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Teacher Suspended For Reading 'Ender's Game' To Middle School Students
- n000ksa 15y agoMy high school teacher put Ender's Game on our recommended reading list. I think I was about 14 or 15 at the time. It was the first science fiction book I read, and I loved it. I don't really remember that much explicit violence. Sounds like the parent is having a bit of an overreaction.
- ghshephard 15y agoSeveral sections of brutal violence from memory - the first fight at school, where they realized he had what it took to fully commit to victory, and then the shower sequence - which really was quite brutal. Not inappropriate for Jr. High, but maybe a bit mature for eighth grade. I don't think a suspension is warranted on purely this basis - I'm sure there is more to the story.
- molsongolden 15y agoI haven't read the book in question but is it more brutal than the hunger games? I know multiple 11 year olds who have read the hunger games trilogy and the children/parents had no issue with it other than "the idea of kids fighting to the death is a weird topic for a young adult book".
- ghshephard 15y agoI would say its more brutal. The violence depicted in hunger games is distant and somewhat clinical - almost as though it was written with the possibility of future film rights. In Enders game, other children are beaten to death in a quite personal manner. I recall being quite effected by the deaths in Enders game. I don't recall any similar explicit imagery in hunger games.
- Avenger42 15y ago(Just going off memory, it's been a while) - Not thirty seconds into the games, Katniss is struggling with an unnamed boy when he drops dead with a knife through his back. - Katniss drops a nest of mutated wasps directly onto a number of sleeping children, two of whom die from the stings. - Katniss witnesses Cato kill an unnamed boy with his bare hands. - Rue gets speared through the torso right in front of Katniss. - Thresh crushes the skull of Clove with a rock, (not enough to kill her, but enough to disfigure her) then does it again and finishes her off. (This one happens no more than a couple of meters in front of Katniss, as Clove had been in the process of choking her before being yanked off by Thresh.) - Katniss shoots a helpless dying Cato in the face with her final arrow. That's just in the first book. All but one of those deaths occur right in front of Katniss, along with several others. The only fight that stuck with me in Ender's Game was with Bonzo - the fight with Stilson was over too quick (and the ending was technically a mystery until they talk about it after Bonzo's death). Bonzo's death was also technically very quick - there was a lot of lead up to it, but the fight itself probably only took about 20 seconds and about half a page (also from memory). Note also that the boys who Ender fights are bullying him mercilessly. Both Stilson and Bonzo bring groups to witness and prevent interference from others. He is forced to fight for his life, in situations which could quickly turn against him, and only an unbelievably swift and alarmingly brutal victory will prevent a future recurrence.
- ghshephard 15y agoI would say its more brutal. The violence depicted in hunger games is distant and somewhat clinical - almost as though it was written with the possibility of future film rights. In Enders game, other children are beaten to death in a quite personal manner. I recall being quite effected by the deaths in Enders game. I don't recall any similar explicit imagery in hunger games.
- ghshephard 15y agoI would say its more brutal. The violence depicted in hunger games is distant and somewhat clinical - almost as though it was written with the possibility of future film rights. In Enders game, other children are beaten to death in a quite personal manner. I recall being quite effected by the deaths in Enders game. I don't recall any similar explicit imagery in hunger games.
- ghshephard 15y agoI would say its more brutal. The violence depicted in hunger games is distant and somewhat clinical - almost as though it was written with the possibility of future film rights. In Enders game, other children are beaten to death in a quite personal manner. I recall being quite effected by the deaths in Enders game. I don't recall any similar explicit imagery in hunger games.
- tomjen3 15y agoWhat? An entire race of intelligent beings is wiped out and the teacher complains about _nudity_?
- petegrif 15y agoBeyond pathetic. What a bunch of neolithic morons.
- Duff 15y agoThis is why teacher tenure is necessary.
- asolove 15y agoNo, that is the institutional scar tissue representing why we need better school administrators and more reasonable parents.
- glesica 15y agoAgreed, but improving the quality of administrators is incredibly difficult to do and forcing parents to be rational about their children is pretty much impossible. So we're left with tenure as an imperfect but practical way to limit the damage that can be done by bad administrators and crazed parents. Which is why tenure is important.
- ceejayoz 15y agoWhat about the damage done by poor teachers protected by tenure?
- rdtsc 15y agoWe won't have reasonable parents any time soon (unless of course we start with reasonable kids and wait 20 years). Now reasonable administrators might work but where do we find the? It is not exactly a position that is coveted by reasonable people, it would guess it would attract and inordinate number of bureaucrats and authoritarians.
- Duff 15y agoThink of it from a teacher's perspective: you do your job, when out of nowhere some nutcase or religious zealot comes out of the woodwork and tries to get you arrested, and failing that, pressures the school board to have you dismissed. Right or wrong, this teacher will be tainted and have his or her career ruined, over the use of a book in the classroom. Ender's Game is a book that has been widely used in high schools for at least 15 years.
- 15y ago
- mee_k 15y agoDownvoted for outright lying in the headline. Big bold letters on the article: South Carolina Teacher Suspended A suspension is not being fired from a job.
- dvdhsu 15y agoYou can't downvote submissions.
- AbsoluteZero255 15y agoSomeone from Reddit?
- georgieporgie 15y agoYou can't downvote a submission on HN, but you can flag it. I'm not sure if you have that ability, though, since you have less than zero of that precious karma. Regardless, you shouldn't be downvoted for explaining why you 'downvoted' a submission, nor for pointing out an inaccuracy in the submission title.
- lewisgodowski 15y agoI also had Ender's Game on my high school reading list, although I read it much much earlier, definitely when I was still in middle school. Remains one of my favorite books to this day. No bad repercussions from reading it on this end.
- sargun 15y agoThat's awful. I loved this book as a kid, and recommend it to every young person. The series as a whole taught me quite a bit about human nature. I would not call it pornographic at all - The few scenes in the book where there is nudity, there is very little that's sexual about it. In other parts of the series, I will agree that it may not be appropriate for 14 year olds. I wonder what the parents are overreacting to.
- lylejohnson 15y agoSeems like a safe bet that the parents are overreacting to their kids' reports of the book's contents. I can imagine a young teenager mentioning the fact that the children in Ender's Game are sometimes nude (albeit in a nonsexual way). There is almost no chance that the parent(s) have actually read the book.
- lotharbot 15y agoI can imagine a kid telling a parent about the fight scene with Bonzo in the shower, and (with the parent not having much context) it sounding incredibly creepy. So the parent goes to the principal and complains, and the principal (who has also never read the book) decides not to take any chances. After all, nobody wants to be the administrator who "ignored a red flag" in the case that the teacher actually is some kind of creep. So the teacher gets suspended until an investigation is complete, not because the administration is evil or stupid, but simply because the incentives are all aligned for the administration to suspend first, and then ask questions.
- ttt_ 15y ago>> There is almost no chance that the parent(s) have actually read the book. It's sad to think that this might actually be true. I can totally imagine a scenario where except for the teacher and children, none of the other parties making so much noise have read the piece before making a ruckus.
- orbitingpluto 15y agoIdeas? But in all seriousness I think the average 14 year old is exposed to far more objectionable material in a Shakespeare play. The average simpleton that complains about the 'moral turpitude' usually isn't smart enough to notice how gaudy one can be. These are the same people that would have issues with Aslan the Christ allegory in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for 'magic'.
- deweller 15y agonudity != pornographic
- rdtsc 15y agoUnfortunately, in the mind of many Americans it is.
- fryguy 15y agoHeadline is misleading. Teacher was suspended for reading a short story from the internet, not Ender's game. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytvinc.com%2Fdocuments%2FSchofieldSchool-PornInvestigation.pdf https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytv...
- scelerat 15y agoCould you explain how this is related? The original article in the Aiken Standard (linked to from from the OP's Forbes article above) mentions three "books," and specifically mentions Card's Ender's Game as being one of them. That Standard article in turn points to a press release from the previous day, also mentions three books and "swear words." Nothing in either article seems to hint at the explicit, graphic sexual content in your link above, dated ten days before the press release in the Standard, and describing material as "pornographic material, from the Internet," not "three books."
- NoPiece 15y agoThe link is to the actual police report, which the parent filed with police in addition to complaining to the school. Amazing how far off the article is...
- fryguy 15y agoThat's the whole point. Ender's Game has little to do with why the teacher was suspended, and the original article was wrong, as well. The original article was posted on /r/scifi a few days ago, and was pretty quickly debunked by the police report.
- Avenger42 15y agoThe school district's press release still only mentions the books, not the downloaded material. I wonder if that means "we're going to fire him because he circumvented our process by bringing in books he didn't clear first, so that we don't have to publicly discuss the fact that he may have been reading more salacious material to students as well."
- iamdave 15y agoThis, as a former resident of South Carolina and family member of someone who works in that state's educational system does not surprise me at all. South Carolina has probably the most fidgety, hammer from God mentality at the state education level. Even so much as a twitch is enough to startle most and send the local district into a tizzy.
- icarus_drowning 15y agoGiven how many of these middle school Students are probably devouring the ultra-violent "Hunger Games" trilogy in anticipation for the film, I find this complaint/decision odd.
- numeromancer 15y agoThe teacher should just read the Old Testament to them. The students then get the "religion" their parents want and all the nudity, sex and violence they crave. Win-win!
- spindritf 15y agoAre you being sarcastic? To me it's obvious that middle schoolers should in fact at least skim parts of the Bible. If not the most important, it's in the top ten most important texts of the western culture. BTW Those other nine (Iliad, The Song of Roland, Heart of Darkness, 1984...) are also full of violence so if schools really do apply that criterion consistently, teachers may as well stop bothering students with any reading.
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y agoIn my middle school (Indiana, public schools), we read chapters from the bible, mostly from the Old Testament. We did this because the next few books we were to read used a large amount of biblical symbolism. Later on, I took an elective in high school over Jewish history, and was assigned a bible for required reading. We also did comparative analysis between other copies of the bible, as well as readings from the Torah. I think nearly everybody found questionable differences between different translations. However, we did grasp the history of the Jewish people.
- hef19898 15y agoRisking to be down voted outright, that's exactly what those people want. reading is dangerous, it encourages thinking. Guess why Guttenberg was such a threat to the church when he invented moving letter printing. He basically destroyed their monopoly on information by providing the full bible to everyone. even back then they where quite carefull about the passages they read to the public.
- numeromancer 15y agohttp://catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html Of course they should read it. It is a book of life; it contains everything from utter foolishness to profound wisdom; from vile pettiness to unrestrained love; from brutal punishment to loving clemency. It is the right book, which would be presented to them for all the wrong reasons.
- brudgers 15y ago>"It’s a tiny bit violent" A child kills several other children barehanded. Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form - Card's view on this is pretty apparent in the first two sequals; Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide. It's always surprising how non-analytical we can be when it comes to violence - an entire planet is destroyed and millions of people screams are heard across the galaxy in A New Hope. Yet, the movie so ingrained in children's culture, it was an uphill battle to prevent my son from watching it when he was three [I felt like it was a victory that he didn't see it until he was five]. That said, Ender's Game is appropriate reading for 14 year olds, and the idea of it as pornographic is asinine. Same could be said of Bloom's Forever of my youth.
- kstenerud 15y agoTBH I don't even see the problem with a three year old seeing A New Hope (except that he might be too young to understand it and might get bored and turn it off). What damage are you hoping to prevent, exactly? Exposure to new ideas is a GOOD thing. Actively preventing your children from knowing about something simply because you disagree with it is censorship in its worst form.
- Avenger42 15y agoParental censorship is widely accepted, and not even worth comparing to state-sanctioned censorship, which I would argue is "censorship in its worst form". Every parent has a right and a responsibility to teach their children in a way that they see fit, and though the state can be called in for cases where their teachings are far outside the norm, to take away or limit these rights is to remove the parent from their role. Of course you can disagree with how someone else raises their kids - aunts, uncles, and grandparents have been doing that since the dawn of time. But, just off the top of my head: - Very young children: Owen and Beru's bodies after the stormtroopers find them? - Slightly older children: Torture of prisoners on the Death Star? - Near-teens: A greedy scoundrel as a "hero" through much of the film? I see plenty of reason to prevent children from seeing them until you feel they're "ready". I don't have children yet, so I don't know when that would be for mine.
- WiseWeasel 15y agoI was first exposed to Enders's Game when a middle school teacher started reading it to the class a little bit each day. After about a week, I couldn't stand the wait anymore and bought the book, probably the first time I had done such a thing of my own volition. It is incredibly sad that the students at this school might miss out on an opportunity to discover this series due to one ignorant, over-protecting parent. Heaven forbid a 14-year-old should be exposed to a swear word or two; it's not like they are constantly exposed to swearing and sexual situations outside of class... Oh wait.
- lutorm 15y agoDid anyone else read Lord of the Flies in school? As far as I remember, that was way more gruesome than Ender's game.
- ghshephard 15y agoGrade 11 - most students are 16 or 17 by the time they are exposed to Lord of the Flies.
- antoko 15y agoMy class read LotF at age 13/14. This was in the UK though, we're not nearly as sensitive to such things :)
- alttag 15y ago8th grade for me, making most students about 13/14.
- rmangi 15y agoWhat?? My 10 year old loved it. The teacher should be fired for not making the kids read it themselves... Amazing book.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoAs with most things 'Forbes' these days, this article is very link baitey. (We need an index for baitness I think, and a unit) Its also incorrect on a number of facts. Its also in a school district that isn't your school district (probably) and so outrage is difficult to change into action. Its also not part of a cluster of such events, or a general rise in incidence of such events and so unlikely to be an indication of a trend. But the author knows that the book 'Ender's Game' is well regarded by the tech savvy community, as is the author, and so constructing a blog post which implies that a well regarded story is considered 'bad for children' elsewhere in the country, is a great way to pump up the page views in the morning. I would have so much more respect for these folks if they did research, checked their 'facts', and then put those facts in a bit of context. But of course had they done that in this case, it would have been a non-story and well who is going to click to read that?
- thematt 15y agoInstead of a blatant "it's incorrect on a number of facts", I think it would be more constructive to say what those facts are and why they're incorrect so we can have an intelligent discussion.
- alttag 15y agoOdd. This was perhaps one of the earliest Sci-Fi books I read (along with many of the Doctor Who books.) I'm fairly certain I first read it in middle school, which would have made me about 10, but may have been as late as the start of high school, making me about 13 (yes, I was young, graduating at 16). I followed the next couple of books in the series, but couldn't get into them to the same extent. I have Ender's Game on my shelf at home (along with Ender's Shadow, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Hegemon), and have actively encouraged my 11-year-old son to read them. He's not quite ready yet (by his own reckoning), but he will be soon. As others have pointed out, the descriptions of violence don't compare at all to "Hunger Games" (or more particularly, the following two books in that series). The Harry Potter series, particularly the last three books, were violent as well (though not to the level of "Mockingjay") ... to the extent that we won't permit our children to watch them, yet, although even my 9-year-old has read all of them. I read "Ender's Game" again in high school, and a third time in my early twenties. One of the fascinating things about good books is that the parts that stick with you change as your experience and outlook on life changes. My recollection from the curriculum at my middle school included "Animal Farm", which also has messages on multiple levels; my younger sister was required to read "Tunnel In the Sky" (by Heinlein; she hated it, but I enjoyed it); my middle school coursework also included "Lord of the Flies", "Great Gatsby" and "Of Mice and Men", all of which also have violent sequences. Part of what makes these books classics (although even having read them a couple of time, I still don't like the last three on that list) is that they capture the human existence—and like it or not, the nature of humanity includes violence, overcoming violence, and the occasional necessity of violence.
- learc83 15y ago>"Tunnel In the Sky" I loved that book. Heinlein's juveniles would be great for middle school kids. I hated all the crap I had to read back then. I read Jurassic Park in 3rd grade, and by the time I was in middle school I found the standard literary fare too mundane to be interesting. School could be much more interesting if they'd just update the reading list.
- thom 15y agoI'm surprised to this day that this hasn't made it onto film.
- tptacek 15y agoThere are around 13,000 school districts in the US, most with many constituent schools, each supporting many hundreds of families. Even if everything about this story is credible (remember, their job is to sell page views, not to inform you), all we've got is one school district in which there was simultaneously a crazy parent and an incompetent school board. Ender's Game is also not a "tiny bit" violent, and although its characters are all young, it was not written specifically for young readers. (In my house, the boy read Ender's Game when he was 10; the girl heard an audio version of it at 9, and "Ender's Shadow", which is more explicit, was on the bookshelf in the boy's 6th grade class room).
- jowiar 15y agoOne of the biggest things stopping kids from developing a lifelong love of reading is the "let's not offend anyone" drivel they are forced to read in the lower grades. It took until about 8th grade to actually come across required-for-school reading that I enjoyed - 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Flowers for Algernon' - and that was in a suburban, progressive school district. When reading is "the thing that teachers make you do," and with the material that is typically chosen, the thought that picking up a book could be done willingly is a foreign concept.
- ArtB 15y agoIt's a matter of taste but where I'm from I think most people would consider 'To Kill a Mockingbird' "let's-not-offend-anyone drivel", then again I can see how in the US it would be more poignant than in countries with less history of racism.
- pjscott 15y agoAccording to the American Library Association, To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the more frequently challenged and banned books in the US. This page lists the dismaying details of what people saw fit to complain about: http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=bbwlinks&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=136590 http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=bbwlinks&Templat...
- timwiseman 15y agoPerhaps I'm misreading the parent, but I think he said "to Kill a Mockingbird" was one of the first required readings in school that did not fall into the drivel category.
- ArtB 15y agoYes, and I'm saying where I grew up most people seemed to think it was outdated drivel. We live (where I live) are in a multicultural society with many immigrants living peacefully, and we found, from the people I know, TKaMB dry and mining lessons that have long been incorporated in our society.
- alttag 15y agoFollowing back the chain of links o the original newspaper story [1], there appear to be three books involved. Only "Ender's Game" is named. Based on the account in the complaint, one of the phrases in question certainly does not come from Ender's Game, and refers to "prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculat[e].' [2] The district apparently requires an (apparently simple) administrative review of material beyond the prescribed curriculum, which was not done in this case. So, it may be that EG was the least sinister but most widely known book of the bunch. I, like others here, leap to defend it, but it may not be the actual source of many of the parent's concerns, but included because its inclusion was in violation of the review policy. 1: http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0315Followup-with-school--3862406 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0315Followup-with-school-... 2: http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_middle_school_teacher_read_explicit_material_to_class_142658256.html http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_m...
- bp2070 15y agoThe link chain is is kind of ridiculous. There are no additional facts given, the other "articles" are just editorializing what the previous wrote about the facts in the original...and in the process some of the facts become distorted as alttag pointed out.
- caseysoftware 15y agoCheck out Updates 2 & 4 on the story: From #2: "According to a news report by local station WRDW, the police incident report in the case claims that the teacher read “pornographic material from the Internet to the students in class. One of the stories was about prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculation.” And in #4, OSC says that he's pretty sure it wasn't Ender's Game at all. There are some pieces of the story missing.
- georgieporgie 15y agoAs the only HN user who disliked the entire series of books, I have no problem with the sentiment, though I disagree with the action. If I found out my imaginary child's imaginary teacher were reading from Ender's Game, I would visit that teacher to ask that better books be read.
- npc 15y agoI can't say I've read the entire series, but you're definitely not the only one who here who disliked Ender's Game. I keep this around in my bookmarks since it pretty clearly expresses what I think is wrong with the book: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
- georgieporgie 15y agoAn interesting read, thanks.
- nooneelse 15y agoI'll second the "not the only one" sentiment. As a child, I liked the book. As an adult, I feel it used my childish mindset and desire to feel special as tools to manipulate me into thoughtlessly accepting a dubious moral framework. As such, I think it is largely over-rated as a work through the common mechanism of idolization of what one liked as a child. Since I can't very well read it again for the first time, I was happy to find a couple of years ago that a narrative-astute friend of mine had happened to never read it. So I encouraged him to give it a try and was extremely careful to say nothing of the ambivalence I've had for it. He summed it up as pulp designed as a preteen want-to-be-a-superhero hook with an twist about on a level with a middling Twilight Zone episode. Thus ends my anecdote.
- lotharbot 15y agoAs a teen who grew up in a pacifist background, I rejected the book's dubious moral constructions. As I said to a friend at the time, who had argued Ender had no other choice: "he doesn't HAVE to live." The same applies to humanity as a whole. As your conclusion rightly notes, we are not so special as to deserve to live at any cost, or to deserve to destroy our enemies at any cost.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- EzGraphs 15y agoGot to love the fact that another HN link hovering around this one reads: "Fact based, data-oriented news (s0rce.com)"
- rsanchez1 15y agoI like how there's a condescending attitude against prudes through the whole article, and then they have to backtrack and say that the pornographic part probably had nothing to do with Ender's Game and had to do with other, actual pornographic material that the teacher was reading to the students. And even then, they wait until the very end to say that "the rest appears to be little more than rumor". Who needs facts to get in the way of pushing an agenda. "It's a little odd that the school would maintain it was just the books if this wasn't the case." Is it so odd? I think it's the school trying to protect the teacher. Just look at the situation in Los Angeles. Many reports of teacher molestation are coming out in the wake of the Miramonte scandal. Parents refused to send their children to Miramonte Elementary after it was revealed that a teacher engaged in despicable acts with students, and the parents were angry that they were not informed sooner. And its possible that more complaints about teacher abuse are swept under the rug, since a deal made between the teachers' union in LA and the LA school district expunges a teacher's record of unproven allegations after four years. They envisioned it would protect teachers against punishment for "petty" misconduct (being late/absent too much, messy, etc.) but never envisioned it would be used to protect teachers from sexual harassment accusations. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-20120317,0,6938495.column http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-20120317,0,693... There is more to this story than what is out there now. The teacher is being protected, and they probably won't tell us what is really going on until more parents come out demanding to know the truth. LA is not an isolated incident, unfortunately. Some particularly bad characters have eroded the trust parents have in teachers, and then teachers react demanding protections, and the same bad characters abuse these protections to save their hide when allegations of misconduct pop up. The whole truth has not come out, and we will probably not like it when it does.