[HPforGrownups] Anti-Harry Potter Video???

[Melissa Frankfother]

No: HPFGUIDX 25400

Lurker unlurking (probably briefly ;-))....

I'm just beginning my 3rd year of teaching 5th grade (I taught learning
disabled kids for 8 years prior to making the switch to 5th grade), and I've
read all the HP books aloud to my students for the past two years.  This
year, for the first time, I'm doing HP & the SS as a novel unit with my
class.  I sent out a welcome letter before school to give the kids a brief
preview of some of the things we're going to be doing this year, including
HP. (I didn't want any parents to think they'd been blind-sided, but I
really didn't think I'd have a problem...silly me.)  About 3 days later, the
principal told me that a parent had come in to request that his daughter be
placed in another class.  He brought in a thick pile of papers he'd printed
up of info from the internet on how HP teaches black magic, devil worship,
blah, blah, blah.  The interesting thing is, this girl's 4th grade teacher
had told me how much this girl had been looking forward to being in my class
because she knew I read the Harry Potter books.

Melissa

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ebony" <ebonyink at hotmail.com>
To: <HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2001 2:17 PM
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Anti-Harry Potter Video???


> I received an e-mail from one of my NCTE digests and was slightly
> alarmed.  Has anyone heard of the video being referred to?
>
> ********************
>
> Subject: Re: Re: [ncte-talk] Anti-Harry Potter video warns about
> witchcraft
>
> Hi - Just had to jump into this conversation.  I have never had a
> parent object or ban a book before in my career and I am so adamantly
> and passionately opposed to censoring that it came as a complete
> shock to me that a parent is refusing to allow her daughter to read
> Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets because it teaches sorcery
> and their religion (Jehovah's Witness) does not allow it.  I asked
> her if she read the book, as it does not teach sorcery or anything
> like that.. and she said she is not allowed to.  She then said her
> daughter could read The Hobbit (like that isn't the same thing??)..
> But then my readiness to switch, or something, must have prompted her
> to investigate The Hobbit, which she said she had read and her
> other children had read, blah,blah, blah,... and now I've been
> informed that she can't read that either.  Now, she's not opposed to
> the class reading it and her daughter sitting in the library for the
> duration reading books and writing "book reports,"... but that's not
> how I teach... So, I'm frustrated, upset and in search of another
> book to start off the school year (I'm think Adventures of
> Huckleberry Finn)!!  Thanks for letting me vent.
>
> **********************************
>
>
> End note--I've been in this colleague's shoes (actually, was there
> last year).  It is a VERY frustrating and infuriating thing to have
> spent a good 20+ hours preparing a full unit around a novel that the
> profession is legitimizing (the NCTE and the IRA *love* Harry Potter
> and want to add it to the recognized body of adolescent lit
> appropriate for the classroom)... and then to be unable to teach it
> because you don't want to exclude all the other kids.
>
> Sigh.
>
> --Ebony AKA AngieJ (who is glad she teaches high school now)
>
>
>
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