Bronx Teacher Assigns Chuck Palahniuk Story, is Suspended

By Roy Edroso Mon., Nov. 9 2009 at 8:28 AM

Categories: Featured, Schools

We recall that when we worked as a tutor in Brooklyn in the 90s, many of our students carried a copy of Sapphire's Push with their schoolbooks. We wonder what those now-grown students will think when and if they learn that a teacher in the Bronx has been suspended for assigning a Chuck Palahniuk story to a test-prep class.

Greg Van Voorhis, who has taught at The Bronx School of Finance for seven years, gave out "Guts" to students preparing for the Regents exam. The story involves a young man who, after describing exotic masturbatory practices, places his anus during one such over a suction drain at the bottom of a pool, to which he becomes stuck, disastrously...

Van Voorhis reportedly told this teenage students not to report what he had shown them, but authorities found out anyway and removed him from his regular job at The Bronx School of Finance last week. Students have created a Save Mr V Facebook site with 298 members at this writing. "Do not get Sucked in the 'pool inlet hole,'" writes one of the discussion participants.

The Post has great fun with this today, noting that the "'self-pleasure' reading" first appeared in Playboy, that Van Voorhis was discovered when "students blabbed about the ribald tale," and that "Palahniuk's agent said the author was unavailable for comment." They also lede, in an apparent reference to Palahniuk's novel Fight Club, "The first rule about having an edgy English teacher is don't talk about your edgy English teacher."

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