I’m aware that teachers have large problems from parents who want to shield their child from things in public schools. This is not possible, and the parents need to be made aware of this fact. It is a teacher’s job to teach, not to censor, and parents need to be reminded of this line that they keep crossing, then they need to be booted to their rightful side of the line. It is a sad state of affairs when parents expect others to censor children.
It would be better for the child’s mind if things were explained, not hidden away. By all means, wait a bit if you feel your child isn’t ready to handle such information and explain that to the teachers, but don’t expect others to enforce your wishes for your child on all the other children. It shouldn’t be done. And don’t think that first and second graders, as well as third and fourth aren’t discussing the exact same ‘taboo’ words and ideas amongst themselves. Don’t lie to yourself, it’s a bad habit to get into.
The Higher Power Of Lucky by Susan Patron
Link New York Times Article
The Newberry award winner above has been deemed not fit for children by some parents, librarians and general busybodies. (The first two may also be the latter, but not, y’know, necessarily.)
Because the book contained the word ‘Scrotum.’
In reference to a, get this, dog.
Quit chuckling, I’m serious.
(As an aside, you know what’s amusing? I live in the middle of nowhere, where ‘Focus on the Family is played in restaurants and there’s a church on every corner. Hell, I can see two from my windows, one in front of me and one in back of me. And yet, the parents and people I’ve talked with didn’t give a damn that the word scrotum was in the book. They cared more about why the dog was bit than the word itself. Might be because mainly we’re a farming and hunting community, though. I’ve an interesting little tidbit about such a thing I’ll share at the bottom of the page, but not before.)
Reached at her home in Los Angeles, Ms. Patron said she was stunned by the objections. The story of the rattlesnake bite, she said, was based on a true incident involving a friend’s dog.
And one of the themes of the book is that Lucky is preparing herself to be a grown-up, Ms. Patron said. Learning about language and body parts, then, is very important to her.
“The word is just so delicious,” Ms. Patron said. “The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It’s one of those words that’s so interesting because of the sound of the word.”
Emphasis mine.
The author said one of the themes is that the main character, Lucky, is preparing to be a grown-up. To prepare for something normally involves study. I hope we all agree on this? To study is to learn. To learn is to try and understand new things. I’m not seeing a contradiction here. In fact, the use of the word scrotum is downright appropriate, especially since grown-ups should know what parts of the body are called.
Children are interested in new things. New sounds, new sights, new smells, new sensations. If you hide something, especially a word, they will be much more interested in it than if it was explained in an honest fashion, because they don’t see/hear/smell it often, if at all.
I read. A lot. I read a lot as a child, and I read as much now as I did then. As an example, I read and finished Stephen King’s ‘IT’ when I was ten. I might’ve been younger, I base my age around there because the roof fell in when I was ten, and I read it before that happened. Either way, that book and many others like it was taken to my elementary school and read in public, in full view of the teachers and my peers.
And you know what? They didn’t care. When my peers wanted to know what something meant and were too afraid to ask a teacher, they asked me. And I made damn sure I had the correct meaning of a word before I gave them an answer, and I’d never gotten a complaint from a child or an adult about it.
(Kicker is, they still do this with words, kids and now adults as well. Do I have a sign on my forehead saying ‘Bookworm’ or something?)
It wasn’t the most progressive school around, but looking back, it’s a damn site better than what I’m seeing in schools now.
I remember reading in “IT”, as a child, when the main characters had sex towards the end of the book, and it was considered an adult act, which is why they did it and also how they got out of the tunnel systems as kids in Derry and away from the killer clown.
That’s the part out of all the books I’ve read that impressed upon me that sex is for adults, and that there is a difference between sex and experimentation. Both of which happened at the same time in the same part of the book.
You’d think it would’ve been the sex ed class at school in fourth grade, or the little red book my mother sat down and read to me, in the driest voice possible, that impressed upon me that particular bit of knowledge. But no, it was a page or five in an old best seller that’s sold at discount racks across America.
Which is a reason I consider someone’s understanding of a book to be a very personal thing, and why books shouldn’t be censored or banned. That a word is considered impolite for a child to read or hear due to societal messages about propriety or religious expectations is ridiculous. A child will take something at face value because it is a new thing, and they have not seen/heard it before and/or they don’t know what it means. They will question it, and they will learn. Learning, contrary to what seems to be popular opinion, is not a bad thing.
If a word is considered bad, like an insult, explain to them why it is insulting. Don’t say “This is bad…Why?…because I said so.”
Children have great bullshit detectors. Those narrowed eyed, considering looks they give people? That’s their bullshit meter going off, sounding the alarm.
Won’t someone think of the children?
Quite. I’m happy to think of the children, especially the ones who have the joy of reading. Which is why I’d rather the book be kept in school libraries.
“I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J. “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.”
Andrea Koch, the librarian at French Road Elementary School in Brighton, N.Y., said she anticipated angry calls from parents if she ordered it. “I don’t think our teachers, or myself, want to do that vocabulary lesson,” she said in an interview. One librarian who responded to Ms. Nilsson’s posting on LM_Net said only: “Sad to say, I didn’t order it for either of my schools, based on ‘the word.’ ”
Something I noticed about the comments in the N.Y. Times article. It doesn’t seem to be the word per-se that’s bothering the adults. They already know what it means. It’s that they would have to answer a question about a word that they don’t like from a child that makes them uncomfortable.
To those who find it offensive and a burden to answer a child’s honest question because they don’t like a word;
How dare you.
You are a teacher, possibly a parent. Answering the questions of children is your job. And you! The librarian! It’s your job to provide books, not take them away! All those things require work, which some people seem awfully anxious to get out of. Making up words like ‘hoohaa’ to replace vagina and ‘weewee’ to replace penis is how people got into this blasted language problem, and now you are digging the hole deeper, by not even allowing a word substitution. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you weren’t willing to say ‘Scrotum’ you anonymous librarian, you. “The word.” indeed. Not that I agree with substitutions, but really. At the very least allow the book and direct the kid to someone who will answer, or a dictionary if you find it oh so offensive. No one said you had to read the book.
Nor do you get to choose “When” the question will be asked. Children are not mindless automatons who can be programmed to only respond in certain ways at certain times. (Though lord knows some adults try)
Since they are old enough to understand a word’s function and purpose, tell them. Especially since half the children’s population already have a scrotum, and the other half of the population will be asking what it is when they spot it if they don’t already know what it’s called.
It’s not like kids don’t examine each other and won’t find it.
You need to quit trying to sweep that under the rug as well. Shove them back to the dark ages, why don’t you.
The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.
-Julie Bosman, N.Y. Times
Books are not polite conversation. Books are personal things, and will be interpreted by individuals differently.
The understanding of a book is a personal thing.
The word ’scrotum’ can be considered ‘polite’ for polite conversation. Why? Because it is the name of a part of the human body. There’s nothing dirty about it, unless the person having one is rolling around in the mud and needs a bath.
No different from your legs, arms, nose or mouth. And it isn’t a ‘dirty’ euphemism (often used to insult someone) for a part of the body either, like cunt or asshole. Don’t go pretending they’re in the same league, that’s disingenuous.
I’ve a bone to pick with ‘polite conversation.’ Polite conversation isn’t reality. Polite conversation is a buffer from reality, an easer of actions between conversing people so they can tolerate one another in day-to-day life. If one is going to ask a question, they can at least be specific and honest.
I dislike it immensely when people are purposefully vague. Either one wants to squash clear communication or one does not; but dancing around the bush and using ‘polite conversation.’ as an excuse shouldn’t be tolerated.
It’s one of the reasons I prefer to converse with kids, they often don’t hide behind society’s idea of ‘polite conversation.’
Here’s my version of polite conversation.
It’s supposed to be honest, yet tactful. Has no need to be noisy and that the adult using it tries to extend to others a degree of privacy should the recipient choose not to discuss something.
Simple, yet I find it affective.
(I’m excluding children in the privacy bit because they have different ideas of privacy, I think. At least, I did when I was younger. I’m afraid my ideas are a bit different now, based on reactions from other people.)
Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten. The biting of the dog’s scrotum by a snake. that’s the part of the book that makes me uncomfortable. The biting. I feel bad for the snake, because I, too, was in such a position once.
My brother apparently thought he was playing with me, I disagreed. (I’d like to preface this by saying we were both very young, not yet school age. In other words, don’t blame me.) I had asthma and breathing problems when I was younger, and the little shit was bouncing on my chest and I couldn’t shove him off. Felt like I was suffocating, and I hate that feeling.
So I bit him to remove the problem. Yes, there. I later learnt our parents had to get some sort of cream for the injury. Needless to say, I became acquainted with dad’s belt. Lesson learnt, I suppose, considering I could’ve bitten it off. But in my defense I didn’t know where I was biting, couldn’t exactly aim.
That’s the only thing about the book that would have bothered me as a child, and it’s the only thing that bothers me now. And the feeling doesn’t come from the idea of scrotum being a ‘dirty’ word, it’s through my own personal experience with genitals, biting and the punishments met out for it.
