Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 25, 1992 TAG: 9203250366
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A teacher he supervises had assigned a certain novel to her students, which prompted a radio evangelist to assemble an indignant mob and fresh kindling. Golding had this to say:
"It's a personnel problem and it'll be dealt with privately."
Say what? A "personnel problem"?
Let's pick up the story where last we left it.
Marion Goldwasser, this year's teacher of the year in Carroll County, assigned "The Floatplane Notebooks," by North Carolina author Clyde Edgerton, as supplementary reading for her 11th grade English class. (Got that? Eleventh grade.)
This fact was discovered by one J.B. Lineberry, local radio preacher and literary critic, who was overtaken by righteous rage. He called the book obscene. He demanded its withdrawal from the reading list.
He's even circulating petitions calling on the district to fire Goldwasser and anyone else responsible. And now he's organizing, for this Friday, a demonstration in front of the school.
While awaiting the event, curious Carroll County residents shouldn't bother trying to check out "The Floatplane Notebooks" from the public library. There's a long waiting list.
They may be interested to know, though, that it received high praise in reviews the year it was published, including in the New York Times and Washington Post. Publishers Weekly named it one of the best of 1988.
With this book, said a Richmond News Leader reviewer, Edgerton moved "a long way toward establishing himself as the South's premier novelist, and one of the country's finest."
Lineberry holds a different opinion, which is of course his right. Indeed, he and the torch carriers aren't really the problem. They're entitled to object to the use of any book in a public school system that is properly open and accountable to the public.
The problem is with the school's reaction.
Quickly, cravenly, incredibly, Golding complied with Lineberry's demand. The book was pulled.
And not only that. Golding also agreed to review the procedure by which books are added to supplementary reading lists.
Never mind that such a response lends credibility to the self-appointed censors, fueling their book-burning and inviting more of the same.
We come now to the climax.
From these administrators who pulled the book - who conspicuously failed to come to their employee's defense, who refused to say publicly that this teacher doesn't deserve such abuse, who declined to condemn the narrow-minded, mean-spirited calls for her firing - from these same educators we now receive an official statement.
The matter is a "personnel problem" that will be handled "privately."
Never mind that a book dispute, publicly raised, can hardly be privately handled. The real question is: What personnel problem is Golding talking about?
Is he just saying, We'll attend to this ourselves? If so, too bad Goldwasser has to be thrown to the dogs. Or maybe Golding is just following orders. His superintendent, Oliver McBride, also has not offered any clear, public defense of the teacher.
Pending a plausible explanation and a belated reunion between Golding, McBride and their respective spines, Carroll County residents must assume a personnel problem indeed exists - in the administration offices.
by CNB