I just finished reading The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew and loved it!  And, were it not for one scene, I could see myself teaching the book in a class.

One scene is robbing students from a book that could potentially make reluctant readers real readers.  The scene in question?  A young girl is on the hunt for something in her parent's bedroom when the parents enter.  The girl happened to be under the bed, is afraid of her father, and doesn't want to let her presence known.  The parents have sex.

Well, I don't object to that.  Chances are kids have heard their parents having sex at least once.  It's a scene that they could probably relate to:  the embarrassment, the fear of being found, the awkwardness. Yet we live in a society that sells sex every day but won't allow young kids to read it.

What I have learned as a teacher is that students generally don't focus on that act.  They read the story for the story.  What happens next?  Why do the characters do what they do?  How could the outcome have changed?  These are questions we want students to consider as they read.  In the book, When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago, there is a scene when the girl notices that a man is masterbating while watching her.  The narrator is both horrified and fascinated by the act.   In all the years I'd taught the book, only one class mentioned the scene.  While they were a bit uncomfortable, they were able to recognize that the author experienced that same sense of discomfort.  We had a very mature discussion about our realization that we mature and the baggage that comes with that.  This, by the way, with 8th grade students who could, at times, be very immature.  There is also a casual mention of a sex scene in Elie Wiesel's book Night.  Only one student ever mentioned the scene and he did it in private.  He was curious about whether or not he had read the scene correctly.  (For those who don't know, while the Jews are being brought to the concentration camps in the cattle cars, there are some who engage in sexual activity.  This is only casually mentioned, I think, to show how people manage in any given situation.  It's odd, but it's there just the same.)

I guess what I'm talking about is censorship.  Years ago I assigned the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson for summer reading.  One of my students read the book the day it was assigned and told the rest of the class to read it, it was that good.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I was called into the headmaster's office and told I had to take it off the list because a parent complained.  The book, for the record, is not about sex but about a rape.  It is not graphic.  In fact, the book is about a girl who needs to find herself and discover courage, strength, and friendship along the way.  It has excellent symbolism and generates authentic, deeply-thought discussion.

Nationally, reading scores in this country are dropping.  Research shows that reading comprehension improves when readers are able to connect to what they read.  Seeing the relationship between the material and their lives helps readers understand.  Why, then, do we insist on taking away the material that would engage them?