check out this list
Permit a moment to read off a few titles
Dante's Divine Comedy
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Milton's Paradise Lost
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
Orwell's Animal Farm
Voltaire's Candide
Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Golding's Lord of the Flies
Heller's Catch-22
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5
Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Out of these, I can recall several that were required reading at some point during high school and all that I read during or around that point if not prior (there were others on his list I've read since [Qu'ran, Dorien Gray, East of Eden] or read and didn't care for). I'm not sure what the issue would be that these could be banned books by a private school. Even for religious reasons.
What exactly was wrong with Milton, Dante and Chaucer for example? What did Catch-22 or Animal Farm have to do with religion at all (at least on an initial reading by an average high schooler). And in both cases, what did they suggest that was really wrong. Are paradoxes something to be overlooked in education now or is a demonstration of the problems of totalitarian statism somehow at odds with the goals of that educational system?
Presuming this was an American school, I think we can see there's not much of a difference in the quality of private versus public schools if this is what we're offering up.
02 June 2009
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9 comments:
It's probably a Catholic school, and they haven't reviewed their reading lists since the...crap, what was that called? When they stopped saying Mass in Latin? I'm a sucky ex-catholic!
The entire concept of censorship is beyond me. I can kinda see nuclear bomb plans being hard to get a hold of, but then again, if you can get the materials you're probably dead-set enough to make one of them anyway. But as far as books or movies go, I just don't get it. Nothing, let me repeat that, NOTHING, was restricted from me by my parents growing up. I remember seeing A Clockwork Orange as a small child. My parents didn't make me watch; they probably didn't even know I watched it. We had it in our collection, everything else I had seen a million times, so I popped it in. You know what my small child mind thought of that movie? Boring. Very boring. The only thing I liked about the whole thing was the threesome scene, and that was mainly because of the music and sped up film/movements. Sex wasn't an issue yet, so the hot, alluring blonde at the end didn't do much either.
I think people who think censorship is a good idea should've been blowjobs. Why can't people think sometimes? Is it that painful? Does it hurt that much?
It looks more like it's a fundamentalist school than a Catholic one.
Well, then that kid has greater worries than the books he's lending out. Poor kid.
Fight the man, kid. And I guess it was the the Second Vatican Council. Anywaaaay.
I think there's a definite limit to the amount of sex kids should see when they're young-young. Obviously there's a difference to us between sex on TV and sex in real life, but to a kid...not as much of a difference. Bad things happen when kids know too much about sex before they even vaguely understand what it is...if you're letting your kid watch porn, who knows what else they're getting exposed to, is what I'm thinking. Why does reading about it seem somehow not as concerning? I honestly didn't think that there were any books that were still banned...I thought that was...historical, or something. But yeah, I remember thinking Clockwork Orange was boring, too.
I wanted to say that nothing was restricted by my parents either, but I guess that's just true for books. They definitely did exercise some taste on things like horror movies, if nothing else. I wouldn't get in trouble for watching something at some other kid's house or anything, but they weren't going to rent Texas Chainsaw Massacre for us to watch.
The prejudice against horror films may be a matter of taste. I myself don't find gore and slasher films all that appealing in a form of entertainment. The sort of creepy stare or gait from characters like Hannibal or the Joker without a great degree of accompanying buckets of blood is a bit more entertaining. Same going back to Hitchcock where the aesthetic design of a scene can contribute to the tension and fear involved more easily than showing someone getting eviscerated by some villainous contraption. There is probably a reason why many of the modern horror films of the Saw/Hostel/TCM vein are referred to as "torture porn". But I'm not yet sure if this turn of phrase should be considered insulting to porn itself or not. The level of graphic depiction is similar and perhaps to some the aesthetics are comparable and awful. But the content is a bit different. Other than rape or pedophilia, there isn't much of a sexual act that I could perceive to be inherently wrong (even if there are some that I personally wouldn't or couldn't do). Indeed, many could be regarded as creative uses of the human body for mutual pleasures. I'm not sure one could find a purpose in that a person should aspire to do a creative disembowelment. And I certainly cannot conceive of both parties deriving some pleasurable advantage from it.
I might agree that too early or too much sexual exposure to a child is a warping event, particularly of a more graphic nature without any explanation or discourse surrounding it. But I'm not sure how much of that is supposed to be the state or indeed the private school's role to police. And it seems to me that there's plenty of "bad writing" which has its focus more intently on sex and/or the human relations surrounding and pursuing sex that might be worth banning for this reason as opposed to works of classical literature that this offers not a single shred of evidence it might damage or warp the minds of teenagers (certainly beyond the damage they inflict themselves upon each other).
I completely agree with both your paragraphs, but I don't want to know what a creative disembowelment might be. My train of thought was really off-topic. I think I'm trying to draw conclusions on my CASA case without having nearly enough information. I've just gotta stop and wait for the mail to be delivered. ARG. Just trying to get a sense of at what age or maturity level an instance of alleged or attempted sexual abuse (in real life, not in observed media) can happen to a kid and he/she can be responsible (morally, legally, psychologically, I dunno!) for reliving it by abusing another kid. Fuck me. Questions I never thought I wanted to ask.
Not sure, but I'm guessing there's something like a quasi-gag order involving on-going court cases (obviously avoiding specific details goes without saying). It may be difficult for you to seek out over rationalized opinions. On a general point, there's always therapists and psychiatrists to make some of those determinations of maturity and understanding of consequence or responsibility. You're also probably not going to get a good sense of age or maturity when the actions are inherently immature. Consider the young teen having sexual relations before they "are actually ready" (whatever that point is) on a consensual basis with another teen and then transfer that to a non-consensual environment or to a physical realm instead of a sexual one. It's already involving messy questions of responsibility and maturity levels before you even make the transfer.
Yeah. I've got to stop trying to even think about counseling this kid in any sense and just see if I can get him into summer school...and guard against potential manipulation. Gag order-esque things aren't such an issue; as an officer of the court I get access to most everything. I'm just impatient. People fax things slowly. Love the bureaucracy.
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