Culture School in Biloxi removes "To Kill a Mockingbird" from reading list - See, it makes students "uncomfortable"

This is so depressing. One of the most anti-racist books of our time, a work that teaches about equality and fighting injustice, isn't being taught, because kids are "uncomfortable" about the language.

Duh, isn't that the fucking POINT of the book? You're SUPPOSED to be angered by it! Sometimes, great literature is meant to make us upset and "uncomfortable". That's how we learn.

 

[Autopsy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States

The tenor of the early challenges changes dramatically over time, shifting with social issues of the day, but primarily with what's being pushed by the education system at any given point in time, library challenges aside. You'll find sex ed books for children (and 'how 2 gay sex' for highschoolers) are a significant number of the more recent ones.

If you're going to have books like these in school, you might as well go all the way. I want to see what would happen if you assigned Mason & Dixon or Gravity's Rainbow as Highschool reading, just as an experiment to see whether or not the U.S.'s current literature actually prepares people to read.
To find out if the current 'socially divisive, critical' curriculum actually does its job: getting people ready for something they may object to on every paragraph, or at least once per page. If these books teach them how to decipher odd prose, outdated language, and important subtext. If everyone left general education with these abilities, the completely frivolous challenges (like To Kill a Mockingbird) would simply disappear.

 

[Sable]

It's like the tards that complain whenever The Dambusters is shown because the fucking dog was called Nigger.

Lol, loads of people called pets that back then.

Sometimes several pets if they couldn't think of new names.

 

[SwanDive]

The book totally deserved it too for promoting rape culture. Fuck'n victim blaming Mayella. Whatever happened to "Listen and Believe". Atticus was just a sexist bigot.

 

[AnOminous]

If you're going to have books like these in school, you might as well go all the way. I want to see what would happen if you assigned Mason & Dixon or Gravity's Rainbow as Highschool reading, just as an experiment to see whether or not the U.S.'s current literature actually prepares people to read.

I'd hardly use those as the touchstone of a high school education, because those are difficult even for well-read adults. Mason & Dixon is actually more dense and convoluted than Gravity's Rainbow as Pynchon novels go. Maybe Crying of Lot 49, and even that's a stretch for high school.

They should at least be able to read books written in an accessible manner to an average person. You know, like To Kill a Mockingbird.

 

[The Great Chandler]

It sounds like an excuse to not bring up race in an Alabama town like that. Not trying to sound like a 60s hippie though.

 

[Autopsy]

I'd hardly use those as the touchstone of a high school education, because those are difficult even for well-read adults.
They should at least be able to read books written in an accessible manner to an average person. You know, like To Kill a Mockingbird.

That was my main point: If these books are "too hard" or "too controversial", how will the students ever be ready to read anything really that challenges their comprehension or beliefs?
I think we would all be well served if the stated goal of these sorts of curriculum was to read something at the level of difficulty and discomfort of Pynchon's works and the byproduct of that goal, even if it's not achieved, is the ability to read Harper or Twain.

 

[UptownRuckus]

Removing books from the schools...Hmm what's next? Burning them?

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Friendly reminder that Atticus Finch was never once stated to not be a racist. He's a lawyer, it was his job to defend a black man because a judge appointed him to be Tom's lawyer. He's a damn good lawyer, though, and that's what makes him admirable.

Regardless, it's still fucking stupid to ban the book just because it's making people uncomfortable, though their excuse is because characters say "nigger" in it. And this is coming from a Mississippi school district, no less.

 

[Apex Predator]

Only a Nazi would oppose banning books that make people uncomfortable. Ideological conformity and purity of thought is the most anti-fascist stance possible. Ignorance is strength.

I'm gonna go get drunk now while I'm still allowed to.

 

[Dysnomia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States

Technically, this is nothing new. However, whereas schools previously pulled the book for references to rape and offensive language, now they are doing it in fear "promoting racism" when that book is one of the most important text in treating others with equal justice, especially in the face of moral hysteria.

Books such as these educated people away from extremism or raving, and these administrators are removing them as if they were restraints to their current platforms, which are mostly ravings in themselves.

Either that, or the soccer moms just don't want to bring up nasty moments in history, when those moments are the ones that should be remembered to prevent them from being repeated.

These days teaching kids about equality means nothing when feelings might get hurt. This is why SJWs are so backwards. They have no capacity to understand the tenets they are clumsily attempting to preach. Because there are too many eggshells that might crack under their feet. So all they can do is stand there and REEEE about things they don't like until someone takes them away. Like a baby. Or a dog that doesn't like the vacuum cleaner.

 

[CWCissey]

Lol, loads of people called pets that back then.

Sometimes several pets if they couldn't think of new names.

Indeed. The actual dog was actually called Nigger too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger_(dog)

 

[Hiragana]

"It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you."
-Atticus Finch after being called a "nigger lover"

The quote is barely a hundred pages in.

As much as I hear them pine about the struggles of the American civil rights era, they don't really seem to grasp the amount of blood and sweat required to stand up against and work toward changing societal attitudes. To Kill a Mockingbird is a book deeply entwined with the time and culture it was written in. If it makes you uncomfortable to see the portrayal and use of language common to that period, that's a testament to how far your society have come and is an emotion which should be embraced rather than avoided.

 

[Linako 2.0]

we should just get rid of all the niggers from america, then there will be no more racism, lol.

 

[Fareal]

I should have an intellectual reaction to this, but my first reaction is just sadness that there are people who don't wamt their children to meet Atticus Finch.

And Boo Radley.

If you don't feel that Atticus Finch is someone for your children to admire.... well, I don't know. I don't know who you do want them to admire, if not someone who believed in justice and the rule of law and doing the right thing no matter how much pressure you came under to do the easy thing instead.

I don't know what it is you want your children to take away from their reading.

 

[Linako 2.0]

how will the students ever be ready to read anything really that challenges their comprehension or beliefs?

they don't.
they simply don't read anything beyond twitter and snapchat.
this is what they had us read in community college

It's a diary of a wimpy kid but with injuns and the first few pages was about masturbating

 

[Syaoran Li]

Wait, they're banning "To Kill A Mockingbird" because they think it promotes racism? Did they even read the damn book? Of course, this is in Mississippi, which is surprising given how conservative that state traditionally is.

I'd hate to see what books are banned in Portland or Brooklyn schools for being "problematic".

So now the SJW's are going after classic literature now. I'm not surprised but still I have lost all faith in humanity.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

they don't.
they simply don't read anything beyond twitter and snapchat.
this is what they had us read in community college

It's a diary of a wimpy kid but with injuns and the first few pages was about masturbating

That shit is like at 9th grade reading level.

 

[Apex Predator]

So now the SJW's are going after classic literature now. I'm not surprised but still I have lost all faith in humanity.

You write "now" as if this is new. The difference is that before, it was pretty much confined to the internet and nearly everyone around them told them they were nuts. But exhaustion is a powerful political tool. The same circles where they used to be told to shove it are now too tired and too afraid of ostracism to protest.

Or, well. Were. There's a backlash against this bullshit simmering on the left. It's only gonna take a couple important voices for an explosion. There are already a lot more nobodies willing to stand up to it than there used to be.