Author: Edmondson, Lindsay (ASD-W)

By: Rebekah Wood & Kailey Connors
GSMS NEWS

Date: April 2021

-POINTS-

Students earn points for their colour during friendly school-wide competitions, such as dress-up days, door decorating contests, etc.

PURPLE: 242

GOLD: 222

Students Of The Month
Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8

-SPORTS-
Girls: Volleyball
Boys: Volleyball

DID YOU KNOW??

GEORGE STREET ONCE HAD A SLIDE (BY MME BOURGEOIS AND MME LENTZ’S ROOM)
AS A FIRE ESCAPE.

The next sport students can be on the look-out for is…

SCHOOL INFO
PHONE NUMBER: (506) 453-5419
EMAILS: Pierre.plourde@nbed.nb.ca
Michelle.ashfield@nbed.nb.ca
Lindsay.edmondson@nbed.nb.ca

Student submission… Thank you, Merrit Johnson 8D2!

8 out of the 10 most challenged books of 2019 were for LGBTQ+ content. Only a parent or teacher can challenge a book. Once the challenge is made it is reviewed at an administrative level. The book is not necessarily ever reviewed and therefore the overall intent of the book is not always taken into consideration. Instead these books are cherry picked for issues and banned accordingly. Therefore, banned books give a good overview of the issues that most worry the more conservative opinions of their period. Likely that is why 8 of the 10 most challenged books of 2019 were for LGBTQ+ content. It’s a big issue today.
This is the problem with censorship: too many people with issues, too few readers.
The most banned book of all time that I have ever read is To Kill A Mockingbird. It was first banned in 1966 because it was “immoral”. Most recently it was banned from 8th grade curriculums in Mississippi in 2017 for “making people uncomfortable”. I found this book neither immoral nor did it make me uncomfortable. In fact this book showed me a world that I never knew existed. Scout and Atticus are now two of my favorite characters ever and the idea that I might never have met them because of some teacher or parent’s personal issues drives me nuts.
So should we ever ban a book? What if a book is racist, should we ban it then? Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men were all banned for being racist. But I don’t think these are racist books. Instead I think they were taken out of the context of their time and misread. But then all books can be misread. So maybe, to be safe, we shouldn’t ban any books, not even for being racist. Let’s use books like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird to teach people, rather than taking these books away from them.
When we ban books, we ban ideas, we limit growth and we kill conversations. In the movie Inherit the Wind, which was about the Scopes Monkey Trial, Jerome Lawrence says, “progress isn’t a bargain, you have to pay for it”. In other words, for our civilization to move forward, we are going to have to give up some old ideas, and giving up old ideas always makes some people uncomfortable.
So whether the book is immoral or it makes people uncomfortable or it’s racist, is irrelevant. It isn’t always easy to know which books to ban, so maybe we shouldn’t ban any. It’s time we let people read what they want to read.

THE SCHOOL ANTHEM

GEORGE STREET MIDDLE SCHOOL, LIFELONG
LEARNING IS THE RULE.
ON THE FIELD-PURPLE AND GOLD, WE ARE FAST, BRAVE AND BOLD .
WE WORK HARD, WE’RE PROUD TO SAY, WE LEARN AND TRY OUR BEST EACH DAY.
WE’RE THE RIVERS, STRONG AND FREE, A BUILDING FULL OF HISTORY.
IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO YOU ARE, AT GEORGE, YOU’LL ALWAYS BE A STAR.
WE’RE CRUSADERS BLAZING OUR TRAIL, GEORGE STREET MIDDLE, BEST WITHOUT FAIL!!
IT DOESN’T M

STAFF SHOUT-OUTS

Mme Reynolds:
She is a great teacher
And she is nice to my class.
-Paul

Mr Godin:
He really helps me with mornings and gives me enough time to have fun in the classroom. He is awesome!
-Tyson
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