Parents Protest Trashy Textbooks

It is hard to understand why the folks in the Charleston, West Virginia area feel it is necessary to blow up a school to get the school board's attention.

Yet, there is basis for the anger of parents over textbook material they consider "obscene, anti-American, and unChristian."

For nearly three months now citizens there have carried out a massive protest against their school systems.  Demonstrations have been accompanied with violence.  One man has been shot, an auto blown up and four schools bombed.

Mass picketing has closed down some schools for several days.  Absenteeism has been running from 50 to 90 percent in some cases.  Wildcat strikes called in support of the textbook protest have idled thousands of coal miners for short periods.

More than 30 protesters have been arrested, including several ministers.  The school board president and school superintendent - supporters of the textbooks - have resigned.

Mothers and fathers cite hundreds of objectionable passages in the 300 new books adopted last June.  Most of the offending books have been removed from the schools while an 18-member citizens committee decides their suitability.

Predictably, a counter group calling itself the Kanawha Coalition for Quality Education has sprung up "for the books and continuance of academic freedom."

As usual, both sides of this controversy are partly right and partly wrong.

Parents have the responsibility and privilege of supervising the education of their children.  Violence, on the other hand, is as "anti-American" as they claim the textbooks are.

Libertarians perform a useful service in resisting potential abuses of our freedoms.  However, they are guilty of equal extremism when they equate questionable material with "quality" and assignments by teachers with "academic freedom" for pupils.

The dispute was triggered by Mrs. Alice Moore, a school board member.  She says discussion questions in elementary texts tend to dispute Christian values and are too complex for young children.

As an example she cites a teacher's guide to be used in connection with the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk."  Second graders are asked, "Is it ever right to steal?" and encouraged to debate the question.  Mrs. Moore agrees this is a proper, moral topic to raise; but she objects to relating it to a fairy tale that makes Jack and his mother poor and needy.

From a third-grader text about a little boy who cheated and felt bad about it, this topic is posed: "Most people think that cheating is wrong, even if it is only to get a penny, which is what Shan did.  Do you think there is ever a time when it might be right?  Tell when it is.  Tell why you think it is right."

From a supplementary book to be used at the discretion of teachers in junior high school is a poem which critics say undermines respect for police:

"I was standing on the corner,
Not doing any harm.
Along came a policeman
And took me by the arm.
He took me around the corner,
And he rang a little bell.
Along came a police car
And took me to my cell."

It is the textbooks for high school students that arouse the most ire.

Critics say sex is cheapened by such stories as that by Allen Ginsberg, once prominent in the "hippie" movement:

"A tall, red-headed chick.  She had been mainly a whore, actually, with very expensive Johns, who would pay her a hundred dollars a shot.  And she was a very lively chick, who took a lot of pot.  Really a remarkable, beautiful, good-hearted, tender girl.  I had a special regard for her from years before because she had really put herself out to straighten me out and here she was like a big, expensive whore."

Here is an example of religious literature that many parents feel is irreverent, if not blasphemous:

"Christ climbed down
from his bare tree this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings."

As an unwarranted politicization of the class room, parents cite a poem titled "Speaking the Hero."

I did not want to go.
They inducted me.
I did not want to die.
They called me yellow.
I tried to run away.
They court-martialed me.
I did not shoot.
They said I had no guts.
They ordered the attack.
A shrapnel tore my guts.
I cried in pain.
They carried me to safety
In safety I died.

The few examples given here are, of course, the most objectionable listed by the protesters.  In many instances the offensive material is just poor grammar.  Some of the religious objections don't bother, me, personally, yet I can see full well how they would drive other, sincere believers up the wall.

Why drag in sexually, religiously or politically oriented material at all?  There is not enough time to acquaint students through the high school level with the widely accepted good literature and universal standards of good conduct.

Why must the professional educators have it all their way?  If a substantial number of parents want a particular approach used in the education of their offspring, so be it.

But pressure for change must come through the ballot box by election of sympathetic school board majorities, or by repeated petitions.

At the same time, school authorities must learn to be sensitive to the needs and wishes of the local citizens who pay the bills.

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