You should be angry at the Tennessee schools. I know I am.
A school district in Tennessee banned the use of “Maus,” a Pulitzer-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, in its middle school classes, citing the work’s profanity and nudity in a 10-to-0 vote.
As leaders in conservative areas across the country push for more control over the way history is taught, the McMinn County school board expressed concern that the expletives in “Maus” were inappropriate for eighth-graders. Members also said Art Spiegelman’s illustrations showing nudity — which depict Holocaust victims forced to strip during their internment in Nazi concentration camps — were improper.
How do you show the horror of the Holocaust? You just have to clean it up? You have to make it clear that this wasn't a trivial, fun, amusing event in order to educate kids about it. You can clean it up. It is the reason that Spiegelman has refused to make a movie out of it.
The school board's objections are ridiculous. Have they ever listened to eighth- graders? I did not learn dirty words from a book or my family, but from my peers. The words in the book are tame compared to the nightmare going on around the characters. Nudity? Oh, Hah. People being forced to line up for mandatory showers and piles of naked corpses are not images that will make kids think of forbidden sexy times.
The 10 to 0 vote is the most chilling part of the article. The whole school board was uniform in their views, no one was principled enough to speak out against the banning. That shows the effectiveness of the Right ininfiltrating our civic life to take control and poison our communities with their oppressive ideas. The teaching of creationism has a similar phenomenon, the teachers are against it, many of the citizens don't want it, the institutions of higher learning reject it and say teaching it is a waste of time.
Good luck to the people of McMinn County. You have been fucked over.
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