Mother Wants 'Pornographic' Diary of Anne Frank Pulled from School
A mother in Michigan has made it her mission to have a "pornographic" book being taught at her daughter's middle school pulled from the curriculum.
That book? The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.
"The problem is the school is giving the seventh graders inappropriate material and not explaining it to the parents," Gail Horalek of Northville told the local Patch.
Horalek has taken particular issue with a specific passage from the unedited "definitive edition" of Anne Frank's Diary, in which the young Holocaust victim "talks about the discovery of her own genitalia."
Here is the offending passage in full, courtesy of MyFoxDetroit:
Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn't realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn't see them. What's even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris…When you're standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you're standing, so you can't see what's inside. They separate when you sit down and they're very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there's a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That's the clitoris.
Horalek insists she thought it was "awesome" that her daughter decided to do a school project on the Diary, until Meads Mill Middle School student told her the book's "graphic passages" were making her "uncomfortable."
Horalek is demanding that the school go back to teaching from the older, edited version of the book that doesn't include the uncomfortable passages.
Northville Schools' Assistant Superintendent Robert Behnke responded to Horalek's petition with a statement suggesting that a committee will be assembled at a date to be determined to review her concerns.
