Mothering

This young man of mine is a blessing. All of my children are. This week he has been at the center of attention. Monday was his orchestra concert. Tuesday we worked hard together, he on cello, me on piano, Ryan on viola, for a performance in church on Sunday.

Wednesday was an usual day. I was requested to come to the high school to discuss my son's and my choice that he not read a couple of books which we found offensive in content. I am not afraid of controversial topics or dark themes, and recognize that clearly life is not all roses and that hard things happen to many people. However, I am concerned that we teach in a way that elevates and inspires people to be their best. I want to expose my children to the best literature that is out there, that models excellent writing and causes one to think about their own life and how they can reach their own potential. There are so many good books available that I don't understand why they are being overlooked for books that have profanity spready thickly and are overtly sexual. Through his high school experience, he has been exposed only to the dark side, rarely to the higher road. I insisted that he read some of the great literature of the world. Does it isolate him? Yes, but he is already isolated in his class by taking a stand on many controversial subjects they have discussed all year. He has gotten quite used to feeling like he was the "lone voice crying in he wilderness." And that day, I felt it too.

I was accused of being against diversity, because one of the books was about the life of black man, but I explained I love the book To Kill A Mockingbird. I was accused of usurping the teacher's authority as a professional educator, but I explained that my value system as my child's parent was being usurped by a teacher who has not invested 17 years in raising this boy to think along a higher standard. I was accused of being too sheltering, that he would be not be prepared for the realities of college life. I praised BYU's standards as being equal to my own, that my son selected that school by himself, because of what he felt while walking on that campus. I was accused of harming my child's classmates because they are missing out on the goodness of Steven. I agreed, that was sad for them, but wondered aloud how much that would be true, as the teacher has allowed them to laugh out loud at some of the opinions he has expressed in class, with the teacher allowing that to happen. They argued that literature is to expose children to the world and that I was preventing my son from being adequate exposure. I explained that he had heard enough swear words from walking down their hallways to sufficiently be exposed enough for a lifetime, that he did not need to read more to be adequately exposed.

Some people advocate exposure to everything, somehow thinking that what matters most is exposure, thus if you're exposed, you're educated. In some schools they even hand out condoms. To me, exposure is not the purpose of education. It is to train a mind to be disciplined and to learn how to do something correctly. Anyone can throw lines on a paper, but someone who knows English, or whatever language they write in, can use them correctly to make something wonderful. Is not the purpose of learning English to increase one's vocabulary, to understand what is being communicated and to learn how to put words together clearly in a way that the person who read them is now better for having read them? My experience says that teaching difficult subjects can be done without having unlimited profanity and rampant sexuality. That was really my only issue. Please allow my son to read something that isn't utterly profane and graphically sexual. In the end, they allowed my son to read books I approve of, without swearing, sexual promiscuity, the rationalization of a man who had incest with his daughter and rampant drug use. I don't think he's really missing very much from missing out on those books. Instead, he gets to read a piece of classical literature that everyone puts on their lists of top 100 books to be read in this lifetime. Taking a stand isn't always easy or popular, but it makes me feel better at the end of the day that a mother can still make a difference in the life of her child.