Abuse of Power in NH School District CONCERNING!

[Scotty_ffgamer]

There are teachers that actually do have lists of books that students can pick from to focus on. This can be done through literature circles, where you split the students up into something like 4 groups, each with a different book. There is also the reading workshop model where students have a lot of choice over what they read. I'm still a little iffy on how the reading workshop model works, but I know several teachers who have found good success with this model. In any case, it is something I think popping up more frequently now, sharky, to some success.

[Pumpkin]

I think I'm probably most on board with blackmage_nuke on this one. Thinking of this as a parent, if my son came to me and was genuinely uncomfortable with the content, I would ask that he have a different reading assignment if he had legitimate reason. And I mean really uncomfortable, not feeling a bit awkward because some scenes in some books I've read or movies I've seen have done that, but I was okay with them. On the other hand, scenes that trigger some of my mental health issues I will stop reading because there is no reason to put myself through that, and if a student has such issues they should have the choice to step away from it.

Overall though, I'm very much against a lot of the censoring done in schools. Kids need to be able to think and examine and analyze and censoring everything often gets in the way of that. I don't care if there's a sex scene in a book, especially for 14 year olds, because a lot of them have sex and the others know what it is. A book talking about a teenager might have some sex in it, I'm really not outraged by that. When I was 14 we were reading some books with some heavy violent and sexual content in order to examine different things, such as distopian societies, consequences of ones actions, psychological issues, among other things. Some of them were hard to read, but that was the point. It made us think about things. It got us involved in the story.

Anyways, I haven't read the book so its hard for me to say exactly how inappropriate it may or may not have been.

[Parker]

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?

are you a troll or what?

how is a sexually explicit book in a school ANYTHING like molestation or grooming children? that statement is so ignorant I'm almost offended.

the school is absolutely at fault for not letting him say his piece, I will agree with you on that for sure. hence why i said everyone in that video was stupid. but if you think that a graphic sex scene in a book is warping children's minds then you're a big silly head. (sorry to use such vulgar terminology, i hope i haven't molested you).

[blackmage_nuke]

When I was 14 we were reading some books with some heavy violent and sexual content in order to examine different things, such as distopian societies, consequences of ones actions, psychological issues, among other things. Some of them were hard to read, but that was the point. It made us think about things. It got us involved in the story.

I think at that age I read The Giver and Brave New World which were pretty tame as dystopias go, but I read 1984 in my 20's and I loved it but it really freaked me out. I honestly think if I was made to read 1984 when I was 14 it would have traumatised me. Im not really making any sort of point here, just giving an anecdote.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

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.

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.

I realize that, which is why I said it wasn't perfect. Just an idea I think deserves more thought and consideration. Schools could perhaps offer online packets tailored to the book of the student's choosing that points out scenarios in the book, and asks them to write about their take on the subject. The teacher could cover broad ideas that are common in literature, literary methods, or certain archetypes, and ask the student to find and give examples of that in their book. Things like that.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

When I was 14 we were reading some books with some heavy violent and sexual content in order to examine different things, such as distopian societies, consequences of ones actions, psychological issues, among other things. Some of them were hard to read, but that was the point. It made us think about things. It got us involved in the story.

I think at that age I read The Giver and Brave New World which were pretty tame as dystopias go, but I read 1984 in my 20's and I loved it but it really freaked me out. I honestly think if I was made to read 1984 when I was 14 it would have traumatised me. Im not really making any sort of point here, just giving an anecdote.

I find that interesting. We did read 1984 in school. It was freshman year I think, maybe sophomore. It never occurred to me that someone would have such a visceral reaction. It's nice to hear Scotty say the idea is of a book list is catching on, because maybe it could help avoid things like that.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I think it also honestly depends on the school and the district as well in terms of the whole reading list idea. Some schools can be pretty strict with the curriculum they want taught even to the point of having essentially scripts they should follow with every lesson. I'm sure that extreme is pretty rare, but I'm not sure I had much flexibility at where I student taught. It's hard to say since my teachers I worked with had specific books they wanted me to cover, but I'm pretty certain those books were mandated by the school as well.

In any case, I'm pretty sure lit circles, text sets, reading workshop, etc are all at least things popularly taught in colleges now. It was a big focus in my Education classes. I'm a big proponent on maximizing student choice and parental involvement so I at least like to hope these ideas are somewhat widespread.

[~*~Celes~*~]

if there is such a problem with it and the book is really THAT vital to the curriculum, the teacher could just take a sharpie to the offending scene and black it out. That way if someone REALLY wants to read it, they have to get their own. Or something? *shrug* I mean, it's just a sex scene. It's not like they're showing pictures or a video.

[fire_of_avalon]

Real problem is we're teaching Jodi Picoult. I mean what?

Also I find that to be too sexually explicit for most fourteen year-olds. Sure some can handle it. Most probably would be disturbed or titillated. Some may have read that without even knowing what sex is. I can see this being read in a senior class but not a freshman class.

[fire_of_avalon]

I didn't know what sex was until I was 11 and that was only because I found my aunt's dirty porno book she hid under the microwave in my grandma's house (IN MY GRANDMA'S HOUSE.) I definitely knew people in high school who were kind of fuzzy on the details until we had sex ed. I am sure it still happens - I have coworkers with kids that age who point blank REFUSE to talk to their kids about sex because they're scared to death the kids will IMMEDIATELY have unprotected sex and hundreds of babies.

I'm not saying that the community has to protect that way of thinking, I think that's a stupid way of thinking personally, but I also think early exposure a discussion about sex should be... well a lot more professional than that. Let's have sex ed then let's talk about risky sexual behavior and why it isn't worth it.

[The Man]

Hey, at least it's not Ayn Rand.

Part of me wonders if the religious conservatives who are okay with Nineteen Eighty-Four being taught in schools because anti-communism would be as okay with it if they realised Orwell was a lifelong democratic socialist who opposed capitalism just as much as he opposed communism, and wrote the book as an allegory against all kinds of totalitarianism.

[fire_of_avalon]

My concern is primarily for the risky sexual behavior, not so much the sex itself. "They had sex" isn't as troubling to me as "they were intoxicated and had sex in which the female may have given an ambiguous revocation of consent which the male ignored. Afterward she cleaned up the aftermath and was more concerned about carpet stains than what just happened to her." While it's true I don't know the full context of the passage (perhaps it was an admonishment?) I do think that a lot of 14 year-olds aren't going to discuss it in a mature fashion and, unfortunately, some may even consider that type of sexual event the status quo.

I was 14 once!

Also we didn't look at warty genitals, but I think demonstrating the consequences of risky sexual behaviors is a good thing because teenager brains are still developing and they can't really do much comparative analysis of risk and reward. Sex ed teaches (or should teach us) to know your sex partners. Use protection. Avoid warty genitals. Without the full context of the passage, again I can't really determine the authors intent, but the end of the scene is pretty clear that the female character is normalizing what I read as a moderately violent event. That, to me, is dangerous to expose to adolescents who are more apt to agree and normalize than question and reject.

[Crop]

Extremely graphic sexual language being taught as part of a school lesson? This is mass molestation.

Since this is a serious thread in General Chat, I wanted to take advantage of the situation and make a joke, but I see you already beat me to it.

[Jiro]

If we stopped being so uncomfortable about sex and stopped making it taboo, maybe we could educate our kids properly and not have them be uncomfortable with natural parts of humans and human society. I didn't have access to a computer and the internet in the same way as many kids do today but even at like age 12 I still had found out about sex and all sorts of other trout online. It wasn't all accurate or reputable either, so let's quit the bulltrout and teach our kids properly. And teach them early, so that they're not getting knocked up at 15, just one year after the parent freaks out about sexual content in the school curriculum. Appalling.

[zx12y]

I am appalled by the discussion taking place. There is absolutely no critical analysis here to be spoken of, just a bunch of well-trained citizens licking the boot of authority.

Have we all forgot how to be civil people who assert themselves within the community? There is a liability issue here that is being swept under the rug. We are all being distracted by the lawyer and content of the book, but forgetting that their is a pedophile out there who is getting away with handing out sex pamphlets to children. The school board is just protecting the power of guilty people above them.

This is a horrible precedent to set. Notice how they have a 2-minute rule in place? That is because so many people came to address the controversy. Now a precedent has been set that the school may create issues and set itself up for an advantage in the political process because of its own shortcomings. Classic create a problem, solve a problem bulltrout.

All of you denying this is nothing like molestation are sadly mistaken. That is to be expected, since child abuse occurs regularly and people readily allow it to happen since people tend to be great at only focusing on
themselves. A better charge would be sexual solicitation of a minor, child pornography, or sexual harassment, but all the libtards here are confusing the issue by nitpicking my choice of words in abeyance to preconceived
concepts about love and violence, failing to recognize state-based violence.

People who are molesters often have build a rapport with the child, much like an authority figure would. This is much different than watching porn on a computer or movie with sex scenes (it was much more eliciting for myself, at least). Can you imagine reading this passage out loud as a group in class? These are instructions from an authority figure on how to repeatedly have promiscuous sex. This text simply normalizes unhealthy sexual behavior in such a way that victims of molestation would have a hard time dissecting the truth of their abusive
reality.

And since it has come this far, I should just go ahead and assert that I myself am a male who has been molested, so I understand the various forms of molestation and types of manipulations that might go into exposing vulnerabilities in children. The school just planted a huge seed in developing minds. I give a huge smurf you to
everyone defending this type of trout. This event was most likely a PSY-OP of sorts, and my thoughts go out to all the impressionable minds affected by this.

If after this book even one child gets an STD, gets pregnant, ruins their relationships with parents, etc. then the cost of the lesson was not worth it at all. There is no moral utility in this lesson except as a wake-up call to those
who haven't yet realized they are being raped by authority in general.

In case any of you missed it, the guy being hauled off was a lawyer. The cop is obviously a blind narcissist by saying things like "you don't know the law" and "stop resisting". See how difficult it is for the populace to assert themselves? Many reasonable parents would allow a professional such as himself to represent the issue, but that becomes an impossibility when we allow our freedom of speech to be trampled. I have tried to raise the issue with the proper authorities of the locale and have been getting the reach-around.