Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum

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Sicc OG
#1
Feb 2, 2006
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#1
Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum - Telegraph



Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'
American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.
Books such as JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards.
Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council.
The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Jamie Highfill, a teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Arkansas, told the Times that the directive was bad for a well-rounded education.
"I'm afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes.
"In the end, education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn't it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?"
Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare
 
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ThaG

Sicc OG
#16
Jun 30, 2005
9,597
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Ike Turner said:
we did sort of killed a shitload of native americans, but i also don't agree with the hitler thing.
Click to expand...
Hitler pales in comparison to what was done to Native Americans.

Hitler was a one off and ultimately unsuccessful thing that lasted a decade and then was over, and was initiated by a small group of lunatics. Yes, six million died, but the jews eventually got a state of their own and the Germans became international villains because of what they did.

What was done to Native Americans, in contrast, was the largest genocide in history, with at least tens of million, possibly hundreds of million dead, and over large portions of the continent very successful (Canada, USA, Argentina, most of Brazil). It was a deliberate, consistent policy, maintained over CENTURIES, i.e. it's not as if some crazy guy decided "Let's exterminate the native inhabitants of a whole continent", but it was pretty much the whole society that participated. And not only there is no guilt feeling over what was done in that society today, but it is mostly absent from the school curriculum and the culture has built an extensive mythology around the whole thing that hides and distorts the truth...

BTW, people in Europe are much more aware of that history, and there is a marked difference between cultural depictions of Native Americans and the Old West on the two sides of the Atlantics - in the US the natives as barbarians to be exterminated portrayal is a lot more common.
 
Props: Rasan and Sacsick
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