Perks banned in Glen Ellyn IL

[soulsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/perks-of-being-a-wallflower-glen-ellyn_n_3421967.html  

 

Ok, so this is one of the dumbest things I've seen. Apparently, the school board of Glen Ellyn IL (a suburb of Chicago) banned Perks

as parents objected to the "sexual content" of the book. Thanks to author Judy Blume, the books have been reinstated.   

 

Good to see Orwell's predictions are alive and well.

[ling]

This has happened to Perks a few times. As well as many other YA novels that deal with sexuality and teenagers.

talking a bit about his own experiences with being banned.

[Sacred_Path]

Hitler's Mein Kampf can't be read in German schools due to censorship, not even excerpts. This in a country that does its utmost to always remind people and especially students of its dark past; the only information many pupils are handed is "he was a natural speaker and the total material deprivation of vast numbers of Germans didn't help".

 

I know, the analogy seems way way off... but my point is that in the Western world, students often aren't trusted to deal with difficult/ ambiguous moral questions.

[ling]

No, I think the analogy is spot on. It just shows how we try to shy away from these difficult but very real subjects. As someone who has studied World War Two, specifically the Holocaust and effect on civilians, extensively, I find censoring a text such as Mein Kampf to be incredibly contradictory to the message the government and school systems should be sending, which is that it is important to be able to be exposed to something, even of a problematic subject matter, and reflect critically on the implications of what is presented. Censoring sex, drugs and history is not going to make those things go away.

[Sacred_Path]

Exactly. Antisemitism would be a great topic for students to explore for its social dynamics, since it happened in all walks of life, including bullying at schools. But we never seriously approached that subject apart from reading short stories that were looked at from a literary standpoint mostly. As I've heard, Perks (the book) also deals with things like rape, and I can say that I've never read a text in all my schoolyears that contained anything that even smelled of rape.

[Jonny Carinthia]

The problem is, that "Mein Kampf" is such a boring book to read, that you must have a good reason to read it. Otherwise you would throw it away after the first 20 pages - something many Germans did indeed during the Nazi aera. Of course, today you can read it from another point of view, but who would? I inherited a copy from my great-grandfather and it took me months to read it.
 

The ban in Germany has much to do with the unsolved copyright-problem and not with the content itself. The copyright (it belonged to Hitler himself until 1945) was trasferred to the state of Bavaria after the war like everything Hitler ever possesed. And the government there was not willing to grant new copies or prints because they did not want to make money out of it.

 

Edit: in the 1970s, a Austrian comedian, Helmut Qualtinger, made a reading of the most important parts of the book. This reading showed the stunned audience, what crap this book was. He did many "sold out"-readings in Austria and Germany and and the laughter of the audience remained stuck in the neck.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Jonny Carinthia

[Sacred_Path]

Edit: in the 1970s, a Austrian comedian, Helmut Qualtinger, made a reading of the most important parts of the book. This reading showed the stunned audience, what crap this book was. He did many "sold out"-readings in Austria and Germany and and the laughter of the audience remained stuck in the neck.

You can tell that it's "crap" from reading even a small excerpt, which just furthers my confusion why it's not allowed in schools (someone once sent me a text file). It's certainly not a devilishly clever device that could seriously influence anyone today IMO. It's toilet paper material, not a dark grimoire.

[cbmac12]

Oh Dee, we have had a few books banned too in ES...Judy Blume was some and even had Red Badge of Courage banned...we got them reinstated.

 

Perks is AWESOME...the reason they wanted it banned was because it brings to light truth of adolescence. Glad it came back to that area.