ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 11, 1996 TAG: 9611120009
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
TRAVEL down that censorship road, no matter the intentions with which it is paved, and you're sure to end in a bad place.
A vivid example of this lesson remains on display, sad to say, at Montvale Elementary School in Bedford County.
The story that began in May, when a teacher confiscated a Rush Limbaugh book from fourth-grader Jason Gardner, has gone downhill from there.
Now the lawyer for Gardner's father, who has sued the school in federal court, says Jason has had another of the conservative commentator's writings seized. He also says the school has established a policy prohibiting students from bringing any reading materials from home.
The school district's attorney denies this last accusation, contending that the rule applies only to books read for a reading competition that is part of the school's instructional plan.
But whatever the competing explanations and ultimate outcome of the case, Montvale would have been better off not getting into this mess in the first place. It would have been better off never to treat a book in school like it was drugs or guns.
The school started down this slippery slope with the confiscation, in May, of Limbaugh's "The Way Things Ought to Be." Never mind that Jason was perusing it during a free-reading period when students were allowed to look at books they had brought from home. Never mind that Jason's father had given him permission to have the book, and that no evidence has surfaced to suggest he was disrupting classmates.
Upon catching sight of a chapter on "condom bungee-jumping" - a parody of condom distribution in public schools - the teacher seized the book and, as if it were so much contraband, sent it to the principal's office.
Granted, "The Way Things Ought to Be" was inappropriate for Jason - developmentally inappropriate, that is. At a court hearing, he could barely read the first sentence. Granted, too, teachers have a legitimate role supervising what kids read in school. What's more, courts in recent years have denied students many of the rights their parents enjoy.
Even so, it was not Jason's incomprehension but the possibility that he might understand what he was reading (about condoms) that apparently prompted his teacher to take the book. And, once school officials determined he had brought it with his father's permission, why not return it to him?
We haven't heard school officials claim that if a student can't understand the contents of, say, William Bennett's "Book of Virtues," they would seize that too - embarrassing its owner in class, refusing to let him have it back even after school, insisting that a parent come pick it up at the principal's office - as the school did with Jason's copy of Limbaugh's book.
It's not as if "The Way Things Ought to Be" is pornography. If the book was inappropriate, its heavy-handed appropriation was far more so. And now the story line may be descending into farce.
The lawsuit brought by Jason's father, who apparently fancies himself a hero of Limbaugh's ditto-heads, is pending. The other day his lawyer charged that, on Sept. 26, Jason took a Limbaugh newsletter to read during a silent recreational reading period. When his teacher saw what he had, according to the lawyer, she told Jason to take it to the principal's office.
Now here's a thought crime for you. The newsletter made not a mention of condoms. It featured an interview with Miami Dolphins football coach Jimmy Johnson. The title: "How to Be the Best."
To his credit, Principal Ron Mason sent Jason back to class with a note suggesting there was nothing wrong with the publication. But, says the Gardners' lawyer, the teacher told Jason not to bring it back to class.
Well, of course. "How to Be the Best" might be risky reading for young minds.
The school district's attorney says Jason is "free to bring it to school, and he is free to read it before and after school, at lunchtime, at recess and at other times which are not part of or disruptive of the instructional program." But does that include the free-reading time, when Jason wanted to read it?
What a sad place for educators to be in - seeming to teach their charges that a book or pamphlet, any book or pamphlet, is more dangerous than censorship.
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