Read A Banned Book This Week

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I was pretty disappointed Tuesday that not one of my students knew it was Banned Book Week.  Not one in any class.  Not one intern.  Not my graduate assistant, even.  Nobody!  But we did have good discussions of book banning and censorship in class, even though I had to carve a little time out of the assigned readings for the day.

I was happy to hear, however, that none of my students was aware of there ever having been any book challenges at their schools.  This does not mean, of course, that there were none.  There very well could have been challenges that the students were unaware of.  But when I read the lists to the students of the ten most frequently challenged books last year or the top 100 most frequently banned and challenged classics, my students were shocked by how mainstream and canonical they were.  Several reported having read most of the top ten from last year, and, as one said, the list of banned classics read like her high school English curriculum.  She had read most of them.

Some speculated that this might be because we live in the northeast, which is wealthier, more educated, and more liberal than most of the country.  And while this may be true, I think we all know that books get challenged here in Connecticut all the time.  In my years as a high school teacher, I was in the thick of two challenges.  One was to Romeo and Juliet and the other to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, both on the grounds of sexually inappropriate content for high school freshmen and sophomores, respectively.  In addition, there were challenges made to other books with other teachers at the center.  One colleague who was teaching UConn Early College Experience English had the parents of a senior challenge Ragtime, again on the basis of sexually inappropriate content.  And one of our middle school teachers got caught up in a challenge to Nightjohn, which is about slavery.  In that case, the parents who challenged the book were white, and their objection was that the children were overexposed to the subjects of race, racism, and slavery.  They felt that these children should not be made to feel guilty about something they were not responsible for. 

That said, we discussed some other forms of censorship that have taken place in other parts of the country, such as the infamous 2012 Texas GOP party platform on education that opposed critical thinking because it undermines fixed faith and parental authority.  Or the more recent case of an Arizona law against the teaching of ethnic studies, used by the Tucson School Board to ban Mexican Studies because it promotes the overthrow of the government.  Fortunately a circuit court judge threw out that decision, although the law itself still stands.

There was a great op-ed in the Hartford Courant this Wednesday, written by a 16 year-old at Staples High in Westport, about the College Board’s decision to cater to conservative criticism of the 2014 AP US History Test.  Critics, such as Ben Carson, accused the test and the supplemental test preparation materials of promoting anti-Americanism.  Carson went so far to allege that the test would make our young people join ISIS.  Rather than resist these criticisms, the College Board, under the enlightened leadership of Common Core architect David Coleman, Bowdlerized the test.  This year’s test deemphasizes any past wrongdoings on the part of the US government or military and, instead, emphasizes US exceptionalism.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think a lively debate or discussion of US exceptionalism is profoundly relevant subject matter for the test, but not at the expense of the study of slavery, or the Trail of Tears, or My Lai.

When I share these stories with students, it’s a little like ripping off their rose-colored glasses.  They’re pretty incredulous.  For example, when I read off the top 100 challenged books list and The Lord of the Rings came in at number 40, the students were shocked.  What got Tolkein’s books banned?  Because the characters walk too much?  Or maybe because there are too few female characters?  If that’s the case, at least we know it wasn’t banned for inappropriate sexual content.  Unless someone starts talking about the homoeroticism of Frodo and Sam’s friendship. 

But that’s a subject for another week.

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