Catholic High School with Disturbing Reading Lists

[jwashu]

While I agree, the excerpt that was just posted, (that I replied to above) portrays rape as a satisfying sexual experience for a male. It’s not. Rape is about power…not sex. A young mind reading this book, might not grasp that fact, reading something like this that seems to glamourize this horror against another.

There are so many books out there to be read…that are fabulously written…are edifying to one’s faith and soul…and are life changers. If I were paying tuition to send my child to a Catholic school, I’d be pretty upset if this, out of all the books on the planet, was the one that the administration collectively agreed would be edifying for teenage girls to be reading.

I’m at a loss as to how a book like this helps a student grow in her faith as a Catholic. Isn’t that the main reason a parent sends his/her child(ren) to Catholic school?

I guess I didn’t see that. While it is beneficial to realize that some males, abet disturbed ones, actually do find it that way because of their psychological confusion between pleasure and power… that’s an understanding for a College Psych major… probably not for a teenager.

I agree there are so many good books, I tend to flinch when people talk about banning books or not allowing some to be read (even when it’s a parental thing) but as a parent I do realize that sometimes that will be the case.

Joe

 

[whatevergirl]

I guess I didn’t see that. While it is beneficial to realize that some males, abet disturbed ones, actually do find it that way because of their psychological confusion between pleasure and power… that’s an understanding for a College Psych major… probably not for a teenager.

I agree there are so many good books, I tend to flinch when people talk about banning books or not allowing some to be read (even when it’s a parental thing) but as a parent I do realize that sometimes that will be the case.

Joe

Yeah…the liberal side of me cringes at the thought of banning (or burning!) books…lol but, there are some books that young minds are not meant to take in…this is one of them. A poster on here sent me another excerpt from this book and it just screams of an author who wants its readers to feel compassion for men who lust after children. I remember the book Lolita, and enjoyed the writing, and as with most books…one has to sometimes stretch his/her imagination to fit the text of the story. The difference is, I was an adult when I read that book. I hardly think it was literary brilliance meant to be taken home for after school reading.

Likewise, asking teenage readers to wrap their imaginations around that of a perverted child offender, is not literature. I haven’t figured out what it is, but it is not literature. I was a journalism major before switching to education, and it makes me sad that even contemporary literature is slipping into an immoral abyss, and is being disguised as something ‘teachable.’

Just my few cents worth.

 

[graceandglory]

I would recommend reading the book with your daughter. That way you can teach her Christian values, and have her come up with a Catholic response to the situations dealt with in the book.

It also might give you some more quality time with your daughter, especially during the troubling teen years, where she can have time to discuss more intimate and pressing details of her own life.

I agree with elliejanba.
I threw my own kids to the lions last year (public schools).

Some of the literature was upsetting. Knowing the liberal slant and anti-Christian perspective the teacher would take challenged me to read it and discuss it with my own kids, so that they would have a Christian world view to share in class discussions.

A lot of the reason kids read what they do is for classroom discussions. Teachers want their students to walk away with a specific world view. Teachers will drive classroom discussions so that the students will adopt the teacher’s world view. If we let the teachers decide what our kids think, we have lost the battle for their minds.

We have to read and discuss literature with our children these days if want them to come out of their education with a solid Catholic world view.

There are other times when I don’t allow my children to read books that the teacher offers them. I had a discussion about the stupid “Goosebumps” books in the 2nd grade classroom. Whether they are “evil” or not, they are a waste of my precious child’s brain and don’t help to develop my child’s world view.

 

[SmartyPants]

I would have my child take a “F” before I would let him/her read a book with such graphic, perverted sexuality.

Any post secondary college that considers pornography good literature would not be the place that I would want my kid to go.

No, I would not like another adult to discuss this material with my child. Ever.

This is pornography. Science has shown that pornography changes brain chemistry. Despite their best attentions this material will replay in their minds.

What is wrong with people!!! Our moral standards have really slid downhill…

OK…

A short synopsis of The Bluest Eye is that it is about a young girl who suffers physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. This black child is growing up in segregated Ohio. She gets it into her mind that the reason she is being abused is because she is not “pretty” like the light-skinned black girls she goes to school with or the white girls with blue eyes who represent the ideal prototype of beauty. Eventually, the abuse is too much and the girl goes mad at the end of the book.

I generally like Morrison’s work; though I think she would benefit from editing out the final chapters of many of her books because she tends to go off the deep end at the end of her novels. That said, however, The Bluest Eye in no way shape or form glorifies sex, incest, or pornography. In fact, that the victim eventually goes mad from her abuse serves as a clear warning of what that type of abuse can cause.

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I have a PhD in Sociology and I assigned The Bluest Eye in my sophomore-level college course that dealt with race and the treatment of racial issues in contemporary American monographs. I really do not think that the book is inappropriate for high school level juniors and seniors in advanced English classes.

 

[graceandglory]

OK…

A short synopsis of The Bluest Eye is that it is about a young girl who suffers physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. This black child is growing up in segregated Ohio. She gets it into her mind that the reason she is being abused is because she is not “pretty” like the light-skinned black girls she goes to school with or the white girls with blue eyes who represent the ideal prototype of beauty. Eventually, the abuse is too much and the girl goes mad at the end of the book.

I generally like Morrison’s work; though I think she would benefit from editing out the final chapters of many of her books because she tends to go off the deep end at the end of her novels. That said, however, The Bluest Eye in no way shape or form glorifies sex, incest, or pornography. In fact, that the victim eventually goes mad from her abuse serves as a clear warning of what that type of abuse can cause.

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I have a PhD in Sociology and I assigned The Bluest Eye in my sophomore-level college course that dealt with race and the treatment of racial issues in contemporary American monographs. I really do not think that the book is inappropriate for high school level juniors and seniors in advanced English classes.

The difference is you are teaching adults and we are raising children. These are our children and it is our right and Christian responsibility to raise them in the Lord with a godly world view.

The moral dilemmas in a novel like that are great for adults to discuss. Children think with their feelings. If their teacher sways them one way they will go for it, that’s just how children are. They are trusting of adults like that. Yes, teenagers are children.

If I as a parent let my children go off to college, I am trusting that my children are old enough to “make their own decisions” and to think on their own. I know they aren’t getting a Christian world view taught at 99 % of university liberal arts colleges. Hopefully their minds have been developed enough in a Christian family by the time they go off to college so they can discern right from wrong and be able to look at things from a Christian perspective.

I don’t expect my teenagers can do that without my help right now. They are just too young.

 

[ChristinaM]

I was just thinking about some of the books I read as a high school senior. “Gee, whatever happened to Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre?” Then I remembered some of the weird things that happened in those books. Catherine and Heathcliff, anybody?

The excerpt that was posted here…that really turned my stomach. That book may be on the AP list but there are plenty of other books on that list that don’t have graphic descriptions of child rape.

These are all white men, none of them all that contemporary. Don’t you think children should be exposed to a diversity of voices?

This bothers me. Why should school teachers avoid assigning great classics because they happen to be written by white men? Why do we have to sacrifice Hemingway, Dickens, and Shakespeare on the altar of diversity? OutinChgoBurbs made a good list - lots of good books there.

 

[sanctamaria17]

I don’t think Annn was saying to get rid of classics, just that we should also include diverse, contemporary material as well. I see no problem with that.

 

[MamaZona]

If your daughter doesn’t read that book, she will be left out, because most colleges would expect her to be familiar with Morrison. I would recommend reading the book with your daughter. That way you can teach her Christian values, and have her come up with a Catholic response to the situations dealt with in the book.

It also might give you some more quality time with your daughter, especially during the troubling teen years, where she can have time to discuss more intimate and pressing details of her own life.

This is exactly the approach I would take, myself.

I read banned books (and ones that haven’t been “banned” too). I think we have to be open to see all sides of life and points of view. Literature and art give us a chance to think about things in a new light and to reach for a clearer understanding of the human condition.

As long as the material is not pornographic, I don’t see harm in reading it.

I’ve found, as I’ve gotten older, my faith grows stronger the more it has been tested. Reading books by atheists and people of other faiths deepen my appreciation of God’s love–as odd as it sounds–because it is clear He is the Ultimate in tolerance and freedom.

Recently, I participated in an art festival. Each person had a sponsor for their art. There was an atheist who showed up and drew stick figures mocking God. Then when the sponsor asked not to be affiliated with him he pranced around crying “sensorship”–but no one took it down…no one wanted to be associated with him. So, he had all of his atheist friends sponsor him from his “meetup group”.

So they did and the organizers, through all of it, touched nothing but his sponsor tag.

And so there it was, a better indictment of atheism than anyone could ever have painted. It was the ugliest “art” there. Ugly chicken scratch next to other works that took hours and days of work and planning and love.

I’m glad it was in full view. Because when you see the ugliness humanity creates left to its own devices, the statement that “everything good comes from God” comes very clearly into focus.

Edit to add: Oh, and we ended up with his sponsor. I didn’t ask for it to be that way. They just did it. Kinda funny how that worked out.

 

[Annn]

This bothers me. Why should school teachers avoid assigning great classics because they happen to be written by white men? Why do we have to sacrifice Hemingway, Dickens, and Shakespeare on the altar of diversity? OutinChgoBurbs made a good list - lots of good books there.

I did not say classics shouldn’t be taught. I like those authors, too. But I also think that students should be exposed to the “cannon” of dead white men as well as people who have a different perspective on the world: women and people of color. There are ways to teach a diverse body of authors that celebrates the cannon but also is clear that it leaves out a lot of people because for a long time in our country (and still to some extent today) we think these people’s voices were not valuable enough to be heard.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

**The difference is you are teaching adults and we are raising children. These are our children and it is our right and Christian responsibility to raise them in the Lord with a godly world view. **

The moral dilemmas in a novel like that are great for adults to discuss. Children think with their feelings. If their teacher sways them one way they will go for it, that’s just how children are. They are trusting of adults like that. Yes, teenagers are children.

If I as a parent let my children go off to college, I am trusting that my children are old enough to “make their own decisions” and to think on their own. I know they aren’t getting a Christian world view taught at 99 % of university liberal arts colleges. Hopefully their minds have been developed enough in a Christian family by the time they go off to college so they can discern right from wrong and be able to look at things from a Christian perspective.

I don’t expect my teenagers can do that without my help right now. They are just too young.

My husband is a professor of philosophy who has a specialty in Ethics. He cringed when I read him the passage, and he agreed it was morally troubling for high school students to read that particular work.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

I did not say classics shouldn’t be taught. I like those authors, too. But I also think that students should be exposed to the “cannon” of dead white men as well as people who have a different perspective on the world: women and people of color. There are ways to teach a diverse body of authors that celebrates the cannon but also is clear that it leaves out a lot of people because for a long time in our country (and still to some extent today) we think these people’s voices were not valuable enough to be heard.

That said, the school in question is Catholic, and should be teaching from a Catholic moral standpoint, whether they are the venerable “dead white men” or not. It is why parents send their children to Catholic schools, and why they sacrifice to pay any where from $7,000 to upwards of $15,000 a year, to be taught from the Catholic perspective.

As I showed you, there are authors of color and female gender who write for adults who can easily be read by high school age group without resorting to smut. Toni Morrison’s works for the 16-18 year old group on high school is smut. Toni Morrison is not on the reading list of better colleges because she is verbose, too graphic without subtlety when it comes to sex, and vulgar. If she was white, she would work for Harlequin or a “gentleman’s” magazine. It is another form of discrimination to consider her an author or import simply because she is African-American. I would place old, white but contemporary Andrew Greeley in the same category for this age group, not because he is smutty, but because he is formulaic, is disrespectful of those who do not agree with him, portrays most fat people as imbecilic, and hasn’t written his own book after the first few.

And please don’t tell me Morrison is read at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The quality of those schools has gone down over the past twenty years. Now, it’s more about the prestige than it is about education.

 

[Annn]

That said, the school in question is Catholic, and should be teaching from a Catholic moral standpoint, whether they are the venerable “dead white men” or not. It is why parents send their children to Catholic schools, and why they sacrifice to pay any where from $7,000 to upwards of $15,000 a year.

As I showed you, there are authors of color and female gender who can easily be read without resorting to smut. Toni Morrison’s works for the 16-18 year old group on high school is smut. Toni Morrison is not on the reading list of better colleges because she is verbose, too graphic without subtlety when it comes to sex, and vulgar. If she was white, she would work for Harlequin or a “gentleman’s” magazine. It is another form of discrimination to consider her an author or import simply because she is African-American. I would place Andrew Greeley in the same category for this age group, not because he is smutty, but because he is formulaic, is disrespectful of those who do not agree with him, portrays fat people as imebelic, and hasn’t written his own book after the first few.

And please don’t tell me Morrison is read at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The quality of those shcools has gone down over the past twenty years. Now, it’s more about the prestige than it is about education.

I don’t much like Morrison, actually. I’ve only read two of her books and I wasn’t all that impressed. I’m in my senior year of college and studying African American Studies so I do have a lot of ideas of quality literature by people of color. I was merely pointing out that it IS important to have a diverse set of authors on a reading list. In my Catholic high school, I , was exposed to a few Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian writers. I took a class called “Women in Contemporary Literature” and also a full year of Shakespeare and a full year of very canonical “American Literature.” I too think the Bluest Eye is rather trashy, but I do not think this means the school should replace what they’re teaching now with the dead white guys books wholesale.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

I don’t much like Morrison, actually. I’ve only read two of her books and I wasn’t all that impressed. I’m in my senior year of college and studying African American Studies so I do have a lot of ideas of quality literature by people of color. I was merely pointing out that it IS important to have a diverse set of authors on a reading list. In my Catholic high school, I , was exposed to a few Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian writers. I took a class called “Women in Contemporary Literature” and also a full year of Shakespeare and a full year of very canonical “American Literature.” I too think the Bluest Eye is rather trashy, but I do not think this means the school should replace what they’re teaching now with the dead white guys books wholesale.

Didn’t say they should. There are tons of better authors though than Morrison for that age group that meet a contemporary and diverse criteria, even if they are an AP class reading “adult” level books. I am very fond of Gaines.

I hope at your Catholic high school you were taught from a Catholic viewpoint. It is why I send my children to Catholic schools, and homeschool when Catholic school does not meet their needs. With the little girls, we have been blessed. With the older two (now 30 and 29), we were not so blessed .

You should know as long as you’re staying- it sometimes take me the full time after I post to edit the post.

 

[Annn]

Didn’t say they should. There are tons of better authors though than Morrison for that age group, even if they are an AP class reading “adult” level books. I am very fond of Gaines.

You should know as long as you’re staying- it sometimes take me the full time after I post to edit the post.

Thanks.

I was referring to an earlier poster (was it whatevergirl?) who objected to Morrison and instead offered a list of white male writers she enjoyed (mind you, those writers are already generally taught, but my point is that if a teacher decides rightfully that there is better black literature than Toni Morrison, he/she should try to replace Morrison with that better black literature.)

Off to class! Have a good day.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

Thanks.

I was referring to an earlier poster (was it whatevergirl?) who objected to Morrison and instead offered a list of white male writers she enjoyed (mind you, those writers are already generally taught…no they are not. In any event, it is not the teacher’s choice when parents are footing the bill to the extent they do in a Catholic school to make up her own morality.
.

I gave a list of 25 authors who were NOT dead white men.

Truman Capote, Gay. Flannery O’Connor. Female
William Faulkner, Struggled with homosexuality.
Ann B. Ross, Female
Taylor Caldwell, Female
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Female
Margaret Mitchell, Female
Rebecca Wells’ Female
Sandra Cisneros,Female
Carol Joyce Oates, Female
Eudora Welty, Female
Ernest J. Gaines, African-American.
Harper Lee, Female
Wally Lamb, Oprah’s list,
Mary McCarthy Female
Jane Austen. **Classics, but **Female
Audrey Nefenegger, Female
Dorothy Parker. Female
Pearl S. Buck, Female
Fannie Flag, Welcome To The World, Baby Girl! Female
Amy Tan, Female
Margaret Atwood, Female
KatherineValentine,. Female

I also gave a list of CONTEMPORARY white men. It might surprise you to know they are quite progressive in their outlook:

Contemporary white men: Richard Peck, A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way From Chicago. And as they should never be neglected for their depth and richnees, James Michener’s* The Novel, Centennial, The Covenant, and Poland*. **Very populist and almost socialist in his later years- died in his 90s I think at the turn of the 21st century. ** I would also recommend Pat Conroy’s *The Great Santini *and Beach Music. Just a liberal.

 

[SmartyPants]

My husband is a professor of philosophy who has a specialty in Ethics. He cringed when I read him the passage, and he agreed it was morally troubling for high school students to read that particular work.

No offense to your husband, but for him to read one passage outside of the context of the entire work and conclude **anything **betrays a lack of intellectual curiosity below the level of what one would expect from a college professor.

 

[thomfra]

No offense to your husband, but for him to read one passage outside of the context of the entire work and conclude **anything **betrays a lack of intellectual curiosity below the level of what one would expect from a college professor.

I tend to agree here. it would help if the poster could give an indication as to on what ethical grounds such literature is questionable (since this is his area of expertise and all).

 

[whatevergirl]

Really, this all boils down to this. If you are paying tuition…[and Catholic high schools are not cheap across the nation…we investigated sending our son to one when we moved to Florida, and they wanted something like $15k per year–and that excludes books, etc.] and you are okay with your kids reading garbage, disguised as teaching tools…that is your choice. If you are sending your kids to Catholic school to receive a Catholic education–and your kids are being handing sexually explicit reading materials, and they are being passed off as teaching tools, that is your choice.

Let’s not call a spade a shovel. A spade is a spade, and it seems like this school is not at all concerned at shaping the minds and hearts of young adults, by promoting a book to edify life, and the faith…but rather promoting a book that parents need to read alongside their kids because the material is too explicit. A parent shouldn’t have to do this, unless they choose to read the book–not because they have to defend the faith…I mean, we have to defend the faith to non Catholics…we now have to defend the faith to Catholics?

I think there are battles worth waging in the world…fighting to have a book like this as a reading choice, just ain’t one of them, in my eyes.

I remember not too long ago, watching an episode of Fr Corapi…where he said something very poignant, that has always stuck with me*…“If we don’t live differently, read differently, talk differently, act differently, than the secular world…how can we ever hope to be good examples of the Catholic faith?”*

If the Catholic schools in our nation start becoming secularized…they will not be any different from secular schools. And again…to come full circle to my earlier point…if you are okay with sending your kid to a Catholic school that is becoming secularized in its teaching, that is your choice. But, let’s not call a spade something else–this book has nothing to do with the faith, and is not edifying for KIDS.

Just my two cents.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

I tend to agree here. it would help if the poster could give an indication as to on what ethical grounds such literature is questionable (since this is his area of expertise and all).

IF it is a Catholic school, and
IF Catholic schools are supposed to represent a certain moral teaching as evidenced by following the Magisterium, and
IF the students are considered underaage, subject to their parents, and
IF the parents are paying the expenses of these students,
IF a teacher presents a book that the parents consider morally objectionable for their children to read, and
IF the book in question involves the excerpt I read,
THEN the parents have a right to consider the book morally objectionable.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

No offense to your husband, but for him to read one passage outside of the context of the entire work and conclude **anything **betrays a lack of intellectual curiosity below the level of what one would expect from a college professor.

He said, “What kind of good context is there for such a paragraph that glorifies child rape and incest? What excuse for such can there be? Please- get as inventive as you please, I beg of you!”*** in relation to high school students reading it in hte context of a Catholic school.

***Everybody else gets to trot out their credentials when it’s agreeable to those with one opinion. Those who have equally strong credentials are not when it doesn’t suit your viewpoint?