Of all the novels I read in school one of the few I remember is To Kill a Mockingbird (what was Lord Jim about? Was it an early Startrek novel???).
To Kill a Mockingbird is a bit hokey but it does stick in the mind, and it's a good book for Grade 10. And certainly it is not racist. It is strongly anti-racist (so much so that the 'lesson' detracts a bit from the story).
But now To Kill a Mockingbird is being taken out of Canadian classrooms because intolerant bigots use racial language in the novel.
What madness! In a world of honour killings, AIDS and popular music that happily uses vile racial and anti-women language we have to ban a book that suggests racism is wrong and people should act in accordance with high principles?
8 comments:
Seriously? This is ridiculous!
I was wondering if you have a source for this? I heard about it elsewhere but I'm trying to look a bit more depth at the issue (as well as how to fight back against it, if possible. Thanks, idiotic parents, for subjecting everyone else's children to your messed up ideas of justice.)
By the time students are in grade-seven, they should be learning how to deal with reading and other materials that may be considered racist or just plain unpleasant. This includes having class discussions about events in history and making comparisons to today. Discussions also involve how we deal with life's unpleasantries.
SD BEd
Where is this being done? Seriously. It's the best novel I've ever read showing the full sides of the racial issues in the south, with a kind yet honest view about it and even a message of hope at how those attitudes change with experience and time through the actions of flawed but decent people.
How sad. I would like to know where this book is being banned.
agreed and should be kept in the classrooms.
It amazing how many decisions are made that affect our children by people who have no children. Who are they to say what should be read in schools. If I recall, we all read it in school and somehow survived it. Get a grip everyone, our kids have to grow up! We can't keep them 'safe' from everything. They have to learn too!
I believe it was removed from the grade 9 curriculum in Ontario about 12 years ago. So, you are a bit slow on this one. The 'new' Ontario curriculum reflects a much more diverse cultural base.
BRAMPTON — A verbal complaint from one parent prompted one high school principal to pull To Kill a Mockingbird from a Grade 10 English course.
But the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board vows the principal at Brampton's St. Edmund Campion Secondary School hasn't banned the book from the school nor has the board banned the book.
"The book has not been banned," board spokesman Bruce Campbell told the Sun today. "This is a board approved text and it's one of a number of texts that schools have the option of selecting.
"Lots of our schools use this novel and they've used it for years."
Published in 1960, the book by Harper Lee won a Pulitzer Prize and is considered a classic of modern American literature. It chronicles a southern lawyer's struggle against racial injustice in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama.
The book was turned into a film starring Gregory Peck.
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