She reads the material that a responsible teacher assigns unless you want to tell me this was the only book available considering it was 30 years ago and has no contemporary value.
Did you really mean to say that a book written 30 years ago has no contemporary value? “Modern literature” does not mean written in the last five years. This is just not a well thought out argument.
If she decides not to read it and gets hit in her grades that would be fair enough. Let her make a choice and accept the consequences, THAT’S being an adult, not reading about sex.
So, I’ve linked you to a source about the main modern Japanese writers known outside of Japan. This particular author is considered the best known by those outside Japan but the article lists two others as the big names. (And Wikipedia also list only those three as current living modern Japanese authors of note.) Which one’s work would you prefer a responsible teacher choose other than the one more widely known outside of Japan? The one who writes about incest and lesbianism or the one who writes about promiscuity and drug use among Japanese youth? Or should they just skip salacious Japan? Or find some lesser known and less significant author to use who writes to American puritanic tastes?
Should High Schoolers be protected from smut like this? Or this? Or the portrayal of this early upskirting?
Think I am guilty of the same taking something to a logical but absurd extreme that you did? Nah. A teacher was indeed suspended because her students saw nudes on an art museum field trip.
I mean to say that in 30 years there has to be other books that are more appropriate for a high school class.
If Japan is incapable of producing a single book that is suitable for high school children then yes, move on. Since I don’t believe that to be so, pick another book. The school already opted for another book so I’m guessing the sexually obsessed children of the rising sun must have a few books that aren’t rated R.
Suitable for advanced High Schoolers in America? Maybe not. Suitable for High Schoolers of all sorts in Japan. They got plenty.
My 23 year old son (the same one who took figure drawing and built sand castles at the topless beach) who currently lives in Japan arrived today for an 8 day visit with his Japanese girlfriend. While he teaches in a Japanese High School, he teaches English, and is not familiar with what is taught as literature in the High School. His girlfriend however was (no duh) raised there. Explicit portrayal of sexuality is just pretty damn common in serious Japanese literature. They don’t shy away from that. If a student studies classic Japanese literature - their equivalent of Shakespeare- then explicit descriptions of sexuality will be read unavoidably. Kids do not seek it out - it is hard reading that old style prose. Serious literature that includes a few explicit sex scenes are suitable for High Schoolers within that culture. No big deal.
Is being nonplussed by explicit descriptions of the sexual aspects of the relationships of a novel’s major characters being “sexually obsessed”? Or is getting all of a dither and hiding from what is by all accounts serious literature that deals a variety of serious themes because it happens to include a few explicit scenes being “sexually obsessed”?
Different culture to be sure. Not sure how to answer the question about sexual obsession but you gotta love their fertility festival. And their animation, well I can’t even link to that. 
Which is a funny post in the context of my son’s girlfriend’s other comment yesterday when I asked her about this - that most Japanese who have not been to America believe that Americans are all very free and easy with their sexuality (she said “liberal” but it was clear that she just didn’t have the word for “loose”) because the media images are such and our comedy seems to be all about sex as well. It wasn’t until she came here on an exchange program herself a few years back that she learned how far from the truth that actually is.
Which segued into a conversation (with number one son aiding in translation) about how comedy often reflects what a culture is most hung up about and uncomfortable with - in America we seems to be very tense about sexuality - in Japan not so much so, but standing out in a crowd, not conforming, is something that makes Japanese people very nervous, so their comedy does silly (rule breaking) much more so.
And to bring that hijack to a meaningful point - the point of an IB program is to pick bright students who are willing to challenge their own cultural perspectives and try to, for brief moments, see how the world looks through different cultural lenses, even if they strongly disagree with those perspectives. Magiver, do you think this student was well chosen for that program? Has she learned to do that? Does being exempted from a class book that reflects a different cultural perspective help achieve that goal?
She wasn’t objecting to a different perspective, she was objecting to the explicit nature of the dialogue. It is no different than rejecting Penthouse Forumn as something she would find objectionable.
And on a side note, I read a number of reviews of the book and while it may be highly rated in Japan it was apparently chopped up enough to make it less so (and a bit confusing).
If I was her father and found out that was the only passage in the book then I would have encouraged her to finish it and include her view of is as part of the review. But that’s me. If my child was uncomfortable reading it I would certainly not push it.
Relative (compared to many Americans standards) lack of discomfort with that explicit nature of the dialog is part of the different cultural perspective. Only part, but part.
BTW, glad to hear that as a parent you would encourage your child to read it.
Straight forward questions were asked though. Care to answer?
(As far as whether or not this particular book is the best book to represent modern Japanese literature, I don’t know. My son’s GF also commented that this author is more read outside of Japan than inside Japan, although she did not offer an alternate suggestion. It may that the cultural self examination and questioning of traditional roles that it reflects is more what Westerners want to think the Japanese are doing than what they actually *are *doing. But that is a different debate I think.)
For the love of God, Magiver, can you stop saying “child”, as if you’ll win the argument if you just say it enough? It’s not true, it’s not convincing, and it’s really starting to grate.
She is sixteen. She is a teenager. It is a time of transition. It is not the same as being eight. Throughout most of human history she’d be married and maybe have a kid or two by now. As it is, most of her friends are becoming sexually active around this period. She is coming in to adulthood. And one of the best ways to transition into adulthood is to begin touching on adult themes in a safe environment.
A child is someone who has not reached maturity. I fail to see the logic behind approving explicit sexual content if it’s presented in a safe environment. She is of an age that allows sexual development at HER pace, not her peers, and not yours. The school recognized that and assigned another book. No histrionics on anyone’s part. Just adults making adult decisions.
If you think college professors have carte blanche over their classes think again. I was in a class that had a teacher dismissed and it was a MATH class. We were adamant with the Dean that we weren’t paying for bullshit. How’s that for maturity? We figured out that the customer had some say in the service provided.
Yeah, but that fifth grade made much more sense.
You can keep repeating it, but it won’t be true. Adolescence is not childhood. Nor is the deliberately extended childhood period of American children beneficial. This biophobic, sexphobic, lifephobic puritanism is not anything more than a naked fear response masquerading as wisdom.
It was age appropriate. Well, for all the students who were in the IB course because they wanted to fulfill its educational objectives rather than add another check box to their resume. Nor is there anything to say that issues of sex and sexuality are inappropriate for older teens. In fact, questions over sexual morality and conduct are exactly proper for someone that girl’s age.
Yes, yes it can. And it says something very interesting about its ‘critics’ that out of an entire novel, they have their entire attention rivited to to a rather tame bit of sexual imagery. When I was 12 I read the Clan of the Cave Bear books just looking for sex. We’d hope (in vain) that many of the adults freaked out by this story would have advanced a bit from that 12 year old mentality.
What an honest formulation.
Of course, the actual function was a college-level class providing a work of challenging world literature that happened to have issues of human sexuality in it. To upper classmen, who elected to take the course of their own free will.
You can continue to act as if they gave Hustler to kindergartners, if you really want.
Which differs not at all from someone not being ready to take calculus or AP physics or French. If she’s not able to deal with an IB course that deals with adult themes, she can drop the class. Just like if you’re not able to work differential equations, you shouldn’t be in a calculus class.
Treating sexuality (but not violence, naturally) like something hideous, shameful and ‘innocence destroying’ that needs to be kept from people lest it ‘soil them’ is absurd. Americans tend to look at sex as something dirty, sinful, unclean, etc, etc, etc. When, of course, there’s nothing more natural and life-affirming. Instead, we celebrate violence and destruction. A woman’s naked breast is cause for a national scandal. The same ‘gridiron combat’ that wardrobe malfunction took place in is simply good ol’ American fun.
Wrong on all points.
The school recognized that one of the most damaging things to a school and a teacher’s reputation is hysterical puritans going bonkers over anything unchaste. Careers have been ruined over less, and as we’ve already seen, you were ready to go to the truly irresponsible hyperbolic step of claiming that it might be an issue akin to sexual assault, placing teachers on the sex offender registry and ruining their careers for the rest of their lives. Again puritanical panic of that sort, replete with media attention (and possible frenzy) backing down simply makes good sense.
Of course there were histrionics, on the part of the girl and her family and the media which reported it as anything other than a laughable bit of immaturity coupled with an entitlement complex on the part of a student who chose a course that they were manifestly unable to cope with, and them pitched a fit once it was blatantly obvious that she was unable to do the college-level work required of the college-level course.
And no, it wasn’t a situation of adults making adult decisions. That would’ve been the IB program working with recognized world literature that explored complex themes (the least of which were sexual in nature), where self-selected students committed themselves to an exploration of the literature even though puritans got the vapors from it. Instead, a girl-child succeeded in making a mockery of the IB program’s goals, methodology and curriculum, avoiding its actual work in order to replace it with something deliberately dumbed down and ‘safe’. If the school’s administration had the courage of their convictions and had stood up against the puritanical panic, they would’ve just flunked her or kicked her out of the course.
Note that the school suggested that the family black out the offending passages- a method that another family used in the past without incident.
The family refused, stating that it would be harmful to them- as adults- to read enough of the book to find the passages and black them out. And apparently they don’t have any less uptight friends who would be willing to do the job.
Makes me want to ask how they ended up with a kid in the first place. Hole-in-sheet? They just loved each other so much that she got pregnant? Artificial insemination under heavy sedation? Virgin Mary scenario?
Anyway, clearly the problem here is not age. They are not simply trying to protect their innocent"child" from the horrible trauma of reading the word “pubic hair.” There is a bigger agenda involved, and frankly it’s not an agenda that is compatible with getting a high-level education.
Albert Einstein read a lot of porn did he? Is this an argument you really want to make, that people with different values than yours can’t function at a higher level?
In your opinion.
Sorry, I must’ve missed the caveat in your own post where you made very strong declarative statements and then backed off with “but that’s only my opinion.”
Mine were based on a logical train of thought and not by my feelings regarding the material (which differ). I knew kids in HS that were probably like the girl in question and they grew up just fine if not a little later than their peers. They are today well rounded and successful.
Well, actually, yes.
If you are so uptight about sex that you are unable to read a piece of literature because it includes a few explicit passages, then you are not going to be able to read a reasonable chunk of the literary cannon. As such, you could hardly call yourself well-versed in literature, could you?
Furthermore, we are sexual creatures. Sexuality is one of our strongest driving forces, and has shaped our minds, our culture, and our world in general. As such, any contemplation of the human condition is eventually going to involve some aspect of sexuality. Thus, any philosophizing about the human condition (a common intellectual enterprise) is going to necessarily involve philosophizing about sexuality- either directly or indirectly. This of course, is why sex shows up so often in great literature. They aren’t being prurient- they are trying to say something about the human condition. And there is so much to say! Sex is and always has been a thing surrounded by mystery, love, shame, fear, ecstasy, obsession, contentment and all those crazy emotions we feel. That’s prime ground for thinking!
If you think you have solved the mysteries of human sexuality, or you have a view so rigid that you cannot even entertain other ideas briefly, you just are not going to be able to think meaningfully about the entirety of the human condition.
And I’d have no problem in saying that yes, you are intellectually hobbled. I’d say the same thing of anyone with beliefs that make them close books, block out words, suppress ideas and reign in their thoughts. That’s the opposite of intellectual. Sorry.