more difficult. Is that book advanced from that perspective? I don’t know, I haven’t read it, but my brief skim of the first chapter tells me no, at least not compared to Absalom Absalom, where I couldn’t even get through the first chapter.
Also, someone mentioned that high school kids are adults – not necessarily – I didn’t turn 18 until my first year of college. I would guess about half the kids don’t turn 18 until the second half of senior year. My kids won’t.
In which case she should be already grown up enough to know it won’t hurt her, and to write an insightful critique of the book for her report.
She should also then be already grown up enough to know that the world does not revolve around her, and that life will involve doing things she doesn’t necessarily feel 100% comfortable with, unless she wants to lock herself in a sealed room, in which case college (other than maybe Regents) isn’t going to a be a good place for her.
She’s already found it objectionable. So she’s grown up enough to know better than to continue on with it. You are not going to win an argument that it’s appropriate to assign sexually explicit reading material and that a child should be forced to read it.
I’ll grant this much: reasonable people can object to that passage, and there’s more where that came from for sure. I didn’t remember the phone sex thing because it isn’t the point of the novel, but it does recur that same way a couple of times. I disagree with the objection, and I think there’s no harm in reading it, while there is harm in avoiding serious art just because it contains sex, even if the sex is explicit.
I’m curious to know what she ends up reading. And it does leave me wondering if it’s okay to have high school students read about sexual abuse but not about sex.
I don’t understand this argument at all. It makes no sense. You’re comparing sexually explicit reading material assigned in school to what exactly? She is not compelled by the school to drive nor is the act of driving objectionable.
It isn’t her call to decide whether she is going to read it or not. She can find it objectionable - big whoop de do.
And one thing you are right on, I certainly am not going to win an argument about the appropriateness of a book for children of various ages with someone who hasn’t read the damned book. But it must be bad. It’s about sex. They can read about people being dismembered, but God forbid they read about members. I hope the school too covers up those saucy piano legs.
