![]() ![]() The exact nature of and reason for the ban is still somewhat unclear. I was not surprised, therefore, to learn that the Chicago Public Schools have recently decided to restrict access to Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir, Persepolis, which deals with her experiences growing up under the fundamentalist regime in Iran. ![]() Again, there were sensitivity concerns, though whether we were worried about offending black people or white people, I don't know. So were passages that depicted, or even mentioned, slavery - and this was for an American history exam. ![]() Passages about rats, or alcohol, or love, or death were similarly proscribed. In another instance, I was told that I could not, for sensitivity reasons, include a test passage about storms at sea. On one project, a colleague of mine working on a world history course was told not to include the fact that gay people were targeted during the Holocaust. But I've worked as an educational writer and curriculum developer for almost 20 years, and the most important part of the job, it often seems like, is not imparting information, but rather figuring out how to make sure that the students don't receive any. The job of American schools, as enforced by the bureaucracy, is not really education. ![]()
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