Legal Rights and Respomsibilites of Public School Teachers

One of the points that caught my eye was the part dealing with curriculum. The article talked about how it is easier to have a student not participate in something than it is to completely change the curriculum. We actually had something like this happen to me in high school. In my freshman year English class, we read a book called Rats Saw God. This book had a very graphic depiction of a sex scene in the book for about 2 pages. Now, at first all the students were a little shocked to be reading this but I guess most of us didn't pay attention to it. There were a few students who found it very offensive and let thier parents know. By freshman year, most of the parents knew each other because we had been in the same class for at least 3 years. Anyway, well one parent found out and was upset and called another parent. That parent called another one, and so on and so on. There were numerous parents that were upset with what we had been reading and so they filled a formal complaint about it because they believed that we were too young to be reading something as depictive as this book. Not to mention, they didn't understand why we read that instead of reading something that was a little more of a classic. So, it turned out that that book was removed from the curriculum. The next book we were about ot read was called White Horse which is a slang for a type of drug. Well, parent didn't like this either and so the teacher decided to pull itbefore having it was taken to the board. I understand that it is easier to change one person than it is to change an entire curriculum, however, I guess if there are enough parents/ people looking and wanting a change, the curriculm might just be able to change.