[Vision2020] Of Mice and Men in Idaho

[Kenneth Marcy]

Here is what London readers of The Guardian read about Coeur d'Alene 
yesterday:

*http://tinyurl.com/qhwwwx3*

Hailed by the Nobel prize judges in 1962 for his realism and sympathetic 
humour 
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1962/>, 
John Steinbeck is under attack in the US, where parents in Idaho have 
branded Of Mice and Men “neither a quality story nor a page-turner” and 
asked for it to be removed from classrooms.

A curriculum review committee in the city of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho has 
recommended the 1937 novella should no longer be taught in classrooms, 
according to the Spokesman-Review 
<http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/may/04/cda-school-committee-proposes-restricting-steinbec/>, 
and that ninth-graders should study it “on a voluntary, small-group 
basis” only.

For parent Mary Jo Finney, the use of words such as “bastard” and “God 
damn” makes it unsuitable for 14- or 15-year-old students. After 
counting more than 100 “profanities”, she expressed her shock to the 
Spokesman-Review that “teachers actually had the audacity to have 
students read these profanities out loud in class”.

Steinbeck’s story of the difficulties faced by migrant fieldworkers in 
the Great Depression is a fixture on high-school syllabuses 
<http://www.steinbeck.org/pages/educational-resources> in the US, the UK 
and beyond, but since 1953 has also become one of America’s most 
frequently-challenged books 
<http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics/reasons>.

There is more to this story at the link *http://tinyurl.com/qhwwwx3*


Ken

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