Karen's Teaching Blog

Welcome to my Education Journal.

I am a teacher, and as part of my dedication to professional development and communication, I try to maintain this blog to share my opinions with others and to do my part to ensure that important topics and and news get some attention. Since I am not always able to post well written blog entries, the most common changes on this blog are the Clipmarks- highlights from important news stories and text from a variety of internet sources. There you will see clips of things I have thought are interesting and important as well as finds other clippers have found. Hope you find something interesting!

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Wednesday the 4th of October 2006

12:53 PM

Now they want to ban Harry...

Mood: annoyed

Yet more people who want to ban books like Harry Potter...

Ga. Mother seeks Harry Potter Ban- Yahoo Newstory

Apparently, dear Harry promotes the indocrination of the Wiccan religion, and even though it's main themes are overcoming adversity and the power of friendship, it's bad for all children.

While Harry Potter isn't the next classic book, it has managed to do something that all authors, educators and parents should be grateful for: it made reading cool again. The books are not difficult to read, and once students finish them, they have the confidence and willingness to try other books. Should be a win, win, shouldn't it?

However, there are people out there who can't stand the fact that the book series involves magic, and witches, and awful monsters- none of which could ever be true- and I have yet to find a child who actually believes them to be.

No one ever seems to give kids the benefit of the doubt- they are rather smart- they can tell when something is impossible and make believe- they know they can't walk through walls to a special train platform that will take them to the secret magic school, with moving staircases and flying broom stick championships.

But instead of investing in ways to show children that those things are make believe, we should just get rid of the books altogether- and why stop there- let's get rid of all the books with dragons, orcs and elves- after all no true literary works of art have any of those things!

I love science fiction and fantasy books- because they give me a place to escape to. They challenge my imagination and let me see themes [such as truth and friendship] in different ways.

There's only so many Little House on the Prairie we can handle.

NB: Oh and another footnote on the bottom of the article is even more important than Harry's life: the same area has stopped the funding for Spanish literature because they think that the books they have are entertaining illegal immigrants in the area. I'm not going to even get started on that one...