Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 21, 1993 TAG: 9306210081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: OSKALOOSA, KAN. LENGTH: Medium
Under discussion is last month's School Board decision requiring teachers to list "profane words" and how often they're used in books for pupils in kindergarten through eighth grade. Parents are to review the lists and decide whether to permit their children to read the books.
Supporters say it's only common sense. Opponents call it censorship and say they're shocked such a ruling could be made in their town of 1,000, which residents say is neither overwhelmingly liberal nor conservative.
"If there is anything Oskaloosa may gain from this, it is the scary knowledge that it takes just a few hysterical, self-righteous adults to violate our constitutional rights," Hans Fuhrmans, a former Oskaloosa resident, wrote in a letter published in The Wichita Eagle.
But Paul Reed, a School Board member and Southern Baptist minister, defends the proposal he introduced and the panel approved May 9 in a 4-3 vote.
It was a double standard that the school prohibited pupils from using profanity in their speech but not from reading it in books, Reed said.
School Board President Dale Heston said the book that sparked the controversy was Katherine Paterson's "Bridge to Terabithia," which was to be read in a fifth-grade classroom. Some parents objected and the teacher removed it from the curriculum, he said. In one sentence, a father asks his son: "What are they teaching you at that damn school?' "
Resident Allen Wise defended the policy at a board meeting.
"I'm not a religious fanatic," he said. "I'm not living under a rock that these kids don't hear worse on the playground than they do in that book, but I wish they didn't."
by CNB