U.S. woman submits formal complaint to the Northville school district in Michigan, claiming ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’, containing a Jewish girl’s thoughts & experiences during the Holocaust, is ‘inappropriate for 7th graders’.

By Ashley Baylen (from Shalom Life)

“The Diary of Anne Frank” has been an important part of the curriculum in North American classrooms since its initial publication in 1947. The candid diaries share the young Jewish girl’s thoughts and experiences while hiding from Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands.

Anne Frank – Archive Photo

Until now, the memoirs have served as a powerful educational tool, teaching children about World War II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a girl their age. But after 60 years, a Michigan mom has come forward, calling “The Diary of Anne Frank” pornographic.

Last week, Gail Horalek filed a formal complaint with the Northville school district in Michigan, claiming that “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition)” was inappropriate for seventh-graders.

Horalek is specifically uncomfortable with a passage in the diary in which Anne Frank explores her own anatomy:

“Until I was 11 or 12, 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.”

Apparently, the passage made Horalek’s daughter uncomfortable, telling Fox 2 that “it’s pretty graphic, and it’s pretty pornographic for seventh-grade boys and girls to be reading.

“It’s inappropriate for a teacher to be giving this material out to the kids when it’s really the parents’ job to give the students this information,” she continued.

Robert Behnke, assistant superintendent for Instructional Services for Northville Public Schools, told Patch.com that the district was following procedure regarding the complaint.

To view source of this publication from Ynet: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4375728,00.html

Original publication taken from Shalom Life  (Canada’s largest independent Jewish news source)