This story is pretty much a typical case of a challenged book in a school library. A school board member, John Briscoe, claimed that Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings shouldn't be lent out to students by teachers. He objects to a graphic rape scene in the book. The problem with his argument is that the book is already restricted. Teachers aren't allowed to have the book in their classroom, and a child needs parental permission to check out the book from the school libary. The quote that I always find disturbing is this:
"The tentative first step taken by Ocean View to require a wink or head nod of parental approval is just that, a first step," he[Briscoe] wrote.(emphasis mine)
By "a wink or nod", I think he means written approval from a parent deciding what is best for their own children. The mention of "a first step" is typical of these stories. It's easy to imagine that the second step would be to permanently remove the book from all schools in the district, but what exactly is the final step?
The story also includes the always crowd pleasing stunt of reading the offensive parts of the book totally out of context in the middle of the meeting. I can only imagine someone yelling out "won't someone please think of the children?!"(Mrs. Lovejoy style from the Simpsons) in the middle of this meeting.
Also, the book has been checked out of the school library 5 times in the past 15 years.
It is truly sad when a book is not judged as a whole and rather by its parts. Objections will sometimes count the profanities in a book as a defense against it which makes me wonder if they even read the book and if so did they miss the story entirely?
ReplyDeleteIt's too bad that the "crowd pleasing stunt of reading the offensive parts of the book totally out of context in the middle of the meeting" seems to be pretty effective. My request for reconsideration case involved a mom who read aloud one excerpt(also a description of rape) from The Color Purple at a school board meeting. The Board voted unanimously then and there to ban the book with no further review. It's amazing how quickly and with so little thought, a group will ban a book.
ReplyDeleteHow sad. A comment on the original article mentioned Mr. Briscoe accused the teachers of being Satanist and supporting Osama Bin Laden because they wouldn't put a large "In God We Trust" sign in front of the school. This man is running for school board. I'm so glad I my children don't live in his district.
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