Why do schools in the US want to teach sexual literature?

Post Reply New Topic

It's a slippery slope. These parents have a right to disagree with educational curricula. They have a right to withdraw their children from the system and homeschool, if they so choose. My concern is that they seem to think a homeschooled student would never have access to those books, through other venues.

Are they saying that they will homeschool their children AND censor the books they choose to read in their free time?

Are they suggesting that those books shouldn't have been published at all?

Are they advocating for censorship, and the banning of books in all formats even to homeschooled kids?

That to me is extremely dangerous pedagogy.

There's a huge difference between "activism" in your child's education, and "banning books" in a free society.

I'm not sure where one ends in these parents' minds, and where the other begins.

Would they be OK with their child choosing these books on their own accord, from a library or bookshop?

That to me is a much bigger question.

Yep. Banning books. Burning books.

Dangerous territory.

I'm still waiting for a list of the titles. I have a 24 year-old in my house. There's a very good chance some of the titles are on my bookshelf right now. When I mentioned this story to MD, she said she's likely read them. She gave me an example of something sexually explicit that she read for school at age 13, but I can't remember the title.

We both have the same mindset. What was the curriculum goal for these books? Are they teaching critical thinking? Sexual safety? Mental health? Social justice?

We have no issues with any teenager having access to books which represent LGBTQ+ lifestyles, sexually-confident women, or even assault - assuming the authors are informative, respectful, and educational for teens navigating these sensitive topics without support from their families.

I couldn't have survived growing up without Judy Blume, who taught me everything from menstruation to sex, masturbation, and orgasms, when I was an adolescent. I'm not ashamed to say I would have been clueless, otherwise.

^We need more eloquence like this.

We must not let the forces of Reaction....and of Decadence....rule the day.

The ironic thing is, you could likely open any of those "terrible" books and find an equally eloquent, inspirational passage that parents would be pleased to read aloud.

When you take words out of context, any one passage can make a book appear brilliant, poetic, and enlightened ... or subversive, controversial, and inappropriate.

Context and character matter. That's why I'd like to know more about the stories themselves.

Perhaps the young woman in the pub learned a valuable lesson. Perhaps the sexually-curious characters were moral, outstanding individuals despite their hormones, or poor choice of language?

They say you should never judge a book by its cover. I'd add that you should never judge a book by one passage, one paragraph, or the personality given to one character.

Sorry for the ongoing rant, but I'd also like to know if these parents were against violence in literature? Why the moral outrage about sexuality, to the exclusion of other themes? Does homophobia matter to them? What about freedom of speech?

Again, it's entirely their right to voice complaints about educational curricula. It's funded by taxpayers. I applaud them being involved or proactive in their children's education. I'm just concerned that we heard excerpts completely devoid of context, and that potentially-great novels were cancelled by nervous parents who wouldn't know "good literature" -- even if it hit them in the arse with a first-edition, hardcover classic by the world's best.

Could somebody gives a synopsis of this video, also who made it and was it broadcast live at any time? Also the credibility. Offhand it sounds to me like something that was faked up for YT. Where exactly is the school in question?

The video shows a school district meeting with educators and angry parents. The parents are reading sexual material, using excerpts from books assigned in the school curriculum.

I thought it was Washington State but admittedly I didn't watch the whole video. The more I look into it, I think it might be in Virginia.

Here are some of the questionable excerpts:

https://www.theblaze.com/news/watch-ang ... 6nJi2nk3rA

The book which these parents are holding appears to be called "Monday's Not Coming".

I did some research on Monday's Not Coming. Here's a synopsis of the story:

https://www.bustle.com/p/mondays-not-co ... s-11983927

https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/ove ... d-jackson/

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-r ... not-coming

Book review:

"Parents need to know that Tiffany D. Jackson's Monday's Not Coming won a 2019 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award. It's a gripping, heartbreaking story about a girl in middle school who goes missing. Parents should be prepared to have conversations about abuse, bullying, poverty, addiction, and low-income housing. This story will spark discussions about neglect, alcoholism, dyslexia, trauma, and grief. There's infrequent strong language (including "f--k" and its variations, "s--t," and "b***h"), a few references to adult and underage drinking and mentions of crack."


I guess missing and murdered black girls don't matter to these parents?

Last edited by IsabellaLinton on 18 May 2021, 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's always good to get the WHOLE context......

"I incorporated the way kids slip through the cracks in the system, the way there is no immediate sense of urgency when black teen girls go missing, and lifted parts of their tragic end. I also focused on the media bias when it comes to reporting about missing white children vs. missing children of color. Coincidentally, when I turned in the book to my editor, the hashtag #missinggirlsDC had just gone viral."

From the author. ^

Now her book will go missing, too --- like the young victims she represents?

For Shame.

I guess the parents are objecting to their kids reading about sexual scenarios in fiction, no matter what story, or what context they exist in?

It seems the bigger issue is that they believe in censorship and banning books. They call it parental guidance, but it's more like thought policing.

I bet none of them would let their kids read these books, even if they were outside the curriculum and the kids showed an interest in their personal lives. I hope I'm wrong, but that's how it seems.

I agree that students don't need to be exposed to gratuitous sex scenes which are written solely for shock value, but it seems these books have social and political relevance. They teach empathy, human rights, critical thinking, victims' rights advocacy, and justice. If I'm not mistaken, those are the basic elements of the US Constitution.











http://www.bookglow.net/30-quotes-from- ... ooks-week/

"Books unite us. Censorship divides us".

Last edited by IsabellaLinton on 18 May 2021, 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Because sex is a normal part of life for most adults, and how we teach kids about that makes a huge difference to their attitudes towards sex (and other human beings) AS adults.

Many teenagers suffer from a mixture of embarrassment and obsessive interest in sex. The two aren't unrelated. The more something is hidden and portrayed as sinful, the more fascinating it becomes. We're essentially training kids to have problems in adulthood.

What makes this particularly odd is the way sex is pretty much "banned" in mainstream media even though it's a commonplace, loving, healthy, positive and fun. Whereas violence and death, on the other hand, are normally quite rare in everyday life yet our screens are full of it - or at least the sanitised, Hollywood version.

This seems to be an effort to subvert that, by being open, realistic and down to earth about sex rather than wrapping it up as something magical, forbidden, perfect and wrong. Good.

The world is a complex place. Much better for kids to work it out on their own without any guidance (and they will).

(That is humor, just is case you can't see me typing with my tongue in my cheek...)

Oh okay, I didn't think sex was banned though, as there are some movies and literature with it in, unless you mean something different by mainstream media?

Well it is and it isn't, which is why I wrote "banned" in quotation marks. Sex is generally hinted at, suggested, or misrepresented on the radio, and in computer games, TV and film. For example movie sex scenes that happen fully clothed, with some terrible backing music, no conversation, no laughter, no mistakes or mishaps, no mess and no snacks. What's all that about? It's so sanitised and so removed from reality that if a TV station screened what the average couple got up to of a weekend, there'd be outrage.

Which is in itself bizarre, as presumably those complaining do realise they got here through sex, and presumably they themselves have some experience of sex, though I'm guessing not very much. Either that or they're so embarrassed by their own sexuality that they're trying to project that guilt onto everybody else.

Shooting people dead, though - that's fine.

There is a lot of sex in the Bible. Funny how that is not banned.