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TN School Bans book with Gateway activity...
Must schools ban 'gateway' books, too?
3:12 AM, May. 9, 2012 |
Our View
Last week, the Sumner County school district removed John Green?s award-winning young-adult novel, looking for alaska, from
its assigned classroom reading list because a parent complained about a scene describing oral sex between a teenage boy and girl. Sumner is the second county in Tennessee to remove the book from class this year.
In a country that categorizes children as chattel, with schools operating in loco parentis, teachers and school boards must respond to parental complaint. However, there are better, more responsible ways to respond to parental concerns than removing the assigned book. Offer that child an alternative title, for example, that fits his or her parents? sense of appropriateness.
While any book removal is disheartening, it is encouraging that book challenges and book bans have declined in the past several years, with 2010 having the fewest number of books protested since 1990, according to the American Library Association.
There have been few challenges in Tennessee school districts recently. Apparently, our schools have been doing yeoman?s work in pre-screening their assigned reading, weeding out any book that might challenge the narrow definitions of good taste, and avoiding the expensive and unseemly task of removing a title from class.
But the Sumner County action does raise an interesting question in light of Tennessee?s new mandate on sex conversation in schools. The legislature has said the only approved approach to sex is that only married men and women should have it; so, what to do about these books in school libraries?
Schools are banned from encouraging, offering access to materials or discussing anything that can be considered as promoting a ?gateway? sexual activity. It would seem logical that Tennessee must now cull its libraries of such offending material.
Perhaps this could be just an unintended consequence of the legislation (HB 3621), but it is difficult to penetrate the intent of legislators; maybe they do wish that our schools be cleansed.
