"Write and Wrong" reaction

I thought this article was very interesting and I still cannot get over the fact that the teacher, Connie Heermann, lost her job over this book. Yes, "The Freedom Writers Diary" may contain some profanity, racial slurs, and other "inappropriate"material, but this is the kind of books that kids should be reading in high schools. In our society today, profanity and other inappropriate topics are becoming more and more common. I don't think anything they'd read in this book is anything they haven't read about on the Internet or seen on TV. Also, it is these kinds of book that engage high school students. Reading one boring book after another won't make them any more excited or knowledgeable about living in our societies today. By giving students these challenging, controversial reading assignments, they are forced to reexamine their beliefs and standards and think more on their own instead of the norms their parents, communities or society in general have laid out. As I already said, I can't believe a teacher would lose her job for this! I only hope that someday teacher will have more freedom in chosing books for their classes to read.