Required Reading
At the high school in la-di-da Hingham on Boston’s South Shore: “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” Parents complained, and the principal said their kids could read another memoir of their choice. She just never told all the other saps, who got stuck reading the vanity campaign tome. Boston Herald:
With school opening Tuesday, the Herald has learned teens whose offended parents complained were allowed by Principal Paula Girouard McCann and Helaine Silva, head of the Hingham Public Schools English Department, to pick any other memoir - an option they never publicized.
“I had no idea,” sophomore Graham King, 15, who was only on page 120 of the 460-page autobiography yesterday, told the Herald with an astonished look. “My parents would like me to be done with it.”
Look at it this way, Graham, if you just read the damned thing, you won’t end up humiliated and ostracisized like the other pathetic nerds whose parents objected to partisan idol worship in the public schools. You know, when the teacher fires up the class discussion and you’re the only one who read some Republican claptrap like Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Or, I dunno, something presumeably apolitical like Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Hey, this looks interesting … My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands. Oh, oh, I’ve got one. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Very dramatic, heart-wrenching … with some serious factual issues. Could make for good classroom discussion. Speaking of serious factual issues, has Al Gore written a memoir yet?
Senior Jes Maloney, 17, just cracked Obama’s book last week.
“My mom thought it was kind of weird,” Maloney said of the tome all of Hingham was encouraged to curl up with as its “community read” for summer.
Lynne Powell-Pinto, chairwoman of the Hingham Republican Town Committee, has a son entering 11th grade.
Powell-Pinto said she brought the book home during the first week of summer vacation even though she thought it “a poor choice.”
Obama, she noted, “is a current political figure. He’s an important historical figure, no quibbles about that. But the goal of the community read is to bring people together. I just think they could have made a less divisive choice.”
Obama won Hingham in the November election but beat GOP challenger U.S. Sen. John McCain by only 1,023 votes.
Silva said a community read committee comprised of teachers, students and support staff initially rejected “Dreams From My Father” as being too risky politically but reconsidered once Obama was in office.
In July, Silva wrote Obama about the selection, requesting the president provide “a written, audio or video message that we could share with the students . . .”
O, the ingratitude. Unclear whether any other sitting pol’s tome has ever been assigned, but I’m going to take a wild guess that this is special, because it’s … Obama.
Hey, I have an idea. How about Douglas Feith’s “War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism.” It’s doorstop heavy, but offers a detailed insider’s view of a critical period in recent American history, and incidentally explains how full of it the “Bush Lied” crowd is.
Silva acknowledged fielding approximately a dozen complaints from parents over the summer, and while “Dreams” never died, “People expressed their personal discomfort with it and we were very willing to accommodate that. One thing you learn from reading is to respect different viewpoints.”
Might want to tell Obama about that.
McCann said she simply wants students “to learn how you can struggle against what seems like overwhelming odds and succeed.”
Well, if that’s what they want to teach the kids, Dick Cheney has a book coming out in spring 2011. He’s an important historical figure, too. Bush’s memoir is due out around the same time. These are books about people who, unlike Obama’s father, actually shouldered their responsibilities, and unlike Obama, governed. And didn’t mind taking a little heat for it. They struggled against what seemed like overwhelming odds to a lot of surrender enthusiasts, and succeeded.
Note to self: remember to check whether either of those books are assigned at Hingham High, summer of 2011.
Addendum: Achillea weighs in with McCain’s Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir and Powell’s My American Journey.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:25 am on Wednesday, September 2, 2009
3 Responses to “Required Reading”
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September 2nd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
How about John McCain’s “Worth the Fighting For?” Or Colin Powell’s “My American Journey?”
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
[...] the meantime, Jules Crittenden reports on a Boston high school where the Hingham (Boston) High School had as its required summer reading [...]
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
How about An American Life by Ronald Reagan?
I graduated from Hingham High in 1988. Clearly things have changed greatly in the past 20 years. And not for the better.