English Books Being Banned

[Sal]

School Board pulls Sherlock Holmes book over complaint by Mormons

August 15, 2011 – Lesley Ciarula Taylor

 

The anti-Mormonism in the first Sherlock Holmes' mystery is too much for students in Grade 6, a Virginiaschool board has decided. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlett introduced the cerebral sleuth to the world. Part of the revenge murder mystery hinges on the Danites, supposedly a band of 19th century religious vigilantes and long a sore point with Mormons.

 

When a parent complained in May, the Albemarle County School Board set up “a committee of educators” to investigate, board chair Steve Koleszar told the Star on Monday.

 

Last week, the board decided “there are better books by Sherlock Holmes, ones that make better use of deductive reasoning” for Grade 6 than Scarlet, he said.  “A part of the book that deals with Mormonism may or may not be historically accurate and reflects the biases of the writer.”

 

What clinched it for Koleszar was that teachers “weren’t dealing with these issues. Sixth graders might not have an understanding that it has a bias.” The book uses flashback to recount the forced marriage of a young woman to a Mormon even though her father had vowed to prevent it. “Such marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace,” Conan Doyle wrote. The father is murdered, the daughter dies of a broken heart, and her true love seeks revenge.

 

About 20 students turned out for the board vote to defend the book, including Quinn Legallo-Malone, who called it  “the best book I have read so far.”  A Study in Scarlet remains in the school library but the Grade 6 curriculum will likely substitute The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Koleszar said.

 

The Albemarle board turns down parents’ requests to remove books they find objectionable more often than it approves them, he said.  What’s his position on that perennially thorny work, Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice? “It is really great writing. As an English teacher, you have to talk about it.”

[Jo Ann Dobbert]

Why should books be band in the first place.  WE should teach our children to read and deduct for them selves what is right or wrong.  After all isn't it the parents place to teach morality.

Sorry I  will put my pic up just as soon as I get it off my old computer

 

[Richard Roman]

How weird is this?

 

I want to ban one of his other stories which was very mean about pygmies!

[Sal]

I love Nazi mentality