Abstract
By Charles S. Clark
Why are complaints about American schoolbooks on the rise?
What Johnny can, should or shouldn't be reading in school is a question that inflames political passions. Across the country, irate parents are confronting school officials with demands that certain books be removed from required class reading, deleted from lists of optional reading or removed entirely from library shelves. Complaints range from profane language to sexual explicitness to “anti-Christian” images to unflattering renderings of minorities. School boards, teachers and parents have been joined by activists on the Right and the Left in battling the issues in communities and in the courts. The growing controversy has exposed fundamental legal and ethical questions over who makes decisions in a democratic society's schools, and whether parents who try to affect book selections are trying to exercise undue censorship.
Go to top
Overview
Among educators charged with inspiring young readers, the text-book series “Impressions” is widely viewed as a modern, imaginative language tool for stimulating the minds of children ages 5-12. Combining folklore with readings from such literary giants as Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis, the 15-book series has been used by 1,500 schools in 34 states over the past decade. The series advises teachers to win the attention of students with special drills. “Tell the children that a magician has cast a spell on some children to create the situation depicted in the illustration,” goes one lesson. “Have them work in pairs to write the magic spell the magician used.”
But some parents -- particularly fundamentalist Christians and educational traditionalists -- view “Impressions” as a dangerous promoter of witchcraft, pop psychology, violence and despair. They claim children suffer insomnia -- and worse -- from reading “Impressions” stories about witches who say such things as, “Bring me the hearts of your mother and sister, and you shall live.”
“It's sick stuff,” says Robert L. Simonds, founder of the California-based Citizens for Excellence in Education, citing 463 objectionable entries and 170 “bizarre” illustrations. “We want them out.” [1]
Such attitudes have made “Impressions” the most frequently attacked set of schoolbooks in the country. At least 55 school districts have been confronted over their use of the series, and so far, five have abandoned it, according to People for the American Way, a group that promotes protection of First Amendment rights (see p. 160).
In Wheaton, Ill., in late 1990, a meeting to protest the series drew 300 parents, and a lawsuit filed in a California school district has worked its way to the appeals court level. When the Sioux Falls, S.D., school board voted to continue using “Impressions,” a protesting parent grabbed a teacher and warned, “The Prince of Darkness will get you.” [2]
The American publisher of the Canadian series, Harcourt Brace & Co., has circulated a 359-page “defense kit” to teachers explaining that “Impressions” doesn't promote any religion, that scary themes are “not predominant” and that the spooky stories that are included have a “positive, developmental” effect by allowing children to “confront and resolve their fears in a fictional setting.”
Such arguments have done little to still the criticism.
The number of challenges to books used in American public schools rose to 348 in 1991-92, according to People for the American Way, the highest tally in the 10-year history of the group's survey. The Chicago-based American Library Association documented 394 challenges to school library books in the 1991-92 school year and estimated that only 20 percent of such challenges get reported. The New York City- based National Coalition Against Censorship reports that in the last two months of 1992 alone, it was summoned for help in defending 54 different books in schools and libraries.
Most significant, according to People for the American Way, is the recent success rate of the challenges: A record 41 percent of the books it surveyed were either removed or had student access restricted, up from 31 percent the year before. “More than one-fifth of all incidents,” the group added, “were the handiwork of extremist conservative groups or individuals, at the national or local level.”
The most common complaints label the books as “Satanic,” “New Age” or “anti-Christian.” Other frequent objections cite profane or objectionable language, and the treatment of sexuality considered offensive.
“Censorship is based on magic,” says Lee Burress, an English professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who has written extensively on school censorship. “It's an attempt to deal with the ungrounded belief that if you mention the things you don't like, what you fear will come to pass.” Burress says that in the past few decades, controversial books have literally been burned in 20-30 American towns.
But to many parents and conservative activists, the censorship charge is an unfair tactic. (See “At Issue,” p. 161.) “Censorship is an epithet, a money-raising word that People for the American Way uses to build its donor list,” says Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum in Alton, Ill. “It's a flyspeck on the horizon in relation to the real issue. Most complaints are about school courses” that offer psychological treatment of children rather than imparting knowledge, she says.
The survey by People for the American Way is also dismissed by Bob Knight, director of cultural studies at the Washington-based Family Research Council. “It's ludicrous,” he says. “Most parental attacks are on the age-appropriateness of the books, and most of the challenged books are retained. If the books end up being offered differently, People for the American Way counts that as censorship. Their claims are greatly exaggerated.”
Conservative organizations that help parents mount book challenges are immersed in a larger struggle to revolutionize the public schools and halt the teaching of what they see as morality-free values, evolution as fact, gay liberation (see story, p. 151), premarital sex, New Age meditations, world government and “non-directional” instruction on drugs and alcohol. They also reject the “look-say, whole-word” method of learning to read as opposed to old-fashioned “phonics.” The look-say method is associated with “progressive education” while phonics is associated with “traditional schooling.” [4]
But calls for censorship are also heard from the political Left, if less loudly. The NAACP and other African-American groups have long protested classic works in which characters use the word “nigger,” among them Huckleberry Finn, Gone with the Wind, Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Just-So Stories of Rudyard Kipling.
What the polar opposites often share, however, is a style of applying emotional pressure that critics say is an effort to impose a minority view on the public. Many seek to bypass the long-established procedures that school systems employ for determining what materials to give to young students. The steady protests that often come from small groups have clearly prompted textbook publishers to “self- censor” by avoiding controversial subjects in textbooks. (See story, p. 159.) And adamant parents have sorely tested the mettle of teachers and librarians who, in extreme cases, have been forced to write a rationale for each of hundreds of books they may have sitting on classroom or library shelves, or upon failing to do so, to remove them.
Supporters of the attacks on books point to the fact that students are captive audiences in the public schools. And they argue that just because a child can read does not mean that he or she is ready emotionally or psychologically for delicate topics.
For critics of censorship, the result is a climate in which “if you happen not to like something, the tendency is to try to get rid of it rather than argue things out,” says Oren J. Teicher, president of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.
“If you're spending the taxpayers' money,” replies Schlafly, “you have to put up with citizens, parents and taxpayers looking over your shoulder and second-guessing your judgment.”
How the arguments are eventually resolved is likely to hinge on the following issues: Is it fair to charge schoolbook critics with censorship?
Most dictionaries define censorship as the suppression of information by government or other officials, a fact not lost on conservative schoolbook activists. “People for the American Way can't produce any examples of a U.S. government authority preventing or forbidding the publication or distribution of a book or newspaper or article,” notes Schlafly's newsletter. So its “entire report is an attempt to justify [its] peculiar use of the word ‘censorship' to excoriate parents who try to protect their children in public schools from being required to participate in classroom activities which parents believe violate their parental rights.” [5]
The Christian group Citizens for Excellence in Education joins with its liberal opponents in eschewing censorship. “Censorship of ideas and the repression of freedom of expression is deplorable in a free society,” it asserts in a position statement. “However, censorship and selection should not be confused. In a school setting involving the captive audience of children, grade-and age-appropriate books, materials and ideas should be selected with extreme care and common sense, keeping in mind the desire to present and model the highest moral, civic, patriotic and cultural ideas.”
Critics of censorship define the term more broadly, as does the American Library Association: “The suppression of ideas and information that certain persons -- individuals, groups, or officials -- find objectionable or dangerous.”
“Censors always deny they're censors,” says Professor Burress.
“The verb to censor operates according to its own peculiar grammatical rules,” writes Joan DelFattore, a University of Delaware English professor and author of a recent book about censorship. “It is used almost exclusively in the second or third person: ‘You are censoring' or ‘They are censoring.' It is almost never used in the first person: ‘We are censoring.'” [6]
More commonly, the comments are similar to the words of Donna Beach, a protesting parent in Harwinton, Conn., who said, “I don't think controversial or offensive books should be taught in schools.” [7]
“Yes, technically, only a school can censor,” says Deanna Duby, deputy legal director of People for the American Way, “and in our rhetorical moments, many of us have used the term in an incorrect sense. But even though these parents aren't censors, they are asking for censorship. They are attempting to get books removed on grounds other than educational ones.”
Advocates of censorship, observers note, can be readily differentiated from concerned parents by their tactics: They often act clandestinely (in at least one case removing books when the school librarian was out of the building), often apply pressure on officials to act on books summarily, often attack parts of books without reading the whole and often attack authors for their associations rather than the content of their books.
An oft-cited distinction between censorship and selection was made in the 1970s by attorney Julia T. Bradley. “Censorship is an act whereby one group imposes its value judgment upon another and permanently limits access to certain resources,” she wrote. “Selection, on the other hand, is a process; the only inherent constraint upon choosing all published materials is that of budget. When censorship occurs, decisions are absolute; a book is unsuitable. In the selection process, choices are relative; is this book more useful, for varied reasons, then another? Moreover, where censorship occurs, one group permanently terminates another's right to judge a book for itself. Where selection operates without restraints, a book which readers consider ‘bad' will die of neglect.” [8]
Such open-ended views of intellectual freedom, however, are not persuasive to many conservatives. People who think that way “have killed the whole idea of standards,” says Knight of the Family Research Council. “They're saying everyone must be exposed to everything or else there's censorship. Of course, there's censorship. We call it editing, selectivity.”
Conservative columnist Cal Thomas, in his 1983 volume Book Burning, says that each schoolbook “ought to reflect the values and views of the community it is in. I don't believe that's censorship; I just believe that's part of the marketplace of ideas.”
Selecting materials appropriate to readers' ages “is not censorship,” maintains Schlafly. “Do you think elementary schools should stock Playboy and Penthouse? Of course not. It's a judgment call.”
The need for age-appropriate materials in schools is acknowledged by Duby of People for the American Way, as long as such considerations are “included with all educational criteria, such as whether the material teaches, how it has been reviewed by recognized experts and how it is viewed by the local population.”
But “setting community standards for age-appropriateness is not the same as taking books off the shelf,” says Gus Steinhilber, general counsel for the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. “Age is an area where reasonable people can differ. Professionals and M.D.s can be brought in to testify as to what stage a child can comprehend material or as to whether it can cause damage. But you can't draw any black lines.”
“The age-appropriateness argument could be raised on almost all school censorship issues,” says DelFattore. “It's almost a knee-jerk reaction by anyone who doesn't like a book because they know the charge” is difficult to counter for people who like the book.
Among those most often labeled “censors” are longtime textbook critics Norma and Mel Gabler of Longview, Texas (see p. 156). They prefer to call themselves “balancers.” “Our efforts have been almost entirely in showing textbook content to the public and urging that students be given more balanced and accurate information,” they said in a press release. “When we do this, the small minority of Americans who hold the same values taught in the textbooks attack us and label us ‘censors.'” The Gablers and other fundamentalists, in turn, frequently apply the word “censorship” when discussing textbooks that omit references to God. Should schoolbooks describe life as it is or life as it should be?
“This book creates ugly imagery for innocent minds,” a parent in Barrington, Ill., said of the fifth-grade health text My Relationships, which has a section on incest. “Like it or not, this is the '90s,” replied a supporter of the book. “Our children need to be aware of what's going on.” [9]
At the core of many demands for what many educators see as censorship is an assumption that exposing a child to an idea or a phenomenon in effect endorses such behavior and might cause the child to emulate it. Hence the reaction of a Florida father who objected to Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese, the story of a teenage boy whose father testified against a criminal gang that had infiltrated the government. The parent blamed it and other “filthy little books” for the dirty language he hears in school hallways.
A New York City group links the teaching of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in schools with a rise in teenage suicide. A Texas parent warns that reading Jonathan Swift's 18th-century satire A Modest Proposal will incite Texas youth to eat people. And the Beloit, Wis., school board challenges Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic (“If you have to dry the dishes and you drop one on the floor -- maybe they won't let you dry the dishes anymore,”), saying “the book encourages children to break dishes so they won't have to dry them.”
Radical changes in a juvenile literature that has moved from the idealized to the “realistic” in recent decades are a source of frustration for many traditionalists. In testimony to a federal commission, Schlafly recalled the pre-World War II school readers she found lying around her house that emphasized “thrift, honesty, family love, respect for elders ... manliness, kindness to the less fortunate, obedience to parents, the consequences of idleness and truancy, crime doesn't pay and why virtue and love are worth more than material riches.”
“By the 1950s,” she continued, “in the heyday of Dick and Jane, the readers were cleansed of such values. By the 1970s, the values question in public schools had become very much worse than value- neutral stories.” [10]
One of the hottest purveyors of modern “realism” is Judy Blume, whose children's works have sold more than 50 million copies. Blume has heard calls for removal of her book Blubber, about a much-teased overweight girl, because of its “existential despair,” “nihilism,” “hedonism” and the fact that “bad is never punished.” One parent said Blume's discussions of sexuality were “too arousing for a teenager. They have no place to let it out.”
“Censorship grows out of fear of ideas,” Blume says. “Usually, it is topics adults don't feel comfortable talking about but that are of paramount interest to children.” [11]
Another who makes waves by “telling it like it is” is Barry Louis Polisar, a Washington-area children's singer who was banned from schools in Anne Arundel County, Md., for performing such lyrics as, “We go and put the goldfish in the toilet bowl; and spread strawberry jelly on the toilet paper roll; Standing on the sofa with carrots up our noses, pretending we are monsters not wearing any clothes.” He dismisses his critics as “people who want to look at life with all the bad parts cut out.” [12]
What the country is seeing, says Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, is “the last gasp of the myth of traditional values. People are yearning for the good old days of the 1940s and '50s, when everything was perfect. But those good old days never were! Don't tell me wife beating and homosexuality and sex abuse are all new things that never existed before!”
“The Right is creating a world that is happiness and light,” she continues. “But the world is happiness and light and pain and despair, and it takes a real tough teacher today to say so.”
Burress of the University of Wisconsin writes, “Our tendency to confuse the world of art and reality sometimes reaches such ridiculous extremes that we all notice it, as in the report of the Montana cowboy seeing his first film, who pulled his pistol and shot the villain on the screen.” [13]
“The metaphor that good books are like food and bad books are like poison is clearly a mistaken comparison,” he also asserts. “A person may decide to eat a nourishing substance, or a destructive substance, but after the decision is made and carried out, the results of the eating are out of the control of the eater....Reading is quite different. The reader decides during every moment of the reading activity whether to continue reading, how to interpret what is read, how to respond to what is read, and what action, if any, to take, with regard to what is read.” [14]
Schlafly argues that children do not go to school to learn realism or decision-making that is disconnected from an overall morality. They go to learn “to do fine things, not to speak in ungrammatical sentences or use profane language,” she says. “A child needs definite, clear instruction from books. What if driver's ed had a decision- making session on whether to drive on the right side of the road?”
Knight of the Family Research Council says it is hardly realistic to present a child “with a world that is without hope, that dwells on morbidity. If a story shows a reality with warts and all, it ought to be made clear that those warts come about for a reason, that there is a cause and effect in the universe.” Too many books, he says, “promote randomness and meaninglessness” with no all-encompassing morality.
To many, the question of which books to permit boils down to how much trust to place in individual children. “Children determine for themselves whether they agree or disagree with what goes on around them,” writes Lois Winkel, editor of the Elementary School Library Collection. “Children determine for themselves whether behaviors portrayed in books, on television or on recordings are ones to emulate. They do that on the basis of family-instilled values.” [15] What role should parents play in selecting books for schools?
Syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff, author of a recent book on censorship, has described a visit to Idaho to interview parents who were protesting schoolbooks. “I failed entirely to persuade the parents that the new books would not damage their children,” he wrote. “But as we talked, it became clear that something else was gnawing at them. They felt mocked by an angry group of their neighbors, including some educators, who called them censors ... insistent on imposing their own values on the community. ‘Surely,' a minister said to me, ‘we have a right to protest. The First Amendment does not exclude us.'” [16]
Though challenges to school-approved books come from many quarters, the vast majority emanate from parents. A recent Education Department-funded study by Dianne McAfee Hopkins, a University of Wisconsin library studies professor, found that of 739 book challenges from 1987-90,64 percent came from parents, 13 percent from teachers and 7 percent from principals. [17] (The rest came from political groups, superintendents and school boards.)
The effect of challenges in many communities is confusion over who has final say. As DelFattore explains, “Once school officials are elected, they make the textbook selections, often in consultation with the community and with education experts. Any parent in the community may then challenge the decisions. But which parent should prevail? Often the conflict is between the values of two sets of parents. If the majority rules, does that mean the minority's views are not represented at all? It's important to recognize that textbook selection will inevitably lead to a discussion, which is not in itself unhealthy.”
Protesters on the religious right, DelFattore continues, are well- versed on procedures, and most are willing to work within the system. But many take stands on principle, complicating the decisions confronting officials. When their child is offered the opportunity to read an alternative book for credit, they often refuse, saying it stigmatizes their children and causes them to miss out on class discussions.
“I don't believe any material is beyond the right of parents to determine suitability,” argues Knight. “If they're a minority, but there's no majority to oppose them, they have a right to that consensus.” Knight also believes the normal procedures are “rigged to minimize parental input. How many parents have the time to become intimately involved in the intricacies of school management and textbook selection?” he asks. “The complaints, after all, come after the kids bring the books home from school.”
Duby of People for the American Way says the Right tries to portray her group as opposed to parental involvement, “but we say every parent should get involved, and those who complain about books should ask for alternative reading.”
“I support parents who don't want their kids to read certain books,” says Burress, “but they will pay some penalty in ignorance of what is probably important literature. And they don't have the right to deny those books to others.”
The National Council of Teachers of English offers extended guidelines to its members, encouraging teachers to keep informed about book-selection issues and maintain a dialogue with parents and school supervisors. It recommends that teachers “engage students in discussions about and activities related to intellectual freedom” and keep an eye on activities of such groups as the Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, the American Family Association and Citizens for Excellence in Education.
“If some attacks are made by groups or individuals frankly hostile to free inquiry and open discussion, others are made by misinformed and misguided people who, acting on emotion or rumor, simply do not understand how the books are to be used,” its pamphlet says. “Others are made by well-intentioned and conscientious people who fear that harm will come to some segment of the community if a particular book is read or recommended.” [18]
Individual books, some educators argue, should be treated as “innocent until proven guilty,” which means they shouldn't be removed while a complaint is under review.
Hopkins says that challenged books are more likely to be retained if the school has a written policy on book selection, if the principal as well as teachers support retention and if the challenge was presented in writing. Oral challenges are more likely to result in a ban, Hopkins says, because “they may not be taken as seriously, and then the librarian is less likely to seek support.”
Finally, Hopkins notes, the ability to turn back a book challenge depends on a librarian's psychological make-up. “Belief in one's ability to affect the outcome and a willingness to question authority -- such as a teacher, principal or school board member -- may make retention more likely,” she says.
If a local complaint works its way to the school board level, Steinhilber of the National School Boards Association advises librarians to document facts, consult a lawyer and enlist help from the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, the American Library Association, the American Association of Publishers and People for the American Way. “The board may want to begin its own anti-censorship campaign,” he writes. “Often, groups looking to burn books are looking as much for favorable media attention as for success in their efforts. The media will also understand that if these efforts against the school system result in censorship, the First Amendment rights of all are in jeopardy.” [19]
Forrest Turpen, executive director of the Christian Educators Association, denies that conservative organizations and parents who enter into book-selection controversies are any such threat. “We got involved simply because numerous parents began calling us out of concern,” he says. “We wanted to help parents understand their rights and responsibilities and give them information about the textbook- adoption process.” [20]
“Parents have a right to be involved in what their children are being taught in the public schools the parents pay for,” says Beverly LaHaye, president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America. “That does not mean that every book objected to should be removed. It means school administrators, teachers and parents should be encouraged to freely debate educational issues on the local level -- that's called democracy.” [21]
Go to top
Background
Battles over censorship were in full force at least as early as 1644, the year English writer John Milton wrote his famous Areopagitica to defend freedom of the press. To remove all “scandalous” books would “require the time of not a few overseers,” he noted. “Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue.” [22]
In schools, debates were under way in 19th-century America, when the perennially troublesome Huckleberry Finn was attacked, not for racially sensitive language but for mocking conventional morality and using bad grammar.
One of the earliest American efforts at laying down the law on censorship was penned by Pennsylvania Judge Curtis Bok, who wrote in 1913 that censorship may be applied “only where there is reasonable and demonstrable cause to believe that a crime or misdemeanor has been committed or [is] about to be committed as a result of the publication and distribution of the writing in question: The opinion of anyone that a tendency thereto exists or that such a result is self-evident is insufficient and irrelevant. The causal connection between the book and the criminal behavior must appear beyond the shadow of a doubt.” [23] The Scopes “Monkey” Trial
American history textbooks were bound in controversy soon after World War I, when several were attacked as unpatriotic and “pro- British” by the Hearst newspapers, the mayor of Chicago and others. The Daughters of the American Revolution weighed in to denounce popular textbooks for insufficient coverage of the nation's military feats, while the Ku Klux Klan complained that too much space was given to Jews and Catholics. [24]
It was in 1925 that a group called the World Christian Fundamentalist Association succeeded in winning passage in Tennessee of a law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. The fledgling American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took it upon itself to challenge the law in court. The result was the world-famous “monkey trial” of substitute schoolteacher John Scopes.
The fundamentalists brought in orator and aging presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan to argue the case for teaching only the creation story as described in the Bible. The ACLU retained famed attorney Clarence Darrow to argue a teacher's right to teach the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. The ensuing 11-day drama, which has been retold in a famous play, films and many books, resulted in a conviction and $100 fine for Scopes (later reversed on a technicality). The Tennessee law remained on the books until 1967. Going After Communists
By the late 1930s, fear of world communism prompted attacks from major lobbying organizations, among them the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Legion, which lambasted a popular U.S. history textbook for being “socialist” and “communist.” By the 1950s, such attacks were also heard from such groups as the John Birch Society, prompting leftist author and poet Granville Hicks to define a censor as “a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”
In the early 1950s, in the age of McCarthyism, the House of Representatives established the Gathings Committee, charged with cracking down on controversial “unclean” paperback books that allegedly promoted delinquency and sexual permissiveness. The panel issued a majority report and proposed legislation to establish a federal censorship board, but it never became law.
Swimming against this tide were many teachers, school officials, librarians and lawyers who spoke of the dangers in suppressing ideas. In 1952, the American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution condemning textbook censorship.
Seeking to distinguish between censorship and the proper selection process in schools and libraries, librarian Lester Asheim wrote in 1953: “Selection begins with a presumption in favor of liberty of thought; censorship with a presumption in favor of thought control....Selection's approach to the book is positive, seeking its values in the book as a book, and in the book as a whole. Censorship's approach is negative, seeking for vulnerable characteristics wherever they can be found anywhere within the book, or even outside it....Selection seeks to protect the right of the reader to read; censorship seeks to protect not the right -- but the reader himself -- from the fancied effects of reading. The selector has faith in the intelligence of the reader; the censor has faith only in his own.” [25] Textbook Activism
It was in 1961 that Texans Mel and Norma Gabler launched the crusade that would establish them for decades as fixtures on the textbook industry's landscape. They were prompted when their son came home from school with a history text that deeply disturbed them. “I was naive,” recalls Mel Gabler, a longtime Exxon employee. “I didn't think a textbook could be wrong. But then I could find nothing in the book about constitutionally limited government or individual rights. The book said all powers had been given up by the states and were now in Washington. As a strict constitutionalist, it set me on fire.”
Texas was one of the largest textbook markets as well as one of the 23 so-called “adoption” states -- meaning that all its school districts are assigned the same texts once they're approved by state officials. The Gablers began attending state hearings to object to texts that they thought lauded President Roosevelt's New Deal, emphasized feminists at the expense of housewives and mothers or furthered the “values are relative” agenda of “the apostles of social change.”
Hoping to avoid the mistakes of rival textbook critics who attacked authors for their “communist” or other hard-to-prove affiliations, the Gablers' Educational Research Analysts decided to stop dealing with authors and to concentrate on “the product.” The tactics they perfected are explained in a guide the Gablers later published for parents who want to challenge textbooks: “A possible approach with school board members, community leaders and school officials is to ask them to react to certain statements, before they realize that those statements are direct quotes from a questionable textbook. When shown that the very thing they object to is a direct quote from the book it will be more difficult for them to take a position that something is wrong with you and not the book.” [26]
Repelled by a trend toward realism in modern youth literature and goaded by a 1962 Supreme Court decision banning school prayer, fundamentalists and other traditionalist parents became regular protesters at school boards across the country. Most of the challenges were to classic novels being used in high schools -- Brave New World, Crime and Punishment, A Farewell to Arms, Les Miserables, Of Human Bondage, Sister Carrie. In dozens of communities, reported Look magazine, extremists “have realized that school boards pick school superintendents who, in turn, pick teachers, books and establish curricula. Since few people turn out for school board elections, they are ripe pickings for a determined undercover campaign by a small group of zealots.” [27]
In Downey, Calif., Edgar Rice Burroughs' books of jungle life were on the verge of being removed from an elementary school library because of a report that Tarzan and Jane were not married. When it was established that they were indeed husband and wife, the books stayed.
The rise of the counterculture in the late 1960s created new demands for frankness in discussions of sex and political controversies in youth literature. By 1969, J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel of adolescent angst, Catcher in the Rye, had become the single most attacked work in school libraries, according to Burress -- at the same time that it was being ordered in growing quantities by numerous school librarians. Backlash in the '70s
In the 1970s, the arrival of legal abortion, non-traditional roles for women, gay liberation and raised black consciousness produced a counter-reaction on the Christian Right. A group of senior citizens in Warsaw, Ind., publicly burned 40 copies of Values Clarification, a textbook of readings from great thinkers about how individuals learn to make moral choices. Their complaint: The book taught moral relativism, situational ethics and secular humanism.
Publishers became chary of releasing schoolbooks that contained any potentially objectionable material, applying their concerns even to the plays of Shakespeare. Popular editions of Romeo and Juliet deleted all hints of sex between the unmarried lovers (rendering them, in the words of DelFattore, “just friends,”) and eliminated a passage in Hamlet in which the Danish prince tells Ophelia, “That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.”
Calls for what critics deride as censorship were also heard from the political Left. The Council on Interracial Books for Children, a New York group of concerned black parents, attacked what they viewed as racist and sexist books, noting: “It seems to us there has been an abdication of responsibility for protecting children from the pernicious effects of such racist and otherwise anti-human books. Unsafe cars are recalled by the manufacturer. Dangerous drugs are taken off the market by the [Food and Drug Administration]. Children's clothing that contains hazardous chemicals is also removed. But who in the publishing world assumes responsibility for the damaging effects of children's books once they are published?” [28]
The National Council of Teachers of English summarized the reasons for the steady calls for censorship during this period, citing the protests of the 1960s, declining SAT scores, increased visibility of women and minorities, sex and drug education, new frankness in depicting teen problems in literature, removal of prayer in schools, resentment among parents toward the new math and the formation of new religious and political organizations. [29] Reagan-Era Rulings
The number of challenges to school and library books declined slightly in the late 1970s, according to a study by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Services, but picked up again in the '80s. “Censorship really came alive for me after Reagan was elected in 1980,” wrote novelist Judy Blume. “The next day, the censors were crawling out of the woodwork, as if to say, ‘Now it's our turn.'” [30]
A series of court cases bolstered the movement of parents seeking a return to traditional values in schools. In Island Trees Union Free School v. Pico, the Supreme Court in 1982 backed a school board's authority to remove 10 books from the school library because they were, in the words of one observer, “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.” But in a complicated decision, the court said the board could not ban books to deny students access to ideas.
The following year, a Tennessee case began a four-year trip through the courts that would epitomize the censorship controversy for much of the decade. Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education began when a group of parents sued their school board, demanding the right to opt their children out of some required reading. The assignment in question, which included readings from The Wizard of Oz, Goldilocks, Cinderella and The Diary of Anne Frank, were designed to encourage critical thinking, role playing and religious tolerance, though the parents complained that they were teaching values other than those ofthe Bible.
On Nov. 10, 1983, the school board rejected their complaint, saying that failing to have the children use the basic reading program could affect how the students learn in science, social studies or any other portion of the curriculum. The board also said that “opting out” would create religious divisiveness in the community and increase pressure to change the curriculum to exclude certain controversial material. [31]
The parents filed suit in December, raising some 450 individual objections to passages in the books. During the trial, they reported that their tires had been slashed and that they had received threats that their houses would be burned down and their church bombed.
In October 1986, Judge Thomas Hull of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee backed the parents, saying that opting out would be “a reasonable alternative which could accommodate the [students'] religious beliefs, effectuate the state's interest in education and avoid Establishment Clause problems,” a reference to the Constitution's separation of church and state.
During the appeals process, which garnered national attention, the parents won backing from the group Concerned Women for America, which was using the case to promote its campaign for home schooling. The school district received backing from People for the American Way.
In August 1987, an appeals court overturned the lower court's decision in the Mozert case, backing the board of education. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
It was also in 1987 that a second major schoolbook case unfolded. In Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, Alabama District Judge Brevard Hand, acting on a petition by a teacher who believed in creationism, ordered 7,000 copies of 45 widely used history, social studies and home economics textbooks removed from classrooms. They violated separation of church and state, the judge wrote,by teaching the “religion of secular humanism.”
The judge also objected to characterization of Colonial Christian missionaries as “oppressors” of Native Americans; he criticized the home economics books for portraying too many women in non-traditional gender roles; he characterized one book's statement that “you are the most important person in your life” as “a religious declaration”; and he argued that “teaching that moral choices are purely personal and can only be based on some autonomous, as yet undiscovered and unfulfilled inner self, is a sweeping fundamental belief that must not be promoted by public schools.”
The parents in the Smith case were backed by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, who called Hand's ruling a “landmark case for freedom of religion and the return to traditional values.” In the complicated appeals process, during which the school commissioners were joined by the ACLU and People for the American Way, an appeals court ordered Hand to reverse his decision.
Go to top
Chronology
1960s
Children's literature moves toward “realism”; black cultural movement leads to demands for ethnic diversity in curricula; parents organize to protest certain schoolbooks.
1961
Fundamentalists Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, launch crusade against “lack of balance” in school textbooks.
1962
Supreme Court ban on prayer in public schools seen as turning point in schools' move toward secularism.
1970s
Feminist and gay-liberation movements gain ground; Christian Right organizes.
1974
The National Coalition Against Censorship is formed in response to Supreme Court's 1973 ruling defining obscenity.
Dec. 14, 1977
Group of senior citizens in Warsaw, Ind., publicly burns 40 copies of Values Clarification, an ethics textbook that they said taught moral relativism, situational ethics and secular humanism.
1979
National Council of Teachers of English sets up standing committee on censorship.
1980s
Reagan era encourages protests by the Christian Right; court cases challenge school use of books seen as “anti-Christian,” sexually permissive or profane.
1980
District Court rules in Florey vs. Sioux Falls School District that Christian carols may be sung in South Dakota public schools.
September 1981
First Banned Books Week organized by American Library Association, American Booksellers Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers and the National Association of College Stores.
June 25, 1982
In Island Trees Union Free School vs. Pico, Supreme Court backs school boards' authority to remove books from school library, though not unconditionally.
Dec. 2, 1983
Tennessee parents file suit against school board (Mozert vs. Hawkins County Board of Education) demanding right to opt their children out of reading materials that advocate role-playing and values not based on the Bible.
1984
Congress enacts Equal Access Act requiring public secondary schools to permit extracurricular student groups to meet on campus even if they are religious.
March 1987
In Smith vs. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, Alabama District Judge Brevard Hand orders social studies, history and home economics books banned for promoting secular humanism. The ruling is later overturned.
1987
Supreme Court in Thompson vs. Waynesboro Area School District rules that school officials can set limits on when, where and how materials that are not sponsored by the school are distributed.
Feb. 22, 1988
Supreme Court declines to review appeals court ruling backing the board of education in Mozert vs. Hawkins County Board of Education.
1990s
Parents step up attacks on textbooks; gay issues emerge as central issue.
February 1992
New York City Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez introduces controversial “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum listing books about gay parents in a bibliography of literature for children. The school board later votes not to renew Frenandez's contract.
February 1993
California appeals court is expected to rule in Brown vs. Woodland on parents' challenge to public school use of the children's instructional reading series “Impressions,” the most frequently attacked set of schoolbooks in the country.
Go to top
Current Situation
“
n
ourt“>
Both camps of the censorship debate have been watching closely for a ruling in Brown v. Woodland, in which a group of Sacramento, Calif., parents challenged the Woodland school district's use of the “Impressions” series. The complaint, filed in 1991 with help from the Rev. Donald Wildmon's Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association, argued that “the purchase and use of these portions of the ‘Impressions' curriculum has a real and substantial effect of affiliating the school district with the witchcraft and/or neo-pagan religions.” [32]
The plaintiffs were offered a chance to give their children an alternative reading assignment and were also offered transportation to a neighboring school district. The Browns declined, saying they want “Impressions” out of all schools in the district.
A group of parents and teachers who approve of “Impressions” were joined in petitions in the case by People for the American Way and numerous educational and teachers' organizations, among them the American Association of School Administrators, the American Association of University Women, the Association of American Publishers, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the California Teachers Association and the American Library Association's Freedom to Read Foundation.
“The plaintiffs have asked this Court,” argued a friend-of-the- court brief filed in the case, “to promulgate a rule that no school district may use educational material regardless of its pedagogical value if, in any subjective view, the material bears any resemblance to religious practices, even where the source of the material is entirely secular, where any resemblance to religious practice is inad- vertent, and where the supposed religious connotations are not read- ily discernible.”
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not issued a ruling in the case as of Feb. 16, 1993. School Boards Targeted
Critics of censorship note that a current top priority for the religious Right is electing sympathetic members to school boards. “The ungodly elect atheists and homosexuals to school boards and legislatures to enact policies and laws that destroy our Christian children,” proclaims Robert Simonds of Citizens for Excellence in Education. [33] His group publishes a manual called How to Elect Christians to Public Office and says it has elected 3,500 Christians to school boards around the nation.
In California last November, 31 percent of the religious Right's candidates were elected to school boards, according to People for the American Way. The school board elections coming this May in New York City are expected to attract candidates from groups such as the Christian Coalition and the Family Defense Counsel, which are upset over the current controversy surrounding the “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum. (See story, p. 151.)
“It frightens me that the Right is running for school boards,” says the library association's Krug. “Citizens for Excellence in Education is a fake name” for the National Association of Christian Educators. “They keep saying that we're a Christian nation. They take a narrow, undemocratic, dangerous view.”
“A school voucher system* is ultimately where they are headed,” says Steinhilber. “They have a perfect right to run for school boards, but we just want to make sure their agenda is known to the public.” *
Go to top
Pro/Con
Are parents who challenge certain schoolbooks engaging in censorship?
Arthur J. Kropp
President, People for the American Way,
From Schoolbook Censors On The March, Sept. 9, 1992.
As America's schoolchildren returned to public school classrooms this year, many found that some of the educational tools they most desperately needed had been taken away. In communities across the nation last year, schoolbook censors took aim at a broad range of educational materials, including classic novels, children's books, drug-abuse prevention programs, school plays, movies and more....
According to the tenth annual edition of Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, People for the American Way's yearly accounting of censorship in the public schools, challenges to curricular materials were up dramatically in the 1991-92 school year, and, ominously, show no sign of abating during the just-begun 1992-93 year. Researchers found 348 challenges last year, half again higher than the previous year's tally.
The rationale for challenges varied, but by and large, attackers charged that materials were either pro-Satan, pro-sex or profane. Charges like “anti-Christian,” “anti-family values,” “Satanic,” “dirty” and “obscene” were repeatedly lobbed in support of challenges to materials most of us would consider perfectly ordinary. For example, James and the Giant Peach, the Roald Dahl children's classic about a boy who takes a magical journey inside an enormous peach, was charged with promoting drug abuse and pre-marital sex. The Catcher in the Rye was called anti-family because the saga of a troubled boy's coming-of-age struggles displayed an “underlying hostility toward Christianity.”
For the tenth year running, the most conspicuous group of challengers last year was the Religious Right....These groups and others are conducting what amounts to full-scale war for control of the public schools. Caught in the crossfire are America's schoolchildren.
Of course, not all incidents were directly attributable to the Religious Right. But even in those cases where no direct link was apparent, the rhetoric we've come to associate with Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly and the rest recurred. Plainly, in the dozen or so years these leaders have been visible at the national level, they have succeeded in persuading their followers that censorship is an acceptable political tool. Between the drumbeat of the televangelists attacking public education as “anti-Christian secular humanism” and the persistent war on popular culture and the fine arts, Americans' revulsion at the notion of censorship has worn down, to the point where no stigma attaches to the act. |
Tom Minnery
Vice President of Public Policy for Focus on the Family Citzen,
From Focus on the Family Citizen, Oct. 19, 1992.
People for the American Way is the liberal pressure group whose mission is to scan the horizons for enemies of the Constitution. Its latest report on censorship cites plenty of villains -- mostly parents who dared to question the subject matter that is being taught to their children and PTA committees who asked too many questions about curriculum....
PAW's report would lead the public to believe these groups threatened the Republic itself.
Well, there are many issues in life to be serious about, but PAW's dark night of repression is not one of them. How does one respond to people such as these? Simply state the truth about their allegations.
When parents -- who are citizens, voters and taxpayers -- question or criticize the quality of tax-supported educational services, reasonable people do not call it censorship; they call it democracy. After all, school boards are government agencies, and most school board members are elected politicians. And if politicians do not heed the public's voice, voters are obliged to try and throw the bums out. This is the American way.
What, then, is censorship? I learned the definition on my first day in college journalism class, as does every aspiring reporter. Censorship is the prior restraint of free expression, usually by government agencies. Sometimes this is acceptable. When my father wrote home to my mother from his duty station in the Pacific during World War II, his letters sometimes had holes in them, courtesy of the military censor who restrained my father from the free expression of his whereabouts. My mother understood.
Most often, however, censorship is not acceptable, and oppressive regimes from the Soviets to the Sandinistas have harassed, intimidated and shut down opposition newspapers and broadcasts so that there could be no criticism of their actions by the people they govern. |
Go to top
Outlook
In Hernando County, on Florida's Gulf Coast, the school board told a high school yearbook staff to abandon its theme “It's All in the Cards” because it might imply endorsement of tarot cards. In Upper Pittsgrove Township, N.J., parents demanded -- and won -- restrictions on library use of a Webster's Dictionary because it defined sexual intercourse (calling it “the sexual joining of two individuals”). And in Clay County, in northeast Florida, the classic novel My Friend Flicka was banned from fifth-and sixth-grade reading lists because it describes a female dog as a “bitch.”
The unpredictability of complaints, coming from any quarter and often concentrating on tiny details, is what leads many educators and librarians to label protesting parents as censors. They complain that educators' time is siphoned off by their protests, that some of the best-qualified teachers have been fired for resisting censorship and that providing alternative study to the children of complaining parents is often costly.
But to catalog a set of extreme examples of censorship is a “straw man argument,” says Knight of the Family Research Council. “If some crackpot indicts My Friend Flicka, that doesn't take away my right to protect my children from premature exposure to unsuitable material. I think it's a healthy development that parents are challenging curricula and texts. My hope is that People for the American Way's list [of book challenges] doubles or triples next year.”
“Most Americans would agree that parents have a right to evaluate curriculum materials,” adds Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, “and that our schools benefit from parents' involvement.” [34]
If protests from small groups indeed can alter school policies, the country may be in for more episodes like the one in Kentucky in 1991. Author Roald Dahl's The Witches was removed from an elementary school library following countervailing complaints: Some parents called it “occultic” and “nightmarish” while a local coven of witches said it portrayed their co-religionists “negatively.” [35]
“Those people who would impose their beliefs on others should be exposed,” writes Edward B. Jenkinson, a professor of English at the University of Indiana. “Those people who know exactly what should be taught in every academic subject at every grade level -- and furthermore know exactly how it should be taught -- should have their ideas exposed to the light of reason. Those people who object to virtually every story or poem in every basal reader should be asked to submit to the public the readers they would endorse. Then the censors would experience the close examination of their textbooks so that they might understand the problem from the other side of the desk.” [36]
Author Judy Blume has reported that her editor at E.P. Dutton in 1989 asked her to avoid language that might upset school librarians. “If I was a young writer starting out today, I'm not sure anyone would publish my books,” she said. [37]
To Phyllis Schlafly, however, the liberal forces in the education establishing are winning. “They've had total monopoly control for a long time, 20 years of sex education and 10 years of drug education,” she says. “But public consciousness has been raised on these issues. Now the public schools are a disaster area, and everyone knows it.”
Differences over censorship clearly reflect deeper differences in educational philosophy. “It is not surprising that these radical groups in American life should attack the public schools in this way, since they are the groups with the most to lose if the schools succeed in their task,” writes Burress. “What, in fact, could be more dangerous to the right wing than an educated populace that reads widely and looks critically at the various organizations in this society?” [38]
In the short run, notes Duby of People for the American Way, the “radical religious Right has a real commitment to its agenda and lots of funding. The public schools are where it's successful.” Her group notes, however, that school systems have learned over the past decade and are now better equipped to address censorship challenges. “I believe that the First Amendment will get the upper hand,” Duby says, “but do I think the Right will stop? No.”
DelFattore says the Right is effective nowadays only because it is “disproportionately active.” Liberals are not often seen at school textbook hearings, she notes. “If you don't get out to state your views, you don't deserve to have your views represented.”
Eternal vigilance will be required, says Steinhilber of the school boards association. “We have been successful in the courts, but in individual school districts, the issue is in doubt. The best part of the American system is that there is a mechanism to air these concerns.”
The problem, he adds, is that “people want to make sure their children are taught exactly the way they want them to be taught, no matter what impact it has on the rest of the community.” He says he often tells his school board colleagues, “We deal with people's children and their money. That's two of their most precious commodities, so they're not always rational.”
Go to top
Footnotes
Go to top
Bibliography
Books
Foundation for Free Expression, American Booksellers, Censorship and First Amendment Rights: A Primer, 1992. With an introduction by New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, this compendium outlines the history of censorship of adult and schoolbooks, detailing court rulings on obscenity and free speech and recounting the experiences of various interest groups in grappling with the issues.
Burress, Lee, Battle of the Books: Literary Censorship in the Public Schools, 1950-85, Scarecrow Press Inc., 1989. An English professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point provides analysis and detailed examples of controversies over school censorship in the past several decades.
DelFattore, Joan, What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America, Yale University Press, 1992. A University of Delaware English professor describes the clashes over schoolbooks that proliferated, she argues, after the arrival of the Reagan administration.
Fitzgerald, Frances, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the 20th Century, Little, Brown and Co., 1979. A journalist surveys the evolution of U.S. history texts, detailing clashes between ideologues, parental activists, lobbyists and publishers over presentation of the American story.
James C. Hefley, What Are They Teaching Our Children, Victor Books, 1985. Well-known conservative Texas textbook critics set out their objections to the bulk of American school textbooks, calling for a return to traditional family values and more emphasis on the virtues of free enterprise and limited government.
Jenkinson, Edward B., Censors in the Classroom: The Mind Benders, Southern Illinois University Press, 1979. A University of Indiana English professor recaps three important school censorship cases and offers his views on the general issue of parental involvement in the selection of school materials.
Schlafly, Phyllis, Child Abuse in the Classroom, Pere Marquette Press, 1984. An influential conservative activist and president of the Eagle Forum compiled testimony from hearings by the Education Department in which parents and teachers criticize modern schools for moral relativism, emphasis on psychological development and bias against religion.
Thomas, Cal, Book Burning, Crossway Books, 1983. A syndicated columnist once associated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority outlines his views on censorship and curriculum decision-making in the nation's public schools.
Reports and Studies
Association, American Library, Banned Books Week '92: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, 1992. This resource book and promotion guide provides lists and summaries of the most frequently censored books. It was prepared in cooperation with the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the National Association of College Stores, the Association of American Publishers and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
of Christian Educators, National Association, How to Help Your School Be a Winner!: Who Speaks for the Children? . This handbook by an affiliate of the California-based Citizens for Excellence in Education offers position statements, legal precedents and political advice for Christian groups seeking to influence curriculum content in public schools.
Boards Association, National School, Censorship: Managing the Controversy, June 1989. This workbook of advice, legal precedent and argumentation details clashes between parents, political activists and school officials over which books to permit or remove from schools.
Way, People for the American, Attacks on the Freedom to Learn: 1991-92, September 1992. This state-by-state compilation by a liberal First Amendment advocacy group is the most current survey of schoolbook challenges. It details the group's concern about the rising influence of the political Right.
Go to top
Next Step
(for further research)
Censorship attempts
“Burn Baby, Burn,” Entertainment Weekly, March 6, 1992. The American Library Association's Judith Krug asserts that censorship attempts in schools are rising, and that the more than 600 reported cases last year are just the tip of the iceberg. Most challenged are books dealing with sex, feminism, teen rebelliousness, AIDS, homosexuality, the negative black experience, and books that suggest non-Christian religious practices, including fairy tales that have the word devil or witch in the title.
“Censors on the Prowl,” The Progressive, November 1991, p. 9. Censorship in schools is on the rise, according to this Progressive editorial. People for the American Way calls the 1990-91 school year the worst for school censorship in the nine years that it has been keeping statistics. Books under attack by right-wing groups include The Grapes of Wrath, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, and The Catcher in the Rye, as well as works by Dr. Seuss, A.A. Milne, Martin Luther King Jr. and C.S. Lewis, among others.
“Reports of Attempted Censorship Reach 10-Year High, Survey Finds,” Education Week, Sept. 16, 1992. Reported incidents of attempted censorship of school materials rose to their highest level in 10 years during the 1991-92 school year, according to an annual survey by People for the American Way. In 41 percent of the incidents, challenged materials were removed or restricted in some way. The book most often objected to last year was Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
“Reports of School Censorship Increase,” The Washington Post, Sept. 2, 1992. A new survey by People for the American Way finds that school censorship rose 50 percent to 348 incidents last year, and that the religious Right is increasingly fighting objectionable books and classroom materials. Examples of censorship in Baltimore, Md. and Meridian, Idaho, are described.
First amendment/free speech
“About Face on Censoring,” Washington Times, May 24, 1991. Columnist Cal Thomas asserts that the intellectual establishment has reversed its views on free speech since the 1980s, when the political Right was accused of censorship. The New York Times, in an editorial criticizing a speech by President George Bush, defended rules on college campuses banning politically incorrect speech, arguing that universities have an obligation to teach tolerance. Thomas declares that curbing speech simply buries prejudices and limits debate.
“Anne Arundel Schools Ban Singer's Satires,” The Washington Post, Sept. 5, 1990. The Anne Arundel County, Md., school system has banned Barry Louis Polisar from performing his materials at its schools. The writer-singer, who has performed his satirical children's songs in schools for 15 years, claims it is censorship. The school's music teacher asserts that the material is simply not appropriate for instructional use.
“Censorship Fight Keys on Children,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 2, 1989. A panel of First Amendment experts discusses the rise in censorship of children's reading materials, which are becoming a battlefield for testing the limits of political and cultural tolerance and constitutional freedoms. The spread of fundamentalist religious sects is cited as a reason for the increase in censorship attempts.
“Censorship Is a Poor Way to Protect Children,” St. Petersburg Times, June 24, 1990. Columnist Nat Hentoff describes his meeting with a group of parents who are disturbed by books on their children's school reading list. These parents are angry that civil libertarian groups call them “kooks” and “troublemakers” and have branded them as censors. The First Amendment covers these people as well as those opposed to them, Hentoff asserts.
Stanley Rothman, “Newspeak, Feminist-Style,” Commentary, April 1990, pp. 54-56. Feminists have been extraordinarily successful in the past 30 years at reshaping textbooks to portray women more favorably. In the past, women in textbooks were portrayed as mothers and sisters rather than as individuals in their own right. The 22 states with statewide textbook adoption policies have played a big role in restructuring the entire textbook market. Educators generally fight ferociously against attempts by conservatives to censor textbooks, but acquiesce eagerly to similar campaigns by feminists. The authors call this rewriting of textbooks Newspeak, and a distortion of the present and the past.
“Word Police,” The New York Times, Jan. 31, 1993. A mood of political correctness has spread from college campuses to the rest of the country. The intolerance of the language police has disturbing implications. Several books on bias-free language have appeared, advocating euphemism and sloppy, abstract language. Simply changing the words will not make the thoughts or actions behind them change, and will not make the problems go away.
Libraries
“Libraries Battle With Censorship,” Sunday Telegram (Worcester, Mass.), May 24, 1992. Librarians are under assault from both the Right and the Left. The latest hot topic is the occult. Attempts at censorship have always existed. The American Library Association asserts that most censorship attempts can no longer be attributed to a group or a particular part of the country, but rather are simply parents asserting themselves as parents.
“NAACP: Remove Book or We Picket,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Aug. 4, 1989. The NAACP demands that a children's book it finds demeaning to blacks be removed from shelves or it will picket the Spartanburg, S.C., public library. The book, Epaminondas and his Auntie, which was originally published in 1907, depicts a black boy and his troubles following his aunt's instructions. The library's director asserts that individuals should censor their own reading habits, and parents should screen what their children read.
Schoolbooks
“Are Kids Ready for Literature?”, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 13, 1989. The “Impressions” school book series has won praise for sparking children's imaginations and stimulating them to read, but attacks against the books are mounting, mainly from fundamentalist Christian groups. Publishers are closely watching the debate over the books in California, and there may be a chilling effect if more school districts drop the texts. Harcourt Brace & Co., the series' U.S. publisher, asserts that the criticisms are ludicrous. The shift in the 1980s toward literature-based texts is discussed.
“Banning Books: Jacksonville Schools Restrict Readings at a Growing Rate,” Miami Herald, June 19, 1992. The 1991-92 school year set a record year for banned books in Jacksonville, Fla., with 24 books, magazines and videotapes challenged, two banned and 15 restricted. Jacksonville is not an isolated example of censorship, but part of a national trend. Civil libertarians attribute the attacks to a “new intolerance” and see them as part of an ultraconservative, grass-roots movement. Some believe that parents are using schools as scapegoats in trying to protect their children from the world's increasing violence. Many groups object to being branded as censors. The Supreme Court has not provided much guidance.
“Complaints Prompt Howard Co. Schools to Evaluate 2 Books,” The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 23, 1990. The Howard County, Md., school system is evaluating complaints about C.S. Lewis's classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and a book on teenage pregnancy. According to the American Library Association, attempts by parents or groups to remove books from school libraries are on the rise. Satanism and occult are the most common objection cited to books in school and public libraries.
Hentoff, Nat, “Banning School Books for the Bicentennial,” The Washington Post, March 9, 1991. The Island Trees case decided by the Supreme Court in 1982 allowed school boards to remove books from libraries if they were “pervasively vulgar” or “educationally unsuitable.” The battle over books in schools is continuing, due to the court's vague language on this issue. There will be no national resolution of the issue until the Supreme Court speaks again decisively.
Hentoff, Nat, “Saving Kids From Satan's Books,” The Progressive, May 1991, pp. 14-15. While much attention has focused on “politically correct” speech and reading on college campuses, a more pervasive form of thought control haunts many elementary and secondary schools. The seriousness of groups attempting to remove books from schools should not be underestimated, and not all assaults come from the religious Right. Various incidents of book censorship in schools are discussed, including an attempt to ban Progressive magazine from a high school library.
“Pressure Rises to Censor Schoolbooks,” USA Today, Oct. 1, 1992. Joan DelFattore, author of What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America, estimates that two-thirds of school texts are affected by issues brought up by protesters. DelFattore asserts that there has been a dramatic increase in challenges to teaching materials since 1980. Even when challenges are denied, the effect is often the same, as publishers tend to practice self-censorship by removing controversial material. Unless they go outside traditional book supply routes, teachers have no choice but to use texts that have been sanitized in some way.
“We Need a Policy, Not a Fire,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 26, 1990. The “Impressions” series of books has come under fire in schools across the country. Groups including Citizens for Excellence in Education object to the books, citing their inclusion of witchcraft and their encouragement of children to defy their parents. “Impressions” has been banned in five school districts and other challenges are pending. Many groups waging censorship campaigns go beyond parents wanting to exercise control over what their own children read, to banning books for all.
School curricula
“Bibles and the Board: Skirmish Brews,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 21, 1993. In Vista, Calif., religious fundamentalists have gained a majority on the school board, prompting fears among parents that the group will censor books, impose school prayer, eliminate sex education and generally impose its beliefs on school policy. The board has already sparked controversy by hiring four new lawyers in anticipation of lawsuits. While the conservatives assert that they will not try to push creationism in the classroom, they indicate that they will seek “sweeping changes” on other fronts.
“Censorship Conspiracy or Grassroots Concern?” Christianity Today, Oct. 8, 1990, p. 64. Christian groups involved in education issues deny charges made by People for the American Way that the religious Right is behind most attempts to censor school materials. The director of the Christian Educators Association International denies that his group is organizing a censorship campaign against the reading series “Impressions,” which has been opposed in 21 communities. A spokesman for Concerned Women of America asserts that PAW fails to see that there is a widespread grass-roots dissatisfaction with public school education.
“If He Could Make It Here...,” Newsweek, Dec. 21, 1992. Joseph Fernandez, chancellor of the New York City school system, has been embroiled in a battle with the school board since coming to New York three years ago. The latest dispute has arisen over how to teach tolerance of homosexuals to elementary school children. Children of the Rainbow, the school system's new multicultural curriculum, includes a section which encourages first-grade teachers to include references to gays and lesbians in their teaching.
“Jack and Jack and Jill and Jill,” Time, Dec. 14, 1992. When and what to teach children about homosexuality is an issue being tentatively addressed in schools around the country. Books such as Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies, recommended reading for first-graders in New York City's new multicultural curriculum, have sparked controversy among school boards and parents. AIDS- awareness programs, an increase in gay-bashing assaults, and teenagers coming to the realization that they are gay, are among the reasons that some schools are addressing the issue.
Leo, John, “Heather Has a Message,” U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 17, 1992, p. 16. John Leo asserts that schools should promote respect and tolerance for all children without endorsing the different beliefs, lifestyles or orientations found in their homes. New York City's new multicultural curriculum has crossed a line in requiring first-grade teachers to teach children about positive aspects of varied family structures, including gay or lesbian parents. The destructive battle being waged over newly imposed values detracts attention from academics, which is where schools should be focusing their energies.
Reinhold, Robert, “Class Struggle,” The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 29, 1991, pp. 26-52. California is at the forefront of the teaching revolution, the sweeping curriculum changes being made in light of the large numbers of immigrant children in schools. A new textbook series published by Houghton Mifflin is the cornerstone of the new curriculum. The series attempts to correct the Eurocentric view of older texts, using a more multicultural approach toward history. The new texts have sparked controversy as many minority groups object to their portrayal in the books.
Sowell, Thomas, “Indoctrinating the Children,” Forbes, Feb. 1, 1993, p. 65. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution argues that the media are raising an outcry over the religious Right's attempts to censor school materials, but have ignored the pervasive indoctrination of schoolchildren by the Left for years. Sowell asserts that schools use brainwashing techniques in psychological conditioning programs imposed on pupils and curricula that propagandize the multicultural message.
Go to top
Special Focus
In Fayetteville, N.C., last fall, a citizens lobby took out full-page newspaper ads attacking the county's public library. Urging citizens to vote against an $11.4 million bond issue for library construction, the ads accused the library of taking the lead in “pursuit of legitimizing homosexuality,” asking, “Can prostitution, bestiality or incest be far behind?”#
What upset the group was the library's recent purchase of children's books that have become a national lightning rod in the debate over censorship and parental influence in schools. Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies are two in an illustrated series intended to expose first-graders to the existence of gay households and lifestyles. “Heather's favorite number is two. She has two arms, two legs, two ears, two hands ... two mommies,” reads the text describing life with a lesbian couple who bore a child through artificial insemination.
Purchase of the books by public libraries brought 19 parental challenges in the last half of 1992, according to the American Library Association. More visibly, the books have been at the center of a firestorm of controversy at the New York City School Board, which last year listed the books in a bibliography accompanying a multicultural curriculum called “Children of the Rainbow.”##
“These books are outrageous for first-grade readers and shouldn't be on the shelves,” says Phyllis Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle Forum. “First-graders can't comprehend what gay means. It's all being done to placate gay pressure groups.”
The decision to include the titles in New York is part of a broader city effort to encourage teachers to provide classroom experiences that “view lesbians/gays as real people to be respected and appreciated.” The move was defended repeatedly by embattled Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez, though in January he agreed to remove one book, Heather, from the optional reading list. (The board later voted not to renew his three-year contract when it expires in June.)
“The question of age-appropriateness has ... been raised, specifically with regard to two or three of the more than 600 books listed in the various bibliographies of ‘Children of the Rainbow,'” Fernandez wrote in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal. “The question is moot because none are required reading....Many teachers will find some of the books useful given the family backgrounds of some of their students.”*
Judith Krug of the library association says the argument that the books are not age-appropriate for first-graders makes little sense in the New York area, where children can “look down Fifth Avenue and see men holding hands and kissing.” But Jeff Baron of the New York State Christian Coalition lambastes the books as “part of a movement to remove moral absolutes from society. There's a big difference between tolerance and saying a certain lifestyle or activity is appropriate and right and good,” he says. “Some of that stuff is embarrassing to talk about even among adults.”
The fact that the two books were offered as optional reading makes little difference to Bob Knight, director of cultural studies at the Family Research Council. “They wouldn't say it's just recommended reading if we were talking about a book saying the Holocaust is a myth,” he says. “Gay lit validates [the same-sex parents] arrangement, which is patently destructive. As taxpayers and parents, we have a responsibility to do more than just yank our children from school. Parents have an interest in the community values in which their children are growing up.”
Rita Addessa, director of the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, which is seeking discussion of gay lifestyles in a multicultural curriculum in Pennsylvania, says conservative opponents are feeling “their cultural hegemony at risk. We as a minority people know the social consequences of censorship and exclusion.”
Leaving aside the moral questions, Joe Grant, the parent who sparked the controversy in North Carolina, says Daddy's Roommate wouldn't be much help to a child seeking to cope with gay parents. “I think it would probably help him accept his father more, maybe, but at the cost of denying his own emotions about the whole issue. And that might be of benefit to the father, but is it of benefit to the child?”**
Sasha Alyson, the Boston-based publisher of the series, says the books are needed to correct a situation in which gays have been treated as if they were invisible. “We need to give kids a little more credit for being able to sort out a lot of different ideas and integrate them into their own philosophy,” he said. He praised librarians who are defending the right to circulate the books. In these times of tight budgets, he notes, at least 500 libraries have accepted his offer to donate free copies.** #
Unlike censorship cases that involve a minority of protesters, notes Joan DelFattore, author of What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America, the “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum “is something a large number of people would question. It's such an emotional issue, it will be resolved on emotional and political lines.” # See “Conservative Groups Continue Their Fight to Ban ‘Daddy's Roommate,'” American Libraries, December 1992, p. 917. ## For more information on the controversy, see the forthcoming CQ Researcher “Gay Rights,” March 12, 1993. The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 10, 1992. Quoted in The Chicago Tribune, Sept. 9, 1992. ** # Quoted in American Libraries, op. cit.
For parents in Bigfork, Mont., the last straw was a pair of satirical articles on self-mutilation and “How to Kill a Cat.” Many had long complained about “tasteless” material in the student newspaper at Bigfork High, but this time they were calling for the resignation of journalism adviser Vernon Pond.
In response, Pond last May persuaded the school to set up a broad- based newspaper oversight board comprised of the school principal, the journalism adviser, two teachers, two community members and three students. Initially, each member had the power to block any story; the censorship policy was later softened to require a majority vote.
“Prior review,” as the arrangement is called, is becoming increasingly common in high school journalism. Young editors and their adult sympathizers in the legal community deride it as censorship. “What's offensive to a 45-year-old high school principal may not be to a 16-year-old audience,” says attorney Marc Abrams, president of the Student Press Law Center in Washington.
Unlike publications for young children, where adult supervision is a given, and college publications, where the legal owners and their prerogatives differ from campus to campus, high school publications fall into a gray area of frequent tension between the rights of free expression and the need to enforce responsible journalism.
Conflicts in high school publications typically arise over the use of profanity, student confessional articles about sex or abortion, risqu cartoons and photos, personal gossip and acceptance of advertisements for gay and lesbian counseling services. Student editors have been expelled, suspended and in at least one case, forced to delete -- by hand -- offending words in all printed copies of a barred issue of their publication.
Sexual frankness and discussions of divisive political issues have been common fare in high school publications since the youth revolts of the 1960s. It was in 1969 that the Supreme Court affirmed a high school student's right to free expression in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District. Considering a group of high school students who were suspended for wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War, the court ruled that school officials could limit student expression only when they could demonstrate that the expression would cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or an invasion of the rights of others. The ruling was seen as extending protection to newspapers, yearbooks, literary reviews and even underground student newspapers unless they are obscene, libelous or disruptive.
In the more conservative Reagan era, the court stepped back slightly from the Tinker decision. In 1988, in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, it supported a St. Louis, Mo., high school principal's decision to kill student articles about personal experiences with divorce and birth control. When a school's decision to remove material is “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns,” it is permissible, the ruling said. “Frank talk” by students about their sexual history and birth control, even though the comments were not graphic, was “inappropriate in a school-sponsored publication distributed to 14-year-old freshmen.”#
The Hazelwood case marked the first time the court said that a class-produced student newspaper was not a forum for public expression. First Amendment experts say the ruling wouldn't apply, therefore, to student publications where student editors have clearly been given final authority over content decisions, or where the school has explicitly designated the student publication as a public forum.
Since 1988, several states have passed laws to protect student publications from prior restraint by school officials, among them Kansas, Iowa, Colorado and Massachusetts. California recently enacted a far-reaching “free-expression Magna Carta for students,” in the words of syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff, which is thought to negate the Hazelwood ruling.##
School administrators, not surprisingly, do not favor such laws. “We believe the school, [represented by] the principal, has a right to decide what's appropriate for the school's age level on such issues as sexual explicitness,” says Gus Steinhilber, general counsel for the National School Boards Association, in Alexandria, Va. Professional journalists, he points out, have to follow policies of their editors and publishers. And “you can't have student newspapers endorsing candidates for public office -- after all, it's still a public school system.”
Abrams of the Student Press Law Center says such a role for the principal is “bad educational policy. The majority of censorship involves solid investigative reporting or April Fools' issues, not explicit sex,” he says. “The topical material is exactly what the students should be doing, to apply their judgment and learn from trial and error.”
What's more, he adds, “it's a facile but false analogy to equate the principal with a newspaper publisher. The case law after Hazelwood clearly shows that if a school grants independence to student editors, it can't be held liable if the paper endorses a candidate or defames a public figure.” # Student Press Law Center, “Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier: A Complete Guide to the Supreme Court Decision,” 1992. ## Column was published in The Washington Post, Jan. 30, 1993,p. A31.
A hearty perennial in the censorship debate is the treatment of religious holidays by the public schools. The sticky issue pits advocates of strict separation of church and state against practicing Christians who feel the importance of their religious heritage is being neglected by public educators.
Responding to pressure from Jewish and other groups, some school systems in recent years have ceased referring to the annual “Christmas Break,” substituting instead such terms as “Winter Break.” Others have enforced policies against Christmas decorations, drawing complaints in the community and in some cases, from teachers.
Later, Griggs explained, three teachers came to him and said they were “personally offended that he would make a religious issue of Christmas.” When the principal learned of the complaints, he ordered the bulletin board taken down.#
Such efforts to keep schools secular are defended by Jewish groups. “Our efforts to halt religious practices in the public schools are prompted in no small part by the hard fact that any such celebration places Jewish children in a most unhappy position,” says a monograph by the American Jewish Congress. “They must either violate their conscience by participating in ceremonies that conflict with their religious teachings or they must place themselves in apparent opposition and hostility to their teachers and fellow pupils.”
The congress argues that celebrating religious holidays in schools trivializes whatever faith is involved. Other Jews accept such programs as long as they reflect the major religions. In a pamphlet called “December Dilemma,” Marilyn Braveman, then director of education for the American Jewish Committee, recommended that school Christmas trees be in common areas rather than classrooms, that “overtly religious dramas and church-like scenery” be avoided and that holiday celebrations “not intrude unduly on academic time,” such as those that “permeate the school atmosphere” beginning as early as October.
“A special effort should be made to see that religious music does not entirely dominate the selection of music for Christmas programming,” Braveman wrote, suggesting such selections as “Deck the Halls” and “Dreydle” rather than religious hymns such as “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful.”
Steven T. McFarland, director of the Christian-oriented Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, Va., says “not only is it legally permissible for school boards to allow display and discussion of religious traditions, it is irresponsible for them not to. Students should know where Christmas came from.”
“It trivializes all faiths when school officials trip over themselves to pretend that Christmas isn't celebrated by a majority of the country,” McFarland adds. “I'm not talking about proselytizing or indoctrination. But the country can't afford another generation of students miseducated about the role of religion in public life.”
In November 1992, the nation's 14,766 school superintendents received a legal advisory from Jay Alan Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice in Virginia Beach, Va., established by Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Public school officials who do not understand the permissible constitutional parameters,” he wrote, “may unnecessarily prohibit or eliminate Christmas activities that are clearly constitutional.”
As legal precedent, Sekulow relied primarily on Florey v. Sioux Falls School District, a 1980 South Dakota case in which an appeals court ruled that “music, art, literature and drama having religious themes or basis are permitted as part of the curriculum for school- sponsored activities and programs if presented in a prudent and objective manner and as a traditional part of the cultural and religious heritage of the particular holiday.”
In addition, the advisory said, “school districts are under no constitutional obligation to rename Christmas vacation as ‘winter vacation.' The Supreme Court itself [in the 1984 case Lynch v. Donnelly] has acknowledged with approval that Congress gives federal employees a paid holiday on December 25, and Congress calls it ‘Christmas.'”
In general, schools ought to handle the holidays “carefully,” advises a pamphlet sponsored jointly by Jewish and Christian groups and the National School Boards Association. “Recognition of and information about such holidays should focus on the origin, history and generally agreed-upon meaning of the observances,” it reads. “If the approach is objective, neither advancing nor inhibiting religion, it can foster among students understanding and mutual respect beyond the local community.”## # See Phyllis Schlafly, ed., Child Abuse in the Classroom: Official Transcript of Proceedings Before the U.S. Department of Education (1984), p. 209. ## National School Boards Association, Censorship: Managing the Controversy, June 1989, p. 47.
Did the Korean War end with the United States dropping the atom bomb? Did the House of Representatives impeach President Richard M. Nixon? The answer to both queries is no, but you wouldn't know it from reading some of the history texts up for adoption last year in the important textbook market state of Texas.
After hundreds of errors were found in preliminary editions of 10 textbooks, red-faced publishers were forced to print corrections and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties to protect a market worth more than $20 million in annual sales.
To observers of the ongoing censorship debate, however, the salient point was not the state of quality-control at American publishing houses. The real issue was the renewed influence of the people who spotted the errors, longtime conservative textbook critics Mel and Norma Gabler.
Since the early 1960s, their Longview, Texas-based Educational Research Analysts has exerted wide influence on the nation's school textbooks by attacking editions offered in bellwether Texas for committing such sins as teaching evolution, promoting feminism and “neglecting” the virtues of free enterprise and states' rights.
“We've been pointing things out for 31 years, and the publishers all say, ‘Oh, that's just the Gablers trying to force their point of view on everyone else,'” says Mel Gabler. “But lately we've been having a lot of fun saying, ‘How about this: Truman dropped the bomb on Korea. The House impeached Nixon.'”
The Gablers' strategy is to separate complaints about factual errors from their more over-arching critiques of ideology. Aided by academics, they scan preliminary editions for errors, then bring them to their perennial appearances at Texas textbook review panels. The couple also composes word-for-word corrections, Gabler says, offering solutions at lengths equal to the original texts so that publishers needn't reformat entire pages. “One publisher said we've shaken the $1.5 billion textbook industry,” Gabler says. “The more credibility we can establish finding these errors, the more they will continue to listen to us.”
The publishing industry has aggressively countered the Gablers' latest efforts. “The numbers and significance of alleged errors in history, reading and other instructional materials have been greatly exaggerated,” said Nicholas A. Veliotes, president of the Association of American Publishers. “In addition, the allegations have obscured the over-all high quality of these texts, which have received high praise from educational authorities and teachers.”
Though acknowledging the gravity of the undeniable errors, the publishers point out that together the books contain some 2 million facts and are therefore “99.9852 percent correct.” They also argue that the Gablers made many errors themselves, and that their concentration on facts, on “the minutiae of history rather than the larger, more important trends and themes ... has moved the discussion away from the desired outcomes of the courses and centered it on a collection of unrelated facts and dates.”#
“The Gablers' real agenda has always been to promote fundamentalism and control of the schools,” says Roger Rogalis, head of the publishers association's school division. “In the ‘70s, they protested the teaching of evolution using [the non-scholarly] Reader's Digest as a source, which made it easy to challenge their credibility. But now they've taken a more offensive approach. They go through the books that don't promote their agenda and they find some lulus. The clear, embarrassing errors put publishers on the defensive, and all the good stuff” gets ignored. # Association of American Publishers, “Textbooks and Errors: Time for a New Look,” monograph, Nov. 10, 1992.
During the decade from 1982-92, censors targeted some of the world's best-selling authors for both adults and children, including novelists, poets and mystery writers. The most frequently challenged book during the 1991-92 school year was John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. Most Frequently Challenged Authors, 1982-1992 Judy Blume Stephen King John Steinbeck Robert Cormier J.D. Salinger Mark Twain Roald Dahl Alvin Schwartz Shel Silverstein Anonymous (Go Ask Alice) Katherine Patterson Most Frequently Challenged Books, 1991-1992 Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Alvin Schwartz The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier The Witches, Roald Dahl The Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Patterson Blubber, Judy Blume Revolting Rhymes, Roald Dahl A Day No Pigs Would Die, Robert Peck A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle Source: People for the American Way!
, Attacks on the Freedom to Learn: The 1991-1992 Report.
Of 348 attempts to restrict or remove curricular or library materials during the 1991-92 school year, 41 percent of the challenges were successful, according to People for the American Way. The states with the most challenges from 1982 to 1992 are listed below. California Oregon Florida Texas Washington New York Illinois Michigan Colorado Iowa Ohio Source: People for the American Way, Attacks on the Freedom to Learn: The 1991-1992 Report
The CQ Researcher • February 19, 1993
© 2004, CQ Press, a Division of Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.