Thanks Leila

I specifically did not read this on Friday because I was having a Happy Baking Day and didn't want to switch into Angry Rant Mode. Decided to read it this morning. And then all the posts about it.

Leila, why do you hate me so much to do this to me?

I'm so angry I'm shaking enough to spill my tea. My Tea!

Can't find angry music....

I can accept that people are snobs. I can accept that they think if it's not high literature they think it's not worth reading, and therefore not worth teaching. I'm used to this flavor of stupid.

I understand that adults have no concept that if a kid is forced to read something that he/she cannot relate to he/she will associate "reading" with "sucks" and this is as much a product of how it is taught as well as content of reading.

But this I could not let slide:
-From reply 'how to keep a child childish-
When it comes to selecting texts for middle school and high school, I'll take Hemmingway, H.G. Wells and the rest any day over what some politically correct, moralizing modern author would have kids read. I want my kids to have a literary experience (for cultural literacy's sake; for the discovery of philosophical ideas; for the witnessing of well written prose; etc.) and it gauls me to think that what they'll get is a lesson in how to cope with troubling teen issues. If they want to teach this, and I'm not saying they shouldn't, they should have a weekly 'teen dilemmas' class.

Is this class going to have such units as "Suicide: Don't Do it" and "Suze is a Punkrocker: Why Suze Cuts Herself" and "Having Your Room and All Your Belongings Destroyed by Your Father: Why Johnny Should Get Good Grades" and "Running Away: Your Step-Dad's Not Mad, He's Just Adjusting"?

Are you f**king joking me? Because Sex Ed is received so well by most communities I can imagine how well a class containing 'teen dilemmas' like drugs, rape, abuse, depression, and SEX would be received. God forbid they read books about characters dealing with these dilemmas. Just have a class that says Don't Let This Happen to You! or Make Sure to Tell an Adult!, because it's never the adults in the kids lives who are the problems. Because reading about a character, even a fictional character, can't possibly make someone feel less alone or that he/she didn't cause these problems, or that maybe there is some hope. Of course these books have absolutley nothing else to add other than their "issues". They have no life philosophy, no way to help, nothing to do with social inequalities or ingrained social apathies.

I think I'll have to come back to this later. It happens when a rant gets so big it starts to lose it's coherance in my head and just becomes a jumble of screaming.