Friday, October 20, 2006
Sex
Well, that should get the search engines' attention, shouldn't it? Actually, this is about a recent Detroit Free Press article (I think it was the only one this week that didn't mention baseball). It seems that a graphic sex book was found in one of the Detroit School of the Arts' libraries. After finding this and after the resulting uproar, it seems that all books about sex were removed from the library.
That seems to me, and to the columnist, a little extreme. From the partial description of the book in question (tell me more, tell me more) it seems that the book in question probably didn't need to be in the public school library. However, I find it troubling that they decided to remove all books about sex in response to this.
Now anyone knows, who's looked at elementary/high school library books anyway, that any book that has any kind of reference to anything even remotely sexual, scatological, or otherwise racy, is going to be underlined, outlined, cut out, or otherwise marked. (At least it was when I was young (back when Eve when was still alive). However, I suppose now with the Internet and MTV, sexual images aren't quite so hard to come by and probably a listing of "vagina" in Webster's isn't going to seem so "racy"."
The problem is that are probably some kids who are going to get their info from the library. Their parents aren't going to tell them about it, and what her classmates believe will lead them to being teenage parents. In this case I think the harm in showing some 14 year old how a condom is rolled on a penis in a picture in a book is going to be much less than having to show a 15 year old how to change diapers.
