8th Grade Required Reading List

A few weeks ago, my daughter came home with a post-it note with the names of 3 books she had to decide between. Her English teacher had assigned them to do reading groups and they had a list of books they had to choose from. I started looking at her list and at first, it didn’t seem too bad…until I got further down the list and then began looking the books up.

I noticed right away the “Social Justice” books listed near the bottom of the list. I expected that, given the current agenda of the education system. I was not prepared for the stuff in the other books…

Teenagers committing suicide, cutting, Anorexia, Bulemia, and the list goes on and on. Now, I have no problem with my kids learning about Mental Health Disorders as long it is something that is making them understand the condition and clearly lets the reader know that this is not something they want to be involved with. But no, not these books. These books made it seem like cutting themselves was amazing and starving yourself and making yourself throw up was a good thing. It was absolutely disgusting. I’ll give the teachers the benefit of the doubt this time and think that they haven’t read the books themselves. If they did, why would they assign these books to impressionable 13 year olds?