The Anne Frank Diary is 'pornographic' according to one mother who has lodged a formal complaint over the book being used in school to educate her own child.
Mom, Gail Horalek, has filed a formal complaint against her daughter's school district over its use of the Anne Frank Diary, saying that many of the passages contained in the book are far too graphic for seventh graders like her daughter.
The mother highlights one part of the book in which Frank discusses discovering her genitalia, and Horalek has said it is akin to pornography, and is completely inappropriate for her child and her schoolmates.
She has complained that Meads Mill Middle School should have asked parents to sign a permission slip before they assigned the book to the children to read, due to the content.
She has said, "The problem is the school is giving the seventh graders inappropriate material and not explaining it to the parents," according to the Northville Patch.
Horalek has explained that the school has sent permission slips home for parents to sign when they have looked to use various other books and films that may contain strong material that some could deem "inappropriate."
Apparently the part of the book that has so offended this lunatic is this portion:
“What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris … When you’re standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you’re standing, so you can’t see what’s inside. They separate when you sit down and they’re very red and quite fleshy on the inside.”
Okay look I think I know a little something about pornography, after all I am immoral, but if reading about the terrible fate of this young woman gets your juices going, you may have MUCH more to worry about than appropriate reading materials.
This is simply an honest description of a young woman writing about discovering her body parts. and in no way does it come off as salacious or prurient. At least no in my world.
This mother is obviously deeply disturbed and it makes me wonder how she handles all of those Donald Duck cartoons where the foul fowl is constantly running around without any pants on?
Here is the part that REALLY get me:
Horalek has now demanded that the book be removed from the curriculum: "It doesn't mean my child is sheltered, it doesn't mean I live in a bubble and it doesn't mean I'm trying to ban books."
Yes, yes it does! If you are demanding that a book be removed from a library, then you are by DEFINITION banning books!
You know if this idiot would spend more time on her reading comprehension, instead of focusing all of her attention on combing books for the mention of genitalia, she MIGHT have been able to figure that out for herself.
The version of The Diary of Anne Frank that I read in junior high, and the version my son read in junior high 25 years later, contained nothing at all that would give anyone the vapors (you know, except the whole story, which was about a family that went into hiding, was found, and slaughtered all because of their religious beliefs).
ReplyDeleteThe fundagelical nutbags absolutely *hate* Anne Frank because she was Jewish. I was in Holland a few years back on business, and took a morning to go see the AnneFrankHuis. I cried all the way through it; the people who maintain it do an excellent job of making the events of so long ago very real and moving. However, the next day, while waiting on line at the airport, an American woman with a nasal midwestern accent approached me and asked me if I had been in line to enter the AnneFrankHuis the day before. When I said I had, she told me that I should have seen another site instead--it was better because it was CHRISTIAN.
… another site instead--it was better because it was CHRISTIAN.
DeleteBut what made the AnneFrankHuis historically notable was the CHRISTIANS the Frank family were hiding from, who ultimately took the family away and killed them.
Also, too, besides the obvious hate she seems to have for Jews, that nitwit seems to not have realized that it was a supposedly Christian family that hid her and her family...
DeleteThis woman sounds very much like my ex-sister-in-law who flat refused to teach my niece the "facts of life" and what to expect because her religion calls it "evil to discuss things like that". (I got stuck with the talk when she began her first period while studying at my place! Poor thing was scared to death.)
ReplyDeleteIgnorant shits like this need to be prosecuted for abuse!
At least she was lucky enough to have someone who would explain it to her rather than ignore it. Wonder what her mother would have done.
DeleteSounds like Piper Laurie in Carrie.
ReplyDeleteThe character who referred to breasts as "dirty pillows," right?
Delete7th grade? I can guarantee Ms. Horalek that her pristine daughter has already explored her genitalia long before being assigned Anne Frank's diary!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I read "The Diary of Anne Frank" in middle school, but we read the play, not the actual diary, which does not contain that section. Interesting. I'd bet this mom's 7th grader was not the least bit bothered by that paragraph. And yes, dear, you are trying to ban a book. Otherwise, you'd have just talked to the teacher about your concerns and asked for an alternative reading assignment, and your sheltered 7th grader could have been given the PLAY instead.
ReplyDeleteOh, and one of the highlights of a trip to Amsterdam was touring the very building where they were hidden, and seeing the actual diary as well as the wall where Anne taped her movie pictures, which are still there.
Obviously this stupid cow never read the book or she doesn't remember she read it when she was younger. Idiot.
ReplyDeleteShe goes on to wonder how a man can get in such a tiny hole, much less a baby come out of it....same thing I wondered about when I was 13. Guess I have a dirty mind like Anne. :-)
ReplyDeleteLOL! I remember wondering exactly the same when my brother was born when I was 7y/o. I had no idea, and remember asking just exactly WHERE he came from, and also HOW he got in there in the first place, and my parents said he came "from down there", and got "in there" the same way, which, to me was totally incomprehensible. So, I assumed, babies must be coming out of our butts until I was about 13, started my period, and was given a book about to read about the female body... (No sex ed in our schools at that time...)
DeleteIn high school, I always put away the Playboy magazine and read Diary of Anne Frank when I was spanking the monkey.
ReplyDeleteDouble snort!
DeleteWatching TV in the evenings, including ads for viagra, sometimes makes me blush if my kids are here. Does this lady forbid her daughter from watching TV? The big bang theory, which is on at 8:30at night when a seventh grader is awake, mentions sexual intercourse and coitus about once a show. Reality shows, a favorite of teenagers, is all about sex. This lady is purposefully missing the point of the book.
ReplyDeleteGryph, my understanding is that she isn't trying to remove it from the school library, but to not have it as assigned reading. Difference.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I disagree with her reasons for not sign TDoAF, I do think schools should stop. We're holocausted out here. Seems this is the only genocide that occurred according to white public schools. To quote Toni Morrison (IIRC), 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. What about the 60 million slaves that died on the middle passage?
Not only Jews died in the Holocaust. People who were Gypsies, Poles, French were also slaughtered. People who were ethnic white German but handicapped were slaughtered. Maybe if you opened your mind, you might learn something.
DeleteYou almost sound like some of the white people I know during Black History Month.
DeleteI wish we'd shine the light on ALL of the atrocities the human race has inflicted on each other, for whatever reason. Knowing helps keep it from happening again. I agree, slavery and the treatment of slaves has been glossed over in our history books and we need to fight for much more exposure, not take away from another. We can't decide whose story is more important, they ALL are, and you think "schools should stop?"
Thinking that one race's horrors or accomplishments are better than another's is the same thinking of those who perpetuated these terrible events in the first place.
The Diary of Anne Frank is much more than a story about the Holocaust.
DeleteDo you know that my school age kids are ALSO learning about the slaves who died? It's possible to teach both, which schools (even "white" public schools) are actually doing.
And fuck this mom for trying to parent other people's kids.
Neither one of you addressed the holocaust that has happened and is in some degree still now happening to our Native brothers and sisters. They have been killed and relocated to areas where virtually nothing can grow, just so the White Man can take over all the fertile soils and get all the oil out of their former lands.
DeleteSome 80% of Native children in the Dakotas are still being taken away from their natural families and being put into white foster families.
Who needs the open mind here, 6:01? I'm pointing out (and you haven't offered anything evidence to dispute it) that the Holocaust was about white victims - thus teachable and acceptable. Meanwhile, much larger (in numbers and duration) genocide was practiced against blacks and native Americans, yet those get only a passing reference in many schools. h And the REAL horror is that the genocide was considered normal by the people of the time.
DeleteSo let me be VERY specific, sinc eyou seem to want to pick a fight: Schools should stop teaching [ONLY] this specific holocaust.
And to 7:18: Vary it up by grade at least! With funding cuts and test-taking emphasis, there seems little time for both/and, instead the "or" chosen seems to default to German/Jewish holocaust and Anne Frank.
My children also learn about the massacre of Native Americans. This is not a contest.
DeleteI don't know what you mean by "vary it up by grade." Are you saying that every year, in every grade, the only massacre taught to kids is the holocaust?
DeleteI'd like to see your evidence of that or that there are either/or choices or defaults. Show me links to curriculum from actual school districts. Otherwise, it's only your anecdotes or assumptions.
A few decades ago, when I was in school, I can only remember studying the holocaust in any depth at all in 7th grade. And even that long ago, in my very white, very small rural city, we also studied the massacre of Native Americans and slaves. I can assure you, my kids who are now in elementary school (in a medium sized, pretty white city) will have an even more balanced, more eye-opening education about American and World history that I had.
I usually get paid quite a bit of $ to do research, 10:36, so stop being lazy and having unrealistic expectations. Or plan to pony up $.
DeleteAnd then you offer - anecdotes from, what, 20-30 yeas ago? Hike.
And yes, IME, (and in the districts surrounding mine) 4th 7th and 8th grades ALL do the Holocaust, usually in Lit/Language Arts. My kids have read the Diary of Anne Frank or a derivative no less than 3 times each in 5 years. Imagine how boring and depressing that is! They are learning little new material.
As an educator in literature, I know first hand that there are quite a few gems from both Native American and African American writers, not to mention Asian writers.
I see with some quick research that there is also a lot of International Children's Literature - Two on the top of the list focus on the Cambodian genocide.
So, 9:35, because your children supposedly read the book 3 times in 5 years, you want NO SCHOOLS ANYWHERE to teach the book? Why don't you parent your own children and let others do the same?
DeleteFuck you 1:24, what I said was stop using this as the ONLY genocide book, or OVERUSING it. - In case you aren't acquainted with actual curriculum - and it sounds like many of you are not, there has been a move to something called spiraling curriculum - which encourages such boredom inducing repetition - anathema to kids who are above average, and torture for the gifted student.
DeleteGail, Gail, Gail -
ReplyDeleteAs an old geezer who studied Anne Frank in school many years ago, I can assure you that I didn't get my jollies from that book. In those days we used the old National Geographic magazines and Sears catalogs to meet our "needs". Kids these days have a little thing called the Internet to sate their curiosity.
However, if you wish to stop your kid from reading literary works that contain the occasional sexual reference, you will surely write a letter to your church to demand discontinuing the use of the Bible as a text of moral authority.
The complete text did not appear until about 1995. Anne's father had edited out a few pages, obviously including the ones the Mrs. Horalek objected to. I read and loved the book as a young teenager, many years ago, and this section was certainly not in it. I can completely understand Mr. Frank's position - he wanted to protect his daughter from such criticism. Mrs. Horalek might not realize that the whole of the book is so much greater than this small section. Besides, kids the age of her daughter are exposed to much worse on television and in music today.
DeleteAnne's story is very much the story of all girls growing up, even Mrs. Horalek's daughter, although very few daughters ever had or will have to deal with the horrors that came Anne Frank's way. It is, with or without the complete text, a beautiful and true account of growing up. Did Mrs. Horalek never read "The Diary of Anne Frank" herself as a teenager?
One of the reasons I wanted my son to read "The Diary of Anne Frank" when he was about 13 was so that he could appreciate how difficult life could be - the years of silence in the attic that ended nevertheless in discovery and death. The diary is an excellent story for young teenagers, male of female, especially when they are in that seemingly unending complaining stage.
Beaglemom
ReplyDeleteIgnorance is Not Bliss!
I hope the school board will not comply.
Up next, the dictionary. I mean come on, sex, penis, vagina, intercourse, pervert, testicles, uterus, breast, the words are endless. AND they define them too. Oh the horror! We must rid the world of this filthy book.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Sarah's faves: ass and friggin'. If we can ban the dictionary, maybe we ban Sarah!
DeleteWith perhaps even an anatomically correct line drawing. Clutch those pearls!!!!!
DeleteI don't know you personally Jesse, but from what I've read on your website these past couple of years you are HIGHLY moral. Apropos of nothing in particular about 25 years ago I had a Corvette with the License Plate OFUIGIT. I recived a letter from the DMV telling me my plate was to be turned in as it was obscene and immoral. Unfortunately my first choice of a replacement "OBSCENE" had already been taken so I had to settle for California plates that read "IMMORAL". I still have the plates if you'd like to see a picture...
ReplyDeletePlease keep up the GOOD work you are involved in.
In 7th grade I turned in a book report on one of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels which I liked for the adventure/action. An unwise nun asked me if my parents knew I had read the book. That was enough to send me back to carefully peruse the sexy parts which I had previously skimmed because BORING.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that when adults get uptight about a book, it sure to make most of the kids in school avidly read the book.
Giggle!
DeleteReminds me of an old RCC joke:
As the custom is in Ireland, every Saturday morning, the entire congregation makes their way to confession to cleanse their souls to prepare for Sunday mass. The priest enters his side of the confessional and waits for the first sinner to enter. A moment later he hears the door open and a voice say…
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose girl.”
Father Flanagan, the Parrish priest recognized the voice as one of his altar boys and asked, “Tis that you little Sean O’Malley?” Sean sheepishly replied, “Yes, Father, it is.”
Father Flanagan pressed, “And who was this loose girl you were with then?”
Sean stated, “I cannot tell you, Father. I don’t want to ruin her reputation.”
Father Flanagan whispered back, “Well, Sean, I am sure to find out her name soon enough so you may as well tell me now. Was it Mary Rooney?”
Sean replied, “I cannot say.”
Father Flanagan pressed further, “Was it Elizabeth Casey?”
Sean spoke, “I’ll never tell Father.”
Father asked, “Was it Patty Mulligan?”
Sean replied, “I’m sorry, but I cannot name her.”
Father continued to press, “Was it Kathy Mannagan?”
Sean softly spoke, “My lips are sealed Father.”
Once more, Father Flanagan asked, “Was it Rebecca Muldoon then?”
Sean coyly said, “Please, Father, I cannot tell you.”
Father Flanagan sighed in frustration. He said, “You are a very tight lipped lad, and I admire that. But you have sinned and now you have to atone. Starting today, you will be relieved of your altar boy duties for four months. Now go back to your pew and say ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers.”
Sean slowly walks back to his pew and his friend Mike slides over and whispered, “What’d you get?” Sean whispered, “Four months vacation and five good leads.”
I guess she is the same mother who wanted her snowflake-pure daughter to be excused from any sex ed they might have in fifth and sixth grade.
ReplyDeleteShe is NOT incensed by the type of torture and torments the young author went through, but only by by the fact that the young author DATED to describe her young adolescent body. :(
(that was supposed to be DARED)
ReplyDeleteSounds like a woman determined to be a grandma ....very soon...her daughter's life be damned. I love the part about her not wanting to ban the book, I just don't want it read. LOL!
ReplyDeleteWe see a lot of that type of ignorance here in New Mexico. Sex education is unthinkable. Birth control out of the question. But at the same time young men a pressured to "prove" they are not gay at a young age. It is not at all unusual for a gay man to have fathered a child or two at a very young age. And while most....I repeat most....of the babies produced are treasured; not all are. Many young women drop-out of school while pregnant and never return. Others are fortunate enough that their parents raise the child for them.
I love women like this bozo! If it wasn't for a similar bozo, I would probably have never discovered and became a huge fan of "Married with Children"
ReplyDeleteIt's that girl I really feel sorry for, imagine having to go through puberty and not feel comfortable enough to ask your mom questions?
I have read Anne Frank book and frankly, there is nothing pornographic. In fact, i think the book is inspiring but sad. Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteMore power to your blog.