Common Core ‘Exemplars’: Graphic Sex and Praising Castro

May 7, 2013 By Mary Grabar Comments (70)

I must admit that I would have been too embarrassed to teach Julia Alvarez’s sexually explicit novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, to the college students I have taught for over twenty years, much less to ninth- and tenth-graders, as many Georgia high school teachers have been instructed to do.  Some high school teachers also have a problem with its overtly feminist and leftist-leaning ideology. The men are portrayed as weak drunkards, continually cheating on their wives.  For example, there is a drunken New Year’s celebration of “the triumphant announcement.  Batista had fled!  Fidel, his brother Raul, and Ernesto they call Che had entered Havana and liberated the country.” No indication in the novel that Fidel and Raul turned out to be tyrants, or Che a mass murderer……To Read More…..