FRIDAY, March 28, 2014 ™
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WHAT MAKES A BOOK APPROPRIATE By Dale Bass STAFF REPORTER dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
Denise Harper welcomes an application from a dad to reconsider a book being read in his 15-year-old son’s Grade 10 class. The chairwoman of the Kamloops-Thompson board of education said she spoke with parent Dean Audet about the concerns he has with The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Audet took his issues to the media this week, providing copies of his application for reconsideration of the material that is part of his son’s curriculum at South Kamloops secondary. In it, Audet has gone page by page, itemizing the parts he finds offensive. He has read the book and watched the movie made from the journal-based coming-of-age novel by Stephen Chbosky. His application notes he sees nothing good about the book, believing the message “is clearly promoting the fact that all of the swearing and immoral behaviour and pornography should be commonplace and acceptable.� Audet, who has four children — ages 15, 12, 10 and six — told KTW he does not believe the material in the book is appropriate for kids his son’s age. While noting his son has been given a different book from which to study, Audet noted his son will be focusing on that book while classmates around him continue to read and discuss The Perks of Being a Wallflower, while also watching the movie created from the book. The book was approved for use for Grade 9 and up, said Sherry Kallergis, operations manager with the education resource acquisition consortium (ERAC), a provincial body representing all but one school district and charged with evaluating curriculum material, making the information available to districts and teachers and assisting with group purchases to keep
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costs to districts down. Kallergis said the evaluation — done by teachers appointed by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation — indicated the book would be a source for “rich discussion� on safety, gender issues, journalling and homosexuality, among others. The book is written in journal format — much like a diary — by a teenaged male to an anonymous friend and includes various issues he faces as he starts at a new school. He’s not particularly outgoing, not the athlete his brother is, nor as socially active as his sister, but he is befriended by others and confronts various situations many students deal with today. Those include pre-marital sex, drugs, threats, physical violence, feelings of inadequacy, smoking, lying, abortion and mental health. Kamloops-Thompson school district assistant superintendent Karl deBruijn said he was not aware of the book until he spoke with Audet. DeBruijn then read some book reviews. “I can see how it could be controversial,� he said. The Perks of Being a Wallflower was banned by a school board in Illinois earlier this year after it had been included in the Grade 8 literacy curriculum. It is on the list of the Top 10 most-challenged books put together by the American Library Association — a list that includes Brave New World, The Grapes of Wrath, Tropic of Cancer, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Satanic Verses, Things Fall Apart, American Psycho, The Metamorphosis and Lolita. It is available at the Kamloops Library. Marc Saunders, director of libraries for the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, said the library “must rely on our patrons to make choices that are right for themselves and for parents to monitor the child’s choices of
reading and viewing. “The selection of this book for the library’s collection is not an endorsement of the values or ideas it portrays. Rather, the library serves as a window to the world with a mandate to serve a wellinformed population.� Kallergis said when books are evaluated, a variety of criteria are considered, including gradeappropriateness, the subject matter, instructional design, whether it meets the curriculum requirements and a key factor of social considerations. Teachers can access the evaluation “to ensure it is appropriate for their use,� Kallergis said. “The question is, ‘Is there value to this book?’� She said the evaluation on the ERAC website, information teachers and districts can access in researching material, showed the book was seen as “a perfect opportunity. Discussion is limitless. The evaluators also said it is noted for literary merit and is a contemporary novel.� Kallergis said it was also deemed to be valuable in helping students develop a broad understanding of their contemporary issues and was appropriate for the cognitive ability of students in Grade 9. DeBruijn said the review, which will be done by school-district library co-ordinator Andrea Wallin, will give the board another opportunity to consider the content. Neither he nor Harper can remember a book being removed from the curriculum during their years of involvement with education in Kamloops. However, deBruijn noted, the idea of acceptability has changed in literature. “There are books we wouldn’t use today that we used before,� he said. “Huckleberry Finn is one of them. I read it in school, but there is language in there that wouldn’t be considered acceptable today.�
ALUMNI & FRIENDS ASSOCIATION
Distinguished Alumni Awards April 11, 2014 | TRU Grand Hall $PDLUBJMT QN t %JOOFS "XBSET QN 5JDLFUT t 4UVEFOUT
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2014 Distinguished Alumni Award Winners Ken Salter
Jason Paige
Skye Buck
Bachelor of Social Work 2000 TRU Distinguished Alumni: Grace Chronistor BSW Award
Computer Automated Systems Technician 2005 TRU Distinguished Alumni: Professional Achievement Award
Bachelor of Science 2006 & Bachelor of Education 2010 TRU Distinguished Alumni: Lifetime Achievement (Awarded posthumously)
Larissa Pepper Bachelor of Business Administration in progress TRU Distinguished Alumni: Neil Russell Student Leadership Award
Janice Yeung (Kamloops Branches)
TD Meloche Monnex Scholarship in Career Development
TRU Distinguished Alumni: Milestone Achievement Award
TD Insurance Meloche Monnex is a proud sponsor of the Distinguished Alumni Awards
Open Learning School of Business and Economics Athletics and Recreation Print Services Faculty of Human, Social and Educational Development
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KAMLOOPS SPRING HOMESHOW 2014
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