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Home-Schooling Mom's Complaint Gets Graphic Book Pulled From Modesto Classroom

by Jim Brown
November 10, 2003
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(AgapePress) - A California parent has succeeded in getting her local public school district to remove a sexually explicit book from classrooms. Just hours after Pam LaChappell called the Modesto School District's curriculum director and objected to Always Running -- La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., the book was pulled from the school system's English classes.

In the book, author Luis Rodriguez recounts events that occurred while he was a member of various Latino gangs based in and around East Los Angeles during the late 1960s. Rodriguez, who is today an award-winning poet and publisher, decided to document his youth in gangland East L.A. in an effort to steer his teenaged son, Ramiro, away from the gang the boy had recently joined.

But during his gang days, the author participated in several episodes of random violence and criminal acts and was jailed on several occasions. His urban memoir describes highly charged events from his life, including fights, Chicano funerals, shootings, rapes, and encounters with the police and the justice system.

LaChappell says although the author discourages readers from joining a gang or using drugs, the book contains extremely graphic material. "There is a lot of sexual violence, which concerns me because of the fact that you have students who have been sexually assaulted in their past. And for them to be forced to either hear a teacher read this book out loud, as occurred in Modesto, or to have them read it at home can cause post traumatic stress syndrome to be triggered."

LaChappell, who has three children in college and a fifth-grader that she is home-schooling, takes a strong interest in what the public schools are doing. She made her complaint after learning that Always Running, which contains pornographic passages and scenes of explicit sexual violence, was being read aloud in English classes at Beyer High School. She says the district's superintendent agreed that the book was inappropriate for school use.

According to the concerned parent, when the book was brought to the official's attention, the superintendent found it even more graphic than some of the other works about which LaChappell had complained. And interestingly enough, the author himself has told the press his book is "not for everyone, and he would not consider it for general use in an English class," she adds.

LaChappell says the head of the Modesto Teacher Association was infuriated that a complaint from a "home-school mom" had prompted school officials to discontinue using Rodriguez's book in the classroom. But despite the removal of Always Running from the Modesto district's classrooms, the controversial work remains on the California Department of Education's recommended reading list.

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