A school in Missouri has banned the Kurt Vonnegut classic “Slaughterhouse Five” and another book after one person complained that the books teach principles that are contrary to the Bible.
Last year a college professor named Wesley Scroggins called for the banning of “filthy books” assigned to students at Republic High School — “Slaughterhouse Five,” Twenty Boy Summer” and “Speak.”
He called the last two books “soft pornography” because they deal with sex. About “Slaughterhouse Five,” he wrote in the Springfield News-Leader:
In English, children are also required to read a book called “Slaughterhouse Five.” This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame.
Well, it took a while, but last week Scoggins scored a two-thirds victory, with the Republic school district voting to ban the Vonnegut book and “Twenty Boy Summer,” but keeping “Speak.”
“I congratulate them for doing what’s right and removing the two books,” Scroggins told the News-Leader. “It’s unfortunate they chose to keep the other book.”
And what kind of depraved mind considers rape to be “soft pornography”?
Comments
11 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.1) I agree, Slaughterhouse Five is contrary to the bible. We should only allow books in our schools that tell us to kill homosexuals, hold men to be above women, and detail the rules about having sex with female slaves. Oh but shit, that would still allow the qur’an! What to do!
2) As a character from Harry Potter, I don’t see how wesley scroggins has any grounds to talk about books running contrary to the bible.
3) Has banning books ever accomplished the intention of the group doing the banning?
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“And what kind of depraved mind considers rape to be “soft pornography”?”
I suppose the rape in the Bible is ok. If they held the Bible up to the same standards as other books, it would be banned
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We need more people like Prof. Scroggins.
Our children should not be exposed to any controversial or challenging ideas whatsoever so that one day they can grow up and be normal, mindless, perpetually angry Fox News viewers.
ಠ_ಠ
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Wow, he must watch some creepy porn.
It seems to go along with the mindset that rape victims are really just a bunch of liars/whores that a lot of these right wing guys have.
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so we should ban Three Little Pigs too
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The name “Wesley Scroggins” set off my Poe detector, but it seems that he actually exists as an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at prestigious Missouri State University.
http://coba.missouristate.edu/61583.htm
One can only hope that he will lose the funding for his chair as the capitalist war on education progresses.
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MSU is also where Yakov Smirnoff was an instructor of management.
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The outrage at this banning seems to have an additional basis on the education mindset that kids only read what’s assigned and never for fun or pleasure.
Having grown up near Springfield, I can guarantee that there will be a massive spike in teenagers reading Slaughterhouse Five and enjoying it, as opposed to having it forced on them in a school classroom, reading as little as possible and bullshitting their way through whatever assignment there was, and then hating it for the rest of their lives.
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So, I didn’t see much in the excerpt or the linked article about the bible other than the headline and the one line referencing it. After a little digging I found a letter to the editor written by Scroggins, where he mentions christianity, here’s the link if anyone’s interested:
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20100918/OPINIONS02/112020001
Also, a couple of choice quotes from an article about the decision from SB supernintendo Vern Minor (do these guys all have made up names?) on page one of the article:
“The discussion we’ve been having was not are these good books or bad books … It is is this consistent with what we’ve said is appropriate for kids.”
on page two (in reference to Twenty Boy Summer, which I have never heard of):
“I just don’t think it’s a good book. I don’t think it’s consistent with these standards and the kind of message that we want to send,” he said. “…If the book had ended on a different note, I might have thought differently.”
Signed,
Epstein’s Mother
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And if all that library carried was copies of the Bible, they’d be fighting over which version was the “true” Bible and which were the work of heretics.
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If all the library carried were Bibles, the monks would be in charge of determining which texts were appropriate to release to the few of us who could read, and we’d just need to worry about not getting the plague, the way God intended.
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