this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 217 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Of course. How can you raise a new generation of Nazis if you teach them to be horrified by the actions of the last?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

To be fair, it wasn't because she wrote about being hunted down by Nazis for being Jewish. It's because she wrote about growing ~~public~~ pubic hair.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago

I don't think it would have been any better to write about growing private hair.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Oh, the poor children. I'm sure they're traumatized after learning that - checks notes - humans have body hair. Don't even get me started on Santa.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Nah that's just their excuse. It's 100% the nazi thing. It's hardly the only book that they're banning on the subject.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

There's also people in america who are hypocrites that would commit the same atrocities as the nazi's if they where allowed too while the same people would denounce the nazis and even call those that they enact their bigotry against nazis

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I know Texas is backwards and regressive, but this headline is kinda clickbait.

A Texas middle school teacher has been fired after assigning an unapproved illustrated version of Anne Frank's Diary to her eighth grade reading class.

...While district officials claim the adaptation of Anne Frank's Diary was not approved, it was included on a reading list sent to parents at the start of the school year, KFDM reports. The investigation will determine if the teacher pivoted from the original approved curriculum or if administrators were aware of the book being part of the class.

She wasn't fired for reading Anne Frank, but for using a graphic novelization of it.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago

I really wish we could give teachers some semblance of independence back in their classrooms. Firing her just for using an unapproved version of an approved novel is ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is that something to get fired over though? There's still context missing here - assigning a non-approved book alone seems like something you reprimand someone over, not fire them. Was there something particularly egregious about that particular version of the book?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not sure if you've ever read her diary, or the ORIGINAL diary, but the original non-edited version, she goes into detail about her sexuality and specifically about another girl. Her father basically ripped out/omitted pages out of shame.

Since the version the school approved was the same version just graphic novellized, you can bet a Texas school did NOT approve the original version.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Texas is a failure to their students.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

If I'm understanding it correctly, this book was on the suggested reading list they sent parents. So it was unapproved but also suggested...?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago

It's okay, he wasn't fired for "being black", he was fired because his short, thick curly hair and broader nose don't fit into our dress code! So it's totally okay!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

I don't get the problem. All you're saying is that the bullshit reason for firing this teacher was actually because it was a horseshit reason.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The people responding to you are missing the point you're trying to make, which is that the title of the article is clickbait.

Texas teacher fired for reading Diary of Anne Frank to class.

This headline is false, if not in the exact words then certainly by the implication. Anyone reading this headline would believe that the teacher was fired for reading The Diary of Anne Frank.

Texas teacher fired for reading Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation to class.

This headline is true. Notice how it is different.

Are either of these headlines good? Obviously not. Is it better to be fired for one than the other? Obviously not, and that is beside the point. Misinformation is a cancer and there doesn't need to be an agenda behind identifying and calling it out.

edit: and if you (reader) look at the second headline and think to yourself "why are you trying to downplay Texas' actions by making it sound less bad?" You need to point that question inwards - why do you think the second headline sounds better? And if a more factually correct headline changes your emotional reaction to the story, don't you think that's an important reason to advocate for accuracy?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Hang on what? So it was unapproved, but simultaneously suggested reading?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why do they still have schools. Shut them all down already

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because the kids wont punish themselves to going to the bathroom during work production hours, which school will teach them is always.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly. How can we condition the youth to be subservient minimum wage slaves??

Although….we’ve seen the side effects of the uneducated

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Don't worry, the right is working on replacing them with bible/vocational school.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

the teacher was sent home on Wednesday after reading a passage from Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation in which Frank wrote about male and female genitalia.

I don't remember reading anything about male and female genitalia in Ann Frank's diary...😕

[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's been released with several edits over the years. The recently released version added back several passages that were scrubbed from the ones most of us read growing up.

Anne Frank wrote a diary. It's a personal diary. It wasn't written to be published.

New pages found writing dirty jokes and about sex: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/16/anne-franks-hidden-diary-pages-risque-jokes-and-sex-education/

On one hand, the "sanitized" versions give the historical context without the personal, sometimes very personal, items that Anne Frank intended to be private. On the other hand, including all of her real thoughts makes it clear that she was a normal, young, very human girl.

I think the full version should be available to anyone and everyone, but I also understand if the school curriculum needs to focus on the historical aspects and thus uses one of the older releases editions. But to be honest, it seems like the people who would have a problem with this have a problem with all sexuality, and they hate anything that destroys the narrative that people can shut off that part of themselves.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

I think having the less sanitized version being taught is potentially more valuable. Part of the value of the diary is providing someone to have empathy with, not to just read a history book about a character. Showing that she was a real person and had similar thoughts to all the other children in the class can help them understand she was real and this could happen to anyone, including themselves. It helps us treat history not just as something that happened but something that is happening.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I found e.g.

https://jezebel.com/this-is-the-pornographic-anne-frank-excerpt-thats-causi-484571352

and

https://www.dw.com/en/secret-pages-in-anne-franks-diary-reveal-her-reflections-on-sex/a-43803106

🙄 throw away a good teacher for this...if Ann was the same age as the class, it's probably the stuff people their age gossip about anyway.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If Ann was living at the time of this class, she would have already watched hardcore porn over the internet.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Sorry - I'm not subscribed anymore and it let me read it so I thought it was open.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/02/anne-franks-diary-pornographic-uncomfortable-truth

This is an older article and I don't think it talks about the new pages that were found with the dirty jokes. But it talks and quotes the "explicit" parts.

The wiki discusses the publication history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl#:~:text=There%20are%20two%20versions%20of,to%20document%20the%20war%20period.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Yep, most versions of her diary are censored. She discusses her first period amongst other topics

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because you probably read one of the versions her father censored. It was impossible to find anything else until recently.

She was a teenage girl and the uncensored version talks about sexuality a lot.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Has anyone here seen this version? Does graphic novelization mean it's graphic as in nsfw? The unedited diary does have a lot of sexual content. If it's just a different version of the book though, that's way overreacting.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I found a pdf online. This is the most graphic part of the book. This is what scares Texans.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

She is fairly scientific in her descriptions. Doesn't seem like a problem to me. Any health class should be covering this anyways.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

You know they're not in Texas...

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

She would have been mortified to know that this was going to be published for all the world to see in the future!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Didn't her father previously withhold these pages, and didn't allow them to be published until later?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I looked it up and it looks like you're correct, this wasn't published until 1995. Which explains why I'd never seen it before.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I didn't realize it was that much later

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Are there any ways to tell if a version is abridged or not?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does graphic novelization mean it's graphic as in nsfw?

As far as I understand it, no.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Okay, just as in a graphic novel, with graphics in it. Yeah an overreaction then.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Sue everyone.

Burn it all down.