Friday, July 29, 2011

Slaughterhouse-Five banned by US school | Books | guardian.co.uk

It’s unconscionable that any educator would ban any book, but to ‘pick on’ a classic that vilifies death and shows the dirty side of war that doesn’t make it into the media is crazy. Further, for a supposed professor at a higher education institution to call it out because it "contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame". makes you wonder whether said educator has actually spent time with a) Sailors and b) young people. I have got news for you Mr. Scroggins, you can hear much worse hanging out at a skateboard park or watching “8 Mile”.

Kurt-Vonnegut-007

Slaughterhouse-Five banned by US school

Kurt Vonnegut's celebrated second world war satire censored along with teen novel Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and young adult novel Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler have both been banned from a school curriculum and library in a Missouri school following complaints from a local professor about children being exposed to "shocking material".

Ockler's novel, which tells of a girl's summer romance as she attempts to get over the death of her first love a year earlier, is being removed from the school curriculum and library in Republic, Missouri, along with Kurt Vonnegut's classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The ban follows a complaint from Wesley Scroggins, a professor at Missouri State University, who wrote in a column for a local paper last year claiming that Vonnegut's novel "contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame". He said that Ockler's book, described by Kirkus Reviews as a "sincere, romantic tearjerker", "glorifies drunken teen parties, where teen girls lose their clothes in games of strip beer pong", and laid into Laurie Halse Anderson's acclaimed novel Speak, which he felt "should be classified as soft pornography".

Slaughterhouse-Five banned by US school | Books | guardian.co.uk

 

The Dirty Lowdown

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