The Handmaid’s Tale in the classroom:

Atwood novel too brutal, sexist for school

Robert Edwards says if students repeated some of the words from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in the school halls, they’d be suspended, so he questions why it is okay in the classroom.

And what about the foul language, the anti-Christian overtones, the violence and sexual degradation, asks the parent who launched a formal complaint about the Canadian novel. Don’t they violate the Toronto board’s policies of respect and tolerance?

“I have a major problem with a curriculum book that cannot be fully read out loud in class, in front of an assembly, directly to a teacher, a parent, or, for that matter, contains attitudes and words that cannot be used by students in class discussion or hallway conversation. Let alone a description of situations that must be embarrassing and uncomfortable to any young woman in that class – and probably the young men, too.”

He said if the book was anti-Islam, it wouldn’t be allowed.

Russell Morton Brown, a retired University of Toronto English professor, said The Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t likely written for 17-year-olds, “but neither are a lot of things we teach in high school, like Shakespeare.

“And they are all the better for reading it.”

Robert Edwards has a point. It wouldn’t be so bad if the book were any good; of course, as the last sentence reveals, the object of North American schooling is not education but social engineering. Mr. Edwards has an uphill battle on his hands.

To adapt something Malcolm Muggeridge once said, “I would rather be a minor character in a Jane Austen novelette than a major one in a Margaret Atwood book”.