You never*** heard of * ** The Catcher in the Rye? No - not read - but heard of * ** one of the most famous books in American literature. How little exposure to literature does it take to have never heard of*** the Catcher in the Rye?
And now you’d like to decide what books should be taught in school?
I’m sorry, ma’am you have to **step aside ** and let the people who know what they’re doing - or just know something, educate your children. You clearly are THE LAST PERSON ON THE PLANET that should be involved with ANYONE’s education.
What makes you think that the people who know what they are doing are the ones educating your children? Have you never heard of the travesties that are perpetrated by the Texas and/or California school book selection board or whatever they are called? Are you not aware of the efforts to have Creationism taught in public schools? Catcher in the Rye is a good book, but it doesn’t come close to Huckleberry Finn. If you want to wax indignant about book banning, go after the folks who want that one banned.
When I began teaching in 1969, Huckleberry Finn was not on the approved reading list. If it was ever placed on the approved list before I retired in 1989, I was not made aware of it. What a crime.
There are parents who want to ban The Diary of Anne Frank because it teaches religious tolerance.
The sad thing about the Texas textbook selection process is that because they are such a large part of the market, textbooks are written with Texas sales in mind. Textbooks across the country are becoming more and more conservative in general because of it.
While I agree that you have to be spectacuarly uninformed and insular to not have even heard of The Catcher in the Rye (I first heard of it as a literal visual picture of the title in an episode of Animaniacs), I absolutely hated every minute I had to read it in high school. That said, I don’t see why it should be removed.
Forcing kids to read a particular book is a sure fire way to make kids hate the book, especially on a tight schedule. A model where kids pick out books and break up into classes for the length of the book would probably produce less “I had to read that in high school, and I hated it” stories.
It would also as a side effect remove the complaint of students being forced to read “inappropriate” material.
I would generally agree with parental input and or interference in the ecucational process, but this woman should probably have read the book before making this decision. To claim that you never even heard of the book and then do some research (which probably was on the internet and came up with some other cases in the past where the book was banned) and then make decisions based on nothing but what others have said about the book just shows how ignorant she is.
There is no reason to assume that educators know what they are doing. Parents also need to play role in their childrens learning process.
Because heaven forbid kids get exposed to new, different, challenging ideas…and actually learn to stick through unpleasant assignments!
Shit, if I had gotten to pick my own reading books in high school, I would have read nothing but Stephen King and anything with monsters-and-gore on the front cover.
The mother is a giant idiot. I hope she gets her fair share of hate mail.
I agree that it should be removed because it’s a craptacular piece of literature. No teenage in the history of the planet has ever talked like Holden Caufield, there’s no plot to speak of, and Holden’s self-pitying cluelessness is throughly offputting. If you’re going to require students to read a novel, let it be a worthwhile piece of literature that actually speaks to the human condition in a way that high schoolers can understand.
That said, the Christ-humping twat in the OP and her ilk need to shut up and go watch Fox or something, and leave these discussions to people who actually learned to read and think for ourselves. No one is entitled to an uninformed opinion.
Well, a teacher could offer four options for a unit, and have four discussion groups. Picking four good books, but letting the students (and their parents, if they have input) choose which one would sort of eliminate the problem, no? A lawsuit can’t stand unless the plantiff himself suffers harm, so a parent can’t sue the school district for subjecting someone else’s kid to The Catcher in the Rye if their own kid had another option. And if all the kids have an option, there’s no issue anymore. And you know that 98% of the students will choose the one that pisses their parent off the most - which means more people will actually read the book, instead of the Cliff’s Notes!
I’d suggest The Holy Bible as an alternate, but there’s way too much swearing, sex and violence for a freshman in high school!
Of course, we would also quintuple the teacher’s salary for quintupling his or her workload, no? Or would the teacher not be required to actually know anything about the books being taught?
I think that people are entitled to any opinion they want, but I think it is the ethical duty of every other person with an I.Q. over 75 to ignore such opinions and oppose those who espouse them.
Please. If a Literature teacher doesn’t know four books on teenage angst and can’t use Google, they shouldn’t be teaching. Really. Discussion groups make less work for the teacher, not more. Hell, when my husband’s really hung-over, there’s discussion groups all day. (Not that this happens often, he’s an excellent teacher.)
A lit teacher generally knows more than four books, but that doesn’t mean he has knowledge of all the books that might be foisted on him by ignorant teenies and their stupid parents. What good can come from stripping yet more discretion from the people who are supposed to know their stuff, and actually do the teaching?
No, no, you’re misreading the propostition. Teacher gives a list of four books. Each student picks one off the list.
Teacher does a few lectures on themes or techniques common to the genre. Students read their selections and form discussion groups according to their selection. In these groups, they discuss the themes or techniques from the lectures and how they are present (or not) in the book they are reading. Each student or each group (depending on how the teacher likes to do these things) writes a paper or does a presentation to demonstrate their mastery of the concepts and content.
Y’all are making it much harder than it has to be.
The teacher needs to know every little detail in order to grade the papers. If said teacher doesn’t catch little errors, it’s easier for the kids to get away with bluffing.
Your idea isn’t that bad. Actually, some of my teachers in high school actually did this.
But I also don’t see what’s wrong with assigning books that students wouldn’t choose on their own. After all, students aren’t given such discretion in their other classes. They don’t get to choose which kind of algebra problems they’ll be tested on, for instance. Learning isn’t always fun or interesting, and it shouldn’t have to be.
English classes aren’t just about reading books, though. They’re also about picking out the significant elements in literature and holding them up to the light. In a lecture about symbolism, for instance, it helps if the teacher can cite examples from work that all the students have experienced. A good teacher can’t do those amazing lectures they live for if everyone in the class isn’t literally on the same page.