The Title is "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Should not be read in schools", this is an essay supporting the idea that the book should not be taught in school due to its explicit content.

I agree with your opinion on this book, but if I were writing this paper, I might have tried to find maybe soemthing like statistical proof about students being exposed to violence and the correlation of that to increase in crime, or something. Teachers don't usually like it if you just state your opinion, but as far as I know, that may have been the assignment. You do have some grammatical errors in this essay, but overall, I think it is pretty good!

You bring up many good points, but did you ever look at it from the other side? Yo usay you doubt the majority of the high school population are rapists, but did you ever wonder about how many have been raped? Rape victims need to hear other's stories to come out with their own. I Know Why the Caged Bird sings has helped children come forward and not be afraid. They saw someone like themselves. Perhaps they didn't know what happened to them was wrong. Perhaps they didn't know how to tell someone. Perhaps they wanted to know more aobut rape victims, but were scared to do it by themselves. Teh list goes on. It's the same with racism. We need examples of how horrible these things are in order to know how to avoid them and deal with them. You talk about how disrespectful the characters are. You and Maya Angelou are not in conflict here. She is also trying to impact her readers on how disrespectful and wrong these things are. I think a boy would be less likely to rape if he were not ignorant about the results to a victim and the consequences. Minds are not simply freely absorbing this if it is in a school setting. Tehy will discuss these things and realize then, if they did not before, how wrong these things are.

I have finished reading "I know why the caged bird sings" in my 10th grade english class. Yeah, the rape scenes are pretty disgusting, but i don't think it's too much for anybody to handle. Every 10th grader knows what private parts boys and girls have and what they do, both from health class and from tv and friends. The fact that a father would rape his own daughter is disturbing, but i don't think anyone suffers emotional scars because of a couple pages or so. 10th graders are exposed to much worse than reading a couple pages about rape. They deal with drugs, sex, alcohol, along with so many others you wouldn't believe. This is just a case of overreacting and trying to shield children from material they already know about. How stupid.