Public School

[NM_Shooter]

Sigh.

I thought I was going to be able to skate past these sorts of issues and not have to deal with them at our high school.  Nope. 

My youngest (15) has an english teacher who is hell bent on injecting her own social / political agenda into the class. 

The most recent one has an anti-war bend to it. 

1) The class is currently reading a book by Tim O'Brien called "The Things They Carried".  It is an explicit book on the Vietnam war, and is written with an intention to shock and sensationalize.  The book is completely full of blasphemy, very harsh language, and explicit gore. 

An example, from page 125, chapter titled "The Man I Killed" :   "Oh man, you f-ing trashed the f-er.  Look what you did, you laid him out like shredded f-ing wheat".

Another from page 69 chapter "How to Tell a True War Story" :  "Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful f-ing letter, I slave over it, and what happens?  The dumb c--  never writes back." 

That's just a small example of a portion of the text of the book.  There are also graphic details of the author telling about climbing up into a tree to peel off the intestines of one of his buddies who got killed by a booby trap.  I also take extreme offense at the amount of blasphemy in this book.  Anyone who has ever taken a behavior psych class knows all about desensitization, and I am not willing to allow my daughter to be desensitized to this sort of vulgar and offensive material. 

I'm disappointed that a teacher in the school would pick a book such as this.  I don't think that it is too much to ask that text books maintain a level of dignity that would be accepted in common conversation, broadcast over TV or radio, or acceptable to be read over the intercom at school.  I am certain that if a person were to show up at a school board meeting and use this sort of language, they would be thrown out of the meeting.  Why then, is this sort of thing required reading for our children?

2) Yesterday, the class watched a film on some sort of war topic.  I was completely floored when my daughter told me that a portion of the movie showed a naked man, drinking beer and leaning against a post.  She told me that there was nothing covering his genitals.  I am confused and disappointed.  At what point in public education did it become okay to show 15 year old girls video of naked men in class, under the supervision of their teacher?   I can't begin to express to you how shocked I am.  I thought that permission slips were required to be sent to parents when material of questionable nature might be the topic?

I've sent an email to the principal of the school, asking for an explanation and expressing my objection.  Not sure how this is going to turn out. 

[MountainDon]

Love to hear the reply

[rick91351]

If you do not get a response to your e-mail in the next week that is satisfactory.  My guess you will not receive a reply.  Copy what you sent and a cover letter to the Superintendent of Schools, the school principle, and the teacher.  All three registered mail with receipt required.  Start looking for an attorney or a group that will run with this.  This is not good but what is happening.   

[Squirl]

I can sympathize with the sentiment of sheltering your child from extreme gore and violence.  I would love to know what bearing this has on English language or literature.


Nudity in a non sexual context I don't find obscene.  There are hundreds art, science, and health education books and movies in almost every high school library.  Flipping through an art book and seeing a picture of the nude "David" by Michelangelo shows all the same anatomy in the same context.  I still remember national geographic movies in class of myriads of naked men and women in tribes and nobody raised a fuss or asked for our permission slips.  Many of these can even be seen on television.


Did your daughter object?  Did she find it offensive?

[Ajax]

I'm not foolish enough to think that my 11 and 8 year old daughters haven't heard those words in school.  I believe the 11 year old hears them daily.  I would not be upset at either the book or the movie.  It seems that the book would be more relevant in history, but than maybe it's being used as an example of a first person narrative or something.

I also wonder why you started with the principal and not the teacher.

[Windpower]

I think it would be very effective to select a paragraph or two from the book to read at the school board meeting

[Gary O]

I think it would be very effective to select a paragraph or two from the book to read at the school board meeting

Seems that would be the very most effective.
Board member's reactions oughta be priceless..............

[NM_Shooter]

My objection is that there should be a level of decency associated with any materials that are presented to children.  The standard should be as such : if it is not fit to be printed and displayed in public on the marquee on the front of the school, it should not be forced upon them as required material. 

Yes... my daughter was uncomfortable with both blasphemy and the nudity.   I'm sure she hears worse at school, but she has the option to remove herself from the situation and not have her grade penalized.

I heard back from the principal, who said that she was going to look into the book and see if it is on the approved list.  BTW, this is a book of fiction as well.  Not like this is a historical novel. 

I'm not sure if I will be more disappointed in the teacher straying outside of approved materials, or more disappointed to find that this is on the "approved" list. 

[peternap]

I agree that reading a few passages at the next school board meeting, especially if you notify the local media what you plan in advance. Tell them to keep it quiet.

Squirl, your intellect is showing but there is a great deal of difference between creative art and dramatic shock video of a naked soldier that adds little to the plot or a porn star wiggling her assets on screen. Everything is in the perspective.

Ajax, sure they hear those words non stop, but unless you're a new wave soccer mom, the kids know they're gonna get a hide tanning if they repeat them in polite company.

Give em Hell Shooter!

[astidham]

when I was in 7th grade we watched romeo and Juliet, it contained nudity and intention.
other than the occasional uncomfortable giggle in the class, we were all pretty well prepared for what we seen.

[MountainDon]

If you look the book up on amazon you'll see it appears to be widely used

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618706410/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0BQ9E4P3QZ0VG21E1ABR&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O'Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.

[peternap]

when I was in 7th grade we watched romeo and Juliet, it contained nudity and intention.
other than the occasional uncomfortable giggle in the class, we were all pretty well prepared for what we seen.

Yes and we also read Beowulf which is about as racy and violent as it gets....but again it's how it's seen in the minds of adolescents.

Classic literature is different than modern smut or even thought provoking fiction.

Listen to a choir sing the Hymn Gloria.
I also have a remix of it that even though it has the same lyrics, it's as dark and sinister sounding as you can imagine.

It's important that the kids learn what war is really about. God knows, there's been enough nonsense written about the moral victories in war when the simple truth is...the toughest most violent...win.

Men are trained to take orders, to kill the enemy without hesitation, to stand their ground until told to do otherwise, to not think and never volunteer.

Then when they come home, they're expected to unlearn those things and live with the baggage they gathered during that tour.

That's important, but just how much of that can that be shoved down a 14 or 16 year old's throat who still can't fathom what it may be like. There is a tremendous amount of growing between 14 and 18 and I think educators are neglecting the basics in order to program the kids a long time before they're ready.

[Gary O]

......That's important, but just how much of that can that be shoved down a 14 or 16 year old's throat who still can't fathom what it may be like. There is a tremendous amount of growing between 14 and 18 and I think educators are neglecting the basics in order to program the kids a long time before they're ready.

That's it in a nut shell. Well stated.

"Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. "
Who are these guys?

Some fights aren't worth a raised eyebrow, some are generated by boredom.....this one, however, risks most the marbles.

Aim true, Shooter.
Keep yer powder dry

[Squirl]

I agree that your daughter should be able to make the decision as to what she finds objectionable and excuse herself from it without repercussions.

If it is on an approved list, you will have a much harder uphill battle.  It most likely would have gone through a higher up bureaucratic entity than even the principle of one school, and you will be fighting an entity which may have broader community support.

[PapaBear]

It's refreshing to see differing positions on a controversial topic without personal attacks.  Way to go guys!  I guess I'm too used to reading the local news comments.    

My eldest is only 4, so I can't say for sure how I would react.  It is my hope that we as parents can supervise our childeren's first exposure to the less savory aspects of society.  Then, when she encounters it on her own, it won't be as shocking, she'll already have a context for it, and probably her own thoughts, ideas, and decisions about it.  But then I'm full of all kinds of ideas about the parent I want to be, and I'm already missing the mark.  So, we'll see...

Fight the good fight, Shooter.  Stand up for your right to be your child's parent. 

PapaBear

[Ajax]

So, what's your end game?

To keep your child from reading this, or to keep all children from reading this?

And I'm still wondering why you didn't just start with the teacher.

[NM_Shooter]

This is a new teacher for our family, and we have known the principal for 5 years and have found her to be reasonable.  I am trying to see if I have a legal leg to stand on first.  If I go to the teacher and gripe, this teacher has a rep for retaliation.  In my letter to the principal, I asked to keep this confidential and to not act until we get some background information. 

How about they read a history book about Vietnam instead?  In history class?  This book is written for shock value to make a point that US soldiers do reprehensible things.   There are not a lot of good Americans in this book.  One section of the book describes a US GI that straps a puppy to a claymore and detonates the trigger. 

What is the literary point in that?  This class is a sophomore level class to teach kids the basics of understanding a novel.  Why can't this can't be done without vulgar language, blasphemy, tremendous gore, and portraying most of the U.S. soldiers as hedonistic savages?  If this book were a film, it would not get less than an R rating.  This is not appropriate material for 15 year old children. 

We are not talking about "Catcher in the Rye".  This book steps way over the line.

Apparently I am not alone.  http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/book-banners-finding-power-in-numbers-28097/

I am considering contacting other parents.  I think we have a pretty strong representation of LDS families at this high school, and I suspect that they will have similar objections.

This teacher seems to place indoctrination over education.  She is determined to interject her social and political views into the classroom.  I am not willing to enter into a conversation with someone such as that.... I know exactly how much she will be receptive to input.  Zero.  In checking her out on Ratemyteachers.com, others have had issues with her too.  Indications are that she does not like boys, and there are complaints about her bringing her politics into the classroom. 

[NM_Shooter]

Got a call from the school principal a few minutes ago.  She told me that she has a meeting set up with the teacher today after school, and that this is just "one more thing" to add to the list of topics to discuss.  It sounded as though my complaint is not the only one, nor is this the only topic.

[MountainDon]

I hope that goes well.

[Native_NM]

The problem is right here in the abstract:

The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army.

It is fiction used to push a political agenda. 

[astidham]

sounds like American literature as taught in English comp to me.   

[Ajax]

This teacher seems to place indoctrination over education.  She is determined to interject her social and political views into the classroom.  I am not willing to enter into a conversation with someone such as that.... I know exactly how much she will be receptive to input.  Zero.  In checking her out on Ratemyteachers.com, others have had issues with her too.  Indications are that she does not like boys, and there are complaints about her bringing her politics into the classroom.

And you know this from speaking to her?  No, you don't.  You're off the deep end before you've even talked to her.

[NM_Shooter]

You know what?  I've got a clothes iron in my new hidden ironing board.  I've never burned my hand on it.  But I know that if I plug that sucker in, turn it up, lay it on my hand, I will get a burn.  I've gotten burned by other clothes irons.  I don't need to get burned by every one to know exactly how that feels. 

I recognize a clothes iron when I see one. 

[Don_P]

There is also a parent teacher conflict here as well, that is said without prejudice. I'd ask for an alternative assignment or preferrably a reassignment to another teacher.
I guess another literary work came to mind;
Well Scout, there are words that you might use out on the ball field that you should not use at the dining room table.
I wouldn't feel comfortable asking a child to read that and would have some serious reservations about someone who required a child to read it.

[Woodsrule]

Reminds me of an incident that we encountered with the public school system some years ago when my daughter was in 7th grade. There was a sex education class that was to be taught and included in the ah, curriculum, was a lesson on how to place a condom on a banana. Since the class was not mandatory, I happily sent in a note, asking to exclude my daughter. She had asked to be excluded as well as all of the other girls in the class because, even weeks before the class, the boys had already started with the lewd comments. Now, boys have been known to do this from time to time.

Thinking the matter to be closed, I was wrong. I received a tersely worded reply that stated, and I paraphrase "We highly encourage you to be more progressive in your thinking and we really want your daughter to be involved in the class. Let us know if this is still a problem."  I did so in another note and thought the matter closed, but this was not to be. I received another, similar note so I went to the school and asked to speak to the teacher. I was not allowed to and after some wrangling, spoke to the vice principal, who attempted to lecture me on my lack of progressive thinking. I told her that what we taught our daughter about sex was our business and not to bother us again with anymore tersely worded notes.

Now, I was not about to back down, but it does give you pause. How many parents had neither the time, inclination or backbone to stand up to these folks? And, who gave them the authority to teach this stuff in the first place? My point is that the public schools have gotten so far afield from their core mission of educating our children to compete in the global marketplace that I fear it will take decades to catch up. Teaching them how to wrap a banana with a condom is not something that I agree with. What think you?