Go Ask Alice, Rainbow Parties, and Socialization
If you are about my age, you might remember the book, “Go Ask Alice”. There was a movie that followed it, and of course there is always the line in Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” with Grace Slick vocalizing “Go Ask Alice”
I am not sure what the intention of the book was, but I always had the feeling it was supposed to teach us young people to stay away from drugs. After all, “Alice” was a “normal” teenager. The book was Alice’s diary, and she was faithful with each entry. She was preoccupied with dieting, popularity, and boys. She gets mixed up with the drug scene, and her life just completely changes for the “better” so she thinks and so the young impressionable reader might think. She loses weight, she has boyfriends and girfriends, she runs away from home and they make this boutique. Her life goes downhill when she ends up in a psychiatric hospital, and supposedly gets clean and stays away from drugs. The warning to us readers was that the book doesn’t end, her life does, from an overdose, says the editor of the book.
That book, if I recall and growing up in the 70’s served as little warning and deterrant. In fact, I remember the book floating around in school and everyone wanting to be just like her and her friends. I remember giggles when someone would pass around the ‘juicy’ parts of the book.
Young people at that age, just think they’re invincible. They can be just like Alice, and not die, or lose control, or any other of the bad side effects of living dangerously. That’s just what they think. As far as I am concerned, the book taught nothing. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the book helped shift young people in the direction of drug use. Even though in the end, Alice dies, the middle parts just were way too “glorified”.
I don’t think educators have learned much since “Go Ask Alice”
The book “Rainbow Party” I fear will promote, not hinder the subject it is writing about, and our schools want to put this in the libraries of our high schools. Now the subject of the book is nothing new, it has already been on middle of the day television where young people could watch and learn all about it, compliments of OPRAH.
What is “Rainbow Party?” It’s a book of fiction, aimed at teens, and a warning to them regarding oral sex. Apparently (one learns something new everyday) the girls at the party all wear a different shade of lipstick, every color of the rainbow at an oral sex party, and I need not describe anymore from there.
I just fear this is “Go Ask Alice” all over again. It will sensationalize the activity. Teens don’t think so differently today. Even if the end of the book the characters face the dangers of venereal diseases, or worse, they still think it won’t happen to them.
Why do schools want to put this on the shelf? Why are people who are leary to do so scoffed at? Parents will worry and others will scream censorship.
It’s items like this that formed part of the 100 reasons I started to homeschool. I will never forget when I started homeschooling years ago, when I told people, their jaws would drop in shock and their very first question would be “What about their socialization????” Well, years later I find my children very well socialized. They can communicate with young and old and every age in between with great ability. For the most part, at every turn I receive praise for their behavior. If I had listened to the nay-sayers years ago, I might have not home-schooled fearing my babies would become social misfits. Well, they aren’t. They are completely the opposite.
One thing is for sure. If there ever was a danger of social misfit for my children, I’d chose that over them “socializing” at a rainbow party, any day.
USA TODAY ARTICLE
ANNISTON STAR ARTICLE
Link to the OPRAH Show Article
