Quote:
Originally Posted by mldavis2
Let me back out by saying that there is no practical way you (we) can isolate our children from everything that is offensive to us as parents.
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I would absolutely agree with this.
I would also say that high school is not necessarily the place to dig into controversial books just because they're controversial. Part of our job as parents is to filter the things that our kids are exposed to. We do it all the time - we don't let three year olds watch horror movies, we don't expose them to other violent imagery. Every parent (or set of parents) has to draw boundaries based on their own values, and filter their children's environment accordingly. That's practically a job description for parenting.
So in a public high school you have hundreds of students, all of whose parents have their own values. The district's values are going to reflect the values of the parents - and they should. In this case, the school board came up with a set of criteria, which was publicly discussed. Then that criteria was applied to three books, two of which did not meet the requirements to keep them in circulation in the school curriculum or library. If there are further complaints, they will be compared with the same set of criteria.
Again, the high school doesn't need to teach controversial books just for the sake of controversy. What educational goals was Slaughterhouse 5 meeting, and are there any other books that would meet the same goals without running afoul of the district's criteria?