Stretch (10-16-2017)
A Mississippi school district in Biloxi has just pulled Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” from its middle school curriculum because .”“it makes people uncomfortable
This is hardly the first case of increasing sensitivity at schools. For instance, last year a district in Virginia removed classroom copies of “Mockingbird” as well as Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” when a parent complained.
Indeed, both “Huck Finn” and “Mockingbird” are among the most frequently challenged books in school curricula over the last decade or so. This is largely because both books use racial slurs.
The argument of those in favor of banning such titles is that to allow them validates these ugly words. But that’s both a misunderstanding of the books, and of how literature works.
es, both books do use hateful language, but in the service of a humane message. They have enough depth that their meaning can’t be summed up in a pat sentence or two, but they certainly aren’t racist works, and expose the hypocrisy behind bigotry.
They’re also powerful works, and entertaining enough that they’ve encouraged a lifelong love of reading in countless students.
Literature, at its best, can take you outside yourself. It allows you to experience things through the eyes of a person of a different age, a different gender, a different culture.
The people who run our educational system regularly talk about the value of diversity. Well this is diversity in its purest form. Every book lets you enter into a different world, and learn to see things from a different angle.
True, encountering how other people think can be a shock to the system, but it’s a helpful one. And if it may temporarily make some students feel uncomfortable, in the long term it empowers them.
First, it gives them useful historical information—this is how people spoke and acted in the past. But it leads to more than that. It leads to questions about why things were that way, how they’ve changed, and if they might change again before too long.
Meanwhile, banning the books not only takes away some great literature from students, but teaches them the wrong lesson. To fear mere words. They’ll be facing the real world soon enough. If they’re armed with the knowledge they can deal with painful or offensive concepts, they’ll be that much stronger.
By the way, the students don’t even need to agree with the books they read. In essays, or classroom discussion, they can explain how Harper Lee or Mark Twain got it wrong, or missed something. Reading is not a passive activity—it’s all part of a give-and-take the author, the reader and others engage in.
So books like “Mockingbird” and “Huck Finn,” if taught with sensitivity, open up dialogue about topics that mean something to students. And will continue meaning something to them as adults. In addition, give the students a little credit, they’re smart enough to understand tough words in the proper context, not to mention tough new ideas.
In any case, it certainly can’t be worse than what they’re already seeing every day in social media.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/...ere-words.html
Stretch (10-16-2017)
political correctness and "sensitivity" rob the world of the complexity of language, and dumb down thoughtthey certainly aren’t racist works, and expose the hypocrisy behind bigotry.
Darth Omar (10-16-2017), Stretch (10-16-2017)
Oh, well, they're hard to read, anyway...
"It [the draft] is duty rather than slavery. I part with the author on the caviler idea that individual freedom (whatever that may be to the person) leads to nirvana, anyone older that 12 knows that is BS."
-(Midcan5)
"Allow me to masturbate my patriotism furiously and publicly at this opportunity."
-(Ib1yysguy)
"There is no 'equal opportunity' today unless the government makes it so."
-(apple0154 )
"abortion is not killing Its birth control"
-(Desh)
LOL when we look back in a decade or two the blame will be laid on conservatives for whitewashing the education system and erasing history.
A sad and pathetic thing to learn of.
"Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything." Joseph Stalin
The USA has lost WWIV to China with no other weapons but China Virus and some cash to buy democrats.
Stretch (10-16-2017)
If the book makes you uncomfortable, the Conservatives should not ban it, they should make it required reading.
4,487
18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
44 U.S.C. 2202 - The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.
LOCK HIM UP!
christiefan915 (10-16-2017), evince (10-16-2017), Phantasmal (10-16-2017), TTQ64 (10-16-2017)
Stretch (10-16-2017)
4,487
18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
44 U.S.C. 2202 - The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.
LOCK HIM UP!
evince (10-16-2017)
4,487
18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
44 U.S.C. 2202 - The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.
LOCK HIM UP!
christiefan915 (10-16-2017), evince (10-16-2017)
name and picture the people who complained
dont assume
4,487
18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
44 U.S.C. 2202 - The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records; and such records shall be administered in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.
LOCK HIM UP!
http://albumsleaksdownload.com/2017/...kingbird-from/
it seems COMPLIANTS were likely an excuse
A U.S. school district has made a decision to remove "To Kill a Mockingbird" from its junior-high reading list after "complaints" about the book's language. A member of the school board said that the decision to drop the book from the curriculum came from the district's administrators and not the board.
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