My daughter is a sophomore in high school. She attends a local public high school. (No Catholic High School in area.)

Her literature teacher assigned a book that has a lot of objectionable content. I saw it when she was doing homework and idly picked it up so I’d have something to do while she was finishing up a math problem, and flipped it open and that was the beginning.

“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. It has some graphic violence. It also has prostitution, sodomy, rape, gang rape by “queens” on a 16 year old boy, children watching their mom have sex with random men, child molestation, and so on.

I sent an email to the teacher objecting to the content and asking to meet.
She is allowing my daughter to use a different book. We have not yet met-we will this week.

I asked my daughter about the class, and she started crying. The book before this was “The Highest Tide” by Jim Lynch. In it, a boy is obsessed with his adult babysitter’s female anatomy, describes it often, and “has his way with the sheets” when thinking about her. It also discusses graphic terms for sexual pleasure and where it is located in women, and uses excessive profanity.

My daughter said she can’t get it out of her head, she feels dirty and she is ashamed because it made her curious and she has been wanting to find more stuff like it, but she hasn’t, but she is so ashamed.

I am livid.

She wrote about her disgust with the objectification of women in the first book. Her teacher said “Boys will be boys.” I know that isn’t much, but it was an adult woman talking about masturbation to my daughter without my consent.

I think by secular standards the stuff was mild. By my standards, it was deplorable. I need help navigating with my ideological point of view in this sea of filth. On line it appears that these books are not common, but also not rare, in the high school setting. Therefor this isn’t a case of a piece of literature that will unanimously be understood as inappropriate.

I plan to meet with the principal and the teacher as soon as I have my case together. I have typed up the objectionable passages—eight pages, 31 seperate passages from just one of the books! I am going to ask the teacher to read a few out loud to us in the meeting. The language is prohibited by the school handbook. I don’t know why they think out loud and written would be different.