Im responding to anyone that watched me in order to find out the results of the public hearing that was called by my independant school district regarding the "banning" of Pillars of the Earth from my school's curriculum.

original thread -> [link]

that thread is poorly worded, now that i read back over it.

SO on this past monday, my independant school district called a public hearing. In this hearing, 6 people for the book and 6 people against the book gave speeches trying to make their points. The hearing began by prayer led by one of the parents against the book being in our school's senior english curriculum. Because she technically isn't an employee of the government, i dont think it's unconstitutional for her to lead us in prayer, but im still skeptical.

My town is somewhat small, i guess, so the room for the hearing was not big enough for the amount of press that his story had recieved. I got there early, and even then i didnt have a chair to sit in. Me and the people i went with tried to dress nicely so that we wouldn't be a detriment to our "cause".

The speeches were actually pretty coherent for the most part. Of course there was an over-zealous and misinformed performance on both sides, but thats alright because i think thats part of why i wanted to go.

there were two main points made by the group against having the book on the reading list for dual credit/AP senior english:
1) There was no parental notification or consent given for this book to be read by the students that had the option to read it. It is important for parents to give consent to any material that might be objectionable

this kind of makes sense, i will admit. Except that some of the kids in the class were (and are now) 18 at the time of reading the book. They dont even need their parents consent to drop out of school, right? As for the 17 year olds; in Texas, the age of consent is 17 years old. We can have sex but we cant read sexually explicit material? Uh, ok.
Anyways, my teacher sent out a note discussing the sexual and violent nature of the book WAY before we read it. Technically, we didnt have to show this to our parents, which i think my teacher should change. But there was AMPLE warning beforehand about the book and its content. Besides, there was another option. No one was forced in any way to read the book whatsoever.

2) This material is a) pornographic and b) unsuitable for this age group. It therefore has no place in a school.

Wrong. pornography = something made for the sole purpose of sexual arousal. If you read the book and analyze is, you will notice that the sexual parts have a role in the book other than being sexual. I wont explain how they are important, because if you're an adult and you can't interpret what an author is trying to convey to you, then how are you supposed to tell ME that IM too young to handle this book? s'all im saying.

i believe i discussed b) a little while ago.
Also, this book was read during the summer, which means that technically, it never had to touch school grounds. I'll touch on that more in a minute.

Those were the major points of the negative side. I agree that parents of minors should be notified for objectionable content, etc. but that's really the only problem with this situation.

The major points that the group for keeping the book on the reading list for dual credit/AP senior english were:
1) We are mature enough to handle this book

Meh, this is easily arguable on both sides. It really just depends. Most of the people i know that have read the book have handled it well.

2) This book was read during the summer

This probably sounds like an invalid point. But it is actually kind of integral to the Pro position. This was during the summer, so there was no day-to-day contact of students discussing the book. You didnt have to reveal which book you read, in fact. By the first day of school, our work with summer reading was way over. If you didnt want to, you in no way had to divulge any information regarding what you did for summer reading. At all. You therefore could not feel peer pressure into reading or not reading the book. This also means that the book never had to leave your house; it didnt even come on school grounds. One man against the book tried to argue that if a student was found with the book at school, it is explicit enough that it would be confiscated and the student would be reprimanded. Also wrong: the book is in our library, and even if it wasnt, theres a chance no one would even bring the book to school.

3) "When this book was assinged, me and my child/parent sat down and talked about the book/assignment together"

HEY THERES AN IDEA
if you're so interested in what you're kid is learning in school, why dont you actually TALK about it first? Theyre in a college-level class; covering their eyes from the evils of the world is doing nothing for you or them. Instead of yelling at everyone else about how you hate this dirty book, why dont you sit down with your kid and discuss WHY it is a dirty book. What is wrong with this scene? What does this tell you about the characters? The time period? How is life different now?

The woman that discussed this concept so eloquently was the mother of Joe Biden's Press Secretary.

THATS RIGHT

Joe Biden's Press Secretary's Mother supports our book. Done.

Some minor points made were things like "if this book were made into a movie it would be X rated and kids their age couldnt even see it"(this makes no sense at all), "Sex in books is not such a bad thing"(poorly supported), "this whole book is ruined because of a few bad sex scenes"(you fail to understand the context of the scenes), and "DO WE WANT OUR KIDS READING THIS SMUT?!"(im not your kid, and yes of course.)

I was amazed by the things people are willing to do because a news channel is reporting a story. One man brought in his young daughter, and when someone began mentioning the sexual content of the book, he stood up, covering her ears, and walked her very slowly out of the room. My friend later pointed out this was done deliberately for show. This I find disgusting; someone is willing to ruin this hearing by pulling an act that will allow others to say THAT MAN WALKED HIS KID OUT THE ROOM CUZ HE WAS GROSSED OUT WOW I CAN GET ON BOARD WITH THIS MOVEMENT.
Maybe im biased, but i think that trying to purposefully skew the appearance of something like this is worse than the offense itself. Really, i am probably biased.

One woman read one of the sexually explicit excerpts out loud (and in character) to display how grotesque it is. This made me the angriest probably. If you take ANYTHING out of context, then you can easily take it any angle you want! How childish is that? The worst thing is that the elderly republican crowd ate it all up. Nope lets not read what we're going against lets just skim the surface and let someone else tell us why we're angry, OKAY.

Overall, i think both sides did a pretty good job of discussing their cases in a sensible way. I dont think the book will stay in the curriculum because once this kind of thing gets going in a conservative Christian community, there's really no stopping it. I just wanted to inform some people about it.

Sorry this is so long and if i pushed this into obnoxiousness.

If you would like to know where you can see the local TV channel news reports on the hearing, note me and i will look up some links for you. I was on TV for a split second cuz of this : B

If you would like to know what the decision is on the book, i will let you know once i hear about it.