"In the meantime, here at home, a girl in the 13-year-old's homeroom was reading a book about gay rights before class started. The homeroom teacher told her to put it away because it was "not appropriate for school". She was preparing for a debate in her Civics class, so basically, our homework is inappropriate for school if it disturbs another teacher. She, of course, put it away. One more little bit of silence."

What was the name of the book?

It seems to me that if she was preparing for a debate, she would taking notes from the book- and not merely reading a book.
In baseball and other sports, people like disagree with the calls. Maybe the teacher was wrong, but does it really mean anything if a teacher makes a wrong call? It's seems to me that bitching about some teacher supposed mistake might be a fun pastime- for example of how much fun it is look at all political talking heads or sports talking heads on TV. But I don't think it's very significant

Just for fun, replace the "book about gay rights" with "the Bible", now how would you view this?

Btw, surely you aren't under the impression that the Bible wouldn't useful in a debate or not useful in terms of understanding English literature in general.