Help with public school providing sexual content to students

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Yes, I’m not in favor of removing books from a college curriculum. If you don’t like what book is being discussed in college, you’re free to drop the class, change your major, attend a church-sponsored college, etc. Kids in high school usually don’t have as many options to do something like just drop English class or change to a different one, which is why I have some sympathy for the kid who is badly affected by reading a “dark” book.

Like I said before in the thread, I myself have read hundreds of true crime books including “In Cold Blood” which is the granddaddy of them all, but I know plenty of other adults with educations who would have difficulty reading that genre or a similar “dark” book because they would find it scary or depressing. My own mother never stopped asking me, “How can you read that stuff, it would give me nightmares!” and if I had brought home such a book at age 14 she probably would have taken it away from me.
 
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Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
that disaster of a novel “Bridge of San Luis Rey” The whole “God wanted it” nonsense and the strangers connected by tragedy? It was just twisted.
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I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who is still scratching my head over the point of that miserable work. It belongs in the same category as Jude the Obscure to me: “Life sucks and then you die.”
 
JimG said:
It sure sounds like it. I was a voracious reader both as an adolescent and adult, and an English Lit major in college. I don’t recall reading anything nearly so sexually explicit and callously violent as the books that are routinely given to 14 year olds in high school today. If it’s not dark, violent, sexually explicit, and perverse, it seems not to make the reading list. Does truth, beauty, and goodness have a place in education?
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I can remember plenty of violent and sexual books shoved at me back in junior high and high school by teachers and librarians. “Lord of the Flies”…“A Day No Pigs Would Die”…“Native Son” just to name a few. None of these books appealed to me, not so much because they were violent or sexual as that I just could not relate to or have any sympathy for the protagonists. I am sure a teacher would have said I needed to broaden my horizons by reading and trying to relate to this stuff. Attitudes like that encouraged me to go study math. I read for enjoyment, still do, and if I’m not enjoying a book I can find better things to do with my time.

That doesn’t mean I never read a dark book back then. I remember very happily plowing through “The Naked and the Dead” (I had a lot of family who’d served in the military) and the works of Paul Zindel. I still harbor annoyance towards the librarian who told my mom I shouldn’t be reading Zindel because it dealt with teen sex and pregnancy, and gave her a copy of “A Day No Pigs Would Die” instead, which involves an abused boy who lives on a farm and witnesses all sorts of animal abuse, a pet pig getting raped and killed in graphic detail, eww. Still one of the worst reading experiences I ever had.
 
Thank you to everyone here for replying, from whichever side of the issue you came from! I learned so much through all of this and had to consider perspectives I hadn’t approached this topic with before. Seeing myself and my attitudes about this through so many different people’s opinions truly helped inform me on where I want to be with my stance on this issue, and to refine the way I present my experience to others.

Please keep me in your prayers so that God’s will be done in this in spite of any of my failings. God bless you all!
 
Tis_Bearself said:
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Xanthippe_Voorhees:
that disaster of a novel “Bridge of San Luis Rey” The whole “God wanted it” nonsense and the strangers connected by tragedy? It was just twisted.
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I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who is still scratching my head over the point of that miserable work. It belongs in the same category as Jude the Obscure to me: “Life sucks and then you die.”
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I think “Bridge of San Luis Rey” struck me most deeply because the other works were morally depraved. They were the clear absence of God. To me, that made sense…life without God-bad things. In the Bridge, however, the author worked very hard to paint a picture of why God wanted each to die and how it was God’s will. Which honestly, I still think is a strong approval of predestination that should pull that book away from Catholic highschoolers. To me, bad theology is far worse than bad morals, especially when it’s so roundly lauded as a great work. Great work about depravity? I get that–evil happens. The idea that God approves of, and even works with evil to get His way? Unacceptable.
 
Teek said:
I plan to meet with the principal and the teacher as soon as I have my case together. I have typed up the objectionable passages—eight pages, 31 seperate passages from just one of the books! I am going to ask the teacher to read a few out loud to us in the meeting. The language is prohibited by the school handbook. I don’t know why they think out loud and written would be different.
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Good on you!
Teek said:
I don’t know how far I can take this.
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I don’t know either, I do know that what you describe here should be absolutely unacceptable, I would probably meet with the teacher and principle as you are doing, and if your unsatisfied with their answer, then take it further where ever that may lead.
Teek said:
I do NOT want to do harm, for example if it went to that and I lost and it set a legal precedent for the schools to have those rights over parents.
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Dismiss this, you need to do and fight for what you know is right, what if you win and save countless other children from this kind of sexual abuse? If you lose, then good thing you found that out sooner rather then later and perhaps you can home school or take her to a Catholic School, and if nothing else, at least you have raised much needed awareness to this harm so those others cannot say they ‘didn’t know’.

What you describe is really grooming kids for all kinds of sexual abuse and perversions.
Teek said:
I don’t know what I should be asking them to do in response. They allow me to request another book for my daughter. What about the other kids? What about the fact that it has happened twice and I was not informed?
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Say exactly that. How can you trust them and what of the other kids?
Teek said:
My heart says I should print out the objectionable passages, and send them with a letter to the parents to tell them what the children have been exposed to so that they can talk to their children about it and help them with it. I don’t know if that would be helpful or just cause a problem to no avail.
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Id do the meeting with the principal and teacher first though.
Teek said:
Anything at all would help.
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In Australia parents are battling something very similar to this called ‘Safe Schools’ which is a Gender Theory program, I would recommend looking up that battle here in Australia and you will find a lot of similarities.

Your teaching our Children what?


Coalition for Marriage


I hope this has helped and God Bless You for standing up for your daughter and no doubt countless others.

You both have my prayers.
 
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Rhubarb said:
Which is more important - that children be ignorant of what goes on in the world, or that they are informed and have a right mind and conscience about the matters they encounter?

I don’t think sheltering a teenager from things is the right way to go about it. They should be taught how to think about such things, when it is appropriate and when it’s not. These books are supposed to make readers feel uncomfortable. They deal with heavy subjects. They are meant to take the rose colored glasses off people’s faces and make them confront very real issues.

I always think of it this way, if I can use profanity as an analogy. I don’t want children to be ignorant of foul language. I want children to be able to identify what language is foul, and that it’s not appropriate to use it in front of Grandma.
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I can use the exact same argument(s) as to why kids should be given drugs to take in school as part of an assignment.

Sex and sexuality is not their place and they have no right!

I think this is such hypocrisy because I can only imagine if they were teaching them Catholicism in a public school and the kind of uproar that would solicit. I highly doubt you would be so open minded and accepting in your argument as you are here.
 
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It’s a bit much to suggest that having students read books that are generally accepted as having literary value is “sexual abuse” or “grooming” them for perversions. Books that contain subject matter about masturbation, puberty, teenage sex, child abuse, and even murder have been part of high school curricula for decades. I read some of them because I chose to and some, like “Native Son” (in which the teenage protagonist murders two young girls and it’s graphically described) because they were assigned. Whether or not I liked the books or parents approved of the books, it is not child abuse or grooming to assign them to a class.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
It’s a bit much to suggest that having students read books that are generally accepted as having literary value is “sexual abuse” or “grooming” them for perversions. Books that contain subject matter about masturbation, puberty, teenage sex, child abuse, and even murder have been part of high school curricula for decades. I read some of them because I chose to and some, like “Native Son” (in which the teenage protagonist murders two young girls and it’s graphically described) because they were assigned. Whether or not I liked the books or parents approved of the books, it is not child abuse or grooming to assign them to a class.
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Not only that, many of these books are assigned BECAUSE these are the topics teens are struggling with. Having a book about a neutral, 3rd party character allows touchy subject matters to be brought up without embarrassing any one student or pointing fingers at an ethnic community. Teen pregnancy, multiple fathers/sexual partners, being a victim of child abuse, masturbation, and even neighborhood violence and murder subjects near and dear to teens. These books give a path to “aruge” a point or, what I think for many, is to realize the gravity of a crime. When an abused child reads a book about an abused child they think “no big deal” but then when they hear classmates talk about how depraved it is, they can come to realize something is wrong. When a child whose engaging in sex reads about the terrible consequences and issues they my be more careful in the future. I think very few see the issues and immoral depravity and say “Oh, hey, I need to get me some of that.”
 
quote=“Tis_Bearself, post:96, topic:454977, full:true”]
It’s a bit much to suggest that having students read books that are generally accepted as having literary value is “sexual abuse” or “grooming” them for perversions. Books that contain subject matter about masturbation, puberty, teenage sex, child abuse, and even murder have been part of high school curricula for decades. I read some of them because I chose to and some, like “Native Son” (in which the teenage protagonist murders two young girls and it’s graphically described) because they were assigned. Whether or not I liked the books or parents approved of the books, it is not child abuse or grooming to assign them to a class.
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I’m not sure I agree with your reasoning on this one. If an adult talked about sexual acts with my daughter in a progressively invasive way, we wouldn’t call it edgy and thought provoking. We would call it sexual abuse and grooming. I do not understand why we think it is different when it is in written form. It makes them uncomfortable. Half of the comments I received here talked about that reaction having happened to them. Not uncomfortable as in “this is an injustice in the world that needs to be confronted”, which is a discomfort that is ennobling, but uncomfortable as in a feeling of being harmed in some way intellectually or emotionally that leads to shame.

There are many things that are a part of society for decades at a time that were proven to be harmful.

Ok. How about this. Which could potentially cause more harm?
  1. Providing edgy, sexually explicit and suggestive material to adolescent children in schools.
  2. Providing great works of literature that are free from sexually explicit material to adolescent children in schools.
 
As many people here have informed me, they are going to face and encounter all of these themes in their lives. So does that necessarily mean they have to get indoctrinated in these themes in English class? Is English class the only point of encounter we have to prepare them for these themes? I thought English class was to encounter great literature, not to challenge social conventions and become savvy on the whole panopoly of sexual crimes and deviant behaviors. Yes, people need to explore these concepts. My kids do as their horizons broaden and they encounter more of the world and they ask about them and have concerns. At Church, at youth group, helping friends through problems, sharing experiences, watching the news. When something is difficult we seek out ways to help them process, and sometimes it is in one of these novels.

It’s like an unfolding awareness that blossoms into a beautiful human person if allowed to take its natural course. When I was little, my mom had these flowers that grew in green fuzzy pods. When they bloomed they were brilliant pinks and reds and oranges. One time my sister and I got impatient and we peeled off the fuzzy green pods so that we could see the flowers. We left them on the stems because we still wanted them to be in the garden. And the colorful petals were in there alright, all bound together tightly. We tried to pull the petals open because they looked so forlorn all closed up like that. But it tore off the petals so we decided to wait. But when we ran back out that afternoon the petals had wilted and become dull and began to be brown at the edges. The ones we had not tampered with opened over the next couple of days and were everything we had hoped they would be.

I guess what I am saying is that the sexual stuff is not necessary, and can be exceedingly harmful. It isn’t harmful every time. And it can be helpful in the right situation. But it can also be very harmful and it is not necessary. Unnecessary harm.

That is the essence, I suppose, for me. When children are in your care, should you not guard them from the threat of unnecessary harm? I don’t think ANYONE in that class benefitted from the passage from “The Highest Tide” in which the teenage boy visualized the attributes of his adult babysitter and “had his way with the sheets.” It wasn’t helpful! And it uses provocative language that becomes a temptation to and a justification for behaviors that can be very harmful to children.

This is just my attempt to articulate what my reaction is to this whole issue. I’m not saying anyone is saying any of these things, or supports these things, but more trying to present what these things would mean from my perspective. As so many of you have done from your own perspective. Which is the whole point of this dialog. For those that have forgotten. I could be wrong and you don’t have to agree. But I am not attacking anyone’s perspective or point of view. I am presenting my own.

Which is CLEARLY not safe to do.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
Not only that, many of these books are assigned BECAUSE these are the topics teens are struggling with. Having a book about a neutral, 3rd party character allows touchy subject matters to be brought up without embarrassing any one student or pointing fingers at an ethnic community. Teen pregnancy, multiple fathers/sexual partners, being a victim of child abuse, masturbation, and even neighborhood violence and murder subjects near and dear to teens. These books give a path to “aruge” a point or, what I think for many, is to realize the gravity of a crime. When an abused child reads a book about an abused child they think “no big deal” but then when they hear classmates talk about how depraved it is, they can come to realize something is wrong. When a child whose engaging in sex reads about the terrible consequences and issues they my be more careful in the future. I think very few see the issues and immoral depravity and say “Oh, hey, I need to get me some of that.”
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I agree. That is what Mary’s teacher did last year. All sorts of challenging, controversial topics. Racism, ego, war and violence, religious intolerance, euthanasia, bullying, broken homes, human trafficking. Short stories, novels, poems, biographies. Really tough concepts. That class explored who they are, who they want to become. They had to work hard at it.

They gained understanding of one another and of themselves. She had to defend her position on religion to the class. It was hard. My son is in that same class this year.
He has taken oppositional stances to the teacher’s world view and what is presented in the book on numerous occasions already. Once she made him defend the side he disagreed with in his writing and he was mad, but he learned so much!

I disagree wholeheartedly with some of the books. I haven’t protested at all because they explore both sides of the issues. My kids, in that literature class, have done what I think everyone here would want.

They did not have to read sexually explicit provocative material to do so. That is the difference! Sexually explicit material affects children’s neurochemistry and the development of their sexuality. No one has the right to do that to children.

https://www.google.co.uz/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/blog/real-healing/201208/overexposed-and-under-prepared-the-effects-early-exposure-sexual-content%3Famp

http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=psych_facpubs
 
And it seems like after you read some of this junk you really need to go to confession maybe for impure thoughts and impure actions… NOT you, just anyone especially a teen in school… Why would you want your child to be immersed in filth they have to confess???
 
I think the issue is that the books are seen by those in the literature world to have literary value or merit. I know I personally would not hit a dog in the butt with some of them, but I’m not an English major or children’s literature publisher.

It’s like how a painting of “The Rape of Europa” in the museum is seen to have artistic merit. If Europa was actually getting raped in front of you in person, it would be a crime. Similarly, a book with some sex scenes, violence or bad language, but that’s considered to have overall literary merit because of how it is written, its treatment of a subject, etc is not the same as somebody standing in the classroom full of students swearing or describing their latest sexual encounter.

There’s still a valid question as to whether all minor students should be required to read this material. Some of them may not be ready for it, and some parents may feel it conveys a message at odds with what they’re teaching their child. On the other hand, some students may be ready for it and may even relate to the subject matter if they or people they know have had similar experiences. It also helps students ponder questions of good and evil, as well as learning to look beyond the fact that a character has sex or commits murder on page 82 and instead focus on the overall theme and message and even in some cases moral of the work. The intent of the teacher is to make students think and learn, not to make them think murder or gang rape is okay, and as someone else said, nobody who comes away from these books is thinking “that sounds like fun, let’s go rape and murder.”
 
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The fact that this post was flagged, Josh, tells you all you need to know about these people.
 
SuperLuigi said:
The fact that this post was flagged, Josh, tells you all you need to know about these people.
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:roll_eyes:

I looked at it. It has namecalling–which is against forum rules. It’s not the theme of the post that’s the issue.
 
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