Censorship
The English Journal article we read was certainly interesting. While I do realize that censorship is an issue, especially self-censorship, I want to repeat that I think cases of English teachers being reprimanded, or heaven-forbid, fired, for teaching something supposedly "inappropriate" for students are extremely rare. I do not want to downplay legitimate concerns, I am also just not wanting to fan the flames of fear. There have been studies of secondary English teachers that show that they believe, for the most part, that they have a great deal of freedom.
Yes, there are many, many texts and materials that I would not show to secondary students. A couple of examples are referred to in the article, examples that teachers in fact DO and DID teach. The Roman Polanski film of "Macbeth" discussed in the article -- which I saw many, many years ago (30 years?) has a good bit of full frontal nudity as I remember. (It was produced by Playboy, but, believe me, it is not "sexy.") I think it is just pretty good common sense that a movie with full frontal nudity is likely to cause more classroom uproar than lead to careful analysis.
Also, personally again, I would not teach Beloved to high school students. I would teach novels about slavery -- in fact I think that is very important -- but there are scenes in that novel that are so horrible that I just think that it requires a very mature audience, indeed. I did teach the novel once to college students in a 200-level course. I designed the whole course to lead up to the novel and I ended the class with it.
Along with one of the teachers quoted, I think if I were teaching an article from Playboy I might just cut the title of the magazine out of the xerox copy. Maybe you consider this paranoid or old fashioned, but it just seems sensible to me.
On the other hand. I would go out of my way to teach literature with postive portrayals of homosexuals. I would teach literature that raises religious issues and questions, including atheism. I would teach the Bible or the Koran. I would teach meaningful works with sexual scenes -- if the scenes were were PG or R (for upper classmen), but not if they were X. I would teach words with swear words, if they were good works of literature. And I would openly discuss the issues involved in our class reading these works.
If some controversy arose over works like these, then I would, of course, defend my right to teach and my students' right to learn -- knowing that the conversation was important and educational for all concerned.
Yes, there are many, many texts and materials that I would not show to secondary students. A couple of examples are referred to in the article, examples that teachers in fact DO and DID teach. The Roman Polanski film of "Macbeth" discussed in the article -- which I saw many, many years ago (30 years?) has a good bit of full frontal nudity as I remember. (It was produced by Playboy, but, believe me, it is not "sexy.") I think it is just pretty good common sense that a movie with full frontal nudity is likely to cause more classroom uproar than lead to careful analysis.
Also, personally again, I would not teach Beloved to high school students. I would teach novels about slavery -- in fact I think that is very important -- but there are scenes in that novel that are so horrible that I just think that it requires a very mature audience, indeed. I did teach the novel once to college students in a 200-level course. I designed the whole course to lead up to the novel and I ended the class with it.
Along with one of the teachers quoted, I think if I were teaching an article from Playboy I might just cut the title of the magazine out of the xerox copy. Maybe you consider this paranoid or old fashioned, but it just seems sensible to me.
On the other hand. I would go out of my way to teach literature with postive portrayals of homosexuals. I would teach literature that raises religious issues and questions, including atheism. I would teach the Bible or the Koran. I would teach meaningful works with sexual scenes -- if the scenes were were PG or R (for upper classmen), but not if they were X. I would teach words with swear words, if they were good works of literature. And I would openly discuss the issues involved in our class reading these works.
If some controversy arose over works like these, then I would, of course, defend my right to teach and my students' right to learn -- knowing that the conversation was important and educational for all concerned.
posted by Allen Webb at 7:11 PM
1 Comments:
Often in the continuing debate that surrounds the censorship issue, the reasoning behind what is being taught in secondary English classroom is forgotten. I appreciate you opinions regarding not teaching certain texts in high school based on the fact that the audience is not mature enough to handle the content. As teachers, I think it is important for us to discuss controversy and even be controversial, without losing track of why we are teaching about controversial material in the first place.
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