Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203300185
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At the high school, the distinction is obvious.
No one could say the Carroll County High School principal, Harold Golding, has anything to do with such principles of sound judgment as:
Maybe a quiet and admired English teacher with 20 years experience, holding a master's degree from Stanford University and honored as this year's Teacher of the Year, can claim better judgment regarding appropriate curriculum for her 11th-grade English class than can a sixth-grade-dropout radio evangelist and power-hungry book-banner obsessing over a novel's few explicit passages.
Maybe it sends the wrong message to the school and to the larger community for a principal to pull that novel from a supplementary reading list over the teacher's protest and without any formal review, and to decline to defend the teacher in the face of a petition drive for her ouster (even describing the affair as a "personnel problem"!).
We cite these principles again because a two-paragraph statement issued Wednesday by Carroll County School Superintendent Oliver McBride shows no appreciation of their merit. The statement may represent a satisfactory conclusion in McBride's book. In ours it leaves nothing resolved and much hanging - including the teacher, Marion Goldwasser, who by our reading is this morality tale's heroine.
As vague as it is vacuous, the statement notes that some sort of review and appeal process for parents' curriculum concerns does exist, but was not followed in this case. It assures that the school will be more "responsive to the concerns of the community."
Which had the presumably intended effect: A protest rally was called off. Stalled, too, is the drive to have Goldwasser fired, to the disappointment of avenging evangelist J.B. Lineberry.
Actually, he demanded not only Goldwasser's head but Golding's, and those of two other school personnel whom he deemed responsible for including Clyde Edgerton's "The Floatplane Notebooks" on an 11th-grade optional reading list. "We was pushing for four of them being fired," he says.
But the platter handed Lineberry isn't empty. Goldwasser asked the superintendent if "Floatplane" could be launched through the review process for a ruling on its suitability. No, said McBride, having just explained in his statement that the process was there to be used. The book remains banned.
And nowhere does his statement evince a hint of support for the teacher or for educators' experienced judgment. It only reinforces Golding's craven submission to the anti-book and anti-teacher crusade, based on calls from just two parents.
Which should tempt some to say: To h--- with the principle-starved principal and the not so superintendent.
We resist spelling this out, not wanting to lose readers who avert their eyes when words offend their moral sensibilities. But neither do we direct this editorial at Lineberry and his allies in the administration.
Rather, we write to Carroll County students and teachers, to the parents, and to all the county's residents who are appalled to see school administrators betray their charges and educational mission; who feel insulted and angered by the embarrassment brought upon their community; who believe their county deserves better.
"I'm not concerned about me, personally," says Goldwasser. "I'm concerned about the educational climate the teachers are going to have to face in the coming years." She worries about the chilling effect on teachers' choice of materials "especially if we don't get any more support from the superintendent than we have seen."
Others should worry, too.
Of course parents should exercise oversight over their children's curriculum. Of course they should question any material they find unsuitable. Of course the school should handle such questions responsively, by well-defined procedure and collective review. No one is suggesting otherwise.
The danger arises when intimidation replaces pedagogical judgment, whereupon a community must rise up to defend itself. Parents, teachers, students and others in Carroll County need to find ways to make clear to Golding and McBride that they don't want self-appointed censors calling the shots, that they hold a lot more respect for education than these sorry officials give them credit for.
To stand by Goldwasser is to rally for the county's self-respect and future.
by CNB