Teacher assigns “lewd” comic
Many questions are raised by this brief news story out of Guilford, CT about a teacher who is accused of giving a freshman student a pornographic comic:
The 14-year old student told her mother he gave it to her as a reading assignment. The mother went to the school superintendent and police.
Superintendent, Dr. Thomas Forcella, tells News Channel 8 they’re investigating and will have more on what actions they’ll take next week.
If it turns out to be yaoi, we’re all in trouble.
09/18/07 at 8:11 am
It was probably Blankets. Maybe Lost Girls, but even that would be surprising. If it is Lost Girls, though we have the Canadian government on our side.
09/18/07 at 9:15 am
THE PRO?
09/18/07 at 10:09 am
Knowing the media, it was probably “Bone.”
09/18/07 at 10:19 am
“Maybe Lost Girls”
Pricey reading for a classroom. 10 to one it’s some kind of manga. We’re in trouble anyway.
“Brakin the law, Brakin the law.”
09/18/07 at 10:35 am
It’d be awesome if it was The Pro.
Or even better, wouldn’t it be great if it was the FCBD Alternative Comics that got that guy down in Georgia all that trouble, and the teacher assigned it as a lesson in censorship? That’s always fun.
09/18/07 at 10:56 am
The girl is a freshman in high school. Blankets is considered to be suitable for OLDER teens, like seniors, not freshmen. Considering how some high school librarians criticized Naruto for being “lewd” and pornographic (it’s sadly all too true - I was flamed for daring to recommend it to teens), it could be ANYTHING.
09/18/07 at 11:10 am
The girl is a freshman in high school. Blankets is considered to be suitable for OLDER teens, like seniors, not freshmen.
Oh, fuck that. Parents like these would have raised a fuss if she had been 18, just as easily as when she’s 14. Besides, it was not too long ago that I was a freshman in high school, and I can tell you that I could have handled Blankets then.
Of course, this pretty much guarantees that every kid in the school will read it by next week.
09/18/07 at 2:08 pm
Interesting … even though it is a news “brief”, why don’t they mention the title of the comic?
09/18/07 at 4:06 pm
It was probably Maus, which a school board would consider “pornographic” for the same reason they consider Slaughterhouse-Five “pornographic” — there’s one page with a drawing of a woman’s breasts on it.
Of course, in Maus they’re a mouse’s breasts, and she’s lying atop a mountain of corpses, but these school-board types don’t split hairs in cases like these.
09/18/07 at 4:17 pm
I too, really wanna see what comic it was before I make judgement.
But, seeing how these things go, usually the idiots who give underage kids comics without comsidering other peoples’ morals, end up giving them something that does have questionable content.
09/18/07 at 5:20 pm
That Heroes in Hire issue that came out last week with the bondage cover that everyone was whining about?
~
Coat
09/18/07 at 8:00 pm
Actually, I am amazed at how little actual information was conveyed in that article. I am also amazed at how little coverage this is receiving overall. I tried to find more information on this using a Google search and itcame up with this very article, the news channel article that is referenced and another one pointing to the Beat entry again.
I would have thought that a censorship case with a bit of a tawdry cast to it would have attracted a little more attention!
09/18/07 at 8:40 pm
a “lewd” comic could be anything from an adult comic to a R rated Magna to most of today’s Marvel and DC comics to a swimsuit issue of Betty and Veronica.
09/18/07 at 9:30 pm
Still, I hope the CBLDF is keeping abreast of the story. Not that they need another case– think of all the perfume Neil would have to sell!
09/18/07 at 10:05 pm
It may be difficult to obtain more information about this case because it is a personnel matter (between the teacher and the school) and as such will have “privacy” walls around it that would not pertain to, say, a comics shop owner getting arrested for giving a mature-themes comic to a 9-year-old.
09/19/07 at 2:53 pm
Per Alexa’s comment: I’m a librarian, I’m describing the way Blankets is handled in almost every library whose librarian I know, and I know (or am acquainted with) plenty of them. Plus, Blankets has been discussed extensively on librarian listservs, so please give me credit for giving a consensus opinion held by many librarians across the country. It doesn’t matter that YOU as a freshman could have handled the book. So could I have, but that was almost 40 years ago for me. I’ve been promoting the inclusion of graphic novels in libraries for almost a quarter-century, and reviewing them for library media for more than 13 years. Believe me, I know a lot of high school librarians who wouldn’t even consider adding Blankets to their collections, precisely because they know they’ve got students and parents like this set who got the teacher in trouble.
09/19/07 at 5:36 pm
According to an update of the article, the comic was Eightball, the kid is now referred to as being 13, and the teacher has resigned. I’m not very familiar with Eightball, so I’m not sure what how to gauge the reactions of the people quoted.
Here’s the URL for the updated article: http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=7100387