Just FTR I think kowtowing to this girl is going to be orders of magnitude more harmful to her in the long run than exposing her to any mainstream literature would be.
She should have to read that book Argent Towers keeps going on about.
I have read the book, and agree that it is in my to ten best books I have ever read, and I think it has in some ways changed me on a fundamental level. It absolutely is not “pornographic”, which implies that there are no other values besides titillation. This is one of the greatest things ever written.
I think it is awesome that the school had the guts to go with such an advanced books. I think we really do ourselves harm by not pushing our students. I wish I had read this stuff instead of the standard issue warmed-over books found in your average high school lit class.
There will always be people opposed to excellence. Pay them no mind.
Ha! That’s a good one. Since when has “students who wish to excel” ever been a protected class for the purposes of discrimination laws, or anything else for that matter? If I don’t make the school football team, can I sue them because they’re discriminating against my desire to excel in football?
A logical thought is easy to test. Just run it to the extremes to see if it works. Should the book be mandatory reading for students in the 5th grade? The answer is no. 6, 7, 8, 9 10? Pick a number. Kids mature at a different rate but that shouldn’t hinder the development of their minds. Advanced classes in high school should not assume advanced sexual maturity.
You said the story has no OTHER value besides titillation. There are many great works of literature available without such passages and we have always kept inappropriate material at arms length from children. They can seek it out but we don’t mandate it.
I thought you were still talking about Uncle Tom’s Cabin which, even by the standards of the day, blows chunks.
Well, four year olds can’t drive, and toddlers shouldn’t be allowed to vote. The answer is, indeed, no. I just ran that shit to extremes and I found a firm and unambiguous answer. Now we can come to one of two conclusions. Either nobody should be allowed to do those things since they’re just a few thousand days older than a toddler, or that your “test” is completely useless in the real world.
Let’s try another test.
Should a college professor be allowed to write his or her own syllabus? Yes.
Should an honors program that wishes to determine who is mature and prepared enough to handle a real college curriculum be forced to water down their reputation in order to comply with the wishes of a student who wants to protect her mind from the outside world? No.
When you strip it of the sophistry about ‘logical thoughts’ and actually answer the question at hand, there’s not much controversy.
And speaking of ‘mature’, no you actually don’t get to define the word however you see fit. The student in the article read something she didn’t like, and reacted by saying “eww, gross”, and handing it over to her parents so they could go to the school and fix the problem on her behalf.
Also, you never answered who or what was forcing her to read it.
FWIW this thread has made me try to find out more about this book, including this NYT review:
Porn this aint. Challenging reading for even an advanced High School class? Yes, it would seem so. The teacher has a lot to discuss to put those subjects, and the stylistics of the book, in a meaningful context. A kid who reacts to a sexual scene with “Ew gross” probably isn’t ready for it.
BTW, “sexual maturity” has nothing to do with this issue; this is an issue of emotional maturity.
And y’know? If it was available in the Kindle store I would have bought it right now and started reading it tonight! But it isn’t, alas. (I’m getting annoyed at what is not, but that is a Cafe Society thread.)
The word is Yes and that’s exactly what the school did.
Parents are responsible for their children and when a child comes to them and says they feel uncomfortable with the sexual content of school material then it’s up to the parents to deal with it.
You can’t redifine phone sex in a book as anything other than pornographic in nature just because it’s not the main focus of the story.
Pornographic is a loaded term. Explicit might be better.
I imagine that you’d also want the fig leafto “tidy up” David and other ancient works, as it had been in the past, to protect such young and vulnerable minds from such explicit trash.
That’s fine.
Forget for the moment, that this is the greatest book every written and look at the material listed as exhibit A: hereafter referred to as explicit sex.
High school children are aware of more than just the basics of sexual reproduction, and different sexual relationships. They’ve seen pictures or drawings of the opposite sex and have been tortured with movies of child birth . All this has been presented to them in a framework that shields them, for better want of a word, from their personal sexuality. Certainly the majority of high school kids learn a great deal more about intimate relationships. The distinction I’m trying to convey is that it is on their terms. The desire to excel in school is independent of their sexual development. Taking college level courses does not negate the general standards we apply in other classes taught in high school. The key word here is “level”. It does not mean college courses. I need not go into some of the sexual stuff that passes for accredited hours at some universities.
“Is drinking water a good thing?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, then you should drink 47 gallons of water a day.”
“Wait, what?”
“See! Now you can’t commit sexual assault and force children to read smut in college level courses!”
Magiver again the issue is emotional not sexual maturity. These kids are all biologically sexually mature. Who cares? The issue that some Seniors in HS are emotionally mature enough to handle a work of real literature that has a few scenes of explicit sex within it and some are not. It is also true that intellectual capability, as evidenced by grades and test scores, does not necessarily correlate with emotional maturity. This was a class designed for those kids who have both the intellectual and the emotional maturity to handle this sort of material. Apparently they however assumed that intellectual capability implied commensurate emotional maturity. With this student they selected incorrectly. You seem to argue that if there is a single student who otherwise has the intellectual capacity (if not maturity, and again, I believe that she has not that) but not the emotional maturity to deal with a subject matter, then no class in the school should offer that material as it would discriminating against those less emotionally mature than their peers who want to excel. Is that a fair summary of your position? Or do you instead say that all HS seniors should be protected from any art that includes anything explicit - at least if the exlicitness involves the “Ew gross” sex stufff?
She will, apparently, get to have her cake and eat it too. She will, officially, be in this class and get credit for that, while not participating in discussions, critique, and analysis of, what per the NYT review and the opinions of everyone here who have actually read the whole book, is a challenging bit of literature with many complex themes, including the brevity of romantic, oh hell, call it erotic, love. Maybe they’ll have her read “Go Dog. Go!” a few times. Or Harry Potter again. Just make sure that her art is safe art, cause that’s how you prepare students to become the intellectual top dogs. Make sure those fig leaves cover up those phalluses and breasts on that trip to the art museum - explicit visual imagery of sexual organs - can’t have that.
Reading about sex has no relevance to sexual maturity. It has a lot to do with intellectual maturity, though, which this girl has shown she lacks. All the more reason to send her back to a less advanced literature class. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. This girl wants to have her cake and eat it to, pretending she is smart while shielding herself from uncomfortable ideas. Well, she can’t do both. She can either grow up and take a college level class or sit in her nursery and pretend sex doesn’t happen. These choices are mutually exclusive.
Teenagers test boundaries. Christians play holier than thow. She is doing both. That does her no good.
One does wonder what kinds of letters of recommendation she will get from her teachers now. This should come up as a matter of discussion when she is applying for those elite schools that she has apparently been aiming for.
As to what other book she should read … that is a real problem. This is a program designed to expose students to diverse international cultural perspectives and this book was chosen as an example of serious literature from modern Japan that deals with a variety of changing social mores within that society. What other book would serve that role? That the teacher has read and can judge papers on?
What is she doing in that program when she really doesn’t want to be exposed to things the disagrees with anyway?
I was exempted from watching a movie once in college. I was a freshman and I’ve always had an extremely low ability to handle gore. So low that I actually ran outside and vomited on a friend’s lawn during a screening of “Robocop.”
Yeah, I know I’m lame.
Anyway, it was a required course. Humanities, I think. My uni required one or two semesters of this course (I can’t remember details any longer), and we’d read various books, have various discussions, etc.
One evening, we were all to meet to watch a film. I showed up and made it about 10 minutes before I couldn’t take it any longer. I believe there was a decapitation. I stood up and went to the professor who was at the back of the auditorium. She agreed that I could be excused and we both went out into the hall and chatted a bit. I told her my issues with gore, she agreed that she didn’t have a problem with my skipping the rest of the film, and it was fine.
Of course, in a university setting, that film was a minor part of the whole class. We dealt with many books and many themes, one right after another, so skipping one thing was not an issue. I appreciated her allowing me to avoid it, though it could just have been the green cast to my skin that made her say yes!
You’ll note that I listed a specific age group to represent the extreme. I did not run it down to the age of 4. That would be running it out to the ridiculous. She’s a child entitled to the protection we grant children. If her parents agree with her desire to read such material outside of school then she is free to do so. The school is not free to ignore their function to provide age appropriate material.
This was clearly sexually explicit material in the book. It cannot be dismissed as a sub-plot to be ignored. It is not the function of schools to provide sexually explicit material to children.
Oh Paleeeeaase.
I had not realized this was the only good book written by someone in Japan or that it was the only country we accepted international books from. Dang. Diversity is hard. Where’s Malibu Stacey when you need a sound bite.
Modern Japanese literature and culture is obviously the subject for that particular segment of the program. Click that link and look at the other works of serious Japanese literature of recent vintage years well known outside of Japan. There is this author who the link describes as “perhaps the most read outside Japan” and Yoshimoto Banana whose “dark novels have dealt with themes such as death, incest and lesbianism”, and Murakami Ryu, whose Wikipedia entry describes as creating work that “deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer’s literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent.” Those are the big three.
So if an international program believes that exposure to modern Japanese literature is part of what they should teach, and is indeed the focus of that particular class, which other modern Japanese writer would you prefer she read?
Paleeeeaase tell.
Or does she skip exposure to the Japanese section because she disagrees with what they read. And if that is her choice then why be in that particular program, a program designed to give a broad exposure to international cultures including modern Japanese literature?
And again please tell me what your thoughts are about taking students to art museums where they are likely to espy an explicit rendition of a penis or two and multiple breasts, some being grabbed, and actually quite a bit of very disturbing explicit images.