I know Texas is backwards and regressive, but this headline is kinda clickbait.
A Texas middle school teacher has been fired after assigning an unapproved illustrated version of Anne Frank’s Diary to her eighth grade reading class.
…While district officials claim the adaptation of Anne Frank’s Diary was not approved, it was included on a reading list sent to parents at the start of the school year, KFDM reports. The investigation will determine if the teacher pivoted from the original approved curriculum or if administrators were aware of the book being part of the class.
She wasn’t fired for reading Anne Frank, but for using a graphic novelization of it.
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Has anyone here seen this version? Does graphic novelization mean it’s graphic as in nsfw? The unedited diary does have a lot of sexual content. If it’s just a different version of the book though, that’s way overreacting.
I found a pdf online. This is the most graphic part of the book. This is what scares Texans.
She is fairly scientific in her descriptions. Doesn’t seem like a problem to me. Any health class should be covering this anyways.
Does graphic novelization mean it’s graphic as in nsfw?
As far as I understand it, no.
Okay, just as in a graphic novel, with graphics in it. Yeah an overreaction then.
the teacher was sent home on Wednesday after reading a passage from Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation in which Frank wrote about male and female genitalia.
I don’t remember reading anything about male and female genitalia in Ann Frank’s diary…😕
It’s been released with several edits over the years. The recently released version added back several passages that were scrubbed from the ones most of us read growing up.
Anne Frank wrote a diary. It’s a personal diary. It wasn’t written to be published.
New pages found writing dirty jokes and about sex: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/16/anne-franks-hidden-diary-pages-risque-jokes-and-sex-education/
On one hand, the “sanitized” versions give the historical context without the personal, sometimes very personal, items that Anne Frank intended to be private. On the other hand, including all of her real thoughts makes it clear that she was a normal, young, very human girl.
I think the full version should be available to anyone and everyone, but I also understand if the school curriculum needs to focus on the historical aspects and thus uses one of the older releases editions. But to be honest, it seems like the people who would have a problem with this have a problem with all sexuality, and they hate anything that destroys the narrative that people can shut off that part of themselves.
I think having the less sanitized version being taught is potentially more valuable. Part of the value of the diary is providing someone to have empathy with, not to just read a history book about a character. Showing that she was a real person and had similar thoughts to all the other children in the class can help them understand she was real and this could happen to anyone, including themselves. It helps us treat history not just as something that happened but something that is happening.
Yep, most versions of her diary are censored. She discusses her first period amongst other topics