Controversial book to stay on reading list

Antioch High School has agreed to form a committee that includes parents to review books after an assigned summer reading book drew protests because of its language and description of sexual acts.

Community High School District 117 Supt. Jay Sabatino said this afternoon that after reading the book, he and two school board members decided to keep it on the summer reading list.

“The consensus is we feel it is a valuable read, a good read… . We will continue to offer an alternative if someone wants one,” Sabatino said.

Earlier today, school board President Wayne Sobczak said he doubted the book — “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie — would be pulled from shelves as some parents wanted.

via Read Street:

The English Department at Antioch High School, in the Chicago suburbs, assigned [The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie] for the incoming freshman class to read over the summer. The book, which follows the misadventures of a 14-year-old American Indian boy attending an all-white high school, won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and was recognized by both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times in the children’s book category.

The book is described as having vulgar language and describing sexual situations, and these parents want it pulled, even though there is a second option for the assignment, Down River, if parents don’t approve of Alexie’s work.

I thought one school official, John Whitehurst, described the parents’ charge of the school condoning such language and behavior most succinctly:

“That is like saying that because Romeo and Juliet committed teen suicide, we condone teen suicide,” Whitehurst said. “Kids know the difference. Like it or not, that is the way 14-year-old boys talk to each other.”

Spitting in the eye of mainstream education - Los Angeles Times

Here’s a long article, four pages, at the LA Times concerning a group of three public charter schools that bear the name “American Indian.”  The schools, run by Ben Chavis, a Lumbee from North Carolina, are open to members of any race yet follow a Native theme without the cliche mainstream ideas of Indians, such as “basket weaving” that the school once had before Chalis took control.  The article doesn’t mention how the Native theme is presented in the school today, but it does cover how the privately run charter schools perform higher than most other public schools in California, despite the rather unorthodox ways the school is run. 

From the first page:

School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded “self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort,” to quote the school’s website.

Students, almost all poor, wear uniforms and are subject to disciplinary procedures redolent of military school. One local school district official was horrified to learn that a girl was forced to clean the boys’ restroom as punishment.

Conservatives, including columnist George Will, adore the American Indian schools, which they see as models of a “new paternalism” that could close the gap between the haves and have-nots in American education. Not surprisingly, many Bay Area liberals have a hard time embracing an educational philosophy that proudly proclaims that it “does not preach or subscribe to the demagoguery of tolerance.”

AIPCS website
American Indian Policy Blog

“Edwin Benson will wear a cap and gown for the first time in his life since majoring in the language, customs and traditions of the Nu’eta, a knowledge base passed to him from elders who lived in the last historic earth lodge village of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota.

Benson has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of North Dakota. “If anyone deserves it, he deserves it,” said Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa and National Park Service superintendent at Mount Rushmore. “He’s one of the best professors I’ve ever seen. It goes beyond the honorary caption. He goes way beyond a doctor in the academic sense.” Benson, 78, who lives in Twin Buttes, N.D., on the Fort Berthold Reservation, has gained international stature for his vast knowledge of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes. He’s renowned for graciously sharing his knowledge with all people. The North Dakota State Board of Higher Education recently voted unanimously to award Benson with the honorary doctorate. He will receive it Saturday during UND graduation ceremonies in Grand Forks, N.D. “I had a white man call me with great news I never expected from a white man,” Benson said in a phone interview from Twin Buttes Elementary School. “To be honest, I cried. I felt better after I cried. I didn’t know how to accept it. It was like a dream, too good of a dream to be true, too good to wake up.””

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Saturday that $500 million in federal stimulus money would go to American Indian tribes across the nation for schools, housing, infrastructure improvements and job programs on reservations.

Mr. Salazar made the announcement at the United Tribes Technical College here.

He was in North Dakota to visit several places, including an energy center on the Fort Berthold Reservation and the Great Plains Synfuels plant to look at its carbon capture project.

He also planned to visit North Dakota communities that were flooded this spring.