Getting Kids to Read
The parents in one Kansas school district have an interesting method to get high school students interested in literature: make it sound pornographic.
If you go to the web site for Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools and click on the link to one of 14 assigned works which this group wants removed from the district's curriculum, you will get this warning:
Warning
Some of the material in these assigned school books is extremely controversial and many people consider it objectionable or inappropriate for children. The content you are about to view contains adult material that may not be appropriate for all users. Before viewing this page you must read and agree to the following:
You are an adult (18 years or older) and have read and understand this warning.
You understand that the material may involve language, content and themes of an adult, objectionable or controversial nature.
IN NO EVENT WILL ClassKC.org BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND resulting from viewing or any other use of this material. If you agree, click here to continue.
And if you do click there, what depraved, explicit, lewd work do you learn about?
For one, Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." (Yes, the 1899 novella about a woman who questions her role in society, but who doesn't do anything more risque than kiss a man not her husband, if my dated recollections are correct.)
The Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools (also known as "ClassKC.org") note that, "The book was widely criticized for its frank, open discussion of the emotional and sexual 'needs' of women, which culminate in a romanticized suicide."
Hey, I say we all try to hold ClassKC.org liable for the damages resulting to us from being exposed to the notion that women have "needs."
Anyway, you can learn more about the ClassKC.org crusade from this Agape Press story; here are the highlights:
Concerned parents in one Kansas school district are seeking to get 14 books removed from high school reading lists because they contain obscenities, vulgar language, or sexually explicit material.
The effort is being led by parents with the group Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools, which believes students in Blue Valley schools are being required to read some novels that are pornographic in nature. However, the Blue Valley Board of Education is refusing to remove the controversial books from the district's high school curriculum.
Even the ClassKC.org site notes that the books aren't technically "required" reading, since any student can request an alternate selection. However, ClassKc.org feels that no students should read these books, since they are "vulgar," "indecent," "salacious," and may contain oral sex, bestiality, and the f-word. (Others books on the list include One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Beloved, and All the Pretty Horses).
Greg Motley, a spokesman for the parents group, says the board has a troubling moral worldview -- "and they're extremely sure that our worldview is not correct," he adds.
Damn them for not believing in the correctness of a worldview which holds that they are immoral!
Greg adds that parents in the community may be unwilling to take a stand and denounce the works of authors like Toni Morrison and Pat Conroy, because it could hurt the parents' bottom lines:
"It's a very difficult line to draw in the sand to say I'm going to make my kid walk out of this classroom," he says, "[because] I'm going to cause my kid to be ostracized by the group of peers that he values -- and secondly, that my business might suffer because of the adverse publicity that I receive."
Hey, nobody ever said that being a kook was easy.
But Greg isn't standing alone:
Motley says his group currently has 800 people on a petition saying the 14 books should be not read by any students in the Blue Valley School District.
Thanks to the write-ups by Ken's group, I anticipate that every teen in Blue Valley will want to read these books. Way to sell kids on literature!
2:54:13 AM 
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