In yet another move designed specifically to get me riled up, local Kansas parents are trying to get the Blue Valley (Overland Park, KS) school board to take many many books off the required reading list. There are too many to name here, so I'll just point you to their poorly-designed website which makes liberal use of the bold tag.

Kansas parents are living in a nonexistent fantasy world where they believe things like the following statement:

While textual descriptions of heterosexual sex, oral sex, homosexual sex, anal sex, rape, and incest are not generally classified as pornography because they don't contain images, it's undeniable that descriptions of sexually-explicit scenes helps develop an appetite for more of the same.

Oh really? I recall reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in high school and being horrified at the graphic descriptions of rape and incest. I don't recall ever thinking "rock on, I gotta get me some of that". The fact that parents think this is an undeniable fact just shows how absolutely completely out of touch they are with the real world.

And then there is this fantastic argument, which has its own page:

Knowing that more than one out of three 5th through 12th graders in Blue Valley have considered suicide (37.5% according to an article in the Kansas City Star), wouldn't it be wise to give required reading assignments that promoted hopeful, uplifting, and positive messages?

They go on to condemn books like Lord of the Flies for giving teenagers the impression that "life is meaningless" (have they ever met a teenager? Most of them believe this already) and House on Mango Street for this fantastic reason:

Not only do the kids hate this book, it is written at a very low level providing little literary challenge.

So kids should only have to read books they like? In that case, I would have read about three or four of the books that were assigned to me in high school. Maybe the kids should get to choose what books they read, then gives themselves an A for effort? That will give them a warm, fuzzy feeling that they've achieved so much, and then they can go on their paper route and drink lemonade with Wally and the Beaver.

And finally, I leave you with this gem from the website:

Many psychologists say that boys are typically 2-3 years less mature than girls until their early 20s. In other words, the current content of the Communication Arts program is probably having an even greater negative impact on our boys than our girls.

That, my friends, is what we call a logical fallacy. Perhaps these parents, instead of trying to Nazify the English program, should go back to school and take some classes in logical reasoning. Either that or web design.

Posted by: rkc at January 11, 2005 10:17 PM

Posted by: Amy at January 13, 2005 2:21 PM