Apparently Anne Frank is not welcome in Culpeper County Schools. In fact, this version of Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition,” has been banned from being taught in the classroom, based on the complaint of one parent. Culpeper County Public Schools, like most school systems, has a process by which books with complaints are screened and evaluated. The process was not followed in this case.
According to the Washington Post:
“The Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition,” which was published on the 50th anniversary of Frank’s death in a concentration camp, will not be used in the future, said James Allen, director of instruction for the 7,600-student system. The school system did not follow its own policy for handling complaints about instructional materials, Allen said.
The diary documents the daily life of a Jewish girl in Amsterdam during World War II. Frank started writing on her 13th birthday, shortly before her family went into hiding in an annex of an office building. The version of the diary in question includes passages previously excluded from the widely read original edition, first published in Dutch in 1947. That book was arranged by her father, the only survivor in her immediate family. Some of the extra passages detail her emerging sexual desires; others include unflattering descriptions of her mother and other people living together.
Allen said that the more recent version will remain in the school library and that the earlier version will be used in classes. The 1955 play based on Frank’s experiences also has been a part of the eighth-grade curriculum for many years. The diary’s “universal theme, that there is good in everyone, resonates with these kids,” Allen said.
The Washington Post was able to outline the complaint process that normally takes place:
Culpeper’s policy on “public complaints about learning resources” calls for complaints to be submitted in writing and for a review committee to research the materials and deliberate, Allen said. In this case, the policy was not followed. Allen said the parent registered the complaint orally, no review committee was created and a decision was made quickly by at least one school administrator. He said he is uncertain about the details because he was out of town.
“The person came in, and the decision was made that day . . . and that’s fine. We would like to have had it in writing. It just did not happen,” Allen said.
Why would an administrator not follow county policy and make such a determination for the entire county? Why doesn’t the director of instruction immediately override the wimpy principals and put the book through the normal complaint process? The Diary of Anne Frank has been read by more people than any book other than the bible. according to some sources. It has been translated into many multiple languages. Very few complaints have been lodged against it.
In most cases, parents who are uncomfortable with teaching materials are allowed to remove their child from being taught the material in question or alternate materials are selected. Why would one parent be allowed to make learning decisions for everyone else’s child in the county. Culpeper County needs to re-evaluate this decision and follow its own rules.
You’re making this easy, Rick.
Teacher: “Anne lived in a confined space for two years, during which she experienced many of the normal thoughts and feelings of an adolescent girl. With such limited company and no privacy, she had no outlet for many of those very normal thoughts except to write them in her diary–no peers to exchange “girl talk” and no way to learn from her own or other’s mistakes (nor even the opportunity to make those mistakes). We have to look at those thoughts and feelings in the larger context of a young life denied by much larger and evil forces, and not focus on them as central to the narrative.”
Are you good with Family Life Education? Those classes are quite explicit, depending on the grade.
“We have to look at those thoughts and feelings in the larger context of a young life denied by much larger and evil forces, and not focus on them as central to the narrative.”
Or, we could just read the shorter version, the one that spoke to people for years.
I am A-OK with sex education in general, and probably with Family Life Education.
But you don’t want adolescents to know that other real children in history undergoing some of the most horrendous circumstances have had the same sexual feelings they do? Somehow they must be protected from that, but you’re ok with giving them the state-mandated sex-ed content. It just doesn’t square, Rick.
Anyway, I will make a point of finding out what the big deal is myself with the unabridged version.
Great summary Emma!
Well, whatever one’s feelings may be on the issue currently at hand, there is one bright ray of light here: After more than half a century, the life of Anne Frank still means so much to so many. I’ll say it once more; “Never again!!” Unfortunately, as we speak, there is probably a 13-year-old girl sitting in a wattle-and-daub, thatched-roof hut somewhere out in Darfur suffering through many of the same fears and feelings as Anne Frank did, waiting for the killers to come. Would it not honor Anne Frank for all of us to end the fears of that other young girl once and for all?
Wolverine,
Amen, I could not agree more! When Rachael was only 6 months old, in her baby sling, we ventured downtown to the Mall and particpated in a rally to Save Darfur. She is now going to be 5 next week and nothing has changed. Lets not forget Rawanda, what a murderous rampage that was, and the world just watched. I will never forgive Clinton for doing nothing.
When you look at how many people were up in arms over our intervention in Bosnia, how would Americans feel about intervention in Darfur? Rawanda? I don’t even understand the politics of many of these areas. I don’t know how to save them militarily or through other initiatives.
But I agree Wolverine. But how do we accomplish this?
Rick, she didn’t say ‘tits’ as I remember. She was too genteel. The incident was not in the annex and it was with a friend who was a little older and more developed. She was curious, not bi-sexual.
“Somehow they must be protected from that”
Nobody said that! Not forcing someone to read something is not “protecting” them from it!
Hiding it from them certainly is.
Nobody said that either! Not forcing someone to read something is not “hiding” it from them!
Class reading has been around since dirt was forming on the earth. Rick, didn’t you have to read Merchant of Venice in school and memorize parts? I seem to remember The quality of mercy is not strained from some grade…..I had to read Julius Caesar, Merchant, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth. They assigned the entire class and didn’t ask if we wanted to. They said to do it.
No … we didn’t read much fiction, when we did it was mostly the case that you picked your own book and the teacher ok’d it. Except that we got stuck reading “Great Expectations”.
Honestly, reading or memorizing Shakespeare seems very pointless to me.
Speaking of Dockens, i sat through the 3D “Christmas Carol” a month ago with my grandson, who was bored stiff. It stuck close to Dickens’ text. It’s overrated … he jusy uses Scrooge to voice conservative ideals, then ridicules them, using supernatural characters … not really such a great work.
The decision was reversed and the book will go through proper channels in accordance with Culpeper County School Board policy. Perhaps they didn’t like being nationally laughed at.
Rick, if your one and only experience with assigned reading was Great Expections, no wonder you hate the idea of assigned reading. What a horrible book.
The idea of using trade books for class reading has been around for many decades. It replaces being stuck in the old literature book. Ugh! The response is generally great!
“Stuck” reading “Great Expectations”?
Reading “Hamlet” is pointless?
Dickens is “overrated”?
I wouldn’t mind being “stuck” in such a “pointless” and “overrated” existence.
Rick, I guess you are the Mark Twain to my Richard Livingstone
Livingstone: “I doubt if anything learnt at school is of more value than great literature learnt by heart.
Twain: A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
I myself read (past tense) quite a bit – but I think that forcing kids to read Shakespeare or Salinger or Dickens is a bias towards the past. Let them read something that speaks more to them. Not to struggle with Old English.
BTW, the greatest author in the history of literature is Philip K. Dick.
hmmmm—-I might say that it is Dante. Or Jane Austen. Or most especially F. Scott Fitzgerald–author of some of the best short stories I have ever read and, of course, the masterful “Great Gatsby.” No modern writer comes close to Fitzgerald’s prose.