I knew it was going to happen in Cedarburg. They picked a perfect time for it.
Someone's challenging the inclusion of the book The Kite Runner in the Cedarburg High (where I used to teach) curriculum. They say they think it's a good book, but not for 10th graders.
They say they want some alternatives. The book does focus on some nasty stuff: child sex trafficking, drugs, and homosexuality. But this is Afghanistan we're talking about--not the United States, of course.
Except for one thing: The three aforementioned vices are ever-present in the United States, and in large numbers. Child sex trafficking is so prevalent, for instance, that there's an enormous notice to contact police pasted onto the kiosk of the bus stop just one block from my apartment, in a relatively well-to-do part of Milwaukee.
And, while researching a novel I'm writing, I asked someone in the know about transsexuality at Cedarburg High. I was told that it's been there for quite some time now. I stopped teaching in a classroom there in 2003, and I must admit that I never actually saw an example of homosexuality that I knew of. But Cedarburg being what it is, there's no doubt that it was there. The pressure applied to remain in the mainstream of student life must have been enormous.
This request that The Kite Runner be somehow hidden until later in the high school experience dismisses the exposure that 10th graders have already had to the more controversial themes in the book. They've already seen it on TV and movies. To pretend that they haven't dodges what prime media has already done.
I know they're trying to protect these young minds from unnecessary corruption far too soon in their lives. For that they can't be overly criticized, but they're already too late. Nobody has to like it, but that's what's happened.
I've got another book to recommend to anyone who's concerned about this, in fact. It's called The Disappearance of Childhood, by Neil Postman, written in the early 1980s. Postman has been one of the more acerbic commentators on the development of our culture in the latter half of the last century. This thin offering struck me as being especially perceptive.
Postman paralleled the development of succeedingly more sophisticated media platforms with the reduction of the innocence of childhood. He begins with the telegraph and concludes with television, and you can see it clearly. He not only points it out, he bemoans it. Kids, he continuously states, have been made to grow up, or be exposed to more adult issues, far too quickly, before they've had a chance to properly mature and deal with them competently.
Anyone who's been in education for a significant part of their lives, like I have, can do little else but nod their heads. The world comes on very fast nowadays. It's getting harder and harder to connect the dots. But someone has to try. What better place than in the schools, where discussions can be structured by an adult?
But to keep an important and excellent book (one of two that had me in tears at the end) away from 10th graders just because you think they should be exposed, what, one or two years later? That begs incredulity. As a teacher said, they're going to be voters in two years. There's no reason to hold back.
Alongside of that comes the realization that, until last year's debacle, we were very involved in Afghanistan's society, unsuccessfully trying to hold back the Taliban to which the population eventually succumbed (for more on that, try The Afghanistan Papers, previously reviewed in this space). That's the same Taliban that committed horrible rites of public execution, that has suppressed the development of women, that has dissolved any separation of church and state, that has approved of childhood marriages. A significant majority of 10th grade girls would be married in Afghanistan by now--something that should be driven home sooner rather than later.
There's no better way to expose those realities than by a well-written book. It's a novel, yes, but it brings to light many parts of Taliban culture that we here do not and will never realize personally. It's an excellent way to sustain perspective: That life here may have its problems but at least girls get a chance to have as much education as they can; that they can marry whomever they wish whenever they wish; that being unmarried does not keep them from pursuing professional dreams. Yes, there's a way to go, but the point remains that significant parts of our society are bearing down on those improvements and won't rest until they're realized.
The sooner girls can get that message, the better. This isn't bullying; this is enlightenment, just at the point at which high school students should be exposed to it. The word is that the decision now rests with the superintendent; let's hope he is similarly enlightened. The Kite Runner isn't a book that needs restriction in its exposure; it needs expansion. We will see if the school district retreats under a canvas of fear, rather than remain open to effective learning.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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