Yesterday I had a meeting with a parent who was challenging some books that are in my English 11 curriculum. At one point, the aforementioned parent objected to my teaching Of Mice and Men because it contained cruelty to animals in its content.
Question: had this parent read any of the books, in full, that she was objecting to?
Answer: whatever the opposite of "yes" is.
But... she had done plenty of online research to cherry pick "controversial" moments from each of the novels, novels such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, and In Country. So, I take it that this parent is very adept at reading online material and finding material to suit her cause online. And as determined as she seems to be, it's only a matter of time that she'll happen upon The Snob House Read-Along. All you need to do, after all, is google my name and there it is.
I'm not going to change my curriculum, but I do want to make sure that anything I've written on this blog can't be used to attack my credibility on the issue. So I've decided to board up The Snob House for a while until this blows over. And it will blow over in no time, trust me.
See you then!
