Wait, didn’t we do this already?
This time the setting is South Central Junior-Senior High School in Harrison County, IN where a parent is filing the paperwork to have TWISTED removed from the school.
TWISTED was assigned in this parent’s, Ms. Mathis, son’s English class. An alternative book, THE OUTSIDERS, was made available for students whose parents were not comfortable with TWISTED. Ms. Mathis chose THE OUTSIDERS for her son, then started on the path to have TWISTED removed from the school completely.
Here is a quote from Ms. Mathis in today’s The Corydon Democrat, the local paper in her community.
""(Twisted) has a lot of bad language in it and situations in it that I don’t think are appropriate," Mathis said Monday. "If the students are going to watch an R-rated movie, they have to get permission ahead of time from parents … And I think there’s a (double-standard) in saying kids can’t cuss at school, yet they are allowed to read a book with such bad words in it.""
It was very nice to be contacted by the local reporter and given a chance to add my voice to the discussion.
"Anderson said the strong language was required for the character’s situation.
"The scene in which Tyler, the main character, uses the ‘F-word’ is the scene in which he is actively contemplating suicide. I used it at that point — the critical point in the book — because it shows the level of the character’s desperation. People on the verge of killing themselves tend not to edit their vocabulary," Anderson said.
Anderson said it’s easier for parents to allow their children to only read the classics and avoid difficult situations, but to do so is "to condemn our children to ignorance.""
You really should read the entire article. (Note: I disagree with the article’s first paragraph. I still don’t have complete information about the current status of TWISTED in the Kentucky high school.)
I am off for a run now.