If you click on the link above, you'll find the information about the book "suspensions" that are happening in the Highland Park ISD. While I do think it is within the school district's jurisdiction to decide what books are placed in the curriculum of their students, granting the public total choice over what their children "can" read simply takes away countless growing opportunities.
The article notes that this really isn't banning these books, just not including them in classroom curriculum, and while I am glad they put on debate in a public forum, I still have a problem for these books being removed, for most of the students who would be reading books that deal with mature themes for class probably do not have the time to read the books now that they have been removed from the curriculum. In essence, while they claim they don't want to ban books, they might as well be.
Certainly, parents do have the right to be cautious about their children's book, but the parents are offered a way out via a contract that says they are okay with the content. That being said, I still have a problem with parents instantly banning books for their children that contain "graphic" sex scenes, because it makes me wonder how the children, who are now entering adulthood, came into existence. Furthermore, they go to a public high school... so, I don't think that suspending books which deal with sex in a mature manner is really going to help their sixteen and seventeen year old children "keep their innocence" or whatever these parents hope to do by banning these books, which will clearly display sex in manner a bit more mature than the average high schooler would, considering the teachers are not choosing such books lightly. I don't think graphic sex scenes in novels are fully necessary to accomplishing this goal of growing as a human (I kind of wonder what they define as "graphic" in the first place), but if the parents really are worried, most of the time marking out the passages or tagging the pages and "forbidding" your children to read them can easily cover the problem, while still allowing most themes of the novel to be presented to the growing young adults. And if the "graphic" sex scene is climactic (hey) to the novel and serves a real purpose in the narrative, that can't possibly be replaced, which I somewhat doubt (which some may argue makes it unnecessary, and therefore the inclusion of these types of things in novels in general unnecessary, but a lot of things in books that provide value to the reader are "unnecessary") but hypothetically speaking, the sex will be dealt with carefully and in a manner that would be more appropriate, or probably less puritanical, than anything their peers or parents could provide, and promote individual thought. So by banning these books, they are only increasing their child's likelihood for childish, ill-formed thoughts on human sexuality to permeate their mind years into adulthood.
Moving beyond sex, a book criticizing capitalism or making references to homosexuality being pushed off the reading list seems, no, is extreme. Again, they go to a public high school. And suspending/banning a book for criticizing an economical system sounds a lot like what communism did under several leaders, so there's that. And thank goodness none of our books were banned for making references to homosexuality or else I wouldn't have been able to read A Separate Peace which has been used in countless essays, and is a pretty good book, in a multitude of facilities (this is an inside joke, Mr. L/anyone else who is confused). Anyway, having books that challenge the accepted thought on capitalism is good to promote individual thought, and force people to actually make good arguments to defend capitalism, or, maybe, against it. Either way the individual chooses to go in regards to capitalism, having what are widely accepted thoughts challenged is important for development, and parents not wanting their children to read something that challenges capitalism indicates to me that they themselves have not sufficiently taught their children their own values in a way that the child will find themselves believing something similar to the parents, or what the parents believe is not good in the first place. And making references to homosexuality... your child, who I will still call a child, seeing they are dependent on the parents in most cases, and are still growing, goes to a public school. What are you hoping to accomplish by this? That they won't have the existence confirmed by literature? Like, I'd love to know the motives here. It didn't even say it "promoted homosexuality" or whatever, just made references to it. Like, what even.
Furthermore, the parents want to ban books that deal with really ugly things, like poverty, alcoholism, etc, and show the darker aspects of life. Sadly, the parents want to keep their babies young forever, but that can't happen (I answered my previous question about the motives, although I'd disagree that that particular point somehow banishes innocence). These children need to grow, and mature literature is supes good at accomplishing that, without actual trauma. I've learned countless lessons from the literature we've read, and while none we've read have had graphic sex scenes (at least by what I'd consider anywhere near graphic), and if a novel did, if it was banned (maybe due to my parents), I'd read it to spite them, and probably learn something from the books in the process. Teacher's shouldn't stop having good books that will promote development because parents can't handle that their child might not be a child ad infinitum.
I'll leave you with this: