Given that everything I know about Hold Still is based on this article, I decided to look it up on Amazon. The bulk of the synopsis includes:
Devastating, hopeful, hopeless, playful . . . in words and illustrations, Ingrid left behind a painful farewell in her journal for Caitlin. Now Caitlin is left alone, by loss and by choice, struggling to find renewed hope in the wake of her best friend’s suicide. With the help of family and newfound friends, Caitlin will encounter first love, broaden her horizons, and start to realize that true friendship didn’t die with Ingrid. And the journal which once seemed only to chronicle Ingrid’s descent into depression, becomes the tool by which Caitlin once again reaches out to all those who loved Ingrid—and Caitlin herself.
I'm not going to sit here and wax poetic about how brave it is, or how brilliant it is -- because I haven't read it. I am going to say that exposing teens to viewpoints that aren't their own is good, and that the Young Adult genre features the word adult for a reason. It's a book written for teenagers on their way into adulthood, who are becoming adults every day and need reading material that caters to their dilemmas and lifestyles. We cannot clap our hands over our ears and eyes and pretend that a high school student isn't being affected by adult issues, because they are. It's happening even as we want to cling to their childhood, and we're not doing anyone a service by pretending.
A parent can and should know what their child is reading, but they do not have the right to say what other people's children can or cannot read. It's not the school's fault that they didn't look at the content of the reading list prior to encountering this book and come to more agreeable solution with the teacher. I don't think it's ever stated if the parents discovered this, or the daughter complained, but given that they're not parading around their daughter while she tells news outlets everywhere how traumatized she was by the word 'fuck' and how shocked she was by teenage sex -- I'm guessing she's probably not the one complaining.
When I was in elementary school I had a friend whose family was pretty strictly religious, to the point that as per her mother's request, she was excused from class when they approached topics that her mother didn't approve of her learning in school. I always thought it was really weird, but it allowed my friend to continue in school without offending her mother's values.
When I was in 7th grade I was reading dime store romance novels. My life was filled with Harlequin and Silhouette, and I could not be strayed from that course. A concerned teacher pulled my mother aside one day after noticing and pointed out that these books contained some very adult themes and concepts that she felt were inappropriate for a girl my age.
I don't even remember how I found out about this, because it wasn't by my mother summarily banning every paperback I owned. I continued to read romance novels until I got bored with them sometime in the 8th grade, and then I moved on to horror novels.
My point is -- my mother and stepfather were well aware of what I was reading. I read these books openly in the living room, at the dinner table, in the car -- wherever I was reading. They presumably made the choice for our family that it was okay for me to read those books. Another parent in the Blue Springs School District may be perfectly comfortable with their children reading Hold Still, may even be glad to see it as a talking point in the classroom. These individual parents have every right to ask the teacher or the principal to excuse their daughter from the reading assignment and let her do some alternative work -- have her research how teen suicide affects peers using a different source or something. But turning to their pastor and starting a crusade under the guise of PROTECT THE CHILDREN?
It's not their place.
Reading about something in a book is not the same as "pushing a lifestyle." The mother looks like a nice woman -- she really does. But at about a minute in she says, "Extremely inappropriate, very explicit in sexual relationships, just various topics that just should not be, you know, pushed -- in my opinion -- in a public school." (Emphasis hers in the video.) I promptly, irrationally hated her and everything she stands for.
Once I recovered from my urge to rage quit right there, I can say as calming as possible: a book written about a topic is not the same thing as pushing that lifestyle onto the readers. Can I emphasis this enough? It's not even glamourizing that lifestyle! In a piece of fiction I once posted to a group online, a character got wasted and got behind the wheel of a car -- and predictably got into an accident. (No one died, thankfully.) I was chastised by one reader for promoting such a dangerous choice as drunk driving. Other readers jumped in and said, "Dude, no. It's fiction, not a lifestyle guide."
In the course of my reading years, I've read books about serial killers, about rapists, about cheaters, about heterosexuals and homosexuals and asexuals, about polygamists, about the mentally ill, about soldiers, about teachers, about historians, about vampires -- and yet I am not a sexually-fluid serial killing rapist vampire with a mental illness who has worked as a soldier, teacher, and historian. Instead, I'm a straight woman and a mother who doesn't feel the need to read about other straight white mothers in her fiction. Holy shit! Call the presses!
What Mrs. Brown is saying there is, "This book talks about people who have different values than me, and I don't want my daughter exposed to that" and trying to say that the book is offensive because of it.
To quote cartoonist Zach Weiner, "'I'm offended' does not equal 'It's offensive'."
Teachers aren't just picking books off the shelf because they look cool. Teachers build their curriculum based around a lot of things, including school requirements and I imagine some of their own bias as to what they feel teenagers need to discuss and learn. Teachers, feel free to chime in here, but I'm decently certain that the teachers are aware of the content of the books their students are reading -- how else do they lead discussions?
Suicide is going to be a very real issue for their daughter's generation. When my sister told me her new school had an assembly because a student commit suicide back in 2005, I remember I was bewildered -- a teen commit suicide in Junction City? Surely that only happens in big places. Surely even the saddest teens (yo) are able to pick themselves up and find a reason to live.
Unfortunately, no. It's sad and it's a terrible fucking tragedy and I hate to say it, but the Brown's daughter is going to be touched by suicide at some point. A peer may do it. A friend may consider it. And I pray to God this is never ever ever ever the case, but she might even be the peer or friend in question. The act of calling it out and making it a discussion topic, instead of putting it on a high shelf and wrapping it up in taboo is a pretty smart decision on the school's part.
They've missed an opportunity for dialogue. They could have used this book as a jumping off point to talk about sex, suicide, depression, friendship, boys -- they could have used it to talk about their values regarding swearing, since that seems to be an issue for them. Hell, they could have used it as a chance to talk about shitty books. I'm by no means saying that they ought to have handed their daughter a condom and said, "Go fuckin' get 'em!" but they could have used this for education rather than attempting to shut out these issues entirely.
What do you think? Have you read the book -- is it an appalling mass of death and orgies and swearing that no teen ought to read? Should schools ban books due to parental bias? When should a parent take the issue to the school, and when should they keep it at home?
0 comments:
Post a Comment