My daughter is in Brittany O'Neil's Multicultural Literature class at Williams Field High School. This is a college level class. Our kids are taking it because they are intelligent and mature enough to handle learning about other cultures and their stories.
First off, these are high school seniors, so Mr. Villafranca, who reported the teacher to police, is very naive or being willfully ignorant if he thinks none of them have ever heard, read, talked about or even had sex by now. This man is acting overly concerned over a book that his son didn’t even read, because he was given an alternative assignment.
Parents were given the list of books at the beginning of the year. If I remember correctly only one or two parents decided to not let their kids take the class after receiving the list. While I think this is to the detriment of those kids, those parents were given a choice and made what they felt was the right one for them.
Before each book is assigned, parents have to sign a permission slip online and/or on paper. Mr. Villafranca could have pulled his kid from the class if he was so upset about the college level reading material. But he did not. His son was given an alternative book to read, since Mr. Villafranca had issues with "Homegoing."
He has created a problem where there literally is none. This guy is just harassing a hard-working and excellent teacher for attention. For him to get police involved is absolutely insane. He seems to be a part of this new brand of conservative that has been creeping into our school boards and slowly destroying public education.
Every parent was given the information and given the choice to let their kids read and learn from these stories.
From the mother of a child in Ms. O’Neill’s multicultural lit class who is reading all the books.
Happy to report that after reading the first three, our worldviews have been slightly expanded and we have yet to burst into flame or takeover the world forcing every one to read the same books.
