Following back the chain of links o the original newspaper story [1], there appear to be three books involved. Only "Ender's Game" is named. Based on the account in the complaint, one of the phrases in question certainly does not come from Ender's Game, and refers to "prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculat[e].' [2]
The district apparently requires an (apparently simple) administrative review of material beyond the prescribed curriculum, which was not done in this case.
So, it may be that EG was the least sinister but most widely known book of the bunch. I, like others here, leap to defend it, but it may not be the actual source of many of the parent's concerns, but included because its inclusion was in violation of the review policy.
From #2:
"According to a news report by local station WRDW, the police incident report in the case claims that the teacher read “pornographic material from the Internet to the students in class. One of the stories was about prostitutes having their faces covered with ejaculation.”
And in #4, OSC says that he's pretty sure it wasn't Ender's Game at all.
The link chain is is kind of ridiculous. There are no additional facts given, the other "articles" are just editorializing what the previous wrote about the facts in the original...and in the process some of the facts become distorted as alttag pointed out.
Odd. This was perhaps one of the earliest Sci-Fi books I read (along with many of the Doctor Who books.)
I'm fairly certain I first read it in middle school, which would have made me about 10, but may have been as late as the start of high school, making me about 13 (yes, I was young, graduating at 16). I followed the next couple of books in the series, but couldn't get into them to the same extent. I have Ender's Game on my shelf at home (along with Ender's Shadow, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Hegemon), and have actively encouraged my 11-year-old son to read them. He's not quite ready yet (by his own reckoning), but he will be soon.
As others have pointed out, the descriptions of violence don't compare at all to "Hunger Games" (or more particularly, the following two books in that series). The Harry Potter series, particularly the last three books, were violent as well (though not to the level of "Mockingjay") ... to the extent that we won't permit our children to watch them, yet, although even my 9-year-old has read all of them.
I read "Ender's Game" again in high school, and a third time in my early twenties. One of the fascinating things about good books is that the parts that stick with you change as your experience and outlook on life changes.
My recollection from the curriculum at my middle school included "Animal Farm", which also has messages on multiple levels; my younger sister was required to read "Tunnel In the Sky" (by Heinlein; she hated it, but I enjoyed it); my middle school coursework also included "Lord of the Flies", "Great Gatsby" and "Of Mice and Men", all of which also have violent sequences.
Part of what makes these books classics (although even having read them a couple of time, I still don't like the last three on that list) is that they capture the human existence—and like it or not, the nature of humanity includes violence, overcoming violence, and the occasional necessity of violence.
I loved that book. Heinlein's juveniles would be great for middle school kids.
I hated all the crap I had to read back then. I read Jurassic Park in 3rd grade, and by the time I was in middle school I found the standard literary fare too mundane to be interesting.
School could be much more interesting if they'd just update the reading list.
"I followed the next couple of books in the series, but couldn't get into them to the same extent."
Ender's Game is a bizarre series. The first book is a juvenile. An adult may enjoy it, but it's a light snack. Everything else in the series is high-concept hard-core science fiction. As hard-core sci-fi goes, by modern standards its probably a bit lightweight, but it certainly doesn't fit into any other genre. (Well, I guess I haven't read the really recent stuff, so I don't know about those.)
I am actually grateful it took me years to learn there were sequels. I only found them once I could mostly understand them, and a re-read several years later still showed me stuff I missed the first time around.
Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form - Card's view on this is pretty apparent in the first two sequals; Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.
It's always surprising how non-analytical we can be when it comes to violence - an entire planet is destroyed and millions of people screams are heard across the galaxy in A New Hope. Yet, the movie so ingrained in children's culture, it was an uphill battle to prevent my son from watching it when he was three [I felt like it was a victory that he didn't see it until he was five].
That said, Ender's Game is appropriate reading for 14 year olds, and the idea of it as pornographic is asinine. Same could be said of Bloom's Forever of my youth.
It's a thoughtful book and such its "violence" can't be quantified onto a simple scale. The personal confrontations are calculated and desperate, they serve the dramatic purpose of establishing the seriousness of the stakes. They also show Ender's resourcefulness, attention to the long haul even under pressure, and savagery when cornered. Ender's choices in the space war are entirely rational, which quickly raises the question whether the morality of the xenocide lies with Ender or those who framed the problem.
All of which sets up "Speak for the Dead", one of the best sci-fi books I know.
Anyone rejecting violence qua violence should probably stay away, but they'll be missing a pretty important reflection on its causes and consequences, and the possibility of redemption.
Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form
... which happens "off-camera" (sort of: the event is presented as a video game fiction with no visible non-mechanical participants), and is presented quite clearly as a moral lesson in the text. Arguing for censorship on this basis would rule out things like history lessons about real wars too, wouldn't it? You don't want to teach middle schoolers that war exists?
>A child kills several other children barehanded.
>Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form
Yes. But the murders are not described in great detail or at great length, and all are in self-defence. A relatively small portion of the book deals with overtly violent acts, Ender feels great remorse, and the tone is not one of glorifying violence.
I think it's still reasonable to say the book is "a tiny bit violent".
What about the whole "Ender commits mass genocide" part?
The book's apologetic tone about his violence doesn't make it any better - I would even argue that it makes it worse, as it waters down to "extreme violence is okay if you don't feel good about it".
> What about the whole "Ender commits mass genocide" part?
I claim there's a difference between a violent act, and a violent work of literature about that act.
The book spends only a paragraph or two on the actual genocide. No graphic descriptions are portrayed.
If I write, "Hitler and the Nazis killed millions of people in WWII", does that make this post violent? I'd argue that it does not. It's a fairly dry and matter-of-fact description of very violent acts. The post is not violent.
On the other hand, I could write a particularly violent description of a minor fight that left both people alive, but would be far more gruesome and objectionable. There's not a direct relationship between a body count and the violence of a literary work about it.
Self-defense ends when the immediate threat is incapacitated. Ender fights on past that point. The umbrella of "self-defence" does not cover all that he does.
That's kind of the point in the book - they chose Ender because he would finish every fight definitively, conclusively and not waffle. Its actually one of the themes.
For a weak, picked-on child it was Ender's only defense in a violent world (from a child's point of view). He could not survive a truce that was then violated by the opponent. It would only give them the opportunity to surprise him later. He had to win on the 1st encounter.
The interstellar conflict was similar - the enemy attacked first, had a superior war machine and with time could overwhelm humanity.
Anyway, the point of books like this is to explore themes like that. They don't dictate a viewpoint to the reader, they provoke discussion and enable insights,if properly introduced to the juvenile reader.
TBH I don't even see the problem with a three year old seeing A New Hope (except that he might be too young to understand it and might get bored and turn it off). What damage are you hoping to prevent, exactly?
Exposure to new ideas is a GOOD thing. Actively preventing your children from knowing about something simply because you disagree with it is censorship in its worst form.
Parental censorship is widely accepted, and not even worth comparing to state-sanctioned censorship, which I would argue is "censorship in its worst form".
Every parent has a right and a responsibility to teach their children in a way that they see fit, and though the state can be called in for cases where their teachings are far outside the norm, to take away or limit these rights is to remove the parent from their role.
Of course you can disagree with how someone else raises their kids - aunts, uncles, and grandparents have been doing that since the dawn of time.
But, just off the top of my head:
- Very young children: Owen and Beru's bodies after the stormtroopers find them?
- Slightly older children: Torture of prisoners on the Death Star?
- Near-teens: A greedy scoundrel as a "hero" through much of the film?
I see plenty of reason to prevent children from seeing them until you feel they're "ready". I don't have children yet, so I don't know when that would be for mine.
It really irks me that in these conversations, we don't talk about the rights of the children, instead, it's just seen as a sliding scale between the rights of the parents and the rights of the state.
Of course, all of this makes me think of Ogden Nash's poem "Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood Alright" ... two lines:
Innocent infants have no use for fables about rabbits or donkeys or tortoises or porpoises,
What they want is something with plenty of well-mutilated corpoises.
(It's also crazy that I can't find a complete copy of a poem from 1935 online)
It depends on what you mean by right, its a very context dependent word. In one sense, rights are precisely the things which the government is not permitted to interfere with. So in that sense it really is about the ability of the state to interfere (or not) with the way a parent raises their child.
In the broader sense, it becomes somewhat hard to talk about because it might matter greatly much how old the child is. My 3 year old is simply not in an position to make many good decisions for herself, but my 6 year old gets a fair bit more freedom, and as they get older I will hand more of the reigns of their own lives to them happily.
It is also hard to talk about separately because in a sense a child's rights are what is left over after the state and the parent divide up their rights, any right absolutely given to the child is denied to one of those two entities. Should I have the ability to restrict what my 3 year old sees? I think most would agree that I should.
Should I have the ability to restrict what my 13 year old sees (when one of them reaches 13)? That is touchier, but I think most will answer, "Yes, but you should use it less and listen to their judgment more." I certainly think that even when my child turns 13 I will want to keep them away from materials that overtly objectify women and I will judge on a case by case basis if they are ready for horror films or not.
For what it's worth, I agree with your sentiment at the end that many parents overly coddle even older children. But I also respect that each parent has the privelege and duty of making those decisions for themselves and their children until those children cease to be children.
I did watch A New Hope with my three year old, but the point is I decided that it was appropriate for my daughter and watched it with her so that I could explain anything she asked about and cut it off if it turned out more violent then I remembered.
I would not force the children of other parents to watch it, and I would be outraged if some government body said I couldn't show it to my three year old.
I watched all three original Star Wars movies with my son (Episode IV through VI) when he was three and a half and honestly, I don't get the point why you shouldn't as long as you watch it with your kid. Since then he likes Jedis as much as he does knights in general. Aparently it didn't harm him.
As far as parental censorship goes every parent may decide for himself. but when parents are starting to try to get convictions of teachers for reading books in school they should rather for home teaching if that is legal. Books are knowledge and as long as they are read in the proper context they can only do good. I mean it#s not that Shakespeare or the other classics (e.g. Goethe's "Faust" or other works of him) are any less violent and / or pornographic. Personaly, I have problems with banning books or art, we have been at this place already too often I think.
The original article in the Aiken Standard (linked to from from the OP's Forbes article above) mentions three "books," and specifically mentions Card's Ender's Game as being one of them. That Standard article in turn points to a press release from the previous day, also mentions three books and "swear words."
Nothing in either article seems to hint at the explicit, graphic sexual content in your link above, dated ten days before the press release in the Standard, and describing material as "pornographic material, from the Internet," not "three books."
That's the whole point. Ender's Game has little to do with why the teacher was suspended, and the original article was wrong, as well. The original article was posted on /r/scifi a few days ago, and was pretty quickly debunked by the police report.
The school district's press release still only mentions the books, not the downloaded material.
I wonder if that means "we're going to fire him because he circumvented our process by bringing in books he didn't clear first, so that we don't have to publicly discuss the fact that he may have been reading more salacious material to students as well."
The link is to the actual police report, which the parent filed with police in addition to complaining to the school. Amazing how far off the article is...
As with most things 'Forbes' these days, this article is very link baitey. (We need an index for baitness I think, and a unit)
Its also incorrect on a number of facts.
Its also in a school district that isn't your school district (probably) and so outrage is difficult to change into action.
Its also not part of a cluster of such events, or a general rise in incidence of such events and so unlikely to be an indication of a trend.
But the author knows that the book 'Ender's Game' is well regarded by the tech savvy community, as is the author, and so constructing a blog post which implies that a well regarded story is considered 'bad for children' elsewhere in the country, is a great way to pump up the page views in the morning.
I would have so much more respect for these folks if they did research, checked their 'facts', and then put those facts in a bit of context. But of course had they done that in this case, it would have been a non-story and well who is going to click to read that?
Instead of a blatant "it's incorrect on a number of facts", I think it would be more constructive to say what those facts are and why they're incorrect so we can have an intelligent discussion.
One of the biggest things stopping kids from developing a lifelong love of reading is the "let's not offend anyone" drivel they are forced to read in the lower grades. It took until about 8th grade to actually come across required-for-school reading that I enjoyed - 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Flowers for Algernon' - and that was in a suburban, progressive school district. When reading is "the thing that teachers make you do," and with the material that is typically chosen, the thought that picking up a book could be done willingly is a foreign concept.
It's a matter of taste but where I'm from I think most people would consider 'To Kill a Mockingbird' "let's-not-offend-anyone drivel", then again I can see how in the US it would be more poignant than in countries with less history of racism.
According to the American Library Association, To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the more frequently challenged and banned books in the US. This page lists the dismaying details of what people saw fit to complain about:
Perhaps I'm misreading the parent, but I think he said "to Kill a Mockingbird" was one of the first required readings in school that did not fall into the drivel category.
Yes, and I'm saying where I grew up most people seemed to think it was outdated drivel. We live (where I live) are in a multicultural society with many immigrants living peacefully, and we found, from the people I know, TKaMB dry and mining lessons that have long been incorporated in our society.
I must respectfully disagree that it is outdated drivel. First, there are large pockets of racism still present throughout the US and the world at large. Even if you are fortunate enough to live in a place where it is simply not encountered, it will be encountered if you travel much.
Second, even if and when we reach a point in society where racism is truly gone, it is useful to know how we got there. To Kill a Mocking Bird not only helps show how society was before, it was itself a small piece of history that helped in a small way make society the way it is now with less racism.
Even if we reach a utopian day where its lessons are no longer relavent (and we are not there yet), it will remain a significant aid in understanding our history.
I just happen to think there are perhaps more important issues worth focussing on in schools such as materialism, environmentalism, the role of belief and science, what it means to be part of a society, the nature of democracy etc which are more timely and vital to introduce kids to.
Racism, in the first world other than the US, seems not dead but mortally wounded and we are ready to move on to the next problem to tackle.
I've traveled a fair bit across 6 continents and I don't think I've ever encountered a society that is simultaneously multi-cultural and without racism. I'm also a believer in the axiom that those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
I can't comment on the dryness of TKaMB though I would say that it does contain enough elements of typical human drama to be more than "a book about racism".
The teacher should just read the Old Testament to them. The students then get the "religion" their parents want and all the nudity, sex and violence they crave. Win-win!
Are you being sarcastic? To me it's obvious that middle schoolers should in fact at least skim parts of the Bible. If not the most important, it's in the top ten most important texts of the western culture.
BTW Those other nine (Iliad, The Song of Roland, Heart of Darkness, 1984...) are also full of violence so if schools really do apply that criterion consistently, teachers may as well stop bothering students with any reading.
Of course they should read it. It is a book of life; it contains everything from utter foolishness to profound wisdom; from vile pettiness to unrestrained love; from brutal punishment to loving clemency.
It is the right book, which would be presented to them for all the wrong reasons.
In my middle school (Indiana, public schools), we read chapters from the bible, mostly from the Old Testament.
We did this because the next few books we were to read used a large amount of biblical symbolism.
Later on, I took an elective in high school over Jewish history, and was assigned a bible for required reading. We also did comparative analysis between other copies of the bible, as well as readings from the Torah. I think nearly everybody found questionable differences between different translations. However, we did grasp the history of the Jewish people.
Risking to be down voted outright, that's exactly what those people want. reading is dangerous, it encourages thinking. Guess why Guttenberg was such a threat to the church when he invented moving letter printing. He basically destroyed their monopoly on information by providing the full bible to everyone. even back then they where quite carefull about the passages they read to the public.
That's awful. I loved this book as a kid, and recommend it to every young person. The series as a whole taught me quite a bit about human nature.
I would not call it pornographic at all - The few scenes in the book where there is nudity, there is very little that's sexual about it. In other parts of the series, I will agree that it may not be appropriate for 14 year olds.
Seems like a safe bet that the parents are overreacting to their kids' reports of the book's contents. I can imagine a young teenager mentioning the fact that the children in Ender's Game are sometimes nude (albeit in a nonsexual way). There is almost no chance that the parent(s) have actually read the book.
>> There is almost no chance that the parent(s) have actually read the book.
It's sad to think that this might actually be true. I can totally imagine a scenario where except for the teacher and children, none of the other parties making so much noise have read the piece before making a ruckus.
I can imagine a kid telling a parent about the fight scene with Bonzo in the shower, and (with the parent not having much context) it sounding incredibly creepy. So the parent goes to the principal and complains, and the principal (who has also never read the book) decides not to take any chances. After all, nobody wants to be the administrator who "ignored a red flag" in the case that the teacher actually is some kind of creep. So the teacher gets suspended until an investigation is complete, not because the administration is evil or stupid, but simply because the incentives are all aligned for the administration to suspend first, and then ask questions.
But in all seriousness I think the average 14 year old is exposed to far more objectionable material in a Shakespeare play. The average simpleton that complains about the 'moral turpitude' usually isn't smart enough to notice how gaudy one can be.
These are the same people that would have issues with Aslan the Christ allegory in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for 'magic'.
I could hardly believe we got to read Shakespeare’s plays in my high school English classes. I swear, nearly everything is a sex joke. Luckily, thanks to the minor language differences, most of the students barely understood the gist of the story, let alone the puns and innuendos, leaving me to die of silent laughter and/or embarrassment.
I know for a fact that effectively nobody involved with high school Shakespeare education understands Shakespeare, up to and including the teachers, because if they did it would never pass muster in a modern school. Oh, sure, the teachers may intellectually know it's filthy, and may intellectually pass that on to the students, but if they really understood it, it would not be there. As it stands now, it's more like telling students that there exists a dirty joke on the internet; true enough, but it hasn't got the sleezy joy of a real dirty joke like the original audience experienced.
One of my favorite high school teachers took the time to explain each and every dirty joke in A Midsummer Night's Dream; he was, consequently, one of the best English teachers I ever had.
There are around 13,000 school districts in the US, most with many constituent schools, each supporting many hundreds of families. Even if everything about this story is credible (remember, their job is to sell page views, not to inform you), all we've got is one school district in which there was simultaneously a crazy parent and an incompetent school board.
Ender's Game is also not a "tiny bit" violent, and although its characters are all young, it was not written specifically for young readers.
(In my house, the boy read Ender's Game when he was 10; the girl heard an audio version of it at 9, and "Ender's Shadow", which is more explicit, was on the bookshelf in the boy's 6th grade class room).
Given how many of these middle school Students are probably devouring the ultra-violent "Hunger Games" trilogy in anticipation for the film, I find this complaint/decision odd.
My high school teacher put Ender's Game on our recommended reading list. I think I was about 14 or 15 at the time. It was the first science fiction book I read, and I loved it. I don't really remember that much explicit violence. Sounds like the parent is having a bit of an overreaction.
Several sections of brutal violence from memory - the first fight at school, where they realized he had what it took to fully commit to victory, and then the shower sequence - which really was quite brutal.
Not inappropriate for Jr. High, but maybe a bit mature for eighth grade. I don't think a suspension is warranted on purely this basis - I'm sure there is more to the story.
I haven't read the book in question but is it more brutal than the hunger games? I know multiple 11 year olds who have read the hunger games trilogy and the children/parents had no issue with it other than "the idea of kids fighting to the death is a weird topic for a young adult book".
I would say its more brutal. The violence depicted in hunger games is distant and somewhat clinical - almost as though it was written with the possibility of future film rights. In Enders game, other children are beaten to death in a quite personal manner. I recall being quite effected by the deaths in Enders game. I don't recall any similar explicit imagery in hunger games.
- Not thirty seconds into the games, Katniss is struggling with an unnamed boy when he drops dead with a knife through his back.
- Katniss drops a nest of mutated wasps directly onto a number of sleeping children, two of whom die from the stings.
- Katniss witnesses Cato kill an unnamed boy with his bare hands.
- Rue gets speared through the torso right in front of Katniss.
- Thresh crushes the skull of Clove with a rock, (not enough to kill her, but enough to disfigure her) then does it again and finishes her off. (This one happens no more than a couple of meters in front of Katniss, as Clove had been in the process of choking her before being yanked off by Thresh.)
- Katniss shoots a helpless dying Cato in the face with her final arrow.
That's just in the first book. All but one of those deaths occur right in front of Katniss, along with several others.
The only fight that stuck with me in Ender's Game was with Bonzo - the fight with Stilson was over too quick (and the ending was technically a mystery until they talk about it after Bonzo's death). Bonzo's death was also technically very quick - there was a lot of lead up to it, but the fight itself probably only took about 20 seconds and about half a page (also from memory).
Note also that the boys who Ender fights are bullying him mercilessly. Both Stilson and Bonzo bring groups to witness and prevent interference from others. He is forced to fight for his life, in situations which could quickly turn against him, and only an unbelievably swift and alarmingly brutal victory will prevent a future recurrence.
I also had Ender's Game on my high school reading list, although I read it much much earlier, definitely when I was still in middle school. Remains one of my favorite books to this day. No bad repercussions from reading it on this end.
I was first exposed to Enders's Game when a middle school teacher started reading it to the class a little bit each day. After about a week, I couldn't stand the wait anymore and bought the book, probably the first time I had done such a thing of my own volition.
It is incredibly sad that the students at this school might miss out on an opportunity to discover this series due to one ignorant, over-protecting parent. Heaven forbid a 14-year-old should be exposed to a swear word or two; it's not like they are constantly exposed to swearing and sexual situations outside of class... Oh wait.
This, as a former resident of South Carolina and family member of someone who works in that state's educational system does not surprise me at all. South Carolina has probably the most fidgety, hammer from God mentality at the state education level.
Even so much as a twitch is enough to startle most and send the local district into a tizzy.
We won't have reasonable parents any time soon (unless of course we start with reasonable kids and wait 20 years). Now reasonable administrators might work but where do we find the? It is not exactly a position that is coveted by reasonable people, it would guess it would attract and inordinate number of bureaucrats and authoritarians.
Think of it from a teacher's perspective: you do your job, when out of nowhere some nutcase or religious zealot comes out of the woodwork and tries to get you arrested, and failing that, pressures the school board to have you dismissed.
Right or wrong, this teacher will be tainted and have his or her career ruined, over the use of a book in the classroom. Ender's Game is a book that has been widely used in high schools for at least 15 years.
Agreed, but improving the quality of administrators is incredibly difficult to do and forcing parents to be rational about their children is pretty much impossible.
So we're left with tenure as an imperfect but practical way to limit the damage that can be done by bad administrators and crazed parents. Which is why tenure is important.
Tenure is meant to protect controversial research, not controversial teaching. Somewhere, we decided that researchers should also be teachers and now the two have been conflated.
As the only HN user who disliked the entire series of books, I have no problem with the sentiment, though I disagree with the action. If I found out my imaginary child's imaginary teacher were reading from Ender's Game, I would visit that teacher to ask that better books be read.
I can't say I've read the entire series, but you're definitely not the only one who here who disliked Ender's Game. I keep this around in my bookmarks since it pretty clearly expresses what I think is wrong with the book: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
As a teen who grew up in a pacifist background, I rejected the book's dubious moral constructions. As I said to a friend at the time, who had argued Ender had no other choice: "he doesn't HAVE to live." The same applies to humanity as a whole. As your conclusion rightly notes, we are not so special as to deserve to live at any cost, or to deserve to destroy our enemies at any cost.
I agree that it is immoral to hold 'self preservation' as your ultimate value. It does not prevent a few people choosing to do so from time to time, and when one of those gets cornered, the results are horrific.
On the other hand, you need to consider that for you to have grown up "in a pacifist background" its quite an unusual event in the History of Humanity. In particular, it means that there's someone somewhere doing all the dirty deeds that keep the pacifists safe and unaware for long enough to raise any offspring. In the primal environment, uncompromising pacifists would probably end up darwinized!
When I say that Ender didn't have to live, I don't say that out of ignorance. I know the history of those who've held the conviction that "God did not condone killing or the use of force for any reason" and "were therefore unwilling to fight for their lives." People from my particular tradition [0] were persecuted, at least in some areas, from the 1530s until 1990. In some communities, a book of martyrs [1] is held in high regard. Migration to escape persecution was remarkably common. ("Running away" is a survival strategy employed by quite a few species.)
I am by no means arguing that others should follow this philosophy. Merely explaining that, having grown up in a culture where we gave this idea serious thought, I found Ender's Game to be shallow and naive.
Wow, thanks for sharing that. I honestly had not thought of "running away" as a sustainable strategy.
To clarify a little bit, it's not so much as of pacifism not being a viable strategy, but that it is a viable strategy for individuals or small communities, but not implementable on a national scale.
Eventually, the martyrdom of a pacifist, while a tragedy on its own, is not detrimental to the meme of pacifism. I'd say it's the opposite. However, if a group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically harassed, I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group doing the harassing. Even if most of the individuals are not physically harmed, the idea of pacifism is the one that suffers.
But of course... geographic isolation may take you a long way, I guess.
> "if a group of people that follows the meme of pacifism is systematically harassed, I'd think it would eventually be assimilated by the other group doing the harassing."
History shows that "running away" and other isolation strategies have allowed at least some groups of pacifists to persist through several centuries. Harassment seems to actually strengthen the idea of pacifism within many of these groups.
It may not be viable on a large scale. But that ties in to my earlier point: a viable strategy for survival is not the ultimate goal. Or, at least, it's not a universally agreed upon primary goal. We're not so special that our survival must necessarily trump everything else. Neither Ender nor anyone else in the book series seems to give serious consideration to the idea that maybe it's better to die than to kill. Again, I'm not arguing that everyone should agree to this philosophy, I'm just saying the failure to give it even token consideration comes off as a bit shallow.
I'll second the "not the only one" sentiment. As a child, I liked the book. As an adult, I feel it used my childish mindset and desire to feel special as tools to manipulate me into thoughtlessly accepting a dubious moral framework. As such, I think it is largely over-rated as a work through the common mechanism of idolization of what one liked as a child.
Since I can't very well read it again for the first time, I was happy to find a couple of years ago that a narrative-astute friend of mine had happened to never read it. So I encouraged him to give it a try and was extremely careful to say nothing of the ambivalence I've had for it. He summed it up as pulp designed as a preteen want-to-be-a-superhero hook with an twist about on a level with a middling Twilight Zone episode. Thus ends my anecdote.
I'm also not a fan. As a piece of juvenile science fiction I think it's serviceable though if I had children I'd probably prefer they skip it.
To start with, the story is predicated on the notion that Eugenics works, or as the saying goes; if it's not outright saying it, it's sure implying it loudly. It's reasonable to say that two intelligent people will probably have intelligent kids, but the novel goes way past that. The three children are freakishly (in the novel's terms, this is another one of my gripes I'll get to) intelligent.
It's not something that could be accomplished without an extremely long and large breeding program, if at all. (also note, you'd be producing an awful lot of pretty freaking smart kids, see my next point) It would mostly be a matter of luck and at that point why have a breeding program at all? Therefore the intelligence of the children is strongly implied to be a result of the breeding program.
In terms of artistic objections, the "freakish intelligence" of the children is accomplished by making most of the other characters in the novel cardboard cutouts or strawmen that Ender can just knock over or tear apart easily. What happened to all the other kids from the breeding program? Surely it produced a bunch of "90% Enders" who are almost as good. It comes off as contrived and inauthentic.
The whole "child soldier" angle is ridiculous as well. Child soldiers are used in conflicts because they are easily manipulated and readily available but that is not always desirable. A rebel fighter in Africa only needs someone who can hold and point a machine gun to replace the last guy who was doing it. The needs of the military in Ender's Game are quite a bit more sophisticated.
Children are also ignorant and dumb. Innate intelligence can only take you so far, it gives you a large "gas tank" but you still need to fill it with gas.
Military Strategy is not necessarily a terribly intelligence-taxing thing. It's mostly a question of learning from the past, taking into account current technology, and trying to anticipate other attacks. If they really wanted to win the war they'd put an experienced General in charge of strategy and have Ender start working on the next great super-weapon, that's what makes decisive victories.
The whole "the enemy's gate is down" thing is a good example of how Ender is not smart, everyone else is dumb and also how the book has a flawed view of military strategy. The "the enemy's gate is down" is a lesson we learned hundreds of years ago at the latest (i.e. the transition from neatly lined up soldiers standing in rows across from each-other firring muskets to modern trench and guerrilla warfare). Is this some bizarre future where we've forgotten all the basic lessons of military history for the past thousand years? Or is this just the worst military academy ever?
Going back to Eugenics, the book's plot requires that Ender is so intelligent that it's more efficient/effective to try and train him up to a brilliant strategist than to just use one of the existing ones. I don't find that realistic.
I also don't buy the whole "He's a kid so he'll look at it from a fresh angle" aspect. Sure kids do tend to be a bit open minded but I find it dubious that they would naturally have the right kind of open mindedness for this application, that is an informed one.
I don't care how new the MD Device is, we're to believe that they have no idea how it works? Not even a guess as to what would happen if you fired it at a planet? Come on... nobody said "let's shoot it at an asteroid or something"? When nuclear weapons were developed pretty much right away nuclear scientists stood around like excited schoolgirls with a puppy coming up with all the super neato places they could set off an A-bomb to see what happens (Underwater! Space! "uninhabited" islands!)
Honestly I could go on and on about all the things I dislike about this book. I realize I might seem a bit worked up, but really it just slightly annoys me that such a mediocre book is so popular. It owes it's popularity mostly to the fact that it's a classic underdog story. A lonely nerdy kid who's smarter than everyone around him kicks ass and chews bubblegum, it's a young sci-fi nerd's wet dream. I know when I was in middle school during tough times I would occasionally spend time daydreaming elaborate revenge fantasies where I showed everyone up, so to a kid like that Ender's Game is very validating. That's good in some ways but I also worry that it can be unhealthy because I think while that sort of mentality is natural is something that needs to be overcome and not indulged.
Overall I find parts of it unwholesome and overall offensive aesthetically.
I like how there's a condescending attitude against prudes through the whole article, and then they have to backtrack and say that the pornographic part probably had nothing to do with Ender's Game and had to do with other, actual pornographic material that the teacher was reading to the students. And even then, they wait until the very end to say that "the rest appears to be little more than rumor". Who needs facts to get in the way of pushing an agenda.
"It's a little odd that the school would maintain it was just the books if this wasn't the case."
Is it so odd? I think it's the school trying to protect the teacher. Just look at the situation in Los Angeles. Many reports of teacher molestation are coming out in the wake of the Miramonte scandal. Parents refused to send their children to Miramonte Elementary after it was revealed that a teacher engaged in despicable acts with students, and the parents were angry that they were not informed sooner. And its possible that more complaints about teacher abuse are swept under the rug, since a deal made between the teachers' union in LA and the LA school district expunges a teacher's record of unproven allegations after four years. They envisioned it would protect teachers against punishment for "petty" misconduct (being late/absent too much, messy, etc.) but never envisioned it would be used to protect teachers from sexual harassment accusations.
There is more to this story than what is out there now. The teacher is being protected, and they probably won't tell us what is really going on until more parents come out demanding to know the truth. LA is not an isolated incident, unfortunately. Some particularly bad characters have eroded the trust parents have in teachers, and then teachers react demanding protections, and the same bad characters abuse these protections to save their hide when allegations of misconduct pop up. The whole truth has not come out, and we will probably not like it when it does.
You can't downvote a submission on HN, but you can flag it. I'm not sure if you have that ability, though, since you have less than zero of that precious karma.
Regardless, you shouldn't be downvoted for explaining why you 'downvoted' a submission, nor for pointing out an inaccuracy in the submission title.
The district apparently requires an (apparently simple) administrative review of material beyond the prescribed curriculum, which was not done in this case.
So, it may be that EG was the least sinister but most widely known book of the bunch. I, like others here, leap to defend it, but it may not be the actual source of many of the parent's concerns, but included because its inclusion was in violation of the review policy.
1: http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/0315Followup-with-school-... 2: http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/Student_claims_Aiken_Co_m...