Abuse of Power in NH School District CONCERNING!

[zx12y]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HC2...&feature=share

Extremely graphic sexual language being taught as part of a school lesson? This is mass molestation. The school district needs to held fully liable for this lack of oversight.

[Parker]

how is that molestation

why was that dude arrested

literally every human in that video is stupid

[blackmage_nuke]

While I think we shouldnt sheild our children from sexually explicit material, I think it is something that should be persued through their own choice and not something they should be forced to do or fail. I can see why some 14 year olds may not be comfortable reading or discussing sexual matters and should not be forced to do so beyond the necesary informative safety precautions. The child (not the parent) should be given a choice of exemption from the text and required to read a different assigned text with similar themes. I think this should apply to any subject that isnt about hard fact (art, music, english). If I had a child and they were forced to write an essay on a rap song about bitches in the club or tits in a painting and my child was uncomfortable with doing so I would object for them as an individual student.

If someone was talking to you about sex (even if they dont mention anyone specific) and you told them you were uncomfortable and asked them to stop and they didn't (or you wanted to leave but they were in a position of authority to deny you as such) I think that can be considered sexual harrassment and I dont think it should be any different in a school.

As to the video I think the guy overreacted but he wouldnt have gotten his desired result otherwise and the school wouldve just ignored him, whereas now its a media thing.

[Slothy]

I'd just like to point out that if the book talked about people murdering or even torturing each other in graphic detail, I doubt any of the parents would have batted an eye.

[blackmage_nuke]

I'd just like to point out that if the book talked about people murdering or even torturing each other in graphic detail, I doubt any of the parents would have batted an eye.

I think they did. That's why there arent any books about gratuitous torture in the curriculum anymore (that I can think of).

As for murder, I think by 14 almost everyone knows that people die and sometimes other people cause it.

[zx12y]

WOW I Didn't expect to see apologists on this one. Do you guys have any idea of what just happened? The school is not going to issue any type of liability for this type of oversight unless the issue is pressed. They are trying to misdirect attention towards the arrested parent instead of the real offended parties. The offender is getting let off free.

Of course this is sexual harassment or molestation. It's not the nature of public education to immerse students in a variety of different radical forms of expression, where do we draw a line between a balance between liberal education and grooming children to be sex slaves and tools of violence?

[The Man]

There is no conceivable universe in which a sexually explicit lecture counts as molestation. It may be questionable at best but your sheer hysteria about this topic is likely to prevent anyone from giving the slightest bit of a trout about it and, if anything, is likely to dissuade people from agreeing with you.

[escobert]

NH is full of full on idiots. Live free or die my ass. Why isn't everyone there dead yet? I hate that I must cross the Connecticut every day to work in that god awful state.

[Shorty]

I haven't watched the video because I'm at work. Is it a textbook, a lecture, or literature they are reading in class as a sort of read-along project? Either way, it's possible that the language may be inappropriate, but calling it molestation is a joke. Have you ever been subjected to molestation? The two aren't even remotely comparable.

While I think we shouldnt sheild our children from sexually explicit material, I think it is something that should be persued through their own choice and not something they should be forced to do or fail. I can see why some 14 year olds may not be comfortable reading or discussing sexual matters and should not be forced to do so beyond the necesary informative safety precautions. The child (not the parent) should be given a choice of exemption from the text and required to read a different assigned text with similar themes. I think this should apply to any subject that isnt about hard fact (art, music, english). If I had a child and they were forced to write an essay on a rap song about bitches in the club or tits in a painting and my child was uncomfortable with doing so I would object for them as an individual student.

If someone was talking to you about sex (even if they dont mention anyone specific) and you told them you were uncomfortable and asked them to stop and they didn't (or you wanted to leave but they were in a position of authority to deny you as such) I think that can be considered sexual harrassment and I dont think it should be any different in a school.

This I disagree with. School isn't all about math, science and english and you can just choose to not learn about anything outside these realm of these three subjects. If the student is uncomfortable, measures should be taken to see that they are made to feel comfortable, which should include removing them from the classroom if need be, but I think that sexual education is important.

edit: oh, you mean outside the generally informative sex ed. Okay, sure, I can agree with that.

[Madame Adequate]

WOW I Didn't expect to see apologists on this one. Do you guys have any idea of what just happened? The school is not going to issue any type of liability for this type of oversight unless the issue is pressed. They are trying to misdirect attention towards the arrested parent instead of the real offended parties. The offender is getting let off free.

Of course this is sexual harassment or molestation. It's not the nature of public education to immerse students in a variety of different radical forms of expression, where do we draw a line between a balance between liberal education and grooming children to be sex slaves and tools of violence?

Well gee, one is reading some books and analyzing their content in a critical fashion with the aim of increasing their understanding of the world, and of increasing the sophistication of their understanding of art and culture, whilst the other is grooming children to be sex slaves and tools of violence. I think that might be where the main difference lies.

As someone who has actually been molested for real I can assure you that there are no parallels to be drawn between the written word and the actual crime of molestation.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

To answer your question, Shorty, the offending material was a book called Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. The one page in the book everyone is up in arms about in the video is a sex scene between two high schoolers that's explicit, I guess. The scene had spoilered for sexual descriptions a couple mentions of the guy's erection, describing the guy "pumping" into the girl, and talking about semen pooling on the ground. Anyone who would read the scene should know that at least some parents would be pretty uncomfortable with it, and the issue seems to be that students had the book before parents ever got a notice of the book's content. They were given a waiver after the students had the books for a week (if I understood the complaints in the video), and the description in the waiver didn't really align with the offending material.

From what I understand, this sexually graphic material was only on one page of the novel. From my research, the whole novel is about a school shooting, detailing the before and after of the event. Bullying is a major issue explored throughout the text. Based on that basic summary, it could make for a pretty interesting and important discussion in the classroom. Was this scene talked about at all in the classroom? Were the students even supposed to read that scene? All we're getting from the video is the perspective of the upset parents, so I can't say I know the whole story, and perhaps it was something the dad blew out of proportion. Based on the descriptions from the parents, it does seem like the whole thing wasn't handled very well by the school. But again, we are getting a pretty biased perspective with that.

As for whether he should have been arrested, that's a whole different matter. He was allotted two minutes to talk like everyone else, and he exceeded that time and was asked to leave I think. He then eventually came back and started ranting about it again. I've seen school board meeting videos like this before, and I always think that the people should probably have just been escorted out of the building. I don't really get why they are arrested.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I don't know of great way to avoid problems like this. I think it's really important to challenge minds, especially young minds, by reading different types of literature and different ideas. Sometimes simply the act of thinking about things can make you more comfortable with your own thoughts and coming to terms with the changes in your state of mind as you develop. It can help you find your voice, and learn to face difficult, strange, or uncomfortable things that you will eventually see in your own personal life.

I also know that everyone has a different opinion on what is appropriate, and what isn't.

The best I can think of is having a list of required reading or suggested reading with a description of the over all theme for the book, and perhaps particular passages that may "challenge" the reader in certain ways. Then the kids and parents can pick a book they're both comfortable with.

I know this would mean more involvement by parents in working with their kids, and more effort on the part of teachers to be familiar with all of the works. It's not perfect, but I think it's an idea they should be refined and implemented.

[Slothy]

I'd just like to point out that if the book talked about people murdering or even torturing each other in graphic detail, I doubt any of the parents would have batted an eye.

I think they did. That's why there arent any books about gratuitous torture in the curriculum anymore (that I can think of).

As for murder, I think by 14 almost everyone knows that people die and sometimes other people cause it.

The same can be said of sex and everything that was actually described in that referenced section of the book.

And who said anything about things like violence or torture being gratuitous? They may be an integral part of the plot in a book worth reading and analyzing. I may have been stretching a bit to mention torture, but I know for a fact that a number of books we read in high school had quite a bit of violence in them. But almost no one would look at the violent scenes in any of them and say they shouldn't be read or that you should even have to notify parents about the fact they're being read in advance.

Having not read the particular book in question here, I can't say that this sex scene is gratuitous. What I can say is that reading and analyzing a book which may realistically depict teenage relationships, whether functional or dysfunctional, has value to every single teenage human being alive today. So the fact that it has an explicit sex scene doesn't matter to me at all. What matters is that scenes context with the rest of the book. But I don't think anyone here would actually try and argue that there wouldn't be more outcry over the sex than over violence regardless of context.

And to the OP, as others have said, comparing asking kids to read this to sexual assault or molestation is more than a bit of a stretch. Saying that having kids read a book with a scene like this is tantamount to grooming them to be sex slaves and tools of violence is outright absurd unless you have some evidence to back up that claim.

[blackmage_nuke]

The main problem with a list of books is that the class cant study the text as a whole and the teacher's attention is further divided amongst them.

And I agree calling it molestation is a bit much.

I thought gratuitous meant something else.
I know I read violent books at that age but I dont recall anything with excessive violence actually being on the required reading list until the last two years of highschool and even then it was only because the subject of crime fiction was chosen out of the pool of available subjects and there were only 5 people in that class.

I dont know how other education systems worked but in ours there were times when we had to chose our own text to analyse as long as they fit the overall vague theme outlined in the curriculum (Journey, Change, that sort of thing) and I think if you want to chose a more mature text then more power to you but there are plenty of texts without excessive violence or sex that are worth discussing and exploring as a basis for further self chosen reading.

I think it is a problem that society has an easier time accepting violence than sex but I think the main problem in this topic comes from the education system, not society

[Old Manus]

I've seen passages just as explicit in Shakespeare at school. Sexual repression all up in this bitch.