Missouri school district bans 'biblically contrary' novels by Kurt Vonnegut and Sarah Ockler

Remember when The New York Times' David Carr made an offhand comment about Missouri and Kansas being home to "the dance of the low, sloping foreheads," and everyone got mad at East Coast elitism? It's infuriating to feel like people are judging you based on your zip code rather than your merits, especially when those people are the ones you view as your cultural allies.

That said, this story is a perfect example of why people elsewhere look down on us. Because it's hard to remember the last time a NYC school banned a book because someone complained it taught "principles contrary to the Bible."


In Republic, Missouri, the Republic High School board has unanimously voted to ban Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer. The books were named in a public complaint filed last year, along with the Laurie Halse Anderson novel Speak, which managed to stay on school shelves.

--snip--

The complaint was filed by Republic resident Wesley Scroggins, a professor of management at Missouri State, and author of several outraged letters to his daily newspaper on the moral dry rot of our public-school system. Last year, the Riverfront Times reported on Scroggins' deep concerns as a parent about the ideas his children are exposed to. His children, by the way, are home-schooled, and therefore not in danger of a teacher forcing them to read any of these books. Still, thought is like a virus, so what if some teenage Denny's waiter with a public-library card serves a Moon Over My Hammy to a Scroggins child? Next thing you know, the kid's applying to attend the Iowa Writer's Workshop. So it goes.

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2011/07/missouri_school_district_bans.php

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Just another example of those poor christians being persecuted, I guess.

:sarcasm:

Because we are the problem, so I'm told.

I mean, why do they want to be treated equally and to not have any religion forced on them. They should just be happy they are tolerated so well.

But I guess we knew that already...

But recognizing that fact is apparently persecuting them.

He believes in survival of the fittest books, so he's really a Darwinist and an atheist.

Atheists are banning books! The truth comes out!

It's too bad those high school kids will not get to read Vonnegut.

I haven't read either of the other books; but I'm guessing the kids will be missing a lot in them too.

Who are you to tell them they're wrong?

What is so hard to understand about that?

What is so hard to understand about that?