On February 8th the New York Times published Teenagers Who Vandalized Historic Black Schoolhouse Are Ordered to Read Books. The article describes a crime, where 4 young boys, vandalized a historic black schoolhouse. The judge of the case handed down a strange ruling. The boys had to read. For someone like me, this would not have been a punishment, but I also didn’t go around vandalizing anything.
USA Today article on the schoolhouse.
Pictures and more from Patch.com
Now, I don’t know if this will work. If those kids see this as a punishment then maybe not, but if they take it as a learning opportunity then maybe so. I’m not sure how enlightened kids that would do this kind of thing are, there is also their age to consider.
I did think that the list of books they were ordered to read was actually pretty well thought out. It wasn’t just, we are going to give you a bunch of books to read as a pure punishment. They thought about the books hoping to give the kids a little background and maybe teach them an understanding that they didn’t have and they weren’t learning from their parents or school.
For those of you interested (like me) here is the list:
“The Color Purple,” Alice Walker
“Native Son,” Richard Wright
“Exodus,” Leon Uris
“Mila 18,” Leon Uris
“Trinity,” Leon Uris
“My Name Is Asher Lev,” Chaim Potok
“The Chosen,” Chaim Potok
“The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway
“Night,” Elie Wiesel
“The Crucible,” Arthur Miller
“The Kite Runner,” Khaled Hosseini
“A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Khaled Hosseini
“Things Fall Apart,” Chinua Achebe
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot
“Caleb’s Crossing,” Geraldine Brooks
“Tortilla Curtain,” T.C. Boyle
“The Bluest Eye,” Toni Morrison
“A Hope in the Unseen,” Ron Suskind
“Down These Mean Streets,” Piri Thomas
“Black Boy,” Richard Wright
“The Beautiful Struggle,” Ta-Nehisi Coates
“The Banality of Evil,” Hannah Arendt
“The Underground Railroad,” Colson Whitehead
“Reading Lolita in Tehran,” Azar Nafisi
“The Rape of Nanking,” Iris Chang
“Infidel,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“The Orphan Master’s Son,” Adam Johnson
“The Help,” Kathryn Stockett
“Cry the Beloved Country,” Alan Paton
“Too Late the Phalarope,” Alan Paton
“A Dry White Season,” André Brink
“Ghost Soldiers,” Hampton Sides