Feelings of Rage
Those privileged few of you who used to read my now-defunct Journalscape blog may remember how, in addition to talking about writing or my friends and family or what have you, it was also a soapbox for my insane political rantings and vomitous rage at certain aspects of our society. I have, wisely, I think, kept most of that off my current blog, but the topic I want to discuss now is rooted not only in writing, but in our fundamental rights as Americans to freedom of the press, so for one night only, you can have a little taste of the old angry Peat.
An old High School classmate of mine posted an article to facebook today about how New Rochelle High School, which we both attended, confiscated a English class’ copies of Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen from students after an unidentified complaint about its sexual content, and then English Department Chairperson Leslie Altschul personally TORE OUT pages 64-70 before returning the books to students. (Apparently, this is the naughty part of the book where two girls engage in GASP! Oral Sex! Shhhh!) You can read the article here.
As a writer, as well as an American and a thinking individual, this fills me with unbelievable anger. Not only is this the wanton and needless vandalization of a book in a place of learning, but this woman, who doesn’t even read all the books in her school’s curriculum and who, I’m willing to bet, has never spent HUNDREDS OF HOURS of her time WRITING a book, thinks she somehow has the right and responsibility to just tear the pages from one? That she has the right to decide which aspects OF REALITY that kids should be exposed to? Just who the fuck does she think she is?
And what’s insane is that this is HIGH SCHOOL. The students involved were seventeen and eighteen years old! Old enough to legally CONSENT to sex, much less read about it. Are Leslie Altschul and the rest of the morons on that school board really so naïve and out of touch that they think kids who were born right around the time Al Gore invented the internet are somehow unaware of oral sex? That anyone can protect them from thinking it might be “cool”? Clearly, these are not people who’ve HAD a lot of oral sex themselves, or they might realize how futile a course that is.
There’s some sex in my book, too. Would they censor that, if I donated copies to my school library? Or will they be too busy trying to get Steven Spielberg to cut the kid pretending to stick his finger up Eliot’s mom’s butt out of the beginning of ET like he did the guns?
For the life of me, I cannot understand this kind censorship. It’s like abstinence education, where educators think they can just bury kids’ heads in the sand about the realities of the world around them, and then just set them free without any understanding of a VITAL aspect of human experience and interaction. People fight. People like to be naked together. Sometimes they even fight that way. Are those really such horrible realities that we have to hide them from our children? How are they supposed to make responsible decisions about or protect themselves from things we won’t even admit exist?
There is contact information in the article. Feel free to complain to the school board people personally. Or just send them copies of your favorite racy novel.
Working with high school and now middle school age, I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that these kids are partaking in far more than just oral sex.
I can’t believe the teacher didn’t even bother reading the book herself.
On a sidenote, did you know that Mr. McKay still teaches at NRHS?
p
Peter,
It is actually worse than two girls ENGAGING in oral sex.
The pages the school removed contained a scene where the girls TALK about oral sex.
Actually, the don’t even talk about it. Lisa (Angelina Jolie) is trying to encourage Susanna (Winona Ryder) to break the rules of the hospital were they are both confined; in this case by having sex but in a way she won’t get caught by the staff (i.e., oral sex which Lisa says is much faster).
Oh, the horror.
Now that my daughter is born and home prices are no longer skyrocketing, I’ve actually been considering a return to New Rochelle. Now… maybe not so much.
On a positive note, those idiot school board jerks just ensured a bunch of purchases of that book, along with whatever else they censor.
I guess it’s an window into a world with Sarah Palin as President, I guess :S
Mind you, consdering how some people take offence at Harry Potter for being about “witchcraft”, I’m not really surprised.
What every school system needs is a parent who will advocate for their child. I would like to know where all of these parents are whose kids had pages ripped out of their books?! I really hope they aren’t as naive.
Besides, by the time Cassie hits HS, that woman will have long since retired. Hell, hopefully she’ll be retired before Nicole gets up there!
P.S. Whoops, bit too many “guess”s in that first post of mine
No worries, Chantal. I usually give people three guesses.
Wow how dumb. I never heard anyone ripping pages out of a book and giving it back to the students. If the school board is SO concerned about material content offending anyone, they should have sent a letter of consent to the parents. It would have just stated that material X contains some sexual content, if you do not want your child submitted please sign this doc. Shit they had this at my high school in 1990. I remember three instances for my 11th grade English teacher:
1)Bible as a work of literature (did Genesis book)
2)While reading Romeo and Juliet, she showed the same movie and it had nudity in it.
3)The Catcher in the Rye because of some language.
I do not remember any parent saying no. I would not seeing any parent today saying no for a junior or senior (probably not a sophmore either).
Hell I received a similar consent form for my son’s sex ed class. The school even offered the parents to see the content before the students were shown.
This is just short-sighted of the teacher and the school board.
Peat,
FYI – for some reason your blog does not render well using iPOD touch (and thus probably iPhone). I do not know if anything can be done about it.
Sent the pinciple an email, congratulating him. Dumbass. If I get a reply, I’ll post it on my blog. I wouldn’t accept money to put the kids I’ll have one day in a school like that! Stupid teacher should be living in a bunker stuck in the Victorian era!
Good grief. I’m thinking back to myself as a 17 and 18 year old, and trying to come up with anything, anything at all, that would have made a book (or movie, or etc.) more attractive to me than someone trying to censor it.
…nice going, Dame Altschul.
http://www.1010wins.com/NY-School-Board–Don-t-Rip-Out-Sex-Pages/3471948
As though saying she did it several years ago somehow makes it better.
That sounds like a CYA statement if ever I heard one. The principal’s statement seems to directly contradict the news article, and in a way that shunts all possible blame to the side.
I smell a ham-handed cover-up.
Smells like ham.
I think not only is the teacher stupid to do something like that (tearing it out is the only sure fire way to ensure that every single student will hear about it and probably read the pages) but tearing out of books in my world = sacralige!!! sick and wrong and wrong and sick!