You’d think the irony alone would shame these people. But you’d be wrong.
Oh: And “firm, rosy-tipped breasts.” Just because I still can.
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I’m going to guess that the parents who are outraged over this book have never, oh, looked under the mattresses of their sons… wait, is that where young boys keep the dirty magazines today? I did. Of course, I didn’t have that blessed internet with its bounty of boobygoodness at my click-clicking fingertips.
I was personally corrupted by the salacious underpinnings of Catcher in the Rye. Oh, the humanity!
Oh please. The book was assigned to a 9th grade class. That’s hardly the appropriate place for firm, rosy tipped breasts. Hell, there was a huge flap back in my own high school days when freshman English had Romeo & Juliet on the assigned reading list. Not because Shakespeare implies that the two lovers got it on, but because parents were edgy about the whole suicide angle. THAT is classic hypersensitivity. Not wanting 14 year olds discussing virgins having sex, etc, etc, etc, is entirely reasonable.
And what is up with Catcher in the Rye worship anyway? I’ve never understood that. There are so many books which touch on similar issues that are much better (pardon the grammar, I don’t have the energy to unwind that last sentence. Beside, I get more entertainment out of writing lengthy parenthetical statements).
”Not wanting 14 year olds discussing virgins having sex, etc, etc, etc, is entirely reasonable.”
… and can be accomplished only by banning their brains.
Catcher in the Rye is just a miraculous piece of writing. And Holden Caufield is one literature’s greatest characters.
“How do I know pornography depraves and corrupts? It depraves and corrupts me.”
— Malcolm Muggeridge
I always thought CITR was overrated, too. It’s good, worthy of “classic” status, but hardly miraculous.
On the censorship issue, since when do parents NOT have the right to censor what their kids read/watch/hear/see etc.?!?! Most clear-thinkng parents of teenagers, regardless of political or religious affiliation, irrespective of ethnic or economic background, know intuitively that they don’t need for their kids to be reading about virgin sex in the 9th grade. DUH. This news story was not about the absence of free speech in Maryland schools, it was about the temporary absence of common sense.
I like your blogwork, btw.
If anything, CITR is underrated.
Yes, parents have a right to censor what their kids read/watch/hear/see, etc. Doesn’t make it any less ironic that they chose a book ABOUT CENSORSHIP to bitch about.
And do you think these parents actually believe they’re protecting their 14-year olds from exposure to these ideas / images? I don’t. I believe this an example of self-serving sanctimony standing in for good parenting.
There’s a difference between knowing that your kids are exposed to the stuff, making sure they have a healthy view of it all, and actually endorsing it. By requiring them to read the book, you tacitly endorse its contents.
As for CITR, it has been too long since I read it, and if I’m going to slam it, I owe it another read–and I shall, as I respect your judgment in this department. However, I think the subjects brought up in CITR are better covered in better books by better writers. To name a few, there’s A Separate Peace (which I didn’t especially enjoy, but people worship it anyway), A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Obviously, each of those touches on the issues of CITR in different ways.
CITR was revolutionary for its time, and deserves merit as a piece of literary history. Salinger broke a whole host of unwritten rules of literature. He used the word ‘fuck,’ he showed what goes on in the heads of angst filled malcontent teens, his dripping hints of incest infuriated the 1950s conservative establishment (those clever enough to catch it anyway).
Of the books I listed above, I’d assert that Burgess’s ACO was far more creative, and represented a much more stark break from convention. Knowles’s ASP has all the teenage angst and existentialism you could ask for, and a wee bit of homoerotic hinting tossed in to spice things up. Nabakov is one of the greatest wordsmiths in English literary history, and I doubt I need to praise the merits of Lolita. Kesey attacked society from every angle with his taciturn Indian and “crazy” lumberjack.
I’ll go ahead and assume you disagree that any of those 4 books is superior to CITR. But then, if everyone agreed on such matters, this wouldn’t be an especially interesting world.
Hell, I forgot Camus’s The Stranger. Just pretend I didn’t.
Bet you didn’t imagine your little observation on irony would generate such a response.
Context.
When I allow my kid to read the history of WWII, I hope that doesn’t mean I’m tacitly endorsing the Holocaust…
The novels you name are excellent, with Lolita in my top 10. But not the same as CITR. Closest is Huck Finn. Second, maybe something like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
People forget Salinger used “fuck” to criticize its casual usage. Holden despairs in seeing it. IRONICALLY, CITR is often banned from high school literature lists because of the inclusion of the word.
Context. Apropos.
Will be taking a nap now.
More irony–Somehow I don’t think Todd Beamer meant “Let’s get a book censored” when he said “Let’s roll.” Maybe the school should change it’s name.
To argue the context of Firm, Rosy Tipped Breasts (or whatever the books title was–I forget), we would have to have read it. I can’t argue with you without knowing how it’s used. WWII history books, ya know, portray the holocaust as a bad thing. It’d be different were it celebrating Jew slaughter.
But enough of that–the debate’s stale.
Talking about CITR is far more entertaining. I recognize that the books I listed don’t compare apples-to-apples. They’re not books about a teenager disgusted with society. My point, rather, was that they each at least overlapped CITR in one way or another (with A Clockwork Orange as the closest by miles).
In other news, if no one ever hears from me again it’s because I’ve been arrested for murdering various employees at blogger/blogspot. Also: I like cheese.
Enjoy your nap.
By requiring them to read the book, you tacitly endorse its contents.
By that line of reasoning, schools should be banning The Scarlet Letter because didn’t good ol’ Hester Prynne have to wear a big ol ‘A’ on her bodice because she’d committed adultery? Wouldn’t want kids to think that adultery in Hester’s case, because she was in love, was right, now would we?
As Jeff said, it’s all about context. Part of educating children is to teach them critical thinking skills. This kid used critical thinking to decide that a. he didn’t like the book and b. he found the ideas presented to be objectionable. But he had the opportunity in the first place. How does any child have the opportunity to develop a necessary skill such as critical thinking if material is banned outright? I find it very sad that his mother wants this book banned when it taught her kid a very valuable lesson. She’s denying others the chance to develop their own opinions about it.
Look, Jeff, I understand where you’re coming from, but if kids are going to be exposed to “firm, rosy-tipped breasts,” then they can damn well just watch the Super Bowl like the rest of us.
Kathy–you’re right that context is important. And in this case, we don’t know the context. The Scarlet Letter teaches lessons about draconian puritanism, adultery, revenge, and love. What lessons are taught by describing a gratuitous teenage sex scene? Of course, I don’t know that it’s gratuitous. The point of the book may be that the girl made a mistake, and the description may be bland to the point of harmlessness. We don’t know. Furthermore, suggesting that banning on lewd book will permanently cripple a student’s ability to develop critical reasoning skills is a bit much.
Ahh, book-talk.
Re: taking this book off the reading list, I read a good number of books I was considered too young to read and the main effect is that it counter-balanced the unthinking grade-school jokes and the HBO I watched when my parents weren’t around. Kids find this stuff because it’s naturally interesting. I’d say that most of the time they’re much better off getting it from a guy with elbow patches on his tweed jacket than the normal sources. Consider it as “look at the tits on her” versus “firm, rosy-tipped breasts”.
Re: Clockwork Orange, if anyone has read the version that ends without the carthartic ending (also the movie version), check for the English release with an extra chapter where he concludes he wants to settle down and lead a better life. Also, Burgess had a beaut with The Wanting Seed.
Re: CITR, the main interpretative problem is that most people read it as teens and don’t come back to it as adults. On my first adult re-read, it wasn’t at all what I remembered.
Oh. The irony…right, you are, Jeff. That was the point of your original post. Sorry, I did catch it, but found the story itself more interesting than the irony once I got into it.
Context. In the hierarchy of contexts suggested by this story and these comments, the context that, in my opinion, is most relevant, is the one in which a student was compelled to read material that he found intrinsically objectionable. And, because America is a great country, this family was able to successfully push back against this dubious educational tool, arguably to the betterment of his local community.
Teen angst is overrated, too. Most of us do get over it, after all. As grownups, we learn to draw our own lines of acceptability, define our own personal boundaries of conscience. When those boundaries are encroached, character and integrity should not blithely retreat and redraw the lines as they are told.
Standing up for what one believes is secondary in importance only to believing in good and right things.
Teachers shouldn’t be able to compel students to read anything that they (the students) find objectionable? Well, then I want to redo school and protest all those books without pictures I was forced to read.
Standing up for what you believe is fine. But without exposure to the book (as Kathy pointed out earlier), how would the kid know he objected to something?
Beck: It’s a slippery slope.
My sister in law is homeschooling her kids and I have to tell you, what she bans them from reading scares the hell out of me. My nephew is six. I bought him an illustrated copy of “Peter Pan.” I thought it would be a fun story for him to read. You know, pirates, flying, never wanting to grow up, Tinkerbell—all good stuff for a kid. The sister in law handed it back to me. She didn’t even want in her house. Why? Because, even though she hadn’t read it, she thought that the pirates represented sado-masochists and that there was a distinct overtone of homosexuality to Peter Pan and the Lost Boys and she didn’t want her children influenced by this. Where’d she get this notion? From her pastor. I try not to be too critical about this because I’m all for free choice when it comes to educating your kids, but this is ridiculous.
I wonder about this a lot. Do you think my niece and nephew are going to have any critical thinking skills when they grow up? Or are they only going to listen to what they want to hear because that’s their habit? I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good. Their sole teacher—their mother—doesn’t present any ideas other than the ones she wants them to have. They’re young, yes, but what’s it going to be like later on? I worry.
Your definition of “lewd material” might be different from mine which I know is different from my Sister-in-law’s. Who’s right? I don’t know. If you ban something like this, well, doesn’t it make it easier to ban something else? Where does it stop?
As all FIrst Amendment experts may recall, what we seem to be bearing in on is that “redeeming social value” prong of the old obscenity test.
I mean, you can just ban anything that has the slightest offense potential (e.g., any mention of sex or even one swear word), but at a certain age (and I think 15 is old enough) it becomes the balancing test you’re describing—Does the “redeeming social value” of the book outweigh the danger points. I think a lot of parents never get to that point – they just say “eeek, a description of a breast” and that’s that.
Me, I like to live in a slightly more complicated world.
Resectfully, I think the whole “without exposure to _______, how would we know what’s objectionable” meme is nonsensical. The notion that we can form reasonable judgements only on that which we have ourselves experienced loses its juice pretty quickly in the arena of critical thinking. Some examples:
1) I haven’t personally analyzed the active and inert ingredients in this Shell gasoline, but I’m pretty sure that my F150 will run just fine.
2) I have not actually examined every issue of Hustler magazine, but I’m pretty sure those folks are naked in there. Do they have articles in that magazine?
3) I have not listened to every single Linkin’ Park song on every album, but I’ve heard enough to know that I think they suck big time. Am I wrong?
It’s silly. Personally, I think it is unfortunate that this kid had to read this book before finding out what was in it. There should have been a responsible adult around (…I dunno, maybe a teacher?!) who could have predicted the potential for problems and informed parents that there was mature content ahead. We aren’t talking about an undergraduate contemporary literature class at UCLA here. We’re talking about 9th grade English, for crying out loud.
Exercising reasonable discernment is just not that tough except for the most obstinately unrepentant moral relativist or the stubbornly moronic. I realize they are out there, because I’ve seen a couple of episodes of The Osbournes. But most folks don’t live that. Thankfully.
Why do you get to decide the parameters of “reasonable discernment” for everyone else, Zeb?
And why do you think it “unfortunate that this kid had to read this book before finding out what was in it”? Have you read it? Do you know what’s in it? I’ll tell you who has read it. His teacher. An adult. Who believes he can use it to teach his students something about the concept of censorship.
Ugh. I hate this kind of bowdlerizing impulse. Yeah, you can understand that your car runs on gasoline without analyzing how gasoline works in an engine—but then you still won’t understand how gasoline works in an engine.
Rid a curriculum of anything and everything that might offend someone someplace somewhere at some time, and you’ve enshrined a particularly pernicious idea of “tolerance.” I mean, at what point can a breast be firm and rosy tipped, anyway?
Moral relativism? Banning things because they could potentially offend someone is of a piece with moral relativism, as far as I’m concerned.
This book is being banned because some people found its content objectionable? If the parents want their kid to be raised in a bubble I’m all for letting them decide what their kid should or should not read, but that’s not what’s happening here. These parents are deciding what all the kids in that school can’t read. How can they possibly ask for the ability to decide the content of their kids’ education, while denying it to others in the same breath?
That was a flaccid, star-tipped breast on display in the Super Bowl, not a firm, rosy-tipped breast.
Anyway, as the father of a teenage daughter, let me assure you that the best way to get your kids to not do something is to tell them you forbid it. Works every time! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I’m betting that book will be flying off the shelves in no time. much to everyone’s moderate disappointment that it won’t live up the the hype. and nutty as they often are—that Peter Pan censorship thing is a kick! I laughed so hard—parents should exercise some control. heck, if the kid learned nothing else, he learned that his mother has standards she’s not afraid to act on.
we don’t need to head for the bomb shelter on this one, Jeff. it comes up every year in the schools, like clockwork, whether it’s Shakespeare or this modern yet-to-be-proven rot.
So Charles: If I were humor-impaired, I might think you were saying that it’s OK to expose our kids to breasts as long as they’re flaccid and star-tipped (and not firm and rosy-tipped).
Hmm. Good enough for me. Let’s implement it! Bea Arthur, it’s comback time!
PS I homeschooled my kids so they could explore a lot more of what they thought was important, allowing me to share what I thought was important and what “experts” thought was important. one’s been accepted to every college he applied for (including Auburn and Beloit College, the “Harvard of the Midwest” they call it) and the other is checking out the world for himself and working some college in on the side.
I suspect that much of the divide in this debate is over whether or not people trust the judgement of the teacher.
My first reaction to the story was to think, “This book sounds like some sort of multiculturalist liberal schlock,” which put me in the opposed camp.
Obviously, a line must be drawn somewhere, and that line isn’t best determined by students. At 14 I absolutely would have been onboard for a critical compare and contrast of Playboy and Penthouse. I might have even picked up some critical reasoning skills in the process. But it hardly would have been appropriate.
So for my final point on this thread, let me cite the wisest philosopher of the 21st century–Chef from South Park.
Chef: Look: Schools are teaching condom use to younger and younger students each say! But sex isn’t something that should be taught in textbooks and diagrams. Sex is emotional and spiritual. It needs to be taught by family. I know it can be hard, parents, but if you leave it up to the schools to teach sex to kids, you don’t know who they’re learning it from. It could be from someone who doesn’t know, [a shot of Mr. Mackey] someone who has a bad opinion of it, [a shot of Ms. Choksondik looking around] or even a complete pervert. [a shot of Mr. Garrison]
…
Stan: But Chef, when is the right age for us to start having sex?
Chef: It’s very simple, children. The right time to start having sex is… [close up] 17.
Sheila (a parent): So you mean 17 as long as you’re in love?
Chef: Nope, just 17.
Gerald (another parent): But, what if you’re not ready at 17?
Chef: Seventeen! You’re ready.
Gotta love South Park.
…Not sure the poetic description of a nipple and the referencing of sex is the same as “teaching” sex, but I take your point.
Me, I don’t see anything wrong with the book, but then, I haven’t read it, either. So. There’s that…
Well, that’s the problem, Jeff….school districts can’t limit their teaching material to only those books that have been read and approved by a parent of every single child in the classroom. Otherwise, nothing would get taught.
Somebody’s got to make a call; it happens all the time when schools design their curricula in every subject. I admit there may be points when a line is crossed, but I think a lot of folks are on a hair-trigger (“Eeek! the book mentions that sex exists! Quick, somebody find something violent instead!”)
Jeff, your position is not without some defensible merit which is, after all, what has helped fuel this discussion. And it really is not my intent to be pedantic about this. But the answer to your question about why I get to decide is simple. Because it’s MY kid’s education we’re talking about here. No, not literally, but nonetheless accurately. I am the parent, so I decide. Period. It IS about me. Or you. Or anyone else that doesn’t like to be forced to swallow something that they know is going to make them sick. That is the salient point, in my opinion.
The thing is, everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to in this story. The school did something to which a student and his parents objected. The two parties contested in a civilized litigious manner, and the parental perogative eventually won the day against the institutional initiative. It was a good old-fashioned duel between opposing philosophies, and I personally think that it is great when an individual wins the freedom to determine their own life’s course rather than have it dictated to them willy-nilly by some dubiously enlightened academic or municipal body.
And the whole “slippery slope” whining is simply that. Its only when these dialogues are outlawed and an individual family’s personal beliefs are disallowed in the public discourse that we will have slipped down the slope.
Oh, and I haven’t read the book either, I might, though, being an adult and all. One final point and then I’m outta here. I’d like to go on record as saying I am a big fan of “firm, rosy-tipped breasts”, myself, and I hope there are enough to go around for everyone.
I was going to say something about the irony of someone being condescendingly derisive about a fear of sexual references being influential are the same people who foam at the mouth to prevent “influential” displays of Christianity…
…but then I thought: what’s the point? No one ever thinks they sputter inanely. No one ever recognizes their own personal hot buttons of irrationality.
I fear none of it—not “God” in the Pledge, not “Christmas Vacation” on the calendar, not “firm, rosy-tipped breasts” as a description for, well, firm, rosy-tipped breasts, I suppose.
Perhaps the book should have simply stuck with “those bumps under there, which may or may not be pinkish in hue.”
Well, I also agree that the kid and his family were most likely being idiots.
Rest assured, if my kid came to me with concerns about the book, I’d talk to him about it and try to help him understand why a description of sex is not necessarily pornography.
By the same token, I really abhor the people who try to ban Huckleberry Finn.