![]() ![]() The book depicts violent exploits (it is war, after all), a scene in a whorehouse, and an act of gang rape by Canadian soldiers. Indeed, The Wars is not of the same creed as Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Why? In a meeting with board trustees, one parent remarked: “The book includes a number of very explicit and detailed descriptions of sexual encounters, most of them exploitive and violent.” It is “inappropriate to be presented to a class of young people,” she said. Parents in the Owen Sound area of Ontario are petitioning to have the book removed from all classrooms under the Bluewater District School Board’s jurisdiction. The latest target in this already-tired tirade is Timothy Findley’s The Wars, an award-winning Canadian novel about a young officer fighting in World War I. Further to that, some have suggested that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is far too controversial for the classroom and heaven help you if you let an adolescent of faith near The Handmaid’s Tale. Lest their teenagers suddenly become privy to the knowledge that the world is not, in fact, butterflies and rainbows, these guardians decide that books such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn can’t be taught unless all of its dirty words are removed. Every once in a while, a keen group of helicopter parents-or else, an overzealous collection of educators-decides that classic novels are no longer suitable for the classroom. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |