There has been a massive discussion about a school district, Biloxi School District, who has been discussing to pull a book out of the 8th-grade curriculum. The book, To Kill A Mockingbird, has received many complaints, about how much censorship and mature language is inside the book. Another case of a book pulling happened in the Drake School Board. Drake pulled a book from their high school curriculum and burned every single one of the books right inside the school. The author of the book, Kurt Vonnegut, sent a letter to the school board, explaining how he is very infuriated about his books being burned. These two books have significant similarities, about how each of their books was pulled, and how each author dealt with this situation. First off, they shouldn’t remove ‘To …show more content…
To this catastrophic event, Kurt sent a personal letter to Drake and explained how his books were pulled were unacceptable. Kurt says in his letter that people think that his novels, are a “work [of] evil,” and should never be shown to the eyes of a high schooler, and about how he would never “enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people.”(Kurt V.). This shows that Kurt is a good man, and never sought to the intent of ruining young minds with his “destructive” work. He also explains how he is trusted by many schools and colleges, to show to Drake that his books are more “widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.”(Kurt V.) Another major discussion was for the pulling of the book, To Kill A Mockingbird. This book was pulled for the main reason of an “[excessive] use of the ‘N’ word.” (Karen N.) If the school district were to pull a book, it should have been a greater purpose. The “N-word” is as only as bad as how you think of it. The Biloxi School District was making a great deal out of it, so the rest of the content in the book, the morals, themes, etc., didn’t
There are usually differences in two different versions of something. This can often be seen when a book is made into a movie. There are many similarities and differences in the book and movie versions of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
It is believed, that there are many pieces to the story of To Kill a Mocking Bird left out of the film version of the novel. I agree with this statement, and I am here today to show you four select scenes and/or characters that (in my opinion) were significant to the story. To Kill a Mocking Bird is a coming of age story for two young children, as well as a story that shows that people are not always what they seem to be. The scenes that I have chosen are very important role in supporting to these themes.
The Eleventh Circuit Court held that if school board believes the books are too vulgar and sexually explicit for students which means that if any school curriculum regulations are ‘‘reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns” they can remove books from the curriculum. However, they decided to keep the book in the school library and allowed teachers and students to discuss the material during class discussions.
In “ If You Assign My Book, Don’t Censor It” published in the Washington Post on November 28, 1999 Mark Mathabane argues that the decision taken by officials of Kearsley High-School in Flint, Mich. of censoring “Kaffir Boy” is unnecessary and disrespectful. He gives a series of examples of how it is a bad decision to censor the content of a book since most of the times this distorts the main ideas and the purpose of the text itself. Kaffir Boy is a novel about Mathabane’s life in South Africa, during the apartheid period. Although Mark agrees that some of the content is a little harsh and might not be suitable for a
As most everyone knows, there are differences between a book and it’s movie adaptation. This is applicable to the book and it’s movie counterpart To Kill a Mockingbird, as well. But aside from the differences, there are also similarities between these two.
“Children deprived of words become school dropouts, dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.” (Peter S. Jennison) Censorship could easily be one of the biggest controversies around the world today. The book “Harris and Me” by Gary Paulsen, about a boy who stays with his distant cousin Harris on the family farm because his parents are a bunch of “puke drunks.” Spends the summer fighting “commie japs”, hunting mice, and tussling with the rooster Ernie. This book was banned by the ALA for nothing more than profanity. If that’s even the right term, especially for today in our society. This book was taught in my sixth grade class and I have adored it ever since, but I was baffled to find out it
Sending kids to school knowing that they are going for educational purposes and then restricting them on what they can and cannot learn is hypocritical. Schools should be allowed to keep Fahrenheit 451 in their curriculum. Controversial issues are brought up everyday in and out of school and issues, like profanity, included in a book gives the story emotion and sets the tone. Timothy Jay, a psychologist and linguist, argues,
The facts of the case are as follows. The Island Trees School District ignored the guidance of the appointed parent “book review” committee and its own staff and began pulling books from circulation in their libraries. The board of education responsible for the decision characterized said books as being, what they referred to as, “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy” (West Law, 1982). Their unilateral decision thereby restricted the rights of the junior high and high school students under their supervision. Steven Pico (a high school student) recognized the censorship in pulling the 11 books, including titles such as The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers by
It is an unimaginable thought that something so similar can be missing so much. They can be both so unique and incomparable. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the main character, Scout and her brother Jem fight prejudice through a young person perspective. The main characters go on a journey against Bob Ewell throughout the sleepy town of Maycomb, at the 1930’s. Bob Ewell has falsely accused Tom Robinson of a crime. On the process the characters grow a lot and find things that spark their curiosity. This makes an interesting plot with many turns. The movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, has many differences from its book, many plots and characters are missing which greatly impacts the movie directed by Robert Mulligan.
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee and film 12 Angry Men directed by Sidney Lumet, both touch on similar themes of justice and prejudice. When contrasting the two texts it is evident that there are many foils which display their own strong personal characteristics yet keep those themes at the core of their character. Generally, influence is a result of conformity, when people begin to make change in their actions and heart, others follow suit to feel included. This is the case in the texts, individuals manage to convince groups of people by creating a norm to be followed. It is more so a case of influencing individuals who in turn convince others. This is because people like to feel included, and not as though they are outcasts.
Critics have said that To Kill a Mockingbird is not a good read for the youth because that it still uses the N-word, which is a word that is almost prohibited in the 21st century. They say that this element of the book makes it irrelevant. Many schools around the country have decided to remove To Kill a Mockingbird from their curriculum because the amount of racial slurs and bad words makes the book hard to teach. Lines such as “What exactly is a n—– lover?”...It’s hard to explain, Ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves… It’s slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.”(Lee ___) Sentences like these make students uncomfortable and more likely to not understand the literary concepts. School district across America have decided to use other books that can teach the same lessons. Although some experts think the use of the N-word makes the novel irrelevant and bit difficult to teach, others think that the use of the N-word is not a big deal and makes the book relevant.
A Time to Kill and To Kill a Mockingbird both have a number of similarities to be compared and contrasted. Both stories can be compared in their themes about justice and racial prejudice. However, this is where the similarities end. The themes and ideas in both novels are vastly different in shape and scope. In A Time to Kill justice is the main theme and most of the ideas are focused on justice and the gray in between the lines of black and white set by the law, racial prejudice is also touched upon very frequently in the comparisons between Jake Brigance and Carl Lee Hailey and how he wouldn't even have had to face trial if he was a white man. In To Kill a Mockingbird justice is a theme which is not expanded upon or explained in nearly
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are extremely influential novels that can teach great lessons to teenagers and adults. One of The Outsider’s main themes is; everybody has different problems, but everybody is still the same. This theme is shown throughout the entire novel and explains it well. There are two different groups in the setting of The Outsiders, the socs and the greasers. The socs are the rich kids that drive nice cars and get into a lot of trouble without being punished by their parents, and the greasers are the less wealthy kids that fight with the socs and wear greased back hair and leather jackets. Both of these groups are completely different people, but they still live in the same city and see the same environment. As Ponyboy states “Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset” (Hinton).
By saying that the U.S. allows almost all books for a reason and fights wars for the freedom of having books, Vonnegut gives more reasons why burning his books should not have happened. Additionally, Vonnegut says that all Americans allow ideas to go around communities that disagree with what they believe, but the Drake School Board is not allowing his ideas to flow freely; they are not being
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a beloved novel published in 1960. After reading the novel there were some moments and people that I found particularly enjoyable. My favorite part of the novel was when the children went to Boo Radley's house to try to get a look at him. In addition, Atticus Finch was my favorite character in the novel. In my opinion the book was very good. I felt that it really showed the thoughts and actions, both good and bad, of the people in the South during the time of the Great Depression. At some points it was sad and at others it was comical but overall it conveyed the message that it was trying to send and everyone could learn something from it.