Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 8, 1993 TAG: 9403090021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In many school divisions, including some in Virginia, there may be fewer books available this fall for schoolchildren to read.
No, this isn't about funding disparities between richer and poorer divisions. It's about censorship - at the hands, usually, of misguided parents.
Last year, there were 347 attempts to censor books, plays and other material in the schools, according to the advocacy group, People for the American Way. Even more disturbing, nearly half the efforts were successful.
That compares to the 1990-1991 school year, when there were 264 attempts to censor school materials, with about a third of them successfull. Last
year's endangered-species list included many traditional targets: innovative teaching programs; Pulitzer Prize-winning plays; classics such as "Of Mice and Men," "Sleeping Beauty" and "Catcher in the Rye."
A new entry was the popular cartoon game book, "Where's Waldo?" It came under fire in Easthampton, N.Y., as too sexually explicit. (The book was discovered to have one illustration of a woman's partially exposed breast.)
"Where's Waldo?" was in good company. The Bible also came under fire by some parents as being too sexually explicit.
The free-speech advocacy group said numerous parents' protests stemmed from sexual content or objectionable language. (Webster's Dictionary is regulary attacked by some book-banners because it contains profanity.)
About a third of the censorship attempts were instigated by religious conservatives, many of whom were egged on by right-wing political organizations. Their frequent rationale for challenges was that materials were "anti-Christian," "satanic," or "New Age."
(In Grand Saline, Texas, a picture of Santa Claus on a classroom wall came under attack because, objectors said, the letters in the word "Santa" could be rearranged to spell "Satan.")
But there was also fire from the left, with liberals attempting to ban several books, usually on the basis of racism.
"Little House on the Prairie" came under attack for its depiction of Indians. "Tom Sawyer," a frequent target, drew parents' protests because of claims that it contains "terms that belittle people of color."
Optimists say this is all part of a good trend - parents taking a greater interest in the schools and in what their children are exposed to.
This is a good trend - up to a point.
Parents have a responsibility to guide their children. They have a right to ask that substitute reading be available for assignments to read books they find offensive. Increasingly, however, some are going beyond that. They seek to censor the use of books and materials, often of a kind to which almost no one else would object, for all children.
In some cases, they're asking for wholesale removal of entire collections by a specific author. Sometimes, indictments are issued of entire genres. (In Auburn, Wash., protesters demanded the removal from elementary schools of every book that mentioned ghosts.)
Over the past two years, nearly half of all school book-banning efforts have been aimed not at assigned materials but at library materials that no child is required to read. Moreover, says People for the American Way, recent efforts have also led to an unprecedented number of teachers being fired, suspended or otherwise harassed.
This is not merely censorious political correctness; it is censorious political correctness with a nasty-edged vengeance. It goes far beyond parents' legitimate and encouraging interest in how and what their children are learning.
by CNB