<story><title>Teacher Suspended For Reading &apos;Ender&apos;s Game&apos; To Middle School Students</title><url>http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/19/south-carolina-teacher-suspended-for-reading-enders-game-to-middle-school-students/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>&amp;#62;&lt;i&gt;&quot;It’s a tiny bit violent&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;A child kills several other children barehanded.&lt;p&gt;Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form - Card&apos;s view on this is pretty apparent in the first two sequals;  &lt;i&gt;Speaker for the Dead&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Xenocide&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s always surprising how non-analytical we can be when it comes to violence - an entire planet is destroyed and millions of people screams are heard across the galaxy in &lt;i&gt;A New Hope.&lt;/i&gt; Yet, the movie so ingrained in children&apos;s culture, it was an uphill battle to prevent my son from watching it when he was three [I felt like it was a victory that he didn&apos;t see it until he was five].&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;i&gt;Ender&apos;s Game&lt;/i&gt; is appropriate reading for 14 year olds, and the idea of it as pornographic is asinine. Same could be said of Bloom&apos;s &lt;i&gt;Forever&lt;/i&gt; of my youth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chernevik</author><text>It&apos;s a thoughtful book and such its &quot;violence&quot; can&apos;t be quantified onto a simple scale.  The personal confrontations are calculated and desperate, they serve the dramatic purpose of establishing the seriousness of the stakes.  They also show Ender&apos;s resourcefulness, attention to the long haul even under pressure, and savagery when cornered.  Ender&apos;s choices in the space war are entirely rational, which quickly raises the question whether the morality of the xenocide lies with Ender or those who framed the problem.&lt;p&gt;All of which sets up &quot;Speak for the Dead&quot;, one of the best sci-fi books I know.&lt;p&gt;Anyone rejecting violence qua violence should probably stay away, but they&apos;ll be missing a pretty important reflection on its causes and consequences, and the possibility of redemption.&lt;p&gt;The books after &quot;Speaker&quot; suck.</text></comment>
<story><title>Teacher Suspended For Reading &apos;Ender&apos;s Game&apos; To Middle School Students</title><url>http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/19/south-carolina-teacher-suspended-for-reading-enders-game-to-middle-school-students/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brudgers</author><text>&amp;#62;&lt;i&gt;&quot;It’s a tiny bit violent&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;A child kills several other children barehanded.&lt;p&gt;Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form - Card&apos;s view on this is pretty apparent in the first two sequals;  &lt;i&gt;Speaker for the Dead&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Xenocide&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s always surprising how non-analytical we can be when it comes to violence - an entire planet is destroyed and millions of people screams are heard across the galaxy in &lt;i&gt;A New Hope.&lt;/i&gt; Yet, the movie so ingrained in children&apos;s culture, it was an uphill battle to prevent my son from watching it when he was three [I felt like it was a victory that he didn&apos;t see it until he was five].&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;i&gt;Ender&apos;s Game&lt;/i&gt; is appropriate reading for 14 year olds, and the idea of it as pornographic is asinine. Same could be said of Bloom&apos;s &lt;i&gt;Forever&lt;/i&gt; of my youth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ajross</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Then goes on to stamp out an entire intelligent life form&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;... which happens &quot;off-camera&quot; (sort of: the event is presented as a video game fiction with no visible non-mechanical participants), and is presented quite clearly as a moral lesson in the text.  Arguing for censorship on this basis would rule out things like history lessons about &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; wars too, wouldn&apos;t it?  You don&apos;t want to teach middle schoolers that war exists?</text></comment>