You'll never guess what they're challenging now.

From nj.com:

"Bottom line, that material is bizarre," said Jeff Gellenthin, who learned about the material through one of his daughter's friends. Gellenthin, also of Mantua Township, expressed his concerns in a fiery e-mail sent to the school last week where he characterized the translation as "pornography" and "sheer smut."

C'mon.  Guess before you follow the link.  Just do it.  I bet you a bazillion dollars that you'll be wrong.

Comments

[Kelly Fineman]

At first I wasn't sure if Ms. Low was trying to protest the book or was upset that her daughter couldn't wear spaghetti straps to school.

It's as if the folks of Mantua are saying "People knew about and/or talked about sex a long time ago? Shocking!"

[Leila]

Note that she recently moved to New Jersey. Now note where she moved from.

[Kelly]

Good lord. I'm getting so tired of this I want to just let these people be stupid. You don't want your kid to read "Gilgamesh," fine. No "Romeo and Juliet"? Fine. No Shakespeare at all? Fine.

Put 'em in their own room with the Bible. Oh, wait, the bible has a lot of sex too!

[Adam S.]

Holy Christ. Just. Christ. Catcher in the Rye is one thing...

[Leila]

Hey now now, Adam. That kind of language will get my blog banned!

[Lauren]

BAN THIS BLOG! It once mentioned hamster sex! Now it's twice!

[jmfausti]

Just last week I was going to leave a comment about how we don't do stupid shit like try to ban books here in Jersey. Of course, some transplanted Texan has to come along and screw up our good record. I guess there's no where left to hide. What's a book loving and ignorance hating girl to do?

[Lisa]

I'm originally from Texas, but now I live in San Francisco and work in a place where I help gay people to study human embryonic stem cells by cutting up poor defenseless animals. So I guess that means I'm now a ... gosh. What *does* that make me??

Did you hear the one about the Texas schoolteacher who got fired for taking her class on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art? Apparently some kid saw a naked piece of art. *gasp*
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/08/art.teacher.fired.ap/index.html

[Leila]

Oh, yeah. I saw it. Very impressive.

[Kyri Freeman]

I bet no one ever complains about the graphic violence in the ILIAD.

[Catherine]

Good Lord.

[Lady S]

So what are we supposed to read?

I can't even begin to express my fury. Maybe if parents actually parented their children (instead of expecting teachers to) they wouldn't have to worry about what they read!

[nrkii]

Okay, I'm going to take a deep breath and be brave....

I've agreed with many of the comments here and elsewhere about the stupidity and even dangerousness of those people who want to ban books. However, I think when we look at some of the individual circumstances, this is much less black and white.

If I had a 15-year-old daughter who told me that something she was reading for school made her uncomfortable, and I took a look, and found content that I felt was rather sexually explicit, what would I do? What should I do?

In the end, it seemed that this woman said, "the other (not explicit) translation that they gave my daughter in replacement is just fine, thank you." She says she thinks other parents should be aware -- but she's not quoted as saying the book shouldn't be taught, no child should be allowed to see this book, etc. She objects only to the one section, in that specific translation.

And again, if I were the mother in this case, I don't know that I'd feel much differently.

Okay, have at me now.

[librainiac]

Whaaa??

[Adam S.]

Leila, if your blog is banned, my blog has been nuked. I have no idea why conservatives and grammar sticklers let me stick around the internet.

[Tom]

Could you explain, perhaps, what exactly you think this parent did that was wrong? Her daughter complained to her that something she was assigned to read made her uncomfortable. I might add, that if you were to say to your boss that something a male co-worker said to you made you uncomfortable, that co-worker would be sent to diversity training in about 3 minutes. So the mother finds that an alternate translation that is less sexually explicit is available and asks that this be given to her child. She does not ask the book be banned. She does not demand that every child be given the alternate trasnlation. She is in fact doing what a parent is supposed to do.

So here's the big question, have you read the translation in question? People who oppose parents are usually the first to complain that the parent hasn't read the book they are trying to ban. Have you read the translation that this parent has complained about? If not, then what right do you have to complain? An example, the book Trying Neaira is an excellent look at life in ancient Greece. But the book is not appropriate for children as it discusses prostituion fairly explicitly and uses the word "fuck" with a fair amount of frequency. Did this particular translation have the word "fuck" in it? Did it describe sexual practices in detail, perhaps discussing anal intercourse? I have no idea and unless you read the translation, you have no idea either.

[Leila]

According to the article, Jennifer Low's daughter was given a different translation of the book. That's pretty usual, given the circumstances -- in this case, it's even lucky that the complaint was made about a specific translation, so the student can even read the same basic story and discuss it in class.

It is totally okay (in my opinion) for a parent to ask that their own child be given different material. That's what Low did and that's what one other parent did. (Yes, I made that Texas comment, but I just couldn't help myself. It just stuck me as funny.)

But, also according to the article, another parent -- Jeff Gellenthin -- is challenging the use of the book, period. That's what I take issue with -- if he doesn't want his kid to read it, fine. But he can't make that decision for anyone else.

Obviously, I'm just guessing, but it's a good bet that this is the passage in question:

She sripped off her robe and lay their naked,/ with her legs apart, touching herself/ Enkidu saw her and warily approached./ He sniffed the air. He gazed at her body./ He drew close, Shamhat touched him on the thigh,/ touched his penis, and put him inside her./ She used her love-arts, she took his breath/ with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him/ what a woman is. For seven days/ he stayed erect and made love with her,/ until he had had enough. At last/ he stood up and walked toward the waterhole/ to rejoin his animals. But the gazelles/ saw him and scattered, the antelope and deer/ bounded away. He tried to catch up,/ but his body was exhausted, his life-force was spent,/ his knees trembled, he could no longer run/ like an animal, as he had before./ He turned back to Shamhat, and as he walked/ he knew that his mind had somehow grown larger,/ he knew things now that an animal couldn't know.

Again, I don't know for sure that this is it, but it seems likely -- if the teacher wanted to discuss it specifically, it's probably because it's a turning point in the story rather than because it has the words "erect" and "penis" in it. And regardless of what Gellethin says, those words do not pornography make.

[Chrissy]

Ok, yes, many of us are reacting strongly because we are seeing more and more books being challenged and or banned outright. We are seeing more and more stories of ONE parent complaining about their child, which is resulting in whole curiculums being changed, books being removed, libraries becoming off limits. Often these books are modern YA books, and easily targetable for many reasons. While this may not be the case in this one incident, to us it is still a symptom of what we see as a bigger issue.
Furthermore, Gilgamesh, to us, is different. It's an epic ancient story. Like Beowulf, The Odyssey, Shakespeare. They were not written for children, but they are being taught to expose high school students to the concept of timeless literature. Writing that has been around almost as far back as history can go. Of course they are going to have adult content in them. They tell of wars, battles, Gods, love and yes, sometimes sex. No one complains about the massacre of Troy. No one complains about the taking of Harfleur. Teens know about sex. Taking away one translation and replacing it with another doesn't change that. Calling something pornography for containing a sex scene is inflamatory and misleading. Why didn't the parent just ask the teacher for the different translation without it becoming a news story? That also would have been good parenting and protecting her child without the loud cries of pornography and her saying to the press "I just don't think this should be in school,".

[nrkii]

Do we know that it was the mother who went to the press?

I'm also put off by the claims (quoted in the newspaper article) that this is censorship. I certainly don't think what Low did was anywhere in the neighborhood.

And Leila, I understand your comment about the third parent. That made me do a double-take as well. I suppose I could argue that he is sticking up for Low, or that he's concerned about what his daughter might be given to read in light of what her friends are being assigned. But in either case, he should just limit his comments to THAT, or keep out of it.

That said, while your original post focused on the third parent, the comments took it to another place entirely, and that's what prompted my response. I get it that some book challenges are destructive, and book banning is insanity added to malice, but I don't think all cases are the same. I believe we have to look at each individually and decide if there is reason to worry, yell, kick, scream, etc. before we actually do worry, yell, kick, scream, etc.

I posted about all this late last night. I'm interested in seeing how this discussion goes.

[cc]

All things considered I'm going to guess that the "pornography" in question isn't friend Enkidu's erect penis (SEVEN DAYS?) but Shamat "touching herself." It's well established (and most recently shown in that documentary about the movie rating board) that the culture is much more freaked out about women enjoying sex than just about anything else.
Which just adds a whole different dimension of unpleasantness to this uproar.

That said, I think it's pretty funny to challenge Gilgamesh. I picture thousands of kids hiding under their pillows. Along with the Metamorphosis of Apuleius and Petronius' Satyricon.

[Leila]

I think you're probably right about that. Pbbbttttht. (At that, not you.)

And I think seven days might even beat Sting's record.

[Tom]

That is 10th grade we are talking about. This is 14 and 15 year old girls and boys. If you think that translation is appropriate for that age group then I really don't know what to say to you. If a congressman sent that to a page he would be forced to resign!!!
In this day and age with children growing up too fast and pedophilia becoming a larger problem the last thing we need to do is sexualize 10th graders.

As far as the parents bringing this to the attention of the public, good for them. Did the school notify the parents that their children were going to be reading sexually explicit material? Did the school not think that some parents might object to material describing explicit sex scenes?

[Leila]

If they'd used it for the past two years, as the article mentioned, without any problems, then no, they might not have. But as far as I remember (I don't have time to read it again, my lunchbreak is almost over), the article didn't mention a permission slip being sent home. The article also doesn't specify whether or not Gellethin even has a child in the class -- it says he found out about it from one of his daughter's friends.

Everybody's different, and everyone's opinion is colored by their own experience. My parents always let me read whatever I wanted to -- I was reading Stephen King in seventh grade, I read the Auel books in middle school and I remember reading The Godfather in early high school. Again, that was me.

I could be wrong, and I'm not trying to split hairs, but I believe that tenth-graders are usually a year older than that -- 15-16. And from what I remember, sex was pretty darned prevalent in middle school, let alone tenth grade. Again, I can really only speak from my own experience, but I do think that most tenth-graders could handle it.

[Tom]

I have a daughter who is 13 and in 9th grade. 10th graders are either 14 or 15.

I will be bet that the reason that there have been no complaints about the translation is because no parents knew about the translation. As far as sex in middle school, do you really think that the average 12 year old has had sex? And this has nothing to do with what a 10th grader can or can not handle. It has to do with what the SCHOOL is saying is acceptable.

Is there any book that you think she be banned from High School? If a teacher decided to teach from a Penthouse Letters collection, would you consider parents who tried to get that book banned to be worthy of abuse?

[Leila]

Like I said, I wasn't sure about the ages.

In terms of sex, I was talking about talk, not deed -- yes, some middle schoolers have sex, no, not the majority of them. But the majority of them talk about it. A lot.

In my school district, we had sex ed. in middle school. (Puberty stuff younger, but SEX stuff in middle school.)

The school is saying that the book is an acceptable piece of literature, sure. Just because you're teaching a piece of fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter), it doesn't mean that you're telling the kids to go out and DO whatever it is that's in the book. Romeo & Juliet is taught in some middle schools and lots of 9th and 10th grade classes -- that doesn't mean that schools are telling kids that teenage sex/marriage, swordfights and suicide are acceptable behaviors.

I've heard the Penthouse Letters collection (the book varies) argument before, and I still don't buy it. I don't think it's a realistic example. I mean, heck. Prove me wrong. Find an example of a high school teacher assigning the Penthouse Letters collection and the ensuing fallout, and I'll tell you what I think of that situation. But I doubt you'll find one.