Red State 'Values' Watch: Banning Books in 'Bama

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As usual, I agree with Aldeth. He is right when he points out that a key issue is just 'what' you would even teach about some of these topics. Personally, I think there are just too many religions and sub-religions these days that it would be impossible to do any of them justice in the mainstream education system. Therefore, I would suggest that very little religious content should be included in normal schools. If parents want them to learn about the family religion then they can send their kids to Sunday school or a special religious school. But to be fair to everyone, the religious content would have to be excluded from the national exams.

Hey, I just spotted this:

Don't let Splunge or any of the other accountants on these Boards hear you disparage accounting! There are plenty of contentious accounting issues out there that raise pretty heated debates. Who needs homosexuality and creationism when you could be debating the worth of intangible assets on the balance sheet or pondering the International Financial Reporting Standard on the Fair Value of Financial Instruments? I mean, is a life insurance contract an investment or an insurance contract - or a weird combination of the two? Yeah - it's a debate you DON'T want them to start up.

 

That's the point I've been arguing when I wasn't being pulled off topic. And after College or University, there is usually more to concern yourself with. The state of Alabama is simply moving their line to a more conservative place than most states.

 

Gnarfflinger,

I honestly don't think we would have had a discussion on here if the bill had only intended that books containing homosexual acts were to be banned up to high school level (Age 16?). (Presumably they are anyway if all books with sexual contact are banned.) The quotes in the orriginal post seem to indicate that any book with a gay character will be baned, up to and including university level. I somehow doubt that all books with gay characters will detail sexual acts, whether of a hetero- or homo-sexual manner. And to be honest, I don't see why anything should be banned at Univesity level

 

Sorry for going entirely off-topic here, but I have just been alerted to a grievious act of blasphemy, and I am compelled to respond.

By "safe", I assume Chandos means "dull". Well, Mr. Excitement, let me tell you - Harbourboy summed it up very nicely. And if you need further evidence of the thrills-a-minute nature of accountancy, just check out this.

"Safe" my a$$.

 

Then why the hell has this topic raged on for three full pages of posts? If that is all we were discussing then isn't everyone in agreement here? As carcaroth said, the issue clearly seems to be that any book containing any character that is a homosexual should be banned - which I disagree with - while generally the public view says not to allow school aged children to read books containing sexual acts - which I do agree with.

 

Well, we would also need to figure out what constitutes the description of a sexual act, and what constitutes acceptable innuendo, or perhaps even an acceptable description of a sexual act. I read 1984 in high school, and that contained a rather graphic sex scene (tho not nearly as anatomically graphic as, say, Bill O'Reilly's "Those who Trespass"), and you can find plenty of sexual innuendo in most serious works of literature, even the Canterbury Tales. So the question is, how do you draw the line? Is it the presence of a few select descriptions of anatomy? It seems to me that a decision on age appropriateness would have to take a number of factors into consideration, not merely the presence of a few offending words or descriptions.

As a junior in HS, 1984 was no problem for me, tho it might not have been the best thing to read say in 6th grade. At the same time, I think we're again drastically underplaying on these boards how much we knew about sex by the time we reached HS, and if you recall, how many people were actually engaging in sex. Strangely enough, and in direct contradiction to the Alabaman instinct to censor whatever it doesn't approve of, the kids I knew who had the most sophisticated and adult understanding of sex were the most likely *not* to engage, while the ones who were the most ignorant were the most likely to make mistakes. Note, for example, the much higher rates of teenage pregnancy and abortion in Texas than in Massachusetts. This sort of thing, for me, is yet more proof that sex education is vital to a public school curriculum. The more a kid knows about sex, the less it seems like "forbidden fruit," and the easier it is for them to understand that the consequences of sex are very real, and not simply another arbitrary adult rule to rebel against.

 

Wow, Bion, great point. Come to think of it, certainly by the time most students reach high school, all of them know about sex, and many are engaging in sex. Are many of us guilty of being old fuddy-duddies?

I also read 1984 when I was a junior in high school, although I don't remember any explicit sex scenes, although I vaguely remember something about her "throwing her sash to the side just as he dreamt she would", so that certainly suggests that there was sex in the book, even if it wasn't graphically detailed.

 

There was the scene with the rats in the womans groin iirc, that could probably be viewed as a sex scene and not a torture scene by some people.

 

The reason this has been such a hot button topic is that the state of Alabama wants to go beyond what I was willing to agree to, both in what to remove and age restrictions on content. I have been defending their right to do so, despite the fact that others don't agree with that position.