A Word Aptly Spoken

This letter has been sent to all of the board members of the school district where I taught for almost 30 years. I am very saddened, angry, and horrified by recent actions they have taken and the slippery slope they are stating on. It is a sad, sad day when an American public school embarks on a program/policy that would follow in the steps of dictators, tyrants, and fascists throughout history. This is a major issue that is happening far too often today as we witness a society feeling emboldened to harm people who are different than them, to spread hatred and lies, and to keep a populace ill-read and uneducated.

Dear Board Members of the Upper Adams School District:

Some of you may already recognize my name as I was a teacher at Biglerville High School for almost thirty years.  I know I had at least one of you in my class and several of you are parents or relatives of students I taught.  As a strong proponent of reading, as well as someone who respects the education and professionalism of teachers, the rights of every parent, and the first amendment, I find the letter that was sent to the teachers in the district to submit a list of all materials in their room and the proposed changes to policy 109-1 to be very disturbing.  

First of all you have done something very insulting and demeaning to the teachers of UASD.  They were each hired because of their education, expertise, and experience.  They were hired to use these skills to give students the best possible education.  In my experiences over all those years, the teachers in the UASD are qualified, have integrity, and want what is best for ALL children.  They were tasked with writing curriculum, acquiring materials, designing lesson plans, and offering exciting, meaningful, and valuable lessons to their students.  By demanding that they provide a list of all the materials in their classrooms, you have called into question their character, their knowledge, and their integrity.  Unless someone has specialized education in the various subject areas or the field of education as these teachers do, there is no one else able to assess the materials as well.

In addition to being demeaning, the demand made in the letter is unreasonable.  Many teachers have tried very diligently to have a plethora of books easily accesible to their students to improve their reading, expand their horizons, and help them to become life-long readers and learners.  What you are demanding will take hours and hours for them.  Are you are asking them to give up teaching time or time with their own families?  If you are asking them to work beyond the contract, is there a stipend for this ill-conceived activity?  Or do you have so little respect and courtesy for these professionals that it hasn’t even crossed your mind?

If you remove materials that a small group of people find offensive, you are taking away the parental rights of a vast majority of parents.  When I taught, I had hundreds of books available in my room.  I taught high school juniors and had materials that were easy to read and difficult to read, that required a certain level of sophistication to understand and others that were for simple enjoyment.  I had fiction – everything from the latest Christian novels and newest YA novels to the classics – drama, biographies and memoirs, graphic novels, and books on a wide range of topics by a wide range of authors.  I had Bibles in my room to use when there were allusions in the literature that the students didn’t get. I tried very hard to have a large enough variety of books to choose from so that every single student could select a book that would hold their attention and create a love for reading.  After all, I know that the best way to get better at anything is to continually do it.

For awhile I had a form that students filled out for each book they selected to read where they filled in the title and author and then had their parents approve the choice by their signature.  It became obvious over time that this was quite the waste of time and paper. I had parents who refused to sign because their children were certainly capable of choosing books on their own.  I also had some who refused on the grounds that it was stupid and that it was my job to approve. I had some parents who would write notes giving blanket permission to their children to read anything because they had a strong sense that their children were mature enough to not believe everthing they read and to be ready to go out on their own in the next year.  These parents had taken the time over the years to read along with and discuss what their children were reading when they were younger – who knew that preparing their children to think on their own against ideas and concepts meant teaching them to work through them. One BHS alum, after praising the fact that he was allowed choice, commented on Facebook this week, “…heaven forbid that parents actually have to talk and be involved with their kids!” There were parents who signed every blank on the form the first time it was presented to them – some because they had confidence in the job they had done raising their children and some because they just didn’t care.  I had only one time in my entire teaching career that a parent objected to a book students could select from my shelves, and it happened in a school prior to my coming to BHS.  Ironically, it was a well-written book but one that I didn’t care for.  As parents they certainly had the right to decide what their own children read.  I immediately took the book back and the boy chose something else. They did not ask for the book to be removed from my shelves because they realized that they were within their rights to determine what their own children read but not what every child read.  

Likewise, with the required reading in my classroom, I had exactly one complaint in all of those years.  It was in regard to a mystery novel by Tony Hillerman.  The story involved the theft of an Navajo mask from the Smithsonian Instute that was used by the Navajo in one of their religious ceremonies.  In the course of the novel, the thief and the investigators end up on a reservation during the religious ceremony that would have involved this type of mask.  There were depictions of the crowd, the costumes, and the dances sprinkled in as the story followed the detectives and the thief.  One parent objected because, in her mind, the mention of the tribal religion was the same as proselytizing.  While I certainly saw no such attempt in the story, but there was simply another assignment given to her daughter.  There was no interference in the reading of the novel for the other 100+ students who were learning a writing technique used within and hopefully enjoying it.

Some of the changes being proposed in policy 109-1 are merely simplifying the language, but upon a careful reading, some of them open the possiblity of the limiting of materials beyond the scope of the outright named objections of sex and language.  They remove a mention of diversity for example.  Certainly the students deserve to see themselves represented in the books available to them.  It is vital that students of color see authors and characters who come from the same background.  I would argue that it is just as vital that other students become familiar with the cultures and societal influences on and of these neighbors and peers as well.  

To eliminate all books with any profanity or sexual content is difficult at best and ludicrous at a serious level, and dangerous at worst.  Who gets to decide how much is too much?  In addition, the time limit on deciding on a book is very short.  Too short to form a committee and have every member of the committee read the book in question.  No material should even be up for discussion if even one member of the committee has failed to read it.

I had a student doing research one time on book banning.  It happened that a group out of Texas who attempted to get many books removed was on a television program at the same time the student was in my class.  Since the period was being spent working on their research, I allowed him to watch the program.  At one point they were ranting on about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet because it contained pre-marital sex.  Every kid in the room shouted at the television, “they were married!”  Obviously my class had actually read the play but these people had not.  Additionally, the so-called “sex scene” involved Romeo climbing in through Juliet’s window.  There is a short bit of conversation and the scene ends.  The next scene in the play is the following morning.  There is no explicit sexual content anywhere in the play.  Is that where the line is drawn because a couple people who never actually read the material “heard” that it was there?  None of your teachers are putting pornographic material out on the shelves for their students. 

I am a Christian woman and follow the biblical teaching not to use the Lord’s name in vain.  As far as I can tell, that is the only Christian prohibition on language.  I doubt that you would find any books chosen by your teachers that are filled with profanity used for the mere shock value. To draw the line in the sand at no profanity, is trying to stop a flood with a sponge.  If you have ever heard the language of groups of children on a sports field starting in little league, in public, on a school bus, or in the halls of a school (including, from my recent experience, a very religious Christian school), you will fully understand that none of these words are new to them. Each parent should teach their children what is appropriate and what isn’t.  The teachers will teach them the proper use of proper English in their writing.  But we can’t shelter them from every profanity.

There is also a question of what words would be eliminated. Bad words/profanity is only deemed that by the common usage.  “Gay” would have been complimentary and meant someone was happy for most of history before being used differently and thrown by children at each other as a slur.  I believe that, besides the use of God’s name in vain, the only real profanity is any word hurled in an attempt to slander, harm, and attack another human being.  

I had a student who offered to take all of my books home over the summer and cross out any “bad words.”  She told me there wouldn’t be any reason to take home To Kill a Mockingbird because there weren’t any bad words in it.  I told her that the only curricular book I had with “bad words” was that book in that it used the N-word, a word only used to hurt and assail a fellow human being.  I allowed its use because the overall message and the crassness of the people who used it outshone any negative aspect.  She saw nothing wrong with words like that, yet when watching a film in my class where there was a mild explicative, she sat on top of her desk with her fingers in her ears, singing “la-la-la-la” for the remainder of the class.  Evidentally disrespect, words flung to harm others, and failure to do the assignment were not problematic but the word “hell” was.  I believe one of her parents or relatives sits on this board.

Finally, what you are attempting seems to me to be Un-American.  It denies the rights of the many in favor of a small, private-interest group.  It is counter to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  Every single despotic, tyrannical leader in history has first taken control of what people can read.  In order to keep people subserviant, societies have made (and continue to make) schooling unavailable to certain races, ethnic groups, and women. They ban. And they burn. Eventually they kill anyone who dares to speak or read.

If you have the best interest of the students enrolled in the UASD at heart, you will want them to be prepared to enter the world armed with the ability to think for themselves, reason through other ideas, see humanity in all its reality, and stand firm.  You want them to be wise enough to do all of these things when they go out into the work force or college in the next few years and not be swayed by every idea they see in writing. You will want them to know what the world is like. If you think you are protecting them in the name of God…well, I don’t know about you, but the God I have learned about and have put my faith in will stand up to the challenge.  If your faith cannot take questions, it must be weak. We have too many people now who cannot reason and discern truth and fact from opinion and rumor as evidenced by the lies, trash, and conspiracy theories rampant on social media.  They have to understand the depravity, ill-will, and potential harm to other others humans are capable of.  They need to see that a coworker or classroom peer would have no problem destroying the project they so diligently worked on for weeks.  That those people would quickly take credit for their work or undermine them to get ahead.  They have to know that not everyone has their best interest at heart – including those who would claim to be protecting them when they are only trying to keep them uniformed, uneducated, and naive.

I implore you to halt this insulting and educationally unsound pursuit before you hamper the ability of those graduating from your district to read with discernment, think and reason through ideas, and sort out the truth from the rumor.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  

Sincerely, 

Lynne Vanderveen Smith

Lynne Vanderveen Smith

Educator and Writer