I thought the term "snowflakes" was reserved for those dirty liberal parents.

I guess it's just used as a pejorative whenever it suits the narrative?

One parent was upset that she didn't get to decide whether or not her son had to read the book. That turned into "Parents are outraged".

Fark at it's finest...

MBK: downpaymentblues: I thought the term "snowflakes" was reserved for those dirty liberal parents.

I guess it's just used as a pejorative whenever it suits the narrative?

No, it also applies to religious conservative parents who are upset when God isn't mentioned every 10 minutes in school.

And (apparently) when one parent doesn't want their 14 year old to read a book full of swearing and violence. I didn't see any mention of religion in the story, so I guess it is an all-encompassing pejorative.

...Life's a piece of shiat, when you look at it.....

The snowflake daddy in this video is a farking pussy.

/Of course, "farking" won't make it through the filter here, because we're all pussies that can't bear the word "fark".

snuff3r: TFA: The STEM page on the Knox County Schools website explains that students will continue reading, and discuss, the book in small groups throughout the fall.

"My child is being forced to read profanity. This is not something that kids are talking about. It's an assigned assignment," said Lee.

No, the kids are being forced to learn something outside of the little cave you've built around your kids. That's what education is all about. Now scat back into your cave and leave the little ones to learn that there are things outside your house that differ from your small-world view.

/OMG PROFANITY!

OMG an ASSIGNED ASSIGNMENT. Can assignments be unassigned?
The parents are full of sh*t. Their kids most likely say much worse on a daily basis. Perhaps they were horrified when they realized the little bastards couldn't actually read.

downpaymentblues: I thought the term "snowflakes" was reserved for those dirty liberal parents. I guess it's just used as a pejorative whenever it suits the narrative?

It refers to helicopter parents with outrage issues; it has nothing to do with their political or religious affiliation.

One sentence on page 79 reads, "I swear to God and all his cronies, darling I'll..." The sentence continues with the "f" word followed by "kill you."

Terrible. Just terrible. There should be a comma after "darling" if it's an aside which it is.

1) Kids don't lie.
B) Kids don't cuss.

When I was 14 or 15, we had to read The Catcher in the Rye, The Scarlet Letter, and a couple of Hemingway works. By that age I already knew (and had heard several times) George Carlin's take on "dirty" words, plus thanks to Monty Python's Flying Circus, I could curse in British.

'Robopocalypse'?

What happened to the good old days when school was all about forcing you to read crap you had absolutely no desire to read? ;)

Once they are used to ubiquity, they really don't have such a powerful negative connotation. I enjoy the using curses as well $10 words. Sometimes being flummoxed fits just as nicely as being mindfarked.
As long as the school doesn't make a big issue over the words and just treats them as other parts of the language I wouldn't have a problem as a parent.
To have the naughty words in a reading assignment is akin to the viewing of
Victorian Nudes nsfw. It is a form of art and should be viewed as-is as part of the context of the piece.

Skr: Once they are used to ubiquity, they really don't have such a powerful negative connotation. I enjoy the using curses as well $10 words. Sometimes being flummoxed fits just as nicely as being mindfarked.
As long as the school doesn't make a big issue over the words and just treats them as other parts of the language I wouldn't have a problem as a parent.
To have the naughty words in a reading assignment is akin to the viewing of
Victorian Nudes nsfw. It is a form of art and should be viewed as-is as part of the context of the piece.

Nice.

14-year-old? They've heard it already. You've heard them say it already. Probably to your face.

I'd rather they learn the literary value of such words in a classroom and as such, when (and when not) to use them - Which sounds a little more like an appropriate lesson for a "civilized citizen and ... upcoming member of community" than using the media to throw a hissy fit at the school board.

Oh fudge and for Pete's sake, what the heck where they thinking?

// spoken in the voice of Mitt Romney

Meh... Heard it all before:

If Tennessee schools don't teach the expletive vernacular, how do you parents expect your snowflakes to know what to say about welfare, food stamps & black people... behind their backs. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Showering your kids in ignorance is how our country is dying. If you love your kids, treat them with respect. Treat them like young adults.

/Hates children
//Hates parents more
///Was a sheltered cripple until he did a year in jail and learned what the real world was.

i forget how to outrage

your kids suck!

?amidoingitright.jpg.pdf.doc.com

Wait until they find out what is in the Bible, they think are mad now?

I think you mean "up-chucking."

I'll save Dr. Alves (whom I know slightly) a bit of time and trouble... especially since at the end of all this she will do nothing whatsoever to resolve the situation other reccommending the STEM program assign a different book next year.

It's hard to get teenagers to read. It's harder to get them to read over the summertime. So they just tried to assign the students something they might want to read. It's a science and technology curriculum (and a pretty imressive one, too... regular field trips to Oak Ridge National Laborotory being the norm), and such schools have had better luck having the students read science fiction than anything else. The probably should have checked it for language, but if the language in this book is the worst thing this father can complain about regarding his kid's schooling there, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job.

Otherwise, pull your brat out of the there and send 'em to Webb.

And please shut up in either case.

"...Sam Lee, the parent of a 14 year-old incomming freshmam..."

You know who else isn't a civilized citizen and being an upcoming member of that community?

For someone who's complaining about proprietry, this cornflake creator really should shave and dress a bit better before going on a TV interview. Way to set an example.

cretinbob: ...Life's a piece of shiat, when you look at it.....

Came to say this. Leaving satisfied.

downpaymentblues: One parent was upset that she didn't get to decide whether or not her son had to read the book. That turned into "Parents are outraged".

Fark at it's finest...

Well, he apparently contacted the local paper about it, that's quite a bit of outrage there, albeit not really a controversy as such.

I do like the school's response to the newspaper and the complaint, though. "Yeah, we understand that a certain set of thin-skinned people will be upset, that's why there are other options on the reading list. If you care enough to whine, but don't care enough to actually look over the books before buying them for your kid, it's pretty much your own fault."

And said in a subtle enough way that the parent probably doesn't even realize he's being called incompetent to his face, nice.

I was a die-hard science fiction geek when I was a kid, still am for the most part. When i was in 10th grade, my English teacher handed me a copy of Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney to read over the Christmas vacation, and he wanted a book report/review of it when I came back in January.

I couldn't put it down. Tore through it in about a week. Then I read it again. Wrote up a two page review on it, gushing about the story and how it was written and the story itself. Got meself an "A" out of that. I'll go back to it every other year or so. Fantastic book if you don't mind Delaney's rather disjointed style. It had a rather generous distribution of all the words that piss Christians off.

It is still one of my all-time favorites.

Clear the fainting couch! Young adults are learning to read the words they learned to speak from their peers on the first day of kindergarden.

Warmachine999: cretinbob: ...Life's a piece of shiat, when you look at it.....

Came to say this. Leaving satisfied.

I was so glad to see the the lyrics didn't get changed during the closing ceremonies, even though it got bleeped in the U.S.
Some day people will get over it.

My 12th grade English teacher was awesome. He convinced us to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. It was nightmarish at first, but within a couple dozen pages we'd gotten the hang of it. Before we knew it we were flying through the book.

Then we got to the part about the chickens.

Suffice to say, they don't censor books published in Middle English.

My 12th grade English teacher was awesome.

/ RIP good man

snuff3r: TFA: The STEM page on the Knox County Schools website explains that students will continue reading, and discuss, the book in small groups throughout the fall.

"My child is being forced to read profanity. This is not something that kids are talking about. It's an assigned assignment," said Lee.

No, the kids are being forced to learn something outside of the little cave you've built around your kids. That's what education is all about. Now scat back into your cave and leave the little ones to learn that there are things outside your house that differ from your small-world view.

/OMG PROFANITY!

In all fairness, we are talking about one of the words that your federal govt has decided is too foul for adults to hear on broadcast tv.