“The Diary of Anne Frank” led us all through the first steps of Holocaust education. Who doesn’t remember the stories she wrote? Her bravery transcends generations. Her story is a staple in middle school education, providing a chilling retelling of the Holocaust through the eyes of a young girl. Any adolescent can identify with someone his or her age writing a book. One woman in Northville, Mich., however, has filed a complaint against her child’s school board saying the diary is too graphic and that she wants the school to start using the edited version.
The part of the story she references is the passage in which Anne Frank describes the anatomy of her vagina, according to Fox Detroit. A mother has the right to shield her child from learning anatomy, and as a concept, it is understandable that she may not want her child to be exposed to a detailed description of a vagina. But hasn’t her 7th grader already taken some form of sexual education by then? Her child is likely either starting or in the throes of puberty and will need to start learning about anatomy one way or another.
And there is so much going on in the rest of the book that the passage is insignificant to the discovery she made between her legs. There are more than two years of documented fear and self-reflection that make the book so valuable. A 7th grader should know that the writer is in the process of maturing and hitting puberty much like them, and a passage about her genitals helps adolescents come to terms with their own changes.
The complaint targets this section and says it is graphic. Meanwhile the rest of the diary is about the Holocaust.
Considering she believes 7th graders are mature enough to acknowledge the terrible suffering people endured, she should also believe they are mature enough to handle a description of a vagina. The school must avoid censoring this segment of the book because it will also convey a message to students that the vagina is somehow taboo. Young girls will be faced with bearing shame because they have such an unthinkable body part. Intervening in the curriculum is not appropriate for good, stable education, especially at an age where children are highly impressionable.
If a family holds different values than the school does, that is a different story, but there is a difference between censoring ‘pornography’ and forbidding children from learning the parts of the reproductive system. Parents themselves cannot determine what contains educational merit.
Anne Frank had a vagina and she was not afraid to describe it. So what?
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