Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students

An anonymous reader writes "Forbes reports that a middle school teacher in South Carolina has been placed on administrative leave for reading sci-fi classic Ender's Game to his students. According to blogger Tod Kelly, '[A parent] reported him to the school district complained that the book was pornographic; that same parent also asked the local police to file criminal charges against the teacher. As of today, the police have not yet decided whether or not to file charges (which is probably a good sign that they won't). The school district, however, appears to agree with the parent, is considering firing the teacher and will be eliminating the book from the school.'"

Comments

"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[eldavojohn]

Well there was that scene where Ender shows up at Petra's dorm wearing a sleeveless jean jacket with a utility belt and says that he heard the cable was broken ... or wait, am I confusing Ender's Game with Logjammin'? I mean, clearly, they're basically the same thing.

Re:"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[DrGamez]

They are ok with literal genocide committed by a child soldier, but the moment the kid has to take a shower (and fight a bully), NOW it's pornographic?

I don't want to live on this pl- no. I don't want THESE people to live on my planet anymore.

Re:"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[ifiwereasculptor]

It was read to the class. Doesn't it mean it was pornophonic? Which has to be less severe. I mean... if it were the same in terms of arousal effectiveness, I imagine radio porn would be rampant.

Re:"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[hawguy]

He fixes the cable?

He must be a Sysadmin!

Thank you, I was afraid there wouldn't be an opening for the obligatory XKCD reference.

Re:"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I don't have kids so I don't really know what's going through these people's heads. I've always suspected that everybody hopes that if nobody brings it up, it'll never occur to the teenagers to get up to mischief. It becomes a perpetual "no it cannot be a problem right now, maybe next year" sort of thing. So if something like sex-ed comes along, it causes the issue to come up at an inopportune time (note: There is no opportune time...) , so they get frustrated that this particular problem is coming up right now. The result? People don't want their kids exposed to things that'll make them think about sex. I'd like to think I'm right, but the thing that baffles me the most about this is all these parents, for some reason, don't remember what being a teenager was like. Remember Back to the Future? Remember Marty's Mom? "I never did things like call boys or park in a car with a boy" and all that other stuff? That's the image I get in my head when I think about these people.

Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. Whatever their motivations, I agree that trying to keep their kids as pure as the Flanders family is not a useful solution. I just don't see why they'd even have violence on their radar until they start seeing their kids actually hurting each other. Until then, there actually is some sense in being offended by pornographic imagery and turning a blind eye to violence on TV. It's a non-argument, sorry.

Re:"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[yurtinus]

Come on now, surely you know exactly what's going on from your days in school...

Student doesn't like the teacher for one reason or another, starts looking for the slightest provocations to harm the teacher. Student finds a reason, rants and raves and cries to mom about it, mom rushes to defend her precious snowflake. School administration fearing lawsuits and the PR backlash sides with the parent and fires teacher. Student pockets this victory and starts looking for the next. Keep an eye on this student, they are going to be big in politics or business some day...

Re:"I Heard Your Giant's Drink Game is Broken?"

[mjwx]

Come on now, surely you know exactly what's going on from your days in school...

Student doesn't like the teacher for one reason or another, starts looking for the slightest provocations to harm the teacher. Student finds a reason, rants and raves and cries to mom about it, mom rushes to defend her precious snowflake. School administration fearing lawsuits and the PR backlash sides with the parent and fires teacher. Student pockets this victory and starts looking for the next. Keep an eye on this student, they are going to be big in politics or business some day...

The student is not to blame, even if they were looking for a way to strike out at a teacher. The blame here lies in the parent(s) who made the complaints. The parent should have made sure the complaint was legitimate.

This is the problem with parents today. The school system and teachers are trying their best to educate children but they run head first into "golden uterus" syndrome which has infected parents meaning that their child is the most precious thing in the universe and must be protected from anything slightly remotely harmful. This hasn't been helped by society putting kids on a pedestal (ye olde think of the children).

The problem is, as you pointed out that Mum, drives her Mum-Tank into the principals office and demands to know why her child has been punished or is learning something she considers unsavoury. Unfortunately school policy is to appease the parents rather then to defend their position. This is mainly due to the fact that if the parent's dont get their way they'll go on TV with a "shocking report" revealing how schools are damaging our kids.

In Australia it's gotten to the point where the worst thing that can be written on a report card is "Little Johnny needs to pay more attention in class" as threats from parents with no clue and no inclination to punish their little ratbags have become so great. Teachers and principals now live in fear.

I think parent's need to be reined in, it's their responsibility to punish their children when they do something wrong but unfortunately, they punish anyone else who tries to rein in their inconsiderate, illiterate, little crotchspawn. Maybe if we made parents responsible for what their crotchspawns do, but that wont happen until there is a fundamental shift in the way society thinks (society thinks, isn't that an oxymoron).

Put them to work

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to find something to do for these people who just sit at home waiting for things to get outraged at (a.k.a. the “volleyball is exclusionary and tag promotes violence” types).

Some probably poses at least basic intelligence and education. Surely there is some way they can be made a useful part of our society. I think if they had something productive to focus on, we wouldn’t hear about stupid shit like this as often.

On a more serious note, I get that some people get off on being outraged/protesting/fighting something. We all know people like this. In a lot of cases they aren’t even really into the cause, they just like being behind something. When they have kids, it’s like a whole new world of stuff to complain about is opened up.

I’m sure this isn’t the first time the school has heard from her (ok, I’m gonna be sexist.. but this _has_ to be the Mother (Mother with a capital "M".. you know the type..)). You don’t go from 0 to this. I just wish these people would think about everyone else they hurt when they indulge their need to whine and at least try to put that energy into something more helpful to the world.

Re:Put them to work

[Hatta]

The problem isn't the outrage, it's that it's aimed at useless targets. By and large, the bigger problem with our society is complacency. When we really need outrage, e.g., to put bankers in jail for their crimes, the same busibodies are nowhere to be found.

Re:Put them to work

[cpu6502]

Let's TP the mother's home. My mom was/is very conservative but she never made a fuss about literature she found objectionable. She simply told the teacher that her kid would not be reading that book/seeing the movie until he was older (high school). That's the proper way to handle it. Like an adult instead of a whiny little bitch demanding the teacher be fired.

Nudity == nudity not porn. It is our natural state and nothing to be ashamed of.

Porn == sex. I don't recall any sex in Ender's Game (or the sequel Speaker for the Dead). So NOT pornographic.

This is as crazy as the government arresting teens who took nude photos with their phones, and then claiming it's porn. It isn't porn if there's no sex stupid cops and stupid politicians. Arrest them for the actual crime committed (nudity)..... oh that's right. The SCOTUS said nudity is not a crime.

Re:Put them to work

[governorx]

The teacher should be fired. The kids should have been reading their own books instead of having the book read aloud to them. How can everyone else be so far off topic?

Re:Put them to work

[cptdondo]

To continue on the serious note, everyone, I mean everyone, complains that boys don't read. The fact is that if a boy is brought up int he average school, he is given nothing, and excuse my language, but chick lit to read. The only reason I read was because my father read and it was stuff interesting to boys. Heinlein, Pohl, etc. It was pulp, but it got me into the habit of reading so i could read more of the conventional and socially acceptable stuff.

My kid had no interest in reading until I got him started on Ben Bova's Orion series. He's 11 and loves it. Yes it's full violence, and sex, and "porn" - I mean, sex with a goddess while covered with animal entrails amid a stone age civilization? It doesn't get any better!

The early Card stuff is next; Planet Called Treason, Ender's Game, you name it. Those are boy books!

I mean school is so screwed up that when we read the Canterbury Tales, the cool tales were the ones that could not be assigned.

Hehe... I read The Wife Of Bath with my 14 year old daughter. Nothing like the prologue where she rants about the uselessness of virginity. Again, want to hold a teenager's attention while reading the classics? Show then the classics!

Re:Put them to work

[tibit]

Agreed. I can't help but chuckle at the outrage when I tell the neighbors that we had a fairly decent intro to mammalian reproductory systems in grade 4 biology. Oh yeah, we did have biology and history as separate subjects starting in grade 4, then chemistry and physics starting in grade 5.

The biggest conservative idiocy IMHO is the whine about sexualizing/objectifying children. Well, it's the adults who do it for crying out loud, not kids! For a kid, learning about the reproductive system has no subtexts at all, and is just as much of a non-loaded topic as learning about, say, basics of organic chemistry like perchance simple hydrocarbons. People who believe that knowledge of the reproductive system is somehow a taboo/dirty subject are the ones where the problem is -- it's not with the subject, nor with the kids, it's with the parents who unfortunately were not brought up in a sane environment, and their minds got so warped around those subjects that they can't deal with them in a normal way.

Re:Put them to work

[mariox19]

I remember watching a movie, The Firm, where Tom Cruise plays a lawyer working for a firm that turns out to be in the employ of the Mob. The firm operates by mean of a gloved fist. In one scene, Cruise's wife and another wife of a partner at the firm are walking together -- the other wife is a real Stepford Wife type -- when the subject of children comes up. Cruise's wife says that she and her husband plan on having children.

"Oh, good" says the other wife. "The firm encourages family. It promotes stability."

In the context of the film, it was obvious that there was ultimately menace behind the firm's "encouragement," but as soon as I saw that scene I thought, "Holy shit! That's how society works. That's what the status quo holds over people's heads." I was young at the time, so it was like a revelation. Later, when I became a history major, I learned that the Norman's of France made their way all over Europe, conquering lands, and were also very active in the Crusades, and all because the bulk of them were unmarried men with nothing to lose and everything to gain. (Inheritance laws deprived younger sons of any automatic livelihood.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is your point speaks to something fundamental in human society.

Re:Put them to work

[Sperbels]

Your sniveling cowardice makes me want to vomit.You deserve to be stomped. Unfortunately, your disgusting weakness will only get OTHER people stomped. I have been raising hell about getting critical problems fixed for 20 years or so, occasionally WINNING those fights, and guess what? There have been NO destructive consequences to my life. None. Zero.

...Says the guy posting anonymously. Nice.

Re:Put them to work

[dan828]

Actually reading TFA, they've posted an update that, more than likely, the offending material wasn't from Ender's Game at all, but probably some other, unrelated, material from the internets. Card thinks that his book was lumped in because it's been a perennial target of the evangelical right due to his being a Mormon.

Re:Put them to work

[Hatta]

What crimes?

Mortgage fraud, perjury, racketeering.

Should we put in jail the average Banker (middle class/lower middle class) who just follows company policy, and greets you with a smile?

No, we should put the highest level CEOs in jail. The ones who are responsible for the pattern of racketeering activity. Just like the Mafia, you don't get to run a criminal organization and claim you have clean hands.

For the most part this is what happened.

You left a lot out of the summary. Like the part where most loans they were rebundling were known to the banks to be 90% fraudulent. How did they know? Congress and the FBI warned them about it. What did they do in response? They increased the number and percentage of so called "liars loans" they issued. They doubled down on practices they knew were fraudulent.

Tell me, what innocent explanation is there for that behavior?

The problem is Outrage. Outrage is getting mad at things that have already happened, it isn't productive method of try to make sure it doesn't happen.

If you're not mad enough to punish people who have done wrong in the past, there will be no deterrent to stop people from doing it again. If bankers know they can crash the economy and get bonuses for it, why wouldn't they do it again?

For most events if you are Outraged it means you don't know enough about what happened or you just more interested in revenge then actually solving the problem.

In your case, you're not outraged because you don't know enough about what happened. Either that, or you're deliberately shilling for the banks.

Go read William Black's book and/or columns. He's the guy who put nearly a thousand bankers in jail in the much smaller S&L crisis under Reagan. He argues forcefully, with plenty of evidence, that outright fraud was the reason for the crisis, and the only reason we can't prosecute this fraud is political corruption. Is his outrage due to being underinformed?

Re:Put them to work

[plover]

I don't care about the crazy soccer moms here. I care that the school board is failing utterly at their job. They are supposed to insulate teachers from crazy parents. They are supposed to be rational, and say "Yes, Mrs. Smith, we heard you, but we leave individual book assignments to the teachers. If you're unhappy with the content the public education system provides, take your child down the street to the private school that more closely matches your morals. Yes, we know it's expensive, but that's your choice."

And yes, a vocal minority of outraged parents (bonded together by a common hatred of porn / literature / science / logic / foreign accents / whatever) will put up their own flat-earth candidate, and will get that school board member fired. Term limits of one would prevent them from worrying about it too much.

Instead, what this school board did is told all their teachers "you're going to get fired for teaching anything that goes against the arbitrary capricious whims of any nutcake parent." And they told every nutcake parent in the district "want to get that unmarried pregnant teacher fired? Just accuse her of having dyed her hair, we're just as crazy as you and we'll fire her for you." That board may as well not exist for all the good they're doing their school system.

Re:Put them to work

[Genda]

YOU ARE SLEEP WALKING and call it a life. You don't have to be a statistician to see the middle class is evaporating like a fragile mist on a summer morning... Those jobless hippies, used to be happily employed and have homes just like you. Then they sent their jobs to the third world. Destroyed their life savings by crashing the stock market. Gutted their retirement by turn entire states into economic wastelands call rust belts. Millions of people who did absolutely everything right, People who planned and saved and scrimped for their futures. Held diverse portfolios, and had property owned and paid for... got squashed like bugs. By the millions. You better believe they're pissed and ready to protest. Because they now live in vans and tent cities popping up outside of every major city in the country.

Your hubris would offend me, if it weren't so clear that you're simply ignorant. Sadly, you're ignorant by choice, and what you don't know my friend, really can kill you.

Re:Put them to work

[PCM2]

Orson Scott Card on how homophobic Orson Scott Card is:

The hypocrites of homosexuality are, of course, already preparing to answer these statements by accusing me of homophobia, gay-bashing, bigotry, intolerance; but nothing that I have said here -- and nothing that has been said by any of the prophets or any of the Church leaders who have dealt with this issue -- can be construed as advocating, encouraging, or even allowing harsh personal treatment of individuals who are unable to resist the temptation to have sexual relations with persons of the same sex. On the contrary, the teachings of the Lord are clear in regard to the way we must deal with sinners. Christ treated them with compassion -- as long as they confessed that their sin was a sin. Only when they attempted to pretend that their sin was righteousness did he harshly name them for what they were: fools, hypocrites, sinners.

Oh, so that clears that up, then. He's not.

For the Children

[TemperedAlchemist]

The school district reports that the letters E, I, N, P, and S have been removed from the school curriculum after a parent complained her son was being exposed to gateway pornography.

Re:For the Children

[robably]

So no more penis, but also no spine.

Re:Back to the Future

[getto man d]

Now we just need to find some really cheap labor.

Think of the children!

What. The. Fuck.

[Iamthecheese]

People who try to ban things "because someone might be offended" are themselves the problem. And it is a wide-spread and serious one.

I only hope we can get over this state of permanent panic before it kills us.

Re:Good Ole Southern Cackalacky

[MickyTheIdiot]

As usual, this case has been discussed in other places first. IIRC the "bruised testicle" was part of what the bitching is about.

We're in a bad spot in our society when these idiots aren't laughed out of the office. Let the freak homeschool her precious snowflake and stop being a burden on us.

When I was in High School...

[tekrat]

We read Candide. That's gotta be way more "pornographic" than Ender's Game. What is this country coming to?

Between Santorum, Limbaugh and the rest of those jokers bible thumping their way into our bedrooms but refusing to even tax one cent of a rich person's income (because that's government intrusion), this country is really and truly fucked.

We're going to be like Argentina, and the shooting in Florida is proving that there are now only gated communities and trailer parks -- and if you're the wrong color in a gated community, you are a target.

Re:When I was in High School...

[Black Parrot]

Between Santorum, Limbaugh and the rest of those jokers bible thumping their way into our bedrooms

I don't care much for Bill Maher, but he was spot-on when he said "even gay men don't think about gay sex as much as Rick Santorum does".

Total failure in so many ways

[jcrb]

I think this is one of those things for which there is a simple solution, find name of parent, all Ender's fans call parent and explain what a complete and colossal idiot they are. Problem solved. News report of parent explaining how their phone didn't stop ringing for several months convinces all future such parents to just keep their opinions to themselves.

"Pornography" is supposed to be judged by the standards of the "community", I think its time or the community to judge the standards of those who wish to judge the community.

Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game

[ScuzzMonkey]

Hansel and Gretel shove a little old lady into on oven and broil her, and that's been broadly accepted as children's fare for two hundred years. A little justifiable homicide shouldn't be a big issue all of a sudden.

Re:Pornographic?

[MoonBuggy]

At any rate, firing the teacher would be more than sufficient if the school decides it was a major no-no.. criminal charges is beyond ridiculous.

Firing the teacher would be absurd, criminal charges would be truly insane. The former only seems in any way legitimate because of the total insanity of the latter - not for one second does a teacher deserve to lose their job for reading a perfectly innocuous (and pretty damn good, IMO) scifi novel to a class of 14 year olds.

Re:if this... then whats next

[Jawnn]

if this, then Shakespeare has got to go as well.

Not to mention several books from The Old Testament.
Idiots...

Maybe he wasn't really reading Ender's Game

[cicatrix1]

Check out some of the comments on the source article. There are claims he was not really reading Ender's Game, and that the school is covering it up.

Law of Unintended Consequences

[CanHasDIY]

Not too long ago, we had a similar issue here when a local religious fanatic (who home schools his children, BTW) demanded the local high school ban, among others, Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaugherhouse V, claiming it too was pornographic in nature.

The school ended up bowing to the holier-than-thou asshole and banned the book; however, doing so had the unexpected side effect of Slaughterhouse V becoming the most read book in the city of Republic. The Vonnegut Library even donated several hundred copies of the book to the local library, all of which were swiftly checked out.

Experience tells me Ender's Game is about to become the most read book in Shofield, SC.

Re:Good Ole Southern Cackalacky

[An ominous Cow art]

"Remember, the enemy's pants are DOWN!"

Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game

[SnarfQuest]

I remember reading "Lord of the Flies" as a school assignment, as well as "The Jungle", and "Jude the Obscure".

If those aren't banned yet, then I don't see why they would bother with such a tame offering as "Ender's Game".

Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game

[Hatta]

Tricky moral situations are essential for children's reading. Feeding children sanitized narratives only primes them to accept the sanitizied narratives that are fed to us by government and media. Expose children to grey moral areas early, and they will be better equipped to handle grey moral areas in life.

Re:Back to the Future

[timeOday]

Don't make this about conservatism or Christianity.

Why not, where do you think this is coming from? Read this:

The Daily Caller flags a little-discussed position paper on Rick Santorum's campaign websiteâ"his pledge to aggressively prosecute those who produce and distribute pornography. Santorum avers that "America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography." He pledges to use the resources of the Department of Justice to fight that "pandemic," by bringing obscenity prosecutions against pornographers... His statement references going after pornography that is distributed not just on the Internet, but also "on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV."

Mind you, I have nothing against abstaining from pornography or preaching against it, but this is something else. And don't say Santorum speaks only for himself, the point here is how many votes he is getting.

Re:Back to the Future

[iamhassi]

At any rate, the teacher should be reinstated and the damned administrators should be fired.

Naw, I'm pretty sure it went like this:

Parent: This book is pornographic and the teacher is reading it to my 14 yr old!
Superintendent: Ender's Game? (thinking: I haven't read that) What parts are pornographic? (read: take quotes out of context and make them sound bad)
Parent: (thinking: shit! I haven't read it either! I just hate that teacher!) .... um.... (quickly googles ender's game pornographic) .... See! It's right there, at the top of google! Ender's Game is pornographic!
Superintendent: OH! Well! That changes everything! I will definitely fire that teacher! .... by the way, are you voting for Santorum? Google "Santorum" and let's see what comes up....

Re:Back to the Future

[EdIII]

Not such a bad idea. Can you imagine how effective a 5 year old could be at cable runs at data centers and in office building ceilings? All it would cost me is some Snackables and a visit to Chuck E Cheese later.

Re:Back to the Future

[ffflala]

Problem is that second fact of yours isn't one. This issue isn't one where the behavior is the same on both sides of the aisle.

I'm a librarian, and I've been on the other end of a few attempts at book bans, and have probably heard more about them than most non-librarians. I have never seen nor heard an account of an "overly liberal parent" who objects to "books that they consider too racist or insensitive" to the point that --and this is an important distinction-- said person demands to have a book removed from a collection and made unavailable to students/people/kids.

I've never seen this behavior, I've never heard of it, and your own links don't provide even any anecdotal references to it. Your second link does describe how many liberals will often stock their libraries with books that support their own worldview, and how they will push to have these books included on school reading lists. That might be true enough, but it is absolutely inaccurate to equate this with book banning/censorship, as the article does. Sure, it is advocating one's own world view. However showing preference to certain books is very, very different from removing access to certain books. Only one of these things is censorship.

Book banning is censorship, and it is a typical (and a stereotypical) conservative solution, not a liberal one.