The Murphy case raises complex questions about constitutional rights, academic freedom and the preservation of childhood innocence. She said she plans to take her complaint to the Virginia Board of Education, where she will lobby for policies that will give parents more control over what their children read in class. The Fairfax County School Board voted Thursday against hearing Murphy’s challenge, but she vowed to continue her quest. “It’s not about the author or the awards,” said Murphy, a mother of four whose eldest son had nightmares after reading “Beloved” for his senior-year Advanced Placement English class. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a masterpiece of fiction whose author’s 1993 Nobel Prize in literature citation said that she, “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”īut Toni Morrison’s “ Beloved,” Murphy said, depicts scenes of bestiality, gang rape and an infant’s gruesome murder, content she believes could be too intense for teenage readers. The book Laura Murphy wants removed from Fairfax County classrooms is considered a modern American classic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |