Leslie Pinney, a 214 school board member, is calling for a ban of 7 books proposed for the curriculum by teachers in the district. Among them, Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" and Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics".
According to Pinney, "We talk about the steady diet of trans fat and sugar, and we know the result is obesity and diabetes. But what are we feeding the minds of our students? They're getting a steady diet of foul language, violence and sexuality outside the classroom by the media. But when it comes to the classroom, isn't there something of a higher level to feed the minds of our children?"
Um, yeah.. Also, best detail of the story, Pinney hasn't read any of the books in question. Just the parts with swears and mentions of genitals.
We must continue to keep high schoolers unaware of these things.
Link to Sun-Times article
Link to Chicagoist article with more links
3 comments:
if you guys are interested, i did a little thing on this for 'BEZ this morning... here's the link:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/chicago/news.
newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=919382
This whole thing sounds pretty gay.
I've only read Perks of Being a Wallflower and the "explicit tales of masturbation and teen sex" don't hold a stick to the material in Anne Frank's Diary (which I remember reading for school). If they wanted to latch onto anything it should have been the fact that the main character gets high...a lot.
Regardless, I'm surprised Perks is even in contention to be taught in schools. To me that screams of unhealthy school lunch syndrome. Giving kids an O.K. book they will read is better than assigning them a classic they won't.
I've never read Slaughter House Five but assuming it's on par with Vonnegut's other stuff it seems pretty logical to teach it. Has anyone read any of the other books and have personal opinions on their quality as books for high school / whether they are too vulgar for high school kids? Kinney what do you teach your kids?
You know the part in "Freakonomics" where they make a link between Roe V. Wade and the drop in U.S. crime roughly 18 years later? The bible says that's wrong.
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