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Comment by sargun | Hacker News Reader

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.

I wonder what the parents are overreacting to.

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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.

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.

>> 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.

Ideas?

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.

By the end of the year, the school fired him.

Which of his plays did you read, perchance?

While in high school, I think I only read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew.

Much Ado About Nothing stands out as particularly dirty in my mind.

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