The district apparently requires an (apparently simple) administrative review of material beyond the prescribed curriculum, which was not done in this case.
So, it may be that EG was the least sinister but most widely known book of the bunch. I, like others here, leap to defend it, but it may not be the actual source of many of the parent's concerns, but included because its inclusion was in violation of the review policy.
1: http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0315Followup-with-school-... 2: http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_m...
From #2: "According to a news report by local station WRDW, the police incident report in the case claims that the teacher read “pornographic material from the Internet to the students in class. One of the stories was about prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculation.”
And in #4, OSC says that he's pretty sure it wasn't Ender's Game at all.
There are some pieces of the story missing.
I'm fairly certain I first read it in middle school, which would have made me about 10, but may have been as late as the start of high school, making me about 13 (yes, I was young, graduating at 16). I followed the next couple of books in the series, but couldn't get into them to the same extent. I have Ender's Game on my shelf at home (along with Ender's Shadow, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Hegemon), and have actively encouraged my 11-year-old son to read them. He's not quite ready yet (by his own reckoning), but he will be soon.
As others have pointed out, the descriptions of violence don't compare at all to "Hunger Games" (or more particularly, the following two books in that series). The Harry Potter series, particularly the last three books, were violent as well (though not to the level of "Mockingjay") ... to the extent that we won't permit our children to watch them, yet, although even my 9-year-old has read all of them.
I read "Ender's Game" again in high school, and a third time in my early twenties. One of the fascinating things about good books is that the parts that stick with you change as your experience and outlook on life changes.
My recollection from the curriculum at my middle school included "Animal Farm", which also has messages on multiple levels; my younger sister was required to read "Tunnel In the Sky" (by Heinlein; she hated it, but I enjoyed it); my middle school coursework also included "Lord of the Flies", "Great Gatsby" and "Of Mice and Men", all of which also have violent sequences.
Part of what makes these books classics (although even having read them a couple of time, I still don't like the last three on that list) is that they capture the human existence—and like it or not, the nature of humanity includes violence, overcoming violence, and the occasional necessity of violence.
I loved that book. Heinlein's juveniles would be great for middle school kids.
I hated all the crap I had to read back then. I read Jurassic Park in 3rd grade, and by the time I was in middle school I found the standard literary fare too mundane to be interesting.
School could be much more interesting if they'd just update the reading list.
Ender's Game is a bizarre series. The first book is a juvenile. An adult may enjoy it, but it's a light snack. Everything else in the series is high-concept hard-core science fiction. As hard-core sci-fi goes, by modern standards its probably a bit lightweight, but it certainly doesn't fit into any other genre. (Well, I guess I haven't read the really recent stuff, so I don't know about those.)
I am actually grateful it took me years to learn there were sequels. I only found them once I could mostly understand them, and a re-read several years later still showed me stuff I missed the first time around.
A child kills several other children barehanded.
Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form - Card's view on this is pretty apparent in the first two sequals; Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.
It's always surprising how non-analytical we can be when it comes to violence - an entire planet is destroyed and millions of people screams are heard across the galaxy in A New Hope. Yet, the movie so ingrained in children's culture, it was an uphill battle to prevent my son from watching it when he was three [I felt like it was a victory that he didn't see it until he was five].
That said, Ender's Game is appropriate reading for 14 year olds, and the idea of it as pornographic is asinine. Same could be said of Bloom's Forever of my youth.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytv...
The original article in the Aiken Standard (linked to from from the OP's Forbes article above) mentions three "books," and specifically mentions Card's Ender's Game as being one of them. That Standard article in turn points to a press release from the previous day, also mentions three books and "swear words."
Nothing in either article seems to hint at the explicit, graphic sexual content in your link above, dated ten days before the press release in the Standard, and describing material as "pornographic material, from the Internet," not "three books."
Assuming the complain was true in the first place
Its also incorrect on a number of facts.
Its also in a school district that isn't your school district (probably) and so outrage is difficult to change into action.
Its also not part of a cluster of such events, or a general rise in incidence of such events and so unlikely to be an indication of a trend.
But the author knows that the book 'Ender's Game' is well regarded by the tech savvy community, as is the author, and so constructing a blog post which implies that a well regarded story is considered 'bad for children' elsewhere in the country, is a great way to pump up the page views in the morning.
I would have so much more respect for these folks if they did research, checked their 'facts', and then put those facts in a bit of context. But of course had they done that in this case, it would have been a non-story and well who is going to click to read that?
BTW Those other nine (Iliad, The Song of Roland, Heart of Darkness, 1984...) are also full of violence so if schools really do apply that criterion consistently, teachers may as well stop bothering students with any reading.
Of course they should read it. It is a book of life; it contains everything from utter foolishness to profound wisdom; from vile pettiness to unrestrained love; from brutal punishment to loving clemency.
It is the right book, which would be presented to them for all the wrong reasons.
We did this because the next few books we were to read used a large amount of biblical symbolism.
Later on, I took an elective in high school over Jewish history, and was assigned a bible for required reading. We also did comparative analysis between other copies of the bible, as well as readings from the Torah. I think nearly everybody found questionable differences between different translations. However, we did grasp the history of the Jewish people.
I would not call it pornographic at all - The few scenes in the book where there is nudity, there is very little that's sexual about it. In other parts of the series, I will agree that it may not be appropriate for 14 year olds.
I wonder what the parents are overreacting to.
It's sad to think that this might actually be true. I can totally imagine a scenario where except for the teacher and children, none of the other parties making so much noise have read the piece before making a ruckus.
But in all seriousness I think the average 14 year old is exposed to far more objectionable material in a Shakespeare play. The average simpleton that complains about the 'moral turpitude' usually isn't smart enough to notice how gaudy one can be.
These are the same people that would have issues with Aslan the Christ allegory in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for 'magic'.
Ender's Game is also not a "tiny bit" violent, and although its characters are all young, it was not written specifically for young readers.
(In my house, the boy read Ender's Game when he was 10; the girl heard an audio version of it at 9, and "Ender's Shadow", which is more explicit, was on the bookshelf in the boy's 6th grade class room).
Not inappropriate for Jr. High, but maybe a bit mature for eighth grade. I don't think a suspension is warranted on purely this basis - I'm sure there is more to the story.
It is incredibly sad that the students at this school might miss out on an opportunity to discover this series due to one ignorant, over-protecting parent. Heaven forbid a 14-year-old should be exposed to a swear word or two; it's not like they are constantly exposed to swearing and sexual situations outside of class... Oh wait.
Even so much as a twitch is enough to startle most and send the local district into a tizzy.
"Fact based, data-oriented news (s0rce.com)"
Right or wrong, this teacher will be tainted and have his or her career ruined, over the use of a book in the classroom. Ender's Game is a book that has been widely used in high schools for at least 15 years.
So we're left with tenure as an imperfect but practical way to limit the damage that can be done by bad administrators and crazed parents. Which is why tenure is important.
Teacher tenure has problems and LIFO (way worse) has a ton of problems but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for better small-town politics.
"It's a little odd that the school would maintain it was just the books if this wasn't the case."
Is it so odd? I think it's the school trying to protect the teacher. Just look at the situation in Los Angeles. Many reports of teacher molestation are coming out in the wake of the Miramonte scandal. Parents refused to send their children to Miramonte Elementary after it was revealed that a teacher engaged in despicable acts with students, and the parents were angry that they were not informed sooner. And its possible that more complaints about teacher abuse are swept under the rug, since a deal made between the teachers' union in LA and the LA school district expunges a teacher's record of unproven allegations after four years. They envisioned it would protect teachers against punishment for "petty" misconduct (being late/absent too much, messy, etc.) but never envisioned it would be used to protect teachers from sexual harassment accusations.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-20120317,0,693...
There is more to this story than what is out there now. The teacher is being protected, and they probably won't tell us what is really going on until more parents come out demanding to know the truth. LA is not an isolated incident, unfortunately. Some particularly bad characters have eroded the trust parents have in teachers, and then teachers react demanding protections, and the same bad characters abuse these protections to save their hide when allegations of misconduct pop up. The whole truth has not come out, and we will probably not like it when it does.
A suspension is not being fired from a job.
Regardless, you shouldn't be downvoted for explaining why you 'downvoted' a submission, nor for pointing out an inaccuracy in the submission title.
All of which sets up "Speak for the Dead", one of the best sci-fi books I know.
Anyone rejecting violence qua violence should probably stay away, but they'll be missing a pretty important reflection on its causes and consequences, and the possibility of redemption.
The books after "Speaker" suck.
... which happens "off-camera" (sort of: the event is presented as a video game fiction with no visible non-mechanical participants), and is presented quite clearly as a moral lesson in the text. Arguing for censorship on this basis would rule out things like history lessons about real wars too, wouldn't it? You don't want to teach middle schoolers that war exists?
Yes. But the murders are not described in great detail or at great length, and all are in self-defence. A relatively small portion of the book deals with overtly violent acts, Ender feels great remorse, and the tone is not one of glorifying violence.
I think it's still reasonable to say the book is "a tiny bit violent".
The book's apologetic tone about his violence doesn't make it any better - I would even argue that it makes it worse, as it waters down to "extreme violence is okay if you don't feel good about it".
Exposure to new ideas is a GOOD thing. Actively preventing your children from knowing about something simply because you disagree with it is censorship in its worst form.
Every parent has a right and a responsibility to teach their children in a way that they see fit, and though the state can be called in for cases where their teachings are far outside the norm, to take away or limit these rights is to remove the parent from their role.
Of course you can disagree with how someone else raises their kids - aunts, uncles, and grandparents have been doing that since the dawn of time.
But, just off the top of my head:
- Very young children: Owen and Beru's bodies after the stormtroopers find them?
- Slightly older children: Torture of prisoners on the Death Star?
- Near-teens: A greedy scoundrel as a "hero" through much of the film?
I see plenty of reason to prevent children from seeing them until you feel they're "ready". I don't have children yet, so I don't know when that would be for mine.
I would not force the children of other parents to watch it, and I would be outraged if some government body said I couldn't show it to my three year old.
As far as parental censorship goes every parent may decide for himself. but when parents are starting to try to get convictions of teachers for reading books in school they should rather for home teaching if that is legal. Books are knowledge and as long as they are read in the proper context they can only do good. I mean it#s not that Shakespeare or the other classics (e.g. Goethe's "Faust" or other works of him) are any less violent and / or pornographic. Personaly, I have problems with banning books or art, we have been at this place already too often I think.
To start with, the story is predicated on the notion that Eugenics works, or as the saying goes; if it's not outright saying it, it's sure implying it loudly. It's reasonable to say that two intelligent people will probably have intelligent kids, but the novel goes way past that. The three children are freakishly (in the novel's terms, this is another one of my gripes I'll get to) intelligent.
It's not something that could be accomplished without an extremely long and large breeding program, if at all. (also note, you'd be producing an awful lot of pretty freaking smart kids, see my next point) It would mostly be a matter of luck and at that point why have a breeding program at all? Therefore the intelligence of the children is strongly implied to be a result of the breeding program.
In terms of artistic objections, the "freakish intelligence" of the children is accomplished by making most of the other characters in the novel cardboard cutouts or strawmen that Ender can just knock over or tear apart easily. What happened to all the other kids from the breeding program? Surely it produced a bunch of "90% Enders" who are almost as good. It comes off as contrived and inauthentic.
The whole "child soldier" angle is ridiculous as well. Child soldiers are used in conflicts because they are easily manipulated and readily available but that is not always desirable. A rebel fighter in Africa only needs someone who can hold and point a machine gun to replace the last guy who was doing it. The needs of the military in Ender's Game are quite a bit more sophisticated.
Children are also ignorant and dumb. Innate intelligence can only take you so far, it gives you a large "gas tank" but you still need to fill it with gas.
Military Strategy is not necessarily a terribly intelligence-taxing thing. It's mostly a question of learning from the past, taking into account current technology, and trying to anticipate other attacks. If they really wanted to win the war they'd put an experienced General in charge of strategy and have Ender start working on the next great super-weapon, that's what makes decisive victories.
The whole "the enemy's gate is down" thing is a good example of how Ender is not smart, everyone else is dumb and also how the book has a flawed view of military strategy. The "the enemy's gate is down" is a lesson we learned hundreds of years ago at the latest (i.e. the transition from neatly lined up soldiers standing in rows across from each-other firring muskets to modern trench and guerrilla warfare). Is this some bizarre future where we've forgotten all the basic lessons of military history for the past thousand years? Or is this just the worst military academy ever?
Going back to Eugenics, the book's plot requires that Ender is so intelligent that it's more efficient/effective to try and train him up to a brilliant strategist than to just use one of the existing ones. I don't find that realistic.
I also don't buy the whole "He's a kid so he'll look at it from a fresh angle" aspect. Sure kids do tend to be a bit open minded but I find it dubious that they would naturally have the right kind of open mindedness for this application, that is an informed one.
I don't care how new the MD Device is, we're to believe that they have no idea how it works? Not even a guess as to what would happen if you fired it at a planet? Come on... nobody said "let's shoot it at an asteroid or something"? When nuclear weapons were developed pretty much right away nuclear scientists stood around like excited schoolgirls with a puppy coming up with all the super neato places they could set off an A-bomb to see what happens (Underwater! Space! "uninhabited" islands!)
Honestly I could go on and on about all the things I dislike about this book. I realize I might seem a bit worked up, but really it just slightly annoys me that such a mediocre book is so popular. It owes it's popularity mostly to the fact that it's a classic underdog story. A lonely nerdy kid who's smarter than everyone around him kicks ass and chews bubblegum, it's a young sci-fi nerd's wet dream. I know when I was in middle school during tough times I would occasionally spend time daydreaming elaborate revenge fantasies where I showed everyone up, so to a kid like that Ender's Game is very validating. That's good in some ways but I also worry that it can be unhealthy because I think while that sort of mentality is natural is something that needs to be overcome and not indulged.
Overall I find parts of it unwholesome and overall offensive aesthetically.
I wonder if that means "we're going to fire him because he circumvented our process by bringing in books he didn't clear first, so that we don't have to publicly discuss the fact that he may have been reading more salacious material to students as well."
I claim there's a difference between a violent act, and a violent work of literature about that act.
The book spends only a paragraph or two on the actual genocide. No graphic descriptions are portrayed.
If I write, "Hitler and the Nazis killed millions of people in WWII", does that make this post violent? I'd argue that it does not. It's a fairly dry and matter-of-fact description of very violent acts. The post is not violent.
On the other hand, I could write a particularly violent description of a minor fight that left both people alive, but would be far more gruesome and objectionable. There's not a direct relationship between a body count and the violence of a literary work about it.
Since I can't very well read it again for the first time, I was happy to find a couple of years ago that a narrative-astute friend of mine had happened to never read it. So I encouraged him to give it a try and was extremely careful to say nothing of the ambivalence I've had for it. He summed it up as pulp designed as a preteen want-to-be-a-superhero hook with an twist about on a level with a middling Twilight Zone episode. Thus ends my anecdote.
For a weak, picked-on child it was Ender's only defense in a violent world (from a child's point of view). He could not survive a truce that was then violated by the opponent. It would only give them the opportunity to surprise him later. He had to win on the 1st encounter.
The interstellar conflict was similar - the enemy attacked first, had a superior war machine and with time could overwhelm humanity.
Anyway, the point of books like this is to explore themes like that. They don't dictate a viewpoint to the reader, they provoke discussion and enable insights,if properly introduced to the juvenile reader.
- Not thirty seconds into the games, Katniss is struggling with an unnamed boy when he drops dead with a knife through his back.
- Katniss drops a nest of mutated wasps directly onto a number of sleeping children, two of whom die from the stings.
- Katniss witnesses Cato kill an unnamed boy with his bare hands.
- Rue gets speared through the torso right in front of Katniss.
- Thresh crushes the skull of Clove with a rock, (not enough to kill her, but enough to disfigure her) then does it again and finishes her off. (This one happens no more than a couple of meters in front of Katniss, as Clove had been in the process of choking her before being yanked off by Thresh.)
- Katniss shoots a helpless dying Cato in the face with her final arrow.
That's just in the first book. All but one of those deaths occur right in front of Katniss, along with several others.
The only fight that stuck with me in Ender's Game was with Bonzo - the fight with Stilson was over too quick (and the ending was technically a mystery until they talk about it after Bonzo's death). Bonzo's death was also technically very quick - there was a lot of lead up to it, but the fight itself probably only took about 20 seconds and about half a page (also from memory).
Note also that the boys who Ender fights are bullying him mercilessly. Both Stilson and Bonzo bring groups to witness and prevent interference from others. He is forced to fight for his life, in situations which could quickly turn against him, and only an unbelievably swift and alarmingly brutal victory will prevent a future recurrence.
Of course, all of this makes me think of Ogden Nash's poem "Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood Alright" ... two lines:
Innocent infants have no use for fables about rabbits or donkeys or tortoises or porpoises, What they want is something with plenty of well-mutilated corpoises.
(It's also crazy that I can't find a complete copy of a poem from 1935 online)
In the broader sense, it becomes somewhat hard to talk about because it might matter greatly much how old the child is. My 3 year old is simply not in an position to make many good decisions for herself, but my 6 year old gets a fair bit more freedom, and as they get older I will hand more of the reigns of their own lives to them happily.
It is also hard to talk about separately because in a sense a child's rights are what is left over after the state and the parent divide up their rights, any right absolutely given to the child is denied to one of those two entities. Should I have the ability to restrict what my 3 year old sees? I think most would agree that I should.
Should I have the ability to restrict what my 13 year old sees (when one of them reaches 13)? That is touchier, but I think most will answer, "Yes, but you should use it less and listen to their judgment more." I certainly think that even when my child turns 13 I will want to keep them away from materials that overtly objectify women and I will judge on a case by case basis if they are ready for horror films or not.
For what it's worth, I agree with your sentiment at the end that many parents overly coddle even older children. But I also respect that each parent has the privelege and duty of making those decisions for themselves and their children until those children cease to be children.
Second, even if and when we reach a point in society where racism is truly gone, it is useful to know how we got there. To Kill a Mocking Bird not only helps show how society was before, it was itself a small piece of history that helped in a small way make society the way it is now with less racism.
Even if we reach a utopian day where its lessons are no longer relavent (and we are not there yet), it will remain a significant aid in understanding our history.
Racism, in the first world other than the US, seems not dead but mortally wounded and we are ready to move on to the next problem to tackle.
I can't comment on the dryness of TKaMB though I would say that it does contain enough elements of typical human drama to be more than "a book about racism".
By the end of the year, the school fired him.
On the other hand, you need to consider that for you to have grown up "in a pacifist background" its quite an unusual event in the History of Humanity. In particular, it means that there's someone somewhere doing all the dirty deeds that keep the pacifists safe and unaware for long enough to raise any offspring. In the primal environment, uncompromising pacifists would probably end up darwinized!
I am by no means arguing that others should follow this philosophy. Merely explaining that, having grown up in a culture where we gave this idea serious thought, I found Ender's Game to be shallow and naive.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr%27s_Mirror
To clarify a little bit, it's not so much as of pacifism not being a viable strategy, but that it is a viable strategy for individuals or small communities, but not implementable on a national scale.
Eventually, the martyrdom of a pacifist, while a tragedy on its own, is not detrimental to the meme of pacifism. I'd say it's the opposite. However, if a group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically harassed, I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group doing the harassing. Even if most of the individuals are not physically harmed, the idea of pacifism is the one that suffers.
But of course... geographic isolation may take you a long way, I guess.
History shows that "running away" and other isolation strategies have allowed at least some groups of pacifists to persist through several centuries. Harassment seems to actually strengthen the idea of pacifism within many of these groups.
It may not be viable on a large scale. But that ties in to my earlier point: a viable strategy for survival is not the ultimate goal. Or, at least, it's not a universally agreed upon primary goal. We're not so special that our survival must necessarily trump everything else. Neither Ender nor anyone else in the book series seems to give serious consideration to the idea that maybe it's better to die than to kill. Again, I'm not arguing that everyone should agree to this philosophy, I'm just saying the failure to give it even token consideration comes off as a bit shallow.