Kids Today

Growing up, I was the kid on my street who conned her mother into buying Forever as just another Judy Blume book when all the other mothers knew that this book was different.  I hid the book in my neighbor's treehouse with the corners of the really good pages folded down so everyone in the neighborhood could read them.

In other words, I appreciate teen smut--really, I do--but even I have my limits.  Or I'm just getting old.  To wit:

In many middle schools today, English classes aren't like the classes I took when I was growing up.  Instead of having the whole class study one book together--usually something like The Catcher in the Rye or Animal Farm or To Kill a Mockingbird--these kids have independent reading, in which they choose books that appeal to them (and teachers give reading process lessons about how to find symbols/themes/characters in whatever books students are reading).  The most popular books at my school are The Gossip Girl series. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, these are loathsome books.  Book  #1 opens with the high school aged main character drowning her sorrows in several glasses of scotch.  The second chapter of the same book is called "an hour of sex burns 360 calories."  You get the idea.

I am not a  prude, and if I was in7th grade, I would probably have loved the books and hidden them in a treehouse and talked about them with all my friends.  But I would not have brought them to school because if an adult saw me with these books, that adult  might want  to talk to me about sex and other things I would not want to talk about with adults.  Ick.

 

Comments

[grumpygirl]

you're right. ick.

i loved forever

[amy]

At the school where I used to teach, there are apparently several teachers who have appointed themselves library sensors and are driving the librarians crazy. (None of these teachers teach English.)

The response of the English teachers to the inappropriate reading material is, "I don't care what they read as long as they're reading!"

[Moxie]

This makes me feel old, too.

[Sara]

I loved Forever. It was a great book for a young gal full of teen angst.

I remember in high school we had a teacher in our AP English class that liked to rock the boat somewhat. The school board (and some stupid parents) that year banned many books we were reading, including The Native Son, The Red Badge of Courage, and To Kill a Mockingbird. All it did was make all of us want to read them more, so when they actually TOOK our copies from us, we all made a trip to the local bookstore and then held literary circles after school just to piss them off.

I teach 4th grade and thankfully, haven't heard of this series. The "Goosebumps" series is kind of strange to me, but they love them.

[deborah]

I don't remember all that much about Forever -- probably because I was too busy trying to get my hands on a copy of Wifey.

[Jill]

I LOVED Forever back in the day, but the book I remember sneaking peeks at in the middle school auditorium was Flowers in the Attic.

And I totally agree with you about the Gossip Girls series. When I taught 8th grade I allowed them to use one book from a series for their monthly independent reading as long as they could write about it afterward and not make me feel uncomfortable reading it. That sometimes worked. But some kids were smart enough to just avoid the icky parts...and it was sheer torture reading those essays.

Feeling old too, but I'm with you on thinking it's weird that they're not mortified to bring those books. I would've died on the spot if a teacher caught us with Flowers in the Attic!!!

ps: You're making me miss teaching...terrible books and all :-)

[Nikki]

ahhhhhh! the fun of reading those books was to sneek read them! i'm so disturbed. hell yeah to blume's forever!

[Amy]

I can't believe I wrote sensors instead of censors. I'm such a dork.

[luolin]

We all read Forever at the public library, but it still felt like sneaking somehow. Maybe it was officially in the section for older teens? How sneaky could it be if we checked it out? Did we just read it inside the library? I can't remember any of the details.

[Erica77777]

In answer to Luolin, I personally read "Forever" in the public library while sitting on the floor back in the dustiest, furthest from the librarian's desk stacks. I would NEVER have been brave enough to check it out. I can still remember the thrill of sneaking it in the back for a good read.

"Are You There God?, It's Me Margaret" was a good starter naughty book for me as a middle schooler--ooh, the racy subject of menstruation.

After "Forever," though, I moved on, like a previous poster, to Wifey and some Erica Jong smut novels. My innocence was officially gone, but I was well into high school by this time. Still, the Gossip Girls series of today scare me. I can not believe that is what middle schoolers are reading today--(said in best crotchety granny voice).

[Schnozz]

I could never get my hands on "Forever." I always tried, and failed miserably. I did, however, revel in V.C. Andrews. V.C. Andrews taught me everything I know about sex today. Which is why I keep waiting for an heir to a giant fortune to seduce me, then later be revealed as my half-brother. (Hint: If you find yourself in one of those books, don't sleep with anyone. You're related to them.)

[Mel]

As a former middle school teacher, I can assure you that the girls looooooooooove talking about their private lives. In a way that I couldn't understand AT ALL because when I was in middle school, I wanted my teachers to know nothing about my life. These girls would tell me about their crushes, their cutting, their drug use, their sex lives. All the while knowing that I had to turn over certain information to my middle school head. Very strange.