Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Discounting Deities
School members in Mobile, Alabama have banned the 1963 novel, The Learning Tree, by acclaimed photographer, writer, composer, and Kansas native Gordon Parks. The Learning Tree is a popular and well-regarded autobiographical novel about a black family in 1920s Kansas.
NBC affiliate WPMI reports the novel was assigned as summer reading material by a teacher at Leflore High.
"The racial language that bothered me, the connotations racially, the explicit sexual overtones which are rampant and numerous. Then, the discounting of deities cursing and, then, you attach Jesus Christ to that," says school board member Reverend Fleet Belle.
"It's too suggestive for 9th graders to be reading. Matter of fact, I would say it's too suggestive for even a Senior in high school to be reading as literature," adds Belle.
WPMI reports that Leflore High Principal D.H. Robinson say she will personally screen every piece of required reading material at Leflore.
That way, students in Leflore can be sure they will never again be allowed to read anything that makes them think, because that would be dangerous.
NBC affiliate WPMI reports the novel was assigned as summer reading material by a teacher at Leflore High.
"The racial language that bothered me, the connotations racially, the explicit sexual overtones which are rampant and numerous. Then, the discounting of deities cursing and, then, you attach Jesus Christ to that," says school board member Reverend Fleet Belle.
"It's too suggestive for 9th graders to be reading. Matter of fact, I would say it's too suggestive for even a Senior in high school to be reading as literature," adds Belle.
WPMI reports that Leflore High Principal D.H. Robinson say she will personally screen every piece of required reading material at Leflore.
That way, students in Leflore can be sure they will never again be allowed to read anything that makes them think, because that would be dangerous.
