Comments

1
Will they be dispensing Soma at the meeting? If so, I'm there, even if I'm forced to interact with all those Deltas and Epsilons.
2
Yeah you guys should totally go to the meeting, shout that woman down whenever she attempts to speak. Maybe you can force her to read the book she doesnt understand and even if she does, it wont change the fact that she still finds the word "Savage" to be offensive.
3
Sorry, I'm an Alpha Plus...I don't lower myself to that level
4
@2 I agree, has the mother even read Brave New World? She should have to hand in a book report prior to attending the meeting.
5
I don't know, rampant promiscuity, drug use, terrorism, suicide....we wouldn't want our 15 year olds to know anything about that, right?

Oh wait, that would be CNN for f*cks sake! Carry on.
6
Oh the irony, political correctness comes back to bite the politically correct in the arse.
7
@4

I dont think she has read the whole book. And even if she did, still wouldnt change the fact that she personally finds the word "Savage" to be offensive. Nothing you can do about it. Some people find the N word so offensive, doesnt matter what the context is.

8
Good god, all the other books on that list and THAT is the one she doesnt like? She should have to read them all, then the resulting head explosion would solve our problems. Lord of the Flies, Maus and the Kite Runner alone should do it.

I wonder if Mom enjoyed the book on the ninth grade reading list: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
9
What a dreary news morning. I think I'll get out of my torpor and set to leaving Seattle. I wrote a letter to the principal of Nathan Hale, telling her I thought she and her staff handled the complaints sensitively, but couldn't understand the escalation to the school district level, and asked if a Seattle Schools parent had as much control over her/his child's instructional reading curriculum as the offended parent has in limiting texts available to the whole district. She has not written me back.
10
@7, Huckleberry Finn is 11th grade, so the n word issue doesnt come up until then.
11
#8: according to a document in the paper chain leading up to this, the parent had problems with Lord of the Flies and The Tempest as well. It's harder to get Shakespeare off the aligned curriculum list. A solution I suggested would be a companion reading of Alexie's short story "The Sin Eaters," a comment on race relations at their worst in America. I sympathize with the intention of raising awareness of and sensitivity to Native Americans, to the point where I've started reading about it, but I don't understand the ploy of getting one book removed from the aligned curriculum list for the school district as a whole. The claim is that the one school her daughter attends has teachers who otherwise excel at language arts but lack the sensitivity training to explore the use of the word "savage." There are seventy-five novels on the tenth grade aligned curriculum list. Four of those novels could be covered in tenth grade language arts, OR the language arts teacher can choose a book off that list. It's not like every tenth grade language arts class in Seattle is forced to study the book.
12
Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet!
13
I would love to attend the meeting and do some shouting, but public testimony is severely restricted from the look of things. You have to have been one of the first 20 people to sign up to speak ahead of time, and those 20 people signed up long ago.

The only person who got on the list to talk about Brave New World is Noam Gundle, a science teacher from Ballard High. Any guesses as to his opinion on the matter?
14
Wait, where's Melissa adding her usual condecending blather to this topic? She's the EXPERT you know!
15
the School Board voted unanimously to keep BNW on the aligned curriculum list.

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