Dirty Books
So, okay. I teach literature. I teach it to college students who range from ages 18-65. I'm not peddling my ideas to children. I'm not trying to corrupt young minds. In fact, everything I teach qualifies as literature. True, Lolita is literature, but see...that's my point. I'm not making ten year olds read Lolita.
Okay, so I'm making adults read books. Some of them have scenes that are a bit racey. I'll admit to that, but here's the thing. Most of the stuff I assign isn't worse than an episode of Scrubs. Most television is far worse than anything I've ever asked anyone to contemplate. Have you seen the Meet Bob commercials? That's about a guy who can't get a hard-on.
And so, one would think anything less than Bob would probably not meet with much resistence, but you'd be wrong. I don't know if it's because it's written down, or because it's taught in a classroom, but suddenly the majority of my students start acting like they've got buckled hats. One of my students felt appalled that in a story we read a man went to a concert only to pick a woman up. My goodness!
What seems worse, please don't take this the wrong way, but the deep deep chauvenism that is produced by my female students is absolutely appalling. I say, "well, the woman doesn't have to go to a hotel with the guy," because I have this opinion that woman might be in charge of their sexuality, and I am replied to in such a way that let's me know that the man in the story is no better than a rapist, that the poor woman in the story aught to consider herself the ultimate victim, and that I aught to be ashamed of myself for so much as suggesting that what the man has done isn't really all that morally reprehensible and for assigning the story in the first place. A guy goes to a concert, sees a girl there, picks her up, whereupon they both go back to a hotel room and have sex. Is that really so deviant that it demands complete moral outrage?
I ask people to analyze these stories and I get page long diatribes about how offended the students are. When did this happen? I can't watch primetime television without at least one reference to sodomy, meanwhile if two people are so much as a bit randy in a book marked literature, I have to read pages upon pages of complaints.
Okay, so I'm making adults read books. Some of them have scenes that are a bit racey. I'll admit to that, but here's the thing. Most of the stuff I assign isn't worse than an episode of Scrubs. Most television is far worse than anything I've ever asked anyone to contemplate. Have you seen the Meet Bob commercials? That's about a guy who can't get a hard-on.
And so, one would think anything less than Bob would probably not meet with much resistence, but you'd be wrong. I don't know if it's because it's written down, or because it's taught in a classroom, but suddenly the majority of my students start acting like they've got buckled hats. One of my students felt appalled that in a story we read a man went to a concert only to pick a woman up. My goodness!
What seems worse, please don't take this the wrong way, but the deep deep chauvenism that is produced by my female students is absolutely appalling. I say, "well, the woman doesn't have to go to a hotel with the guy," because I have this opinion that woman might be in charge of their sexuality, and I am replied to in such a way that let's me know that the man in the story is no better than a rapist, that the poor woman in the story aught to consider herself the ultimate victim, and that I aught to be ashamed of myself for so much as suggesting that what the man has done isn't really all that morally reprehensible and for assigning the story in the first place. A guy goes to a concert, sees a girl there, picks her up, whereupon they both go back to a hotel room and have sex. Is that really so deviant that it demands complete moral outrage?
I ask people to analyze these stories and I get page long diatribes about how offended the students are. When did this happen? I can't watch primetime television without at least one reference to sodomy, meanwhile if two people are so much as a bit randy in a book marked literature, I have to read pages upon pages of complaints.
posted by Monstro D. Whale | 12:38 PM
1 Comments:
This cleansing of the system of any books that touched on 'sensitive' matters began in the 80's. I can remember when the school library suddenly had to get rid of lots of old classic books. The Catcher in the Rye, for example, was removed (and I agree with that, since that book had no place in elementary school). However, many books that were considered American classics were removed from the library, and... what... burned? Who knows. But that is when the literary cleansing of our educational system began.
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