Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
History is rife with dark episodes disparaging one group or another, usually written by the victors. There was the Roman oppression of the Jews and the sacking of Jerusalem , the sack of Rome, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the thirty and hundred year wars, slavery in America (and elsewhere), the Nazi occupation and holocaust, and the Vichy collaboration with that; the list goes on.
Do you see a pattern here? Most of those entail religious or racial oppression; and all have had historical fiction written about them, most of which rightly or wrongly demonizes one side or the other. Are we to ban this great body of literature just because it might offend someone? Going down that road would have us ban history; after all, it was written by the victors.
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Nobody's saying that anything should be banned. The question is whether it's suitable material for reading assignments for young children. Was the specific reason that "A Study in Scarlet" was assigned BECAUSE of its subject matter of the alleged criminal practices of the Mormons, or was it because of Sherlock Holmes? If it's the latter, there are 3 other Sherlock Holmes novels and 56 short stories that you can equally assign which don't contain the Mormon issue.