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She had a choice of 3 books for her latest reading assignment:
“Where the Crawdads Sing”
“Bear Town”
And a book about gender fluidity/identity (I don’t know the title).
She already saw the “Crawdads” movie and was not interested in the gender book. “Bear Town” was described as being about small town hockey. She thought that was the least bad choice.
I skimmed “Bear Town” this afternoon, and it is only superficially about hockey. It’s really about rape. And suicide, and drugs, and being in the closet, etc. The book is littered with words that I cannot type here. At one point a character asks his dad, “How do you know if you have a good looking c*%^?” The purported theme of the book is “toxic masculinity.”
“Crawdads” isn’t much better as there is an attempted rape.
My daughter hasn’t even had her first kiss yet and here she is having to read about rape in English class.
I know that the world she is growing up in is not the same as the 1980s and 1990s. But is it too much to ask for some Shakespeare? Austen? Dickens? Fitzgerald? Edgar Allen Poe? Mark Twain?
If we can’t have our kids read the classics, is it too much to ask to have assigned books that don’t contain graphic sex and foul language?
Last edited by calgirlinnc; 11-09-2022 at 11:21 PM..
So far in 10th grade English - Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, William Shakespeare Macbeth. She starting Edith Wharton and onto James Joyce and Hemingway. I don't know about Fitzgerald - but The Great Gatsby is (was) pretty standard across the US.
I don't know what the "f" is going on with public schools!
No only do your school's books contain graphic sex and foul language (bad enough!) but the language is dumbed down. No multisyllabic words! No SAT words!
My daughter can't believe her students have such a limited vocabulary. The words she (& her peers) knew in 10th grade, only a little more than a decade ago, are a mystery to 10th graders now. The decline has been steep.
In business, it will become a serious problem. This dumbed down language will hurt Americans competing worldwide. Even when English is a second language, foreigners will still have a better vocabulary than Americans. Sure, the US businessmen will get the preferred pronouns down, but won't be able to follow a complex discussion.
Last edited by YorktownGal; 11-10-2022 at 07:35 AM..
She had a choice of 3 books for her latest reading assignment:
“Where the Crawdads Sing”
“Bear Town”
And a book about gender fluidity/identity (I don’t know the title).
She already saw the “Crawdads” movie and was not interested in the gender book. “Bear Town” was described as being about small town hockey. She thought that was the least bad choice.
I skimmed “Bear Town” this afternoon, and it is only superficially about hockey. It’s really about rape. And suicide, and drugs, and being in the closet, etc. The book is littered with words that I cannot type here. At one point a character asks his dad, “How do you know if you have a good looking c*%^?” The purported theme of the book is “toxic masculinity.”
“Crawdads” isn’t much better as there is an attempted rape.
My daughter hasn’t even had her first kiss yet and here she is having to read about rape in English class.
I know that the world she is growing up in is not the same as the 1980s and 1990s. But is it too much to ask for some Shakespeare? Austen? Dickens? Fitzgerald? Edgar Allen Poe? Mark Twain?
If we can’t have our kids read the classics, is it too much to ask to have assigned books that don’t contain graphic sex and foul language?
You do know that nearly every author (not sure about Poe) you listed also wrote about rape (along with other terrible crimes) in at least one of their "classics", right? The majority of their body of works were allegories of--or just simply straight-up stories about fratricide, slavery, sexual violence, murder, and race-or-gender-based repression.
So, yes, it is too much to expect that Sophomores in high school will not be assigned reading with adult themes. At what age is a person supposed to be sheltered from being asked to read foul language, sexuality, and sexual crimes if 16 is too young? 18? 24? 36?
Has she never be assigned to read any classic? I agree that an English curriculum should be balanced with literature from modern, historic, and ancient times, not just works written after 1980.
Out of the three, "Crawdads" is probably, for you, the lesser of three "evils". The book and movie differ. It's not terrible, and at her age, she can probably handle it. She probably knows more about these things than you believe.
You do know that nearly every author (not sure about Poe) you listed also wrote about rape (along with other terrible crimes) in at least one of their "classics", right? The majority of their body of works were allegories of--or just simply straight-up stories about fratricide, slavery, sexual violence, murder, and race-or-gender-based repression.
So, yes, it is too much to expect that Sophomores in high school will not be assigned reading with adult themes. At what age is a person supposed to be sheltered from being asked to read foul language, sexuality, and sexual crimes if 16 is too young? 18? 24? 36?
Has she never be assigned to read any classic? I agree that an English curriculum should be balanced with literature from modern, historic, and ancient times, not just works written after 1980.
This is the crux of the matter; teachers selecting age-appropriate material. There was a discussion about this very topic in the education forum here earlier this year. Someone said, that they'd been required to read a certain book twice in highschool, because the English teacher in their junior or senior year said, they'd been too young to understand it in the first half of their HS career. I looked up the title, and found an article by a college professor, who said he stopped teaching that very book to his undergrad students, because THEY were too young to fully understand it! He now only uses it in his graduate courses.
When I was in highschool, no thought was given as to age-appropriateness of the reading material. Many of the books we read had grisly graphic violence and/or abuse in them. Some of the students found the readings to be traumatic or difficult to stomach. I've run into a number of adults who are parents, who say their HS readings turned them off to literature altogether. That's sad. I think that can be avoided with more care taken in the selection of reading material.
The same authors who write the books with extreme violence or sex scenes write other books or short stories with the same themes, but without the scenes that create an obstacle for students to not only appreciate the literature, but to understand it at all. Teachers seem to make their choices based on a list of authors that allows them to tick off certain boxes, but without looking deeper to see what choices of readings are available from each author, to make choices appropriate for teens.
You do know that nearly every author (not sure about Poe) you listed also wrote about rape (along with other terrible crimes) in at least one of their "classics", right? The majority of their body of works were allegories of--or just simply straight-up stories about fratricide, slavery, sexual violence, murder, and race-or-gender-based repression.
Beyond having undergraduate and two graduate degrees in English literature, I taught college English for years. I am not ignorant of the great works of literature, but thanks for assuming.
Many great books are about overcoming horrible circumstances, but do so in a way that ultimately demonstrates the beauty of our fallen world and the resilience of the human spirit.
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So, yes, it is too much to expect that Sophomores in high school will not be assigned reading with adult themes. At what age is a person supposed to be sheltered from being asked to read foul language, sexuality, and sexual crimes if 16 is too young? 18? 24? 36?
Adult themes are one thing. Crudeness for the sake of crudeness is another. What literary or educational merit is there in a character asking about the way his “c—-“ looks? How does this enrich my daughter? Does it make her more compassionate, more humane, kinder? No, it is simply there for shock appeal.
I further object to the way the author described self-harm in the book. He suggested that self-harm is emotionally helpful. It is not; it is a a gateway to suicide, which he also idealized in the book.
Furthermore, if young people decide that they want to read this on their own time, fine. I don’t care what other people read. But it is not appropriate to be assigned in school.
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Has she never be assigned to read any classic? I agree that an English curriculum should be balanced with literature from modern, historic, and ancient times, not just works written after 1980.
They read parts of The Odyssey in 9th grade. That’s it.
Last edited by calgirlinnc; 11-10-2022 at 11:39 AM..
No only do your school's books contain graphic sex and foul language (bad enough!) but the language is dumbed down. No multisyllabic words! No SAT words!
My daughter can't believe her students have such a limited vocabulary. The words she (& her peers) knew in 10th grade, only a little more than a decade ago, are a mystery to 10th graders now. The decline has been steep.
In business, it will become a serious problem.
I hadn’t even thought of that! Excellent point.
English class is not at all about learning how to write and understand literature; it is about SJW topics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MCNJ
Out of the three, "Crawdads" is probably, for you, the lesser of three "evils". The book and movie differ. It's not terrible, and at her age, she can probably handle it. She probably knows more about these things than you believe.
We’ve discussed “these things” with her, and much more thoroughly and honestly than will be discussed in her classroom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
This is the crux of the matter; teachers selecting age-appropriate material. There was a discussion about this very topic in the education forum here earlier this year. Someone said, that they'd been required to read a certain book twice in highschool, because the English teacher in their junior or senior year said, they'd been too young to understand it in the first half of their HS career. I looked up the title, and found an article by a college professor…
What was the book?
Quote:
When I was in highschool, no thought was given as to age-appropriateness of the reading material. Many of the books we read had grisly graphic violence and/or abuse in them. Some of the students found the readings to be traumatic or difficult to stomach. I've run into a number of adults who are parents, who say their HS readings turned them off to literature altogether. That's sad. I think that can be avoided with more care taken in the selection of reading material.
The same authors who write the books with extreme violence or sex scenes write other books or short stories with the same themes, but without the scenes that create an obstacle for students to not only appreciate the literature, but to understand it at all. Teachers seem to make their choices based on a list of authors that allows them to tick off certain boxes, but without looking deeper to see what choices of readings are available from each author, to make choices appropriate for teens.
My daughter’s approach is, let me get through the book even if it’s awful so I can pass the test and pass the class and graduate high school. This has done the opposite of make her enjoy literature, and I find that very sad.
She had a choice of 3 books for her latest reading assignment:
“Where the Crawdads Sing”
“Bear Town”
And a book about gender fluidity/identity (I don’t know the title).
She already saw the “Crawdads” movie and was not interested in the gender book. “Bear Town” was described as being about small town hockey. She thought that was the least bad choice.
I skimmed “Bear Town” this afternoon, and it is only superficially about hockey. It’s really about rape. And suicide, and drugs, and being in the closet, etc. The book is littered with words that I cannot type here. At one point a character asks his dad, “How do you know if you have a good looking c*%^?” The purported theme of the book is “toxic masculinity.”
“Crawdads” isn’t much better as there is an attempted rape.
My daughter hasn’t even had her first kiss yet and here she is having to read about rape in English class.
I know that the world she is growing up in is not the same as the 1980s and 1990s. But is it too much to ask for some Shakespeare? Austen? Dickens? Fitzgerald? Edgar Allen Poe? Mark Twain?
If we can’t have our kids read the classics, is it too much to ask to have assigned books that don’t contain graphic sex and foul language?
It is WAY TOO much to ask that books do not contain "graphic sex and foul language" because language is 100% about being graphic and no language is "foul language." They are all just words. Sex is a reality. Shakespeare is still taught. Austen, Dickens, twain are just famous, but are not they good for anything other than being famous? Austen was revolutionary when written. So it should be in a historical literature class, but is a general HS survey, why put it there. Fitzgerald, again, fascinating for its social commentary on the 20s, but what value is it outside its historical placement. Literature has classics, it has contemporary writing, and SHOULD make the reader challenge her thoughts and emotions. Its why Poe and Austen became classics. Mark Twain, well I have a pretty low opinion of his crap, but that is just me. I do not think it ever had any value. He was the Steven King of his day.
Oh yeah, and her sexual activity should have nothing to do with rape. You know rape has nothing to do with sex. If not, maybe you should read the book.
She had a choice of 3 books for her latest reading assignment:
“Where the Crawdads Sing”
“Bear Town”
And a book about gender fluidity/identity (I don’t know the title).
She already saw the “Crawdads” movie and was not interested in the gender book. “Bear Town” was described as being about small town hockey. She thought that was the least bad choice.
I skimmed “Bear Town” this afternoon, and it is only superficially about hockey. It’s really about rape. And suicide, and drugs, and being in the closet, etc. The book is littered with words that I cannot type here. At one point a character asks his dad, “How do you know if you have a good looking c*%^?” The purported theme of the book is “toxic masculinity.”
“Crawdads” isn’t much better as there is an attempted rape.
My daughter hasn’t even had her first kiss yet and here she is having to read about rape in English class.
I know that the world she is growing up in is not the same as the 1980s and 1990s. But is it too much to ask for some Shakespeare? Austen? Dickens? Fitzgerald? Edgar Allen Poe? Mark Twain?
If we can’t have our kids read the classics, is it too much to ask to have assigned books that don’t contain graphic sex and foul language?
I agree with you 100%. I'm an older woman but I went to private school in one of the top schools from 6th to 9th grade. Reading was highly suggested and reading lists were given each semester.
Then, I attended public high school from 10th to 12th grade. First of all, I was years ahead on the reading. Books suggested I had read in 6th grade in 11th grade. Easy A. I was stunned.
The years in the private school were good ones. For my own children, they went private until 8th grade and are voracious readers today and love books and reading of all types. One graduated in 2002; the other one in 2007 from HS.
I saw the Crawdads movie; did not read the book but agree it would the easier of the 3.
It is WAY TOO much to ask that books do not contain "graphic sex and foul language" because language is 100% about being graphic and no language is "foul language." They are all just words. Sex is a reality.
If any student in that class spoke the way those characters do, they would be suspended. Language is not “all just words.” Some words are not acceptable in polite society, and some words are not allowed at all. Is the N word just a word? Are you OK with that word?
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Literature has classics, it has contemporary writing, and SHOULD make the reader challenge her thoughts and emotions.
Challenges to “thoughts and emotions” should be presented within the scope of what students can process though. Would “Mein Kampf” be acceptable in a high school class? What about something written by the Marquis de Sade? Is “Lolita” cool with you?
Again, people can read what they like on their own time. School is different.
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Oh yeah, and her sexual activity should have nothing to do with rape. You know rape has nothing to do with sex. If not, maybe you should read the book.
This comment is both condescending and inappropriate.
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So saddened to read this....
