SEATTLE, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- A parent asked the Seattle School Board to ban a classic novel, "Brave New World," arguing it's prejudicial to American Indians.
The school board Wednesday decided to postpone its decision on the 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley, saying it needed more time to deliberate and would again address the matter at a later meeting, Seattlepi.com and KUOW-TV, Seattle, reported.
Sarah Sense-Wilson, the mother of a student at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle, said her daughter was offended by the reading assignment.
"They left having an image of Indian people as being criminals, that we're to be feared, that we're scary, that we hold these ceremonies that are animalistic and brutal and violent," Sense-Wilson said.
Jack Miles, an English and religious studies professor at The University of California in Irvine and a member of the board of the Aldous and Laura Huxley Literary Trust, said, "(Huxley's) point is not to celebrate the white visitors and laugh at the Natives who are on the Reservation. It's rather to draw attention to the ways in which the larger society is the wilder and more depraved one."
A Seattle School District committee took the novel off the Nathan Hale curriculum, but Sense-Wilson said she wants the ban district-wide.
Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson said the novel has not been taught in an inappropriate or insensitive manner.
