YOU WON'T %$*!@#& BELIEVE THE $#!% THEY WANT OUR KIDS TO READ IN SCHOOL

... Or maybe you will.  After all, this is about the Grand Rapids public schools.

Allegedly without reviewing it, the city school district ordered 140 copies of The Literary Experience as an literature appreciation textbook for advanced placement classes at City High.  After shelling out sixty bucks a pop for the book and receiving shipment, administrators finally got the idea of checking out its contents.  Only then did they discover the mistake they had made.

The Literary Experience is a collection of short stories, the prize pig of which is a 70-page tale of two brothers who cannot utter a sentence without a "s---" or a "f---" in it as they talk about their vile lives of sex, drugs, and crime in the urban jungle.  Now I would have thought that if an honors English cirriculum needed a good story about brothers with a penchant for finding trouble, Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov would have fit the bill.  Certainly a bill less than $60 a book.

Well, at least school administrators, after having failed to vet The Literary Experience before taking delivery of the volume, didn't fail to recognize its unsuitability as a textbook.  Plan "A" is to return the books.  If they can't do that (seeing that they have already stamped them the property of the Grand Rapids Public Schools), Plan "B" is to cut out the pages of the offensive short story from each book before distributing it to students.

Of course, that back-up plan already has the usual suspects hysterically denouncing school administrators as censors.  Need we discuss the idiocy of defining censorship as the adult exercise of judgment as to what textbooks should be used for the instruction of minors?  No, anyone who can't get that, won't ever get it.  Instead, let's turn our attention toward the captain of this ship of fools.  That would be none other than the Board of Education vice president, Lisa Hinkel.

She is horrified at the prospect that school administrators might deny their young charges the joys of reading filth.  Shaken by their tyrannical designs upon our youngsters, Hinkel shuddered, "I can't advocate for cutting pages from a book.  That just goes against everything I believe."  This from the woman who a couple of weeks ago told parents unhappy with the quality of education at the city's public high schools to pack their bags and get the hell out of town.  Maybe it's time parents told Hinkel to pack her bags.

Comments

[Rollnggrnade]

The Press' coverage of this situation has been pretty bad (as it usually is with most things). Cutting the pages out of the book was never really an option (but that's the most sensationalist part of the story, so they focused in on that), and they contacted the publishing house about sending the book back and about sending the book home with a note to parents.

What's more important, however, is that there are actually people in this society that think Advanced Placement English students reading a play discussing real contemporary issues and containing profanity is going to be the undoing of our society. "Topdog/Underdog" won a Pulitzer Prize and Suzan-Lori Parks is a superb contemporary writer. It's like a perverse amalgamation of "Dead Poets Society" and "Footloose" come to life.

While "the Brothers Karamazov" is a good book that everyone would do well to read, concentrating solely on the classics is a poor approach - especially given how increasingly out-of-touch they are with contemporary society. Any English class should explore both contemporary and classic literature.

[Nick]

And they wonder why Charter Schools are so popular... you can't keep parents in these schools if you tried. Hinkel doesn't need to do anything more to encourage parents to leave. They're voting with their feet already.

Just don't complain on the next "count day."

--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Grenade.

So the works of the great authors of Western Civilization -- e.g. Dostoyevsky -- shouldn't have primacy in the classroom because they are "out-of-touch" with comtemporary society?

Now how is that so? Because they aren't literary trompe d'oeil expertly replicating the vulgar, obscene, and profane mannerisms of today's debased culture? How does larding the pages of a story with this detritus of so-called realism actually help a student better understand the great truths of the human condition?

When considering that last question, let's keep in mind that reading works like those of Ms. Parks are not without risk. Whether or not her short story in "The Literary Experience" textbooks is assigned or not at the present time, it is presented to students under the imprimatur of the Board of Education. No matter how you square it, gutter language and pornographic depictions of sex have been condoned by the authorities as "literature" and therefore acceptable modes of expression.

I can see how that can coarsen a student. I am utterly at a loss as to how it may enlighten him or her. And that's the hurdle that advocates of putting such writings in the classroom must clear. If they deny that there is any risk of debasing students, they can be ignored as fools or charlatans. But if they are to be taken seriously, they need to show that:

[1] A student is more enlightened than coarsened by writings like that of Ms. Parks;
[2] such enlightenment can only be had through that or similar writings (in other words, if the work's lesson can be learned through non-licentious works, then there is no need to for school authorities to condone its coarseness); and
[3] this particular enlightenment is the business of the public school system to bring about (as opposed to family, church, adulthood, the school of hard knocks, etc).

These are perfectly reasonable requirements to be met. Unless they have a complete contempt for any standards of decency, those who think Ms. Parks's short story has a place in a high school textbook should be willing to respond to them. If they have sound arguments to make, they should do so.

Regards, Bill

[daschoon]

It's sad that some people just look for reasons to go after the schools. As if this book is going to have the least bit of negative impact on advanced placement high school seniors. This is a reason to send kids to charter schools? Teaching college-level material to college-level students? That doesn't speak very highly of charter schools.
On this, LAW should really be ashamed of itself. When the complaint was a racial slur in a textbook two years ago, the Web site attacked opponents for rejecting it. Now they're attacking the same people for supporting age-appropriate language. And for a vehicle that has so often been on the side of freedom of speech and transpareancy to refer to universally appraised literature as "filth" is just appalling. It looks as though integrity is only a value when it is in support of your own beliefs.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Nick.

I don't think the the GRPS educrats will complain next count day. They will instead figure out a way to keep the falling count a secret for as long as possible as Taylor is trying to do right now.

Of course, what makes this incident bizarre is that we even have to argue that work like "Top Dog/Underdog" shouldn't be in a high school classroom.

Regards, Bill

P.S. Nice reportage and commentary on the recent budget debacle in Lansing.

[daschoon]

For a venue that so often attacks the media to draw conclusions entirely from the media makes this even worese. Judging by your post, Bill, it appears you haven't even read the play. How can you make these statements in good faith without having examined the work?

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Daschoon.

You're a bit confused.

[1] We did not comment on the controversy over the seventh-grade textbook that contained racial epithets. If we had, we would have opposed its use for obvious reasons.

[2] "Top Dog/Underdog" has hardly been "universally" praised as the present controversy clearly shows. Do you really think the fact that Ms. Parks received a Pulitzer for it demands a cessation of critical evaluations of the work? Does a Pulitzer silence opposition to use of her work as a high school textbook?

[3] What does freedom of speech have to do with it? The taxpayers through their elected representatives and appointed officials have the right to determine which textbooks will be purchased with their tax dollars. Do you seriously believe that exercising judgment about which textbooks will or won't be used constitutes censorship?

[4] Crap is crap, even if it is taught in college.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director, L.A.W.

[The Executive Director]

My dear Daschoon,

The favorite gambit of anything-goes-liberals that you must read a book or see a film to form a judgment about it is nonsense. If you've been on the planet for awhile, you can rely upon secondary sources you trust to gather enough information about a work to have an informed opinion about it. In this case, I do not have to read a 70-page play that contains over 100 expletives to have a sound idea of its literary merits, especially as a text for high schoolers.

Regards, Bill

[Frank]

Bill,

Given your Libertarian views, and well read disposition, I find it interesting that you would criticize this at all. You didn't even read it? My elected officials will make the right decision by recognizing that college-bound students of City High(the ONLY place that will use it) can certainly navigate through our media and society better having studied it.

By the way, did you know that this story won't even be used? Or that the books will not leave the school?

Another fantastic job of super-assumption and holier-than-thou pontification Mr Tingly.

Keep up the good work.

Frank

[daschoon]

Bill,
You can't believe what you're arguing. Who criticized the play? It starred Don Cheadle when it opened, and later Mos Def. This isn't fringe work, it's mainstream literature. If this wasn't the public schools, you'd be criticizing the press and the school board for even making an issue out of it.
You took a swipe at the schools and now you're trying to justify it with arguments that read like a George Bush thought bubble. "I do not have to read it to get a sound idea..." Are you honestly attacking people for suggesting that you inform yourself before making an opinion? Has this site finally become what it was created to advocate against?

[The Executive Director]

Frank,

Since when does a libertarian disposition translate to suspending judgment on standards of decency, especially in matters than concern minors, and ESPECIALLY when it involves my hard-earned tax dollars? If I have to pay for it, I'm going to have my say about it.

One thing I will say is this: Nothing more than commonsense and common decency make it plain that the vulgar language and pornographic content of Ms. Parks's play are not ways in which we want high school students to publicly express themselves. And if Ms. Parks's wordsmithing is anathema to public expression, then what place does it have in a public classroom?

So what is the argument that it is has a place? Advocates of making her work available to high school students have made plenty of assertions, but no arguments. Is that so much to ask? No, it's not.

Particularly when there is no planned use of Mrs. Parks's play in City High's cirriculum. So why not simply remove her play from the textbook and eliminate the issue? What other than a fetish for filth moves anyone to denounce the removal of an offensive text that no one wants to use for instruction?

And by the way, Frank, spare me the "holier-than-thou" bilge. As an airman, a Russian linguist (you don't know how to swear to until you know Russian), and a machinist, I can cuss with the best of them. Yet, in all my experiences in the service and in business around the world, I was never in any situation in which knowing swear words or pornographic depictions of sex or the jargon of street crime did me one bit of good. As I have lived just about as unsheltered a life over the past thirty years as one can, short of a career criminal, I think I have sufficient experience to judge whether or not high school kids need to learn the crap in Ms. Parks's play.

They don't.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director, L.A.W.

[The Executive Director]

Daschoon,

There are a myriad of things of which you form opinions about without any direct experience of them. For example, do you have an opinion about the Iraq War? Did you form that opinion after serving in combat over there? If you didn't serve, then by your reckoning, you cannot form a sound opinion about the war. In fact, even if you did serve, you could not have possibly experienced the entirety of the war, so once again by your reckoning, you cannot have opinion about it.

Of course, that's absurd. The same goes for t.v., film, and literature. I don't have see a movie or read a book to have an informed opinion about it. What I do need is information about it. I got what I needed from secondary sources sufficient to inform me about the suitability of Ms. Parks's play in a high school textbook. Hence, opinion expressed.

If you don't understand that, Daschoon, then I am going to ask to cease voicing any opinions about me or L.A.W., because you do not know everything there is to know about me or our organization. So you have no basis for forming any such opinions. ;)

Regards, Bill

[The Executive Director]

By the way, Daschoon, by definition the vulgar is mainstream in a vulgar culture. So much for Ms. Parks's play being "mainstream".

Regards, Bill

[LAWfanclubmember]

"Reporting the news the news won't report in Grand Rapids"

THIS is your tag-line??? Now that is pretty doggone funny. You got your misinformation from one news source (and a bad one at that) and formed a whole mess of opinions based on the mainstream "news in Grand Rapids".

Oh loyal reader, ask yourself this. In the last many, many months, what subject has Mr. LAW commented on in which he might actually have something positive to say? Other than Catherine's Care Center, of course; even Mr. LAW could not say a bad word about this wonderful service to our community. So other than Catherine's, does he have anything good to say about anything? I don't know about you, loyal reader, but I am pretty suspicious of people who never have anything good to say about anything. I have a feeling that Mr. LAW's glass is always half empty, which is not a very positive, uplifting way to live. I have a feeling that the 2 or 3 regular people who post here and tend to agree with the majority of Mr. LAW's ramblings also have half-empty glasses. How very pathetic and sad for all of them.

Some people like to criticize and pontificate because of their self-righteous need to hear themselves criticize and pontificate. And some of us get our laughs at the expense of those who pontificate.

Keep it up, Mr. LAW-man Tingley. My friends and I always get a laugh out of your ramblings. And we do love to laugh!

Regards right back atcha, LAW man.

(Did you guys notice how the angrier he gets, the bigger the words he uses? That just cracks us up!! At least he gets a lot of use out of his thesaurus.)

[Tommy Times]

It is interesting to see what people pick up on as objectionable.

I looked at the list of authors included in the Literary Experience: Shakespeare, Donne, Da Vinci, Yeats, Arthur Miller, Melville, Coleridge, Conrad, Borges, etc. I don't know whether the classics have primacy, but they are well represented.

It would be easy to pile on the textbook selector for not catching the presence of a few bad words, but let he who has read all 1500 + pages cast the first stone.

I read a few of the poems listed in the index of the book.

From Grass, by Carl Sandburg:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -

I am the grass; I cover all.

From Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The anthology also includes i sing of Olaf glad and big, by E.E. Cummings. It would seem to me that those who found the Parks play objectionable would also find this poem objectionable.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Tommy.

You say, "It would seem to me that those who found the Parks play objectionable would also find this poem objectionable."

Do you understand the difference between the Venus de Milo and a Hustler centerfold? Do you understand why a person might say that study of the former is suitable for high schoolers but the latter isn't? Of course you do.

Then you also understand that somewhere in the spectrum of images of nude women between the Venus de Milo and that Hustler centerfold there is a point at which the nudity is gratuitous and a further point at which it is pornographic. I think we can all agree that a pornographic image does not belong in a high school classroom. I would hope that we all can also agree that gratuitous nudity doesn't belong there either.

The same goes for the vulgarities and obscenities of Ms. Parks's play. They are at least gratuitous, certainly in a high school setting, for one of two reasons: [1] Whatever lesson is to be taken from her work can be learned by other works sans the dirty language; or [2] if the argument is that the lesson is "anthropological" -- i.e., a study of how certain segments of American society actually live -- then the entire work is gratuitous, because that particular lesson is hardly necessary to a good high school education.

Now let me take this one step further. The burden is upon those who want offensive materials in the classroom to demonstrate that they are NECESSARY to an effective education. That burden has yet to be carried by those who want City High students to have access to Ms. Parks's play.

Regards, Bill

[daschoon]

Bill,

You are to be commended for not just erasing all these posts, it speaks highly of you as a person and the site as an alternative voice. It is your platform after all, and would have been in your right to do so. There is really no response I can give to your above statements. I think you've said it all.

Dan

[Jen B.]

Interesting that none of those above who find profanity, pornography and everyday filth in our culture as a good thing noted even for a second that our brilliant local school system missed the mark from day one.

Who is the buffoon who forgot to get an advance copy of this book and proof it?

Who is the fool of all fools who received the book in, catalogued it and passed it around without checking what is actually in this book first?

Finally, who is the teacher without conscience or dignity who thinks presenting this "crap" is acceptable to us and our children? You want to build a generation of kids with empty minds, empty hearts and empty thoughts, keep using books like this one containing "Pulitzer Prize" winning junk for them to digest. Crap in is crap out. Guaranteed.

I can't have faith in a public school that makes errors like this and calls it a learning experience. If I want my kids to hear filth, see filth and live in filth, I certainly don't want it coming from our public school system which should be models of dignity and decency, but aren't any longer.

Bring on the charter schools, christian schools and alternative schools. People who support GRPS are as bad as those running the district. The incompetent leading the incompetent.

Bill, you got it right as you usually do. I support LAW 100% on this one. People who have lost their way in life are the only ones who believe dismantling the world as we know it is a good thing. Stand strong on honesty, standards and the human conscience. Too many of us are becoming modern day Wormwords and Screwtapes - we are moving to the dark side because it's so much easier to be awful, nasty and bad than it is to be kind, giving and good. Be our conscience when we fall prey to the main stream media on important issues like this one. The school board, the administrators and our esteemed teaching professionals who made a big mistake here are the ones who should be taken to task for bad decision making and bad judgement calls. LAW is simply calling out the deed done wrong.

Jen
A Ticked Off Parent

[Gihhny]

Hey LAW Fan Club Member - Who needs enemies when we can have friends like you? My guess is you need to get back on your meds and calm down. You had nothing of importance to say on an important topic. My guess is you live in your parents basement and have no job. Any friends you might have live in their parents basements with no jobs too. You sad, sad little person.

People like me who have followed this site for years value it. I don't always agree with the view points, but I appreciate those who point out an issue often not covered much by the MSN, and get a conversation going. If you can't contribute to the conversation, please go away.

Bill - I understand your view point on this problem with the school district. They do need to justify to the parents why this would contribute to their childrens education. They have not made the case and they won't. GRPS continues to stumble and fall. Too often for me. When will they get ANYTHING right, when no one is left and the doors lock on a closed district for good? One person noted the book won't get used, the story won't be shared after all. So, we excuse this mistake just because it got stopped just in time? No, they need to be spanked for continued misguided notions and behavior. It is so frustrating.

Gihhny

[Bridget Dupont-Tingley, Editor, L.A.W.]

Hello Jen & Gihhny,

We appreciate both of your thoughts and interest on this topic. My guess is you are both parents of school aged children and that is why this issue of profanity and vulgarity strikes you the hardest. Those with a blase' attitude on this issue are not as directly impacted is my guess.

Children learning to speak and understand what profanity is and how powerful and disgusting it can be reminds me of those charming little children of South Park - Kyle, Stan, Cartman, Kenny and the gang. I certainly wouldn't want the real thing in my classrooms, parks, communities or homes. Every other word is a profane thought or statement. Cute for adults to hear who can keep it in context. Not so cute when kids do it in real life who haven't learned yet how to straddle life's difficult boundaries. Use of profanity by the young can sometimes be a launching pad in time to more dangerous life experiences. We the adults are supposed to be the ones who help steer children away from being wild, unlearned little creatures into tomorrow's thinking, acting and feeling adult who respect themselves and others. That can't happen in a world of filth and profanity no matter how intellectually it's packaged.

The reason few of us are able to connect on this issue of whether profanity is good or bad for kids is that we remain in a very divided society. Divided in terms of religion, faith, politics, education, health/medicine, science and the like. It's pretty depressing to realize we've reached a point in our current world when 1/2 the population say's it's ok to call mommy and daddy and the kids next door the M.F. word or when boys and girls call the headcheerleader a Ho word or when someone does something we don't like they are branded a S.O.B. The other 1/2 of our population cringes in horror that we've reached such a point of no return and reason no longer seems to prevail.

The reason for all of this is very simple, we can't find common ground because we are no longer speaking common languages.

It will be up to those of us who do share common ideas, thoughts and concepts to bond together for the good of all. The struggle will not be easy and it will not be quick. As Jen brought up so well in referencing C.S. Lewis and his book The Screwtapes Letters, darkness will always prevail if we let it. So, we must not.

I agree with Bill wholeheartedly on this article. The questions he asked are the ones everyone should be asking. Be you a parent with school aged children, a parent with grown children or taxpayers at large who keep the public schools supported. Our Executive Director, always posts reader feedback be it in agreement with our position or contrary to it. We are more than fine with dissenting opinions. The reader feedback that shows respect will get replies and we will all enjoy on-going conversations. As is the point of the original article. The more we speak, the more we truely converse, the more progress we will make on hot topics like this one. Those who go beyond the pale and/or creep near insanity, silence will be the greatest gift we can give you.

Sometimes, I think we all need to re-visit the rules we were taught in kindergarten. Or worse, we never learned at all:

1) do not use foul language or you'll get your mouth washed uut with soap
2) don't be selfish
3) share with others
4) respect yourself
5) respect those around you
6) if you use something up, replace it
7) clean up after yourself
8) get rewards the right way - earn them
9) if you are having a bad day, take a nap so, you don't make everyone else have a bad day
10) cookies and milk will solve any crisis at hand

Regards,

[Leonard Wood Grotenrath Jr.]

Dammit, Bill, stop responding to your critics with such spot-on ripostes! Your comments leave me with virtually nothing to add!
Save for this tidbit from G.K.Chesterton in "Heretics" : "But the truth is that the ordinary honest man ... was not either disgusted or even annoyed at the candour of the moderns. What disgusted him, and very justly, was not the presence of a clear realism, but the absence of a clear idealism."
The late political philosopher, Leo Strauss, of the University of Chicago, was fond of recalling that the Greek word for vulgarity was "apeirokalia", which literally means, "lack of experience in things beautiful". When we feed our children's minds with the vulgar fodder of such "literature", we should not be surprised when thay vomit up their despair!

Leonardo

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Dan.

Thanks for the thumb's up on our comments section policy. We enjoy hearing both the pros and the cons about our articles.

Regards, Bill

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Jen & Gihhny.

Thanks for your comments. Let me endorse the remarks of our editor Bridget and add one thing: Keep up the fight. Commonsense will prevail in the end.

Regards, Bill

[The Executive Director]

Once again, Leonard, I must thank you for a delicious bon mot. "Apeirokalia" is the perfect word to describe the benighted condition of those who celebrate vulgarity as art. They are blind to beauty because they are ignorant of the God-given essence and purpose of things, so they pervert art into a vehicle of the zeitgeist.

This is well evidenced by Parks's play, a lesson in the noxious postmodernist virtue of authenticity. So using anything other than the foul language of the street would be a transgression against that virtue. Indeed, it would constitute the vice of hypocrisy, the postmodernist crime of restraining the "real self" of visceral desire and appetite under the false veneer of civilization. Of course, I suppose we could blame Rousseau for this nonsense, but the good Thomist I am, I point the finger at Ockham and his damn nominalism. ;)

Regards, Bill

[daschoon]

You know, Mr. Tingley, there is an open spot on the school board right now. You seem to have a lot of free time, a lot of strong opinions about education and a number of like-minded followers. From one product of the public schools to another, I'd say it's time for you to put up or shut up.