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Monday
As this is Banned Book Week, I first look at literature banning before discussing how to respond to the banners. According to messaging consultant Antonia Scatton, there’s are ways to effectively counter those parents and others who are bullying and censoring teachers while banning books and closing down school libraries. First of all, however, here are a few observations about banning novels.
Having taught literature for over 40 years, I can testify to the vast range of things that a student can carry away from a work. As reader response theorist Norman Holland once observed, we replicate our identities as we read, which means that a passage which is of immense significance to one reader will often go unnoticed by another. Samuel Delany, the legendary African American science fiction writer, talks about zeroing in on a casual reference in an Isaac Azimov novel to a dusky-faced character. As Delany was trying to find a foothold in the overwhelmingly white 1950’s sci-fi world, that tiny detail meant all the world to him—and nothing at all to most other readers.
Songwriter Tom Lehrer humorously captures the phenomenon in his song “Smut,” written (I believe) in the 1960s. Here’s a stanza:
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder
For filth (I’m glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder
When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)
To demonstrate how far censors are willing to go, Oklahoma’s governor recently attacked National Public Television’s Clifford the Big Red Dog, a series based the Norman Bridwell books. (Apparently there are some lesbian characters in some episodes.)
When it’s not LGBTQ+ issues, censors are going after race and sex. For a Virginia woman recently profiled by the Washington Post, it’s sex. As Hannah Natanson’s article reports, Jennifer Petersen has made it her life’s mission to get books banned from school libraries and curricula:
Jennifer Petersen keeps 73 school books she detests in her basement.
She ordered most from Amazon. In the last year, she read each one. She highlighted and typed up excerpts from more than 1,300 pages — of the 24,000-plus pages she read — that she says depict sexual acts. Then she filed challenges against 71 of the books with Spotsylvania County Public Schools, the Virginia district where one of her children is a student and the other is a recent graduate. (Two books were removed before she could challenge them.)
Thanks to Petersen’s efforts, one of the books banned has been Toni Morrison’s Beloved, one of America’s greatest novels, about which Petersen wrote, “The book illustrates the horrors of our history. However, the passages outlined do not add to the story and they are sexually explicit.”
Second guessing a Nobel-prize winning author for what does not add to a story shows a breathtaking level of arrogance. If, as I suspect, one of the scenes Petersen tagged was the slaveowner’s sons assaulting Sethe by sucking on her milk-filled breasts, then the scene is integral to the novel’s central theme of violation. It shows both how even slaveholders long for tenderness and how such longing is perverted by a system in which humans own other humans. The theme is taken up later when Sethe murders the very child she has suckled to save it from being returned to slavery. (Its ghost then proceeds to haunt her.)
Censors of all stripes have always had this blinkered arrogance. I think of those fanatical church reformers after Luther who shattered stained glass windows and destroyed musical instruments for (so they argued) interfering with receiving God’s word in plain and unadulterated fashion. Morrison shows the deep complexity of the world, a complexity that includes sexuality, but that’s of no interest to the Petersens of the world.
Who would you trust your kids with—a teacher who, often with years of experience, is seeking to develop well-rounded and mature individuals who can think for themselves? Or a zealot with a narrow ideological agenda?
So anyway, that’s my rant. Now to Antonia Scatton’s recommendations on how to respond to such people. Scatton, according to her website, is a “political messaging expert and communications consultant who is currently partnering with the DNC’s Association of State Democratic Committees to bring her message strategy training workshops to Party leadership, staff, candidates and elected officials across the country.” It so happens that this material is tailored for Virginia, in which Petersen is joined by Republican governor Glenn Youngkin in a culture war against its schools.
Welcome to Democrats Fight Back! Public Schools Edition
By Antonia Scatton
Top Talking Points!
On attacks about GLBTQ+ children and parents, Youngkin transgender student policy:
This is state-mandated discrimination, bigotry, and bullying. No child should ever be told that there is something wrong with them because of who they (or their parents) are.
On parents’ rights:
We take all parents beliefs into account, not just those who make the most noise. We’re not going to let a handful of right-wing vigilante parents with extreme minority views override the wishes of most parents.
On CRT and race:
We believe in teaching the truth about our history and our progress as a country.
On culture wars:
It’s puritanism for profit. It’s dangerous and dictatorial. It’s hurting our kids and impeding their education.
It’s book banning, surveillance and state censorship. This relentless teacher harassment is making it impossible for teachers to teach and driving them out of the profession.
This is a national campaign to discredit public schools for private profit and political power. It’s a coordinated effort by private corporations seeking to raid public school budgets. Keep public dollars in public schools.
On why public schools matter:
As a society, we have an obligation to educate every child.
Public schools are what make our children into free and functional adults. They are the engine of equality and economic mobility.
Public schools unite us and make us all Americans. They give us a set of shared American values and a common understanding of our history.
That’s why we need to:
Focus on learning. Help our kids get caught up, make up for lost time. Work with them and their parents to make sure that every single child is being challenged and inspired to do their very best.
Make our schools places where kids can feel welcomed, supported, and safe from bullying, discrimination and (gun) violence. Bring in new resources to support their safety and mental health.
To do that, we need to fully fund our schools. We need to recruit and retain teachers (and support staff) with the best skills and experience, and give them the pay they deserve and the resources, support and trust they need to do their incredibly important jobs.
Bonus:
Generally, we don’t want to engage in debates about gender issues in schools. That’s what they want us talking about. However, several Virginia candidates told me about events where voters were approached by Republican agitators and prompted to ask the candidates whether they wanted “men using girl’s bathrooms.” The best response to this is:
“Did it ever occur to you that Glenn Youngkin’s policy actually forces girls to use men’s bathrooms?”
In short, Scatton is suggesting that liberals take the offensive in responding to the attacks.