They say that you can’t fight city hall.
However, a group of parents concerned about what they say is a highly offensive book used in the Guilford County Schools’ AP English program are hoping they can get the book removed from the reading list after they address school library officials in an early morning meeting on Thursday, May 19.
Elena Wachendorfer, who has kids in the Guilford County school system, said she was alarmed when she began reading the book that her son was reading as part of the English program.
The book, “Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward, has won a National Book Award. However, Wachendorfer and other parents say there’s no way it should be part of a reading list for Guilford County Schools.
“I picked up the book and began reading it,” she said. “It wasn’t just one scene – it was 15 different ones from beginning to end. They were equally foul.”
Wachendorfer said the book contains a great deal of offensive language, disturbing themes and graphic sexual descriptions of sex involving a very young girl.
She also said the overall message was horribly depressing and added that, with literature like this in schools, it’s no wonder school children are so depressed and fraught with emotional problems.
“That book and any other book like it has no place in our kids’ classroom,” she said. “I won’t tolerate dumbing down my kids or filling them with perversion. I want to make sure that nothing like this happens again.”
Wachendorfer said that she and others had planned to show their opposition at a library committee meeting at Northern Guilford High School on Thursday morning, May 12, but that meeting had been postponed a week. School officials, she said, stated that some of the library committee members were needed to help administer tests due to some teachers being absent.
“I don’t know if they were trying to buy time,” Wachendorfer said.
She said that one opponent of the book had planned to speak to Guilford County Board of Education as a speaker from the floor this week and planned to read passages from the book aloud at the meeting, however, that speaker was unable to make it at the last minute.
Sounds like some moms need to get a reality check on what their kids already know about the subject of sex while in Highschool. Trying to shield kids from topics that many are already well aware of is silly. Use this as an opportunity to discuss with your kids what the subject of this book is about….young teen girl growing up in poverty without a great deal of potential supervision and the consequences of the choices she makes. Maybe Karen can learn something about her own kids.
Note….NC law requires abstinence versus safe sex to avoid STDs and Unwanted pregnancy. I hope parents are smarter about what kids really need to know before they go off to the world of college or work after Highschool.
How would you know what high schoolers know or don’t know about sexually explicit material? It’s the parent’s job and not the teacher’s to introduce them to this junk if they so choose.
I suppose if parents do not want their students to read horrible things or sexual exploits or anything “foul”,they they must not allow them to read the Bible.
At least the Bible teaches morality. What would reading foul, disgusting sexual encounters teach, other than to just expose them.
Virtually every American boy at one time or another had access to a Playboy magazine 50 years ago, that doesn’t mean it should have been allowed in the schools.
When it comes to sexual content,, the bibles pales in comparison to many of these books. It’s one thing to say a character slept with someone. It’s quite another to describe in detail the sex performed by that character.
There’s no way that a single book which is nationally recognized is in any way “dumbing down” our education. If anything this book elevated our education by challenging our “typical” literature styles with advanced topics. The course in which this is taught is an advanced course work level meant for high school students who are advanced enough to take a college course. If students are mentally mature enough to take college level work, they are mentally mature enough to read about college level topics. This book in no way promotes the topics discussed, but if anything shows the consequences of following through with them. This book is a great text to be reading following a challenging natural disaster of our own, the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the amazing teacher who taught this book gave multiple alternatives such as censoring your book for you, marking the pages that were graphic, or a completely alternative text altogether. She also gave plenty of warning ahead of time to her students that are 17 and 18 years of age. If the student felt uncomfortable with this text, there were multiple opportunities to switch to the alternative book. Many students began reading this book and decided it was not for them, the teacher swiftly gave them the alternative book and had no worries with their decision. It is sad to see that yet another amazing book is being challenged and removed from our book lists in a country that is founded on the ideals of being free.
“a challenging natural disaster of our own, the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Huh?? It was not a ‘natural disaster’. It was a planned act of global disruption (partially funded by our government) and fed upon by opportunistic – and evil – governments worldwide, pharmaceutical corporations, media outlets, and the taxpayer-funded education industry.
Watch that tinfoil hat of yours….is has slipped way to the right.
Covid-19 is a “natural disaster”?
Explain how, groomer.
Hahaha. This is why I pay for private school. A pedophilic porn novel isn’t preparing kids for anything but drugs and sex with adults.
Exactly. Take your kids out and home school them. No kids in school, no money to continue the depravity of the neo Marxists.
I spent 12 years in private school and read much more graphic books than this. Every one taught with lessons geared towards understanding a world beyond my small one, preparing me for my college career and then my master’s career. If you are incapable of understanding the underlying and overarching themes of any book being taught in a school, let alone an upper level AP course, you have no standing to speak up on education of any type.
Books have been banned in public schools since their creation. Parents should have a say in what their children are exposed to. If a book is banned and a parent wants their child to have access to it, they always have the option of purchasing it themselves and giving to their child.
If you feel it’s so important for your child to have access to a specific banned book, then buy it yourself and give it to your child.
A book like that is a litmus test that can be used to judge if a student is really ready for college.
You people completely miss the point as usual. Maintaining a moral culture through teaching materials is important. If you have students who are upset by the book, that should tell you something. The far left gets upset if they pass by a confederate statue and demand it be removed. Students are offended by a book they are asked to read in a school classroom and the leftists cry “book banning” and “first amendment”. You people are the reason that our country is headed down the toilet. There are too many books that portray positive themes to allow such trash to be assigned in any class. The administrators who approve of these types of books in the curriculum should be fired immediately. If you are a teacher, you do not have to put these in front of the students. Have some personal convictions.
You can go kneel at your statues to racist losers all you like….but banning books is banning books.
Books are not the problem. You censor-crazed first amendment hating anti-intellectual thought and reasoning ninnies that don’t trust the minds and emotions of children are the problem. You have no issue pushing insane theories and total republican propaganda but get your panties in a bunch over the slightest deviation of what your narrow minds understand or entertain. You are simple. You are shameful. You are the problem. Get out of the way.
Be careful who you call simple you may offend the wrong person
Mrs. Wachendorfer has not read this book in its entirety if she cites “15” of these “offensive” scenes from beginning to end. Four at most, making up about 4 paragraphs in a 250 page plus novel depicting a motherless family living in poverty in the South while facing Hurricane Katrina. The themes dealing with family and motherhood, compassion and resilience overshadow the sexual experiences of the character telling her story.
Government schools are run by Democrats. They are the prime source of govt indoctrination & propaganda. Our children are shuffled thru grade school AND college. They are good little socialists. “Too old, too soon, too late, smart.”
They teach our children what to think, not how to think.
What a con. Schools are just struggling to control the classroom and teach the basics as best they can and this ninny thinks they have this amazing power to override the influence of parents and a child’s social group of friends to manipulate a kid’s cultural belief system. What a joke.
I love laughing with local school teachers how they are the evil propaganda fascists’ indoctrinating their students to be liberal zombies! Most teachers I know are actually conservative Christians.
Maybe we should ban the BIBLE TOO! It promotes prostitution and murder!!