USA Censorship and Books

I apologise for the harsh title of this post but facts are facts. Last year I read and reviewed a book called the Freedom Writers Diary, which was also made into a movie starring Hilary Swank.

It was an excellent book written by Asian, Caucasian, Latino, Hispanic and African-American teenagers about their own lives in the inner city of Los Angeles. These students were all expected (by the teachers) to drop out, end up in jail or on the streets or worse. Instead every one of them graduated from High School. These teenagers learnt to rise above the poverty, the drug abuse, the guns and other crimes in their neighbourhoods. They learnt to beleive in their dreams, to make goals for themselves and to strive to reach those goals. And one of the things they did was to set up a Freedom Writers Foundation.

Well today I read a news article that says this.

An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months.

This high school teacher attended a work shop at the Freedom Writers Foundation. She was DENIED the opportunity to allow her students to READ and learn from this book - The Freedom Writers Diaries. Apparently one school board member objected to the language. ONE person objected to swearing - language that everyone speaks and hears all day, every day, even me.

One has to wonder if it was the swearing the board member really objected to - or whether it was the clear message of the book that kids can turn their lives around, and take charge of their own destinies. There are some in academia, unfortunately, who can't stand it when kids don't live down to their expectations. The real obscenity here is not the swearing, but the refusal by the board to give this teacher permission to use a very powerful tool to help these kids excel. WRH Rivero

What makes this worse is that in todays world, this story is not reported in the US media. No, we have to read the non-American press to find stories like this.

Freedom Writers Diary - Book Review

Well I finished the Freedom Writers Diary. (This is the cover version that I have). It was a hard book to get through because of all the painful stories. These are teenagers who were shot at, raped, assaulted by gangs and by parents, jailed, living on the streets and doing drugs. But at school they were reading about Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic - two girls who lived through wars and wrote diaries. Anne of course lived through the Second World War in Europe. Zlata lived in Bosnia and lived through the Bosnia/Serbian war of the early 1990s. She was forced into hiding because she was of mixed ethnic race. Anne did not survive her war - but she was not killed in the gas chambers. Anne died because of disease - specifically Typhus. Zlata survived and her family escaped their war to Paris. She now lives in Ireland.




Anyway the kids wrote letters to Miep Gies - the Dutch women who helped hide Anne Frank's family in the office building. Miep was invited to America for some war related anniversary, so Ms Gruell - the kids teacher - arranged for Miep Gies to speak to the kids as well. This had a huge impact on them, so the following year, the teacher invited Zlata Filipovic to visit and speak to the kids. Another huge impact.

When the kids started High school, they were put into a "English for Dummies" class with a freshman teacher, because they were not expected to graduate. They were expected to drop out, be killed, end up in jail or on the streets. All of the 150 kids in Gruell's English classes stayed in school for the entire 4 years and they all graduated. Of course they had problems, but they stuck it out. Several of these kids were the first in their families to EVER graduate high school.