According to CBC News, a parent’s complaint regarding “sexually explicit content” recently led to the removal of “Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary” from schoolrooms teaching fourth and fifth grade children.* The offensive content?
Oral sex – “oral stimulation of the genitals”
After review by a panel comprised of parents, teachers, and school administrators, the dictionaries have been returned to the classroom and students may access them only if their parents have signed a permission slip.
Does anyone else remember looking up the meaning of “dirty words” when you heard them? I remember giggling with my friends during library time when we tried to find as many as possible in the time we were allotted (or before the teacher caught us). I understand the urge to protect children, but by the time a child is in public school a few years, they’ve heard most “dirty words” countless times. Because of this, wouldn’t it be prudent to allow children to learn the correct meaning of terms they are already hearing (and probably using), should they wish to know?
In other book banning news, FOX News reports this week a middle school in Virginia removed, “The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition” by Anne Frank, after a complaint by a parent that the book contains “sexual references”. The county’s Director of Instruction “didn’t want to make a big deal” out of the situation so he acted on the complaint by removing the book and replacing it with the originally published version, one censored by Anne’s father to remove the sexual content (among other things).
“The Diary of a Young Girl” has long been a reading assignment for many seventh or eighth grade students.** It’s written by a 13-15 year old girl who endured the horrors of hiding for two years from the Nazis in a confined attic and who later died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
I read the censored version of Anne’s diary when I was in school (although I didn’t know at the time it was censored). It was powerful, it was frightening, it was real. It’s true I didn’t suffer from the removal of Anne Frank’s innocent description of her vagina. (She describes it without being crass and remarks she doesn’t see how a man fits in that little hole and she certainly doesn’t understand how a baby comes out.) That said, I do not believe I would have been harmed by it either. In fact, I know I wouldn’t have.
The same year I read “The Diary of a Young Girl”, we (most of the girls in my class) were passing around copies of “smut” books some had either bought or swiped from their mothers, books like “Sweet Savage Love” by Rosemary Rogers. I assure you nothing an innocent girl could have written in her journal would have compared to the things described in books that fell open to all the naughty bits because the books had been opened to those pages so many times.
I will only add that I was a sheltered child. Seriously sheltered. My parental sex education consisted of a set of books from Time Life that addressed the biology of sex and sexual maturation, and one sentence from my father. “Yeah sex is good or everyone wouldn’t be doing it, but if you do it before you get married I’ll kill you.” Sheltering didn’t help me, it only led me to alternative sources to satisfy my curiosity.
I understand and respect the opinions of people who are concerned about protecting their children, but quite often I think they must not remember what they or their friends were like when they are children. Wouldn’t talking to your children be a much better way to address things we must all eventually learn?
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* Approximately ages 10-11
** Approximately ages 12-14
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An endless source of amusement for my brother was the fact that if you looked up “fart” in the dictionary you received the following definition “an explosion between the legs.”
I once asked my mom what f*** meant.
She made a big deal about searching for it in the dictionary. Then she told me it couldn’t possibly be a word because it was not listed.
Some years later I found that she was wrong:)
Lady Julia,
I could not agree with you more. I raised two beautiful daughters. We tried to be as open with them about sex as we could. Our biggest limitations were how we were taught. We endeavored to do a better job than our parents. I know my daughters will do a better job than their parents.
It is a very strange society that censors such a moving story like “Diary of a Young Girl, but allows movies and even TV shows with wanton killing and violence to exist. Not to mention how sex and love is portrayed in most movies and TV shows. The notion that if we don’t talk about our genitalia they will not exist is ludicrous. Anne’s story is about being human in the most horrible of conditions. What an important lesson for any child to learn. Both my daughters read the story and were moved by it. I never realized it was censored. What a shame. I would not have objected to the word vagina.
I think care should be taken in teaching children about sex and sexuality. To much to soon can be traumatic. But to little to late can stunt a child’s development. I think love, honesty and balance are the keys.
Very nice post.
Thank you,
Mike
It isn’t up to schools to teach children about sex, it’s the parents decision when and how their children are exposed to information.
“It isn’t up to schools to teach children about sex, it’s the parents decision when and how their children are exposed to information.”
Theoretically you are correct. The real world truth is many people are unwilling or unable to teach their children what they need to know. Thank Goddess that schools make the effort to educate children about life not merely the three R’s.
Censorship is never justified in a free society.
Sometimes censorship is necessary. I don’t want my kids reading violent stuff and think there is too much of it in schools and everywhere.
Parents have a right to expect their children will not be exposed to the obscene or the vulgar. People who want to expose their children can although they should be shot in my opinion. You can’t untell someone’s children something they don’t want them to know. You can tell yours what you want them to know.
I think censorship in the US is taken to crazy extremes, and that puritanical attitudes toward sex have no place in modern society. I find it sad, too, that anyone would consider a schoolgirl’s musings to be obscene or vulgar. Why not, instead, encourage a healthy attitude toward sexuality? Too many girls are buying into society’s notion that their sexuality is a sordid thing.
I love your blog, btw. My boyfriend was my impetus into femdom, but your more subtle blend of domme is far more intriguing than the whole whips-and-chains thing.
Interesting point, but to me, this is merely the price of having a free AND responsible society. This would not be an issue in a society that was not free; some authority would dictate what could and could not be read. Nor is it an issue in an irresponsible society (think of some in SE Asia) where anything goes; not somewhere i would want to raise a child.
The problem is that we do not make a distinction between innocence and naivete. The naive pretend that ugliness does not exist. The innocent know that ugliness exists, but chose not to look. As a parent I always strived to nurture innocence while hoping I was not merely fostering naivete.
BTW: Lady Julia, this may be my new favorite site. Extremely stimulating.
Maybe parents DO remember what they themselves were like as children, and that is WHY they seek to shield and protect them, even to the extreme mentioned in the article.
When considering the public schools and libraries, it is not a matter of whether there is going to be censorship, but of who does it. The parents, who under our law and customns have the ultimate responsibility? Some faceless hack writer in a textbook company? A bureaurocrat at the department of education? Political activists, with their own agenda? The librarian? The teacher?
Maybe Mr. Frank removed some of the intimate personal details from his daughter’s diary before it was published because he wanted to protect her privacy. Perhaps being privy to such details is none of our d**n business.
Freemann
Freemann, I don’t disagree with you about the possibility that Mr Frank wanted to protect her privacy. Anne was, however, rewriting her diary with the thought of publication in mind. Anne’s Revisions I’m not sure we’ll ever know what she did and didn’t want published, although what rewrites she had accomplished give us a little indication. Either way, if someone objected to the reading of the book on the basis that Mr. Frank’s wishes should have been respected, I am not sure I would disagree with that. I do not know if he signed away the rights to do so when it was published, but again – your point is one I would consider more valid than I would censoring it because of the innocent sexual descriptions of a young girl who was coming of age.
As for your comments regarding parental responsibility and censorship, are you suggesting the censoring of the curriculum should be left to the parents? If so – which parents? And how effective would their efforts to shield their child be? Children will come of age. They are exposed to things via other children, tv, videogames, etc. Is censorship the answer? Or is teaching them to responsibly handle the information they are receiving in a manner that is safe, appropriate, and informed. Throughout life we are exposed to situations that require us to make moral decisions. At what point do we stop shielding children and begin teaching them how to make wise choices?
Lady Julia,
Yes, as a teacher I am saying that setting the curriculum, deciding what should or should not be taught, is the responsibility of the parents, in the final analysis. After all, they are paying the bills, and he who pays the piper calls the tune. In a democracy, all the parents have a say on what goes into public education, and each set of parents has the final say on what they teach their own children.
Of course I believe that we should teach our children, as I tried to teach mine, to make wise and moral decisions. And we must teach them to accept the consequeses of those decisions, for the world will impose those consequenses whether we teach the kids to expect it or not. Again, who decides what is wise and moral? Do you really trust an agent or agency of the State to decide what is wise and moral to teach our children? Maybe i would, if I felt that the school system was democratically run, but in my state, in my county, it is not.
Freemann
I have no problem with individual parents indicating they do not wish their children to read certain things. I may disagree with it, but that is their right. I do have a problem when that parent’s opinion denies other children access to something their parents (and teachers) feel is acceptable and even beneficial.
John and Leslie, thank you for your comments and for visiting my blog :) Welcome!