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I am on one today...
Man! Came across something else that truly urks me today! I need to stop paying attention to the outside world or something.
My cousin's wife (I don't know either of them very well- we're not close and I've probably only seen them a handful of times in my life) is currently in battle with her 7th grade daughter's middle school over their reading list- mainly "The Giver." Did anyone read this in school?
I did. She is OUTRAGED that they have to read it. She put on her FB that society is trying to rob our children of their innocence and that she was contemplating boarding school or "a really big closet." No lie.
I guess one of the biggest problems she has with the book is that a father injects a baby with some kind of lethal drug, killing it, and then sends it down a garbage shoot. She also doesn't like the implication that heaven doesn't exist because when the characters in the book get to a certain age they send them off to Paradise (or whatever they call it- I haven't read it in forever) but really they are just killing them and sending them down the same shoot.
Would you fight the school board on this? Are there any books you don't want your child reading? Do you believe in giving your child an unbiased education?
Re: I am on one today...
Man, I'm liking you more and more.
That's something that drives me crazy, too. I absolutely would not fight the school board on this, and I'm hard pressed to think of a book that I wouldn't let my kid read. My mom wouldn't let me read Go Ask Alice because of all the drug use when I was 12, but I snuck it in and read it in the closet, if that tells you anything about the type of kid I was. I told my mom that recently and she thought it was hilarious.I think if I were a parent I'd be almost as strict as my parents were, but I'd let them go to town on reading whatever they wanted. I firmly believe that kids are going to be swayed by negative influences only if they have a weak sense of self - not by whether or not they read some book..
I'm not a mother yet, so my opinion could change when confronted with this issue in the next 10 years...
IMO, children's minds are constantly developing and their exposure to outside infulences needs to limited to a certain extent because they simply may not be able to comprehend/filter/understand some material yet.
With that said, exposing my kids to the inevitable bad influences they will face first through literature is probably the best way to introduce such material to them.I think 7th graders are mature enough to read and discuss just about any subject. But, if someone chooses to hold off letting their own kid be exposed to these things- their prerogative, their kid.
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She's a pastor's wife (not that who she married defines her or anything) so I think she feels like she has a certain image to uphold. I don't think letting your child read an allegorical piece of literature means you are exposing them to something inappropriate. This book is no worse than Orwell's Animal Farm in the religion department. The whole time I just want to tell her... If you raise your child well, they will still maintain the beliefs you instilled in them after reading a work of FICTION.
Please people.
I do find it remarkably ironic that one of the major themes of the book is the power of knowledge... And this lady wants to keep that from her daughter to protect her "innocence" (read: naivety.)
I have always been grateful that my parents never put any limits on my reading material. We had GREAT book "rules!"
1. They'd buy me any books I wanted regardless of how many I wanted. Troll book day was like Christmas for me every time!
2. I could go to the library whenever I wanted (it was within walking distance of our house)
3. There was no limit on what I could read (topic or author)
4. I could stay up as late as I wanted reading, as long as I didn't whine about getting up the next morning. This one was sort of a trick, though, because althought it made me feel very grown up, my parents knew I couldn't read in bed for more than 30 minutes without falling asleep.
)
I think all of these reading freedoms were awesome. They made me feel really grown-up, which led to a lifelong love of reading. Plus, I didn't really need to rebel---like the one of you said above, being exposed to these things through literature is a great first exposure. Since nothing was "forbidden" to read about, I didn't feel like I was missing anything and had no desire to rebel. I can't say other kids would react the same way, but I plan on setting the same reading "rules" if we ever have a child.
I think we all know how I feel about banned books!
I wouldn't fight any book that a school deemed appropriate for my child. I don't plan on trying to shelter my child and make them think nothing bad ever happens in the world (or in literature--even if it's fiction, often it parallels the real world in some way). Sheltering a child like that never leads to anything good.
On the other side, if a parent actually READS the book (which few do) and objects to it, I think it is one thing if they ask if their child can read something else instead of the book in question. I personally don't like it, but to each their own. However, it angers me to no end that these people go and try to force their beliefs on the rest of the world. Just because you don't want your child reading a book doesn't mean you have any right to tell me that my child can't read it too. I hate that.
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My parents censored nothing; language, books, music, movies, it was all fair game. I watched the South Park movie with them when it came out. When a librarian wouldn't check a book out to me because it had too much "adult content," my sister bought it for me as a Christmas present and we collectively thumbed our noses at the librarian.
I do not believe the banning of literature, or the censorship of anything, is going to further anyone's knowledge...exposure and open conversation will.
My dad wasn't much for reading, so he never looked at what I brought home from the library. I can only remember my mom not wanting me to read a book once, when I was around 10 and she saw me reading a sleazy murder mystery set at a stripper convention...I think the teaser on the back talked about G-strings. Perfectly understandable.
Other than that, she let me read whatever I wanted, often raiding my library stack for her own reading material. Occasionally she would ask if I understood something in a book that she thought I might not understand since I read a lot of books from both the adult and teen sections). In my opinion, that's the way to raise well informed, open-minded children.
If someone tells me I shouldn't/can't read a book, I go out of my way to read it and find out why they didn't want people reading it.
I agree with making personal calls on a child's age and maturity level in knowing what they could and couldn't handle reading (I wouldn't do a read aloud of In Cold Blood to a 4th grader ya know?) but absolutely refusing books is crazy. I'm all for any thing that gets a kid to read.