On page 64, Fletcher regales a tale of when he cut out a story about poop out of his book. He writes, "As much as I hated to admit it, I could see she was right. The next day I happened to bump into Tom Newkirk at my local post office. I told him the story, too.
"The boys would be 'rolling on the floor,'" Tom repeated, sadly shaking his head. "God forbid we have a book in the classroom that's so funny and engaging it would get a bunch of boys rolling on the floor!"
This is a very poignant story. Why censor our kids (boys) reading and writing about poop, farts, sports, war, etc.? These things may make us uncomfortable, but isn't that a small price to pay for our students actually reading and writing?
Of course there are limits to what we can "allow" our students to write. We have to be careful that our students' writing doesn't cross the line from "uncomfortableness" and "inappropriate" or "scary." For example, "war stories" would be an OK topic for my students to write about in general, however, they would have to be "tasteful." I guess everything has to be taken on a student by student, piece by piece basis. There are very few subjects that should be outright dismissed from student writing.
On page 64, Fletcher regales a tale of when he cut out a story about poop out of his book. He writes, "As much as I hated to admit it, I could see she was right. The next day I happened to bump into Tom Newkirk at my local post office. I told him the story, too.
ReplyDelete"The boys would be 'rolling on the floor,'" Tom repeated, sadly shaking his head. "God forbid we have a book in the classroom that's so funny and engaging it would get a bunch of boys rolling on the floor!"
This is a very poignant story. Why censor our kids (boys) reading and writing about poop, farts, sports, war, etc.? These things may make us uncomfortable, but isn't that a small price to pay for our students actually reading and writing?
Of course there are limits to what we can "allow" our students to write. We have to be careful that our students' writing doesn't cross the line from "uncomfortableness" and "inappropriate" or "scary." For example, "war stories" would be an OK topic for my students to write about in general, however, they would have to be "tasteful." I guess everything has to be taken on a student by student, piece by piece basis. There are very few subjects that should be outright dismissed from student writing.