July 27, 2023 – West Bend, WI – Recently, I was overwhelmed by the well-done movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on a true story about the worldwide epidemic of child trafficking for sex, and how the U.S. seems to be the hub for it.
After watching interviews with the actors, producers, and even the real Tim Ballard who Sound of Freedom is about, one of the problems suggested concerns the sexualization within the curriculum of our schools today.
Looking at our own community through our local news, my eyes were opened wide to the inappropriate books being offered to our children in West Bend and the surrounding school districts. It turns out that age-inappropriate books are actually a national crisis, as well as a local one. In fact, I was shocked to learn that The Kite Runner (#11), one of the two books under reconsideration in the West Bend School District, is only 3 ranks below the sexually perverted book Fifty Shades of Grey (#8) according to the American Library Association’s most challenged list of public and school library books.
During the reconsideration review meeting of The Kite Runner, almost everyone on the committee admitted that portions of the book could trigger trauma. They tried to wash it away by comparing the number of pages of trauma-triggering excerpts to the size of the entire book; that’s not the way trauma works.
It only takes minutes to be traumatized by rape for the rest of a lifetime. Most people never heal completely from a loss due to suicide. Why are we offering students books where trauma-triggering and sexualization are possible issues?
As the Sound of Freedom movie proclaims, “Children are not for sale.” Let’s not sell our youth to the liberal ideologies that lead to harming the minds and bodies of our youth.
Jenni Ciriacks
West Bend, WI
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