Think back to 6th grade. What was your life like? I remember looking forward to playing cards for the last hour of the school day on Friday afternoons if I had completed all of my work. I was learning how to do division and reading simple chapter books. Even though I was a bit old, I still caught an occasional episode of Sesame Street but preferred morning cartoons. I hadn’t yet kissed a boy, didn’t know what sex was, and never even heard the word rape.
Compare that to 6th graders today. At 11 and 12 years old they are growing up, but are still quite innocent. In school they are now learning about topics with social themes and discussing these topics in small groups. Below is a letter to parents of 6th grade students at White Pines Middle School in Grand Haven informing them that their children will be participating in fiction book clubs reading books with social themes.
The letter states:
“Some of the themes that will be explored in these books are issues of: domestic violence, serious illness, divorce, bullying, sexual identity, depression, poverty, forced labor, homelessness, discrimination, sexual harassment, body image, neglect, immigration and community violence.”
My first reaction is WOW! These are pretty heavy topics for 11 and 12 year old children. Are they trying to increase the suicide rate even more rapidly? My second reaction is how much foul language, violence and explicit sexual content is in these books? The letter from the school states that these books are appropriate for middle school, but I have lost faith in the school’s ability to determine appropriateness. After all, they read the transgender book Call Me Max to 5 year olds, and offer the pornographic book Milk and Honey in the high school library.
The good news is parents around the country have caught on to the fact that students everywhere are being exposed to inappropriate books. There are several books that have been reviewed on this site and rating systems for books that function like movie ratings are coming into existence. Here are a few websites you can visit to read book reviews written by parents and community members, not written by professional school book reviewers working to push an unhealthy political agenda onto our children.
Mary in the Library Michigan – Facebook Group