
Teacher Suspended For Reading 'Ender's Game' To Middle School Students - ale55andro
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/19/south-carolina-teacher-suspended-for-reading-enders-game-to-middle-school-students/
======
alttag
Following back the chain of links o the original newspaper story [1], there
appear to be three books involved. Only "Ender's Game" is named. Based on the
account in the complaint, one of the phrases in question certainly does not
come from _Ender's Game_ , and refers to "prostitutes having their faces
covered with ejaculat[e].' [2]

The district apparently requires an (apparently simple) administrative review
of material beyond the prescribed curriculum, which was not done in this case.

So, it may be that EG was the least sinister but most widely known book of the
bunch. I, like others here, leap to defend it, but it may not be the actual
source of many of the parent's concerns, but included because its inclusion
was in violation of the review policy.

1: [http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0315Followup-with-
school-...](http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0315Followup-with-school--
3862406) 2:
[http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_m...](http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_middle_school_teacher_read_explicit_material_to_class_142658256.html)

~~~
caseysoftware
Check out Updates 2 & 4 on the story:

From #2: "According to a news report by local station WRDW, the police
incident report in the case claims that the teacher read “pornographic
material from the Internet to the students in class. One of the stories was
about prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculation.”

And in #4, OSC says that he's pretty sure it wasn't Ender's Game at all.

There are some pieces of the story missing.

------
alttag
Odd. This was perhaps one of the earliest Sci-Fi books I read (along with many
of the Doctor Who books.)

I'm fairly certain I first read it in middle school, which would have made me
about 10, but may have been as late as the start of high school, making me
about 13 (yes, I was young, graduating at 16). I followed the next couple of
books in the series, but couldn't get into them to the same extent. I have
Ender's Game on my shelf at home (along with Ender's Shadow, Shadow Puppets,
Shadow of the Hegemon), and have actively encouraged my 11-year-old son to
read them. He's not quite ready yet (by his own reckoning), but he will be
soon.

As others have pointed out, the descriptions of violence don't compare at all
to "Hunger Games" (or more particularly, the following two books in that
series). The Harry Potter series, particularly the last three books, were
violent as well (though not to the level of "Mockingjay") ... to the extent
that we won't permit our children to watch them, yet, although even my 9-year-
old has read all of them.

I read "Ender's Game" again in high school, and a third time in my early
twenties. One of the fascinating things about good books is that the parts
that stick with you change as your experience and outlook on life changes.

My recollection from the curriculum at my middle school included "Animal
Farm", which also has messages on multiple levels; my younger sister was
required to read "Tunnel In the Sky" (by Heinlein; she hated it, but I enjoyed
it); my middle school coursework also included "Lord of the Flies", "Great
Gatsby" and "Of Mice and Men", all of which also have violent sequences.

Part of what makes these books classics (although even having read them a
couple of time, I still don't like the last three on that list) is that they
capture the human existence—and like it or not, the nature of humanity
includes violence, overcoming violence, and the occasional necessity of
violence.

~~~
learc83
>"Tunnel In the Sky"

I loved that book. Heinlein's juveniles would be great for middle school kids.

I hated all the crap I had to read back then. I read Jurassic Park in 3rd
grade, and by the time I was in middle school I found the standard literary
fare too mundane to be interesting.

School could be much more interesting if they'd just update the reading list.

~~~
thom
I'm surprised to this day that this hasn't made it onto film.

------
brudgers
> _"It’s a tiny bit violent"_

A child kills several other children barehanded.

Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form - Card's view on
this is pretty apparent in the first two sequals; _Speaker for the Dead_ and
_Xenocide_.

It's always surprising how non-analytical we can be when it comes to violence
- an entire planet is destroyed and millions of people screams are heard
across the galaxy in _A New Hope._ Yet, the movie so ingrained in children's
culture, it was an uphill battle to prevent my son from watching it when he
was three [I felt like it was a victory that he didn't see it until he was
five].

That said, _Ender's Game_ is appropriate reading for 14 year olds, and the
idea of it as pornographic is asinine. Same could be said of Bloom's _Forever_
of my youth.

~~~
kstenerud
TBH I don't even see the problem with a three year old seeing A New Hope
(except that he might be too young to understand it and might get bored and
turn it off). What damage are you hoping to prevent, exactly?

Exposure to new ideas is a GOOD thing. Actively preventing your children from
knowing about something simply because you disagree with it is censorship in
its worst form.

~~~
Avenger42
Parental censorship is widely accepted, and not even worth comparing to state-
sanctioned censorship, which I would argue is "censorship in its worst form".

Every parent has a right and a responsibility to teach their children in a way
that they see fit, and though the state can be called in for cases where their
teachings are far outside the norm, to take away or limit these rights is to
remove the parent from their role.

Of course you can disagree with how someone else raises their kids - aunts,
uncles, and grandparents have been doing that since the dawn of time.

But, just off the top of my head:

\- Very young children: Owen and Beru's bodies after the stormtroopers find
them?

\- Slightly older children: Torture of prisoners on the Death Star?

\- Near-teens: A greedy scoundrel as a "hero" through much of the film?

I see plenty of reason to prevent children from seeing them until you feel
they're "ready". I don't have children yet, so I don't know when that would be
for mine.

~~~
joshbuddy
It really irks me that in these conversations, we don't talk about the rights
of the children, instead, it's just seen as a sliding scale between the rights
of the parents and the rights of the state.

Of course, all of this makes me think of Ogden Nash's poem "Don't Cry Darling,
It's Blood Alright" ... two lines:

Innocent infants have no use for fables about rabbits or donkeys or tortoises
or porpoises, What they want is something with plenty of well-mutilated
corpoises.

(It's also crazy that I can't find a complete copy of a poem from 1935 online)

~~~
timwiseman
It depends on what you mean by right, its a very context dependent word. In
one sense, rights are precisely the things which the government is not
permitted to interfere with. So in that sense it really is about the ability
of the state to interfere (or not) with the way a parent raises their child.

In the broader sense, it becomes somewhat hard to talk about because it might
matter greatly much how old the child is. My 3 year old is simply not in an
position to make many good decisions for herself, but my 6 year old gets a
fair bit more freedom, and as they get older I will hand more of the reigns of
their own lives to them happily.

It is also hard to talk about separately because in a sense a child's rights
are what is left over after the state and the parent divide up their rights,
any right absolutely given to the child is denied to one of those two
entities. Should I have the ability to restrict what my 3 year old sees? I
think most would agree that I should.

Should I have the ability to restrict what my 13 year old sees (when one of
them reaches 13)? That is touchier, but I think most will answer, "Yes, but
you should use it less and listen to their judgment more." I certainly think
that even when my child turns 13 I will want to keep them away from materials
that overtly objectify women and I will judge on a case by case basis if they
are ready for horror films or not.

For what it's worth, I agree with your sentiment at the end that many parents
overly coddle even older children. But I also respect that each parent has the
privelege and duty of making those decisions for themselves and their children
until those children cease to be children.

------
fryguy
Headline is misleading. Teacher was suspended for reading a short story from
the internet, not Ender's game.

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytv...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytvinc.com%2Fdocuments%2FSchofieldSchool-
PornInvestigation.pdf)

~~~
scelerat
Could you explain how this is related?

The original article in the _Aiken Standard_ (linked to from from the OP's
Forbes article above) mentions three "books," and specifically mentions Card's
_Ender's Game_ as being one of them. That _Standard_ article in turn points to
a press release from the previous day, also mentions three books and "swear
words."

Nothing in either article seems to hint at the explicit, graphic sexual
content in your link above, dated ten days before the press release in the
_Standard_ , and describing material as "pornographic material, from the
Internet," not "three books."

~~~
fryguy
That's the whole point. Ender's Game has little to do with why the teacher was
suspended, and the original article was wrong, as well. The original article
was posted on /r/scifi a few days ago, and was pretty quickly debunked by the
police report.

~~~
Avenger42
The school district's press release still only mentions the books, not the
downloaded material.

I wonder if that means "we're going to fire him because he circumvented our
process by bringing in books he didn't clear first, so that we don't have to
publicly discuss the fact that he may have been reading more salacious
material to students as well."

------
ChuckMcM
As with most things 'Forbes' these days, this article is very link baitey. (We
need an index for baitness I think, and a unit)

Its also incorrect on a number of facts.

Its also in a school district that isn't your school district (probably) and
so outrage is difficult to change into action.

Its also not part of a cluster of such events, or a general rise in incidence
of such events and so unlikely to be an indication of a trend.

But the author knows that the book 'Ender's Game' is well regarded by the tech
savvy community, as is the author, and so constructing a blog post which
implies that a well regarded story is considered 'bad for children' elsewhere
in the country, is a great way to pump up the page views in the morning.

I would have so much more respect for these folks if they did research,
checked their 'facts', and then put those facts in a bit of context. But of
course had they done that in this case, it would have been a non-story and
well who is going to click to read that?

~~~
thematt
Instead of a blatant "it's incorrect on a number of facts", I think it would
be more constructive to say what those facts are and why they're incorrect so
we can have an intelligent discussion.

------
jowiar
One of the biggest things stopping kids from developing a lifelong love of
reading is the "let's not offend anyone" drivel they are forced to read in the
lower grades. It took until about 8th grade to actually come across required-
for-school reading that I enjoyed - 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Flowers for
Algernon' - and that was in a suburban, progressive school district. When
reading is "the thing that teachers make you do," and with the material that
is typically chosen, the thought that picking up a book could be done
willingly is a foreign concept.

~~~
ArtB
It's a matter of taste but where I'm from I think most people would consider
'To Kill a Mockingbird' "let's-not-offend-anyone drivel", then again I can see
how in the US it would be more poignant than in countries with less history of
racism.

~~~
timwiseman
Perhaps I'm misreading the parent, but I think he said "to Kill a Mockingbird"
was one of the first required readings in school that did not fall into the
drivel category.

~~~
ArtB
Yes, and I'm saying where I grew up most people seemed to think it was
outdated drivel. We live (where I live) are in a multicultural society with
many immigrants living peacefully, and we found, from the people I know, TKaMB
dry and mining lessons that have long been incorporated in our society.

~~~
timwiseman
I must respectfully disagree that it is outdated drivel. First, there are
large pockets of racism still present throughout the US and the world at
large. Even if you are fortunate enough to live in a place where it is simply
not encountered, it will be encountered if you travel much.

Second, even if and when we reach a point in society where racism is truly
gone, it is useful to know how we got there. To Kill a Mocking Bird not only
helps show how society was before, it was itself a small piece of history that
helped in a small way make society the way it is now with less racism.

Even if we reach a utopian day where its lessons are no longer relavent (and
we are not there yet), it will remain a significant aid in understanding our
history.

~~~
ArtB
I just happen to think there are perhaps more important issues worth focussing
on in schools such as materialism, environmentalism, the role of belief and
science, what it means to be part of a society, the nature of democracy etc
which are more timely and vital to introduce kids to.

Racism, in the first world other than the US, seems not dead but mortally
wounded and we are ready to move on to the next problem to tackle.

------
lutorm
Did anyone else read _Lord of the Flies_ in school? As far as I remember, that
was way more gruesome than Ender's game.

~~~
ghshephard
Grade 11 - most students are 16 or 17 by the time they are exposed to Lord of
the Flies.

~~~
kstenerud
Am I the only one who, though exposed to violent media as a young child,
didn't turn into a deranged psychopath?

~~~
lutorm
No offense, but how many deranged psychopaths actually agree that they are?

~~~
kstenerud
I don't know. What does the relevant medical literature say?

------
numeromancer
The teacher should just read the Old Testament to them. The students then get
the "religion" their parents want and all the nudity, sex and violence they
crave. Win-win!

~~~
spindritf
Are you being sarcastic? To me it's obvious that middle schoolers should in
fact at least skim parts of the Bible. If not the most important, it's in the
top ten most important texts of the western culture.

BTW Those other nine (Iliad, The Song of Roland, Heart of Darkness, 1984...)
are also full of violence so if schools really do apply that criterion
consistently, teachers may as well stop bothering students with any reading.

~~~
numeromancer
<http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html>

Of course they should read it. It is a book of life; it contains everything
from utter foolishness to profound wisdom; from vile pettiness to unrestrained
love; from brutal punishment to loving clemency.

It is the right book, which would be presented to them for all the wrong
reasons.

------
sargun
That's awful. I loved this book as a kid, and recommend it to every young
person. The series as a whole taught me quite a bit about human nature.

I would not call it pornographic at all - The few scenes in the book where
there is nudity, there is very little that's sexual about it. In other parts
of the series, I will agree that it may not be appropriate for 14 year olds.

I wonder what the parents are overreacting to.

~~~
lylejohnson
Seems like a safe bet that the parents are overreacting to their kids' reports
of the book's contents. I can imagine a young teenager mentioning the fact
that the children in Ender's Game are sometimes nude (albeit in a nonsexual
way). There is almost no chance that the parent(s) have actually read the
book.

~~~
ttt_
>> _There is almost no chance that the parent(s) have actually read the book._

It's sad to think that this might actually be true. I can totally imagine a
scenario where except for the teacher and children, none of the other parties
making so much noise have read the piece before making a ruckus.

------
tptacek
There are around 13,000 school districts in the US, most with many constituent
schools, each supporting many hundreds of families. Even if everything about
this story is credible (remember, their job is to sell page views, not to
inform you), all we've got is one school district in which there was
simultaneously a crazy parent and an incompetent school board.

Ender's Game is also not a "tiny bit" violent, and although its characters are
all young, it was not written specifically for young readers.

(In my house, the boy read Ender's Game when he was 10; the girl heard an
audio version of it at 9, and "Ender's Shadow", which is more explicit, was on
the bookshelf in the boy's 6th grade class room).

------
icarus_drowning
Given how many of these middle school Students are probably devouring the
ultra-violent "Hunger Games" trilogy in anticipation for the film, I find this
complaint/decision odd.

------
n000ksa
My high school teacher put Ender's Game on our recommended reading list. I
think I was about 14 or 15 at the time. It was the first science fiction book
I read, and I loved it. I don't really remember that much explicit violence.
Sounds like the parent is having a bit of an overreaction.

~~~
ghshephard
Several sections of brutal violence from memory - the first fight at school,
where they realized he had what it took to fully commit to victory, and then
the shower sequence - which really was quite brutal.

Not inappropriate for Jr. High, but maybe a bit mature for eighth grade. I
don't think a suspension is warranted on purely this basis - I'm sure there is
more to the story.

~~~
molsongolden
I haven't read the book in question but is it more brutal than the hunger
games? I know multiple 11 year olds who have read the hunger games trilogy and
the children/parents had no issue with it other than "the idea of kids
fighting to the death is a weird topic for a young adult book".

~~~
ghshephard
I would say its more brutal. The violence depicted in hunger games is distant
and somewhat clinical - almost as though it was written with the possibility
of future film rights. In Enders game, other children are beaten to death in a
quite personal manner. I recall being quite effected by the deaths in Enders
game. I don't recall any similar explicit imagery in hunger games.

~~~
Avenger42
(Just going off memory, it's been a while)

\- Not thirty seconds into the games, Katniss is struggling with an unnamed
boy when he drops dead with a knife through his back.

\- Katniss drops a nest of mutated wasps directly onto a number of sleeping
children, two of whom die from the stings.

\- Katniss witnesses Cato kill an unnamed boy with his bare hands.

\- Rue gets speared through the torso right in front of Katniss.

\- Thresh crushes the skull of Clove with a rock, (not enough to kill her, but
enough to disfigure her) then does it again and finishes her off. (This one
happens no more than a couple of meters in front of Katniss, as Clove had been
in the process of choking her before being yanked off by Thresh.)

\- Katniss shoots a helpless dying Cato in the face with her final arrow.

That's just in the first book. All but one of those deaths occur _right in
front of Katniss_ , along with several others.

The only fight that stuck with me in Ender's Game was with Bonzo - the fight
with Stilson was over too quick (and the ending was technically a mystery
until they talk about it after Bonzo's death). Bonzo's death was also
technically very quick - there was a lot of lead up to it, but the fight
itself probably only took about 20 seconds and about half a page (also from
memory).

Note also that the boys who Ender fights are bullying him mercilessly. Both
Stilson and Bonzo bring groups to witness and prevent interference from
others. He is forced to fight for his life, in situations which could quickly
turn against him, and only an unbelievably swift and alarmingly brutal victory
will prevent a future recurrence.

------
lewisgodowski
I also had Ender's Game on my high school reading list, although I read it
much much earlier, definitely when I was still in middle school. Remains one
of my favorite books to this day. No bad repercussions from reading it on this
end.

------
WiseWeasel
I was first exposed to Enders's Game when a middle school teacher started
reading it to the class a little bit each day. After about a week, I couldn't
stand the wait anymore and bought the book, probably the first time I had done
such a thing of my own volition.

It is incredibly sad that the students at this school might miss out on an
opportunity to discover this series due to one ignorant, over-protecting
parent. Heaven forbid a 14-year-old should be exposed to a swear word or two;
it's not like they are constantly exposed to swearing and sexual situations
outside of class... Oh wait.

------
iamdave
This, as a former resident of South Carolina and family member of someone who
works in that state's educational system does not surprise me at all. South
Carolina has probably the most fidgety, hammer from God mentality at the state
education level.

Even so much as a twitch is enough to startle most and send the local district
into a tizzy.

------
deweller
nudity != pornographic

~~~
rdtsc
Unfortunately, in the mind of many Americans it is.

------
EzGraphs
Got to love the fact that another HN link hovering around this one reads:

"Fact based, data-oriented news (s0rce.com)"

------
tomjen3
What? An entire race of intelligent beings is wiped out and the teacher
complains about _nudity_?

------
rmangi
What?? My 10 year old loved it. The teacher should be fired for not making the
kids read it themselves... Amazing book.

------
petegrif
Beyond pathetic. What a bunch of neolithic morons.

------
Duff
This is why teacher tenure is necessary.

~~~
asolove
No, that is the institutional scar tissue representing why we need better
school administrators and more reasonable parents.

~~~
glesica
Agreed, but improving the quality of administrators is incredibly difficult to
do and forcing parents to be rational about their children is pretty much
impossible.

So we're left with tenure as an imperfect but practical way to limit the
damage that can be done by bad administrators and crazed parents. Which is why
tenure is important.

~~~
ceejayoz
What about the damage done by poor teachers protected by tenure?

------
georgieporgie
As the only HN user who disliked the entire series of books, I have no problem
with the sentiment, though I disagree with the action. If I found out my
imaginary child's imaginary teacher were reading from Ender's Game, I would
visit that teacher to ask that better books be read.

~~~
npc
I can't say I've read the entire series, but you're definitely not the only
one who here who disliked Ender's Game. I keep this around in my bookmarks
since it pretty clearly expresses what I think is wrong with the book:
<http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm>

~~~
lotharbot
As a teen who grew up in a pacifist background, I rejected the book's dubious
moral constructions. As I said to a friend at the time, who had argued Ender
had no other choice: "he doesn't HAVE to live." The same applies to humanity
as a whole. As your conclusion rightly notes, we are not so special as to
deserve to live at any cost, or to deserve to destroy our enemies at any cost.

~~~
crpatino
I agree that it is immoral to hold 'self preservation' as your ultimate value.
It does not prevent a few people choosing to do so from time to time, and when
one of those gets cornered, the results are horrific.

On the other hand, you need to consider that for you to have grown up "in a
pacifist background" its quite an unusual event in the History of Humanity. In
particular, it means that there's someone somewhere doing all the dirty deeds
that keep the pacifists safe and unaware for long enough to raise any
offspring. In the primal environment, uncompromising pacifists would probably
end up darwinized!

~~~
lotharbot
When I say that Ender didn't have to live, I don't say that out of ignorance.
I know the history of those who've held the conviction that _"God did not
condone killing or the use of force for any reason"_ and _"were therefore
unwilling to fight for their lives."_ People from my particular tradition [0]
were persecuted, at least in some areas, from the 1530s until 1990. In some
communities, a book of martyrs [1] is held in high regard. Migration to escape
persecution was remarkably common. ("Running away" is a survival strategy
employed by quite a few species.)

I am by no means arguing that others should follow this philosophy. Merely
explaining that, having grown up in a culture where we gave this idea serious
thought, I found Ender's Game to be shallow and naive.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites> [1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr%27s_Mirror>

~~~
crpatino
Wow, thanks for sharing that. I honestly had not thought of "running away" as
a sustainable strategy.

To clarify a little bit, it's not so much as of pacifism not being a viable
strategy, but that it is a viable strategy for individuals or small
communities, but not implementable on a national scale.

Eventually, the martyrdom of a pacifist, while a tragedy on its own, is not
detrimental to the meme of pacifism. I'd say it's the opposite. However, if a
group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically harassed,
I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group doing the
harassing. Even if most of the individuals are not physically harmed, the idea
of pacifism is the one that suffers.

But of course... geographic isolation may take you a long way, I guess.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"if a group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically
> harassed, I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group
> doing the harassing."_

History shows that "running away" and other isolation strategies have allowed
at least some groups of pacifists to persist through several centuries.
Harassment seems to actually strengthen the idea of pacifism within many of
these groups.

It may not be viable on a large scale. But that ties in to my earlier point: a
viable strategy for survival is not the ultimate goal. Or, at least, it's not
a universally agreed upon primary goal. We're not so special that our survival
_must necessarily_ trump everything else. Neither Ender nor anyone else in the
book series seems to give serious consideration to the idea that maybe it's
better to die than to kill. Again, I'm not arguing that everyone should agree
to this philosophy, I'm just saying the failure to give it even token
consideration comes off as a bit shallow.

------
rsanchez1
I like how there's a condescending attitude against prudes through the whole
article, and then they have to backtrack and say that the pornographic part
probably had nothing to do with Ender's Game and had to do with other, actual
pornographic material that the teacher was reading to the students. And even
then, they wait until the very end to say that "the rest appears to be little
more than rumor". Who needs facts to get in the way of pushing an agenda.

"It's a little odd that the school would maintain it was just the books if
this wasn't the case."

Is it so odd? I think it's the school trying to protect the teacher. Just look
at the situation in Los Angeles. Many reports of teacher molestation are
coming out in the wake of the Miramonte scandal. Parents refused to send their
children to Miramonte Elementary after it was revealed that a teacher engaged
in despicable acts with students, and the parents were angry that they were
not informed sooner. And its possible that more complaints about teacher abuse
are swept under the rug, since a deal made between the teachers' union in LA
and the LA school district expunges a teacher's record of unproven allegations
after four years. They envisioned it would protect teachers against punishment
for "petty" misconduct (being late/absent too much, messy, etc.) but never
envisioned it would be used to protect teachers from sexual harassment
accusations.

[http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
banks-20120317,0,693...](http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
banks-20120317,0,6938495.column)

There is more to this story than what is out there now. The teacher is being
protected, and they probably won't tell us what is really going on until more
parents come out demanding to know the truth. LA is not an isolated incident,
unfortunately. Some particularly bad characters have eroded the trust parents
have in teachers, and then teachers react demanding protections, and the same
bad characters abuse these protections to save their hide when allegations of
misconduct pop up. The whole truth has not come out, and we will probably not
like it when it does.

------
mee_k
Downvoted for outright lying in the headline. Big bold letters on the article:
South Carolina Teacher Suspended

A suspension is not being fired from a job.

~~~
dvdhsu
You can't downvote submissions.

~~~
AbsoluteZero255
Someone from Reddit?

