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Re: censorship



Here, here!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Bergeron, Paul <BergeronP@CI.NASHUA.NH.US>
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 10:36 AM
Subject: [ARCHIVES] censorship


>For the educators and librarians on this listserv, I thought I'd share this
>editorial from American City & County Magazine at
>www.americancityandcounty.com
>
>
>Editor's Viewpoint
>It's a sin to kill 'A Mockingbird'
>By Janet Ward
>In Lindale, Texas, you are exercising the appropriate community values if
>you lie about being raped, attempt to lynch innocent people, believe in
>terrorizing children and snub those who are a little odd. At least that's
>the conclusion I draw based on the town's reaction to Harper Lee's classic
>tale, "To Kill a Mockingbird." The book, about a white Alabama lawyer's
>quixotic fight to free a wrongly arrested black man and the effect the
>battle has on his young children, was kicked off the advanced placement
>English reading list in Lindale because "it conflicted with the values of
>the community."
>Anne Arundel County, Md., took Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird
>Sings" off its ninth-grade reading list because it "portrays white people
as
>being horrible, nasty, stupid people." Much like, until very recently,
>ninth-grade history books portrayed black people.
>Marysville, Calif., knocked off J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye"
>because it didn't want the community, which apparently agrees on absolutely
>everything else, to be "polarized" over a book.
>And one Bridgeport Township, Mich., public school nixed the wondrous Harry
>Potter series because it deals -- as do "Snow White," "Cinderella" and
>"Hansel and Gretel" -- with magic and witchcraft.
>Those are the findings of the American Library Association's Office for
>Intellectual Freedom, which released a list of the 100 most frequently
>challenged books in honor of Banned Books Week (Sept. 23-30). During the
>1990s, the organization tracked more than 5,000 complaints at public
schools
>and libraries to come up with the Worrisome 100, which includes such titles
>as "Of Mice and Men," "Brave New World" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry
>Finn."
>Across the country, parents who think nothing of letting their children
>watch "South Park" and play "Doom" video games, turn into stormtroopers at
>the thought of those same children picturing in their minds Harry climbing
>onto his broomstick for a rollicking game of Quidditch. And rather than
risk
>an argument, spineless cities and counties are backing them up.
>Here's what I think: Local government officials who let someone convince
>them to take "To Kill a Mockingbird" off a high school reading list should
>be made to write "I will not censor literary works" 100 times on the
>blackboard. Then they should be forced to write an essay comparing and
>contrasting the policies of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the United
>States toward literature. Then somebody should throw the book at them.
>
>
>Paul R. Bergeron
>City Clerk
>229 Main Street
>Nashua, NH 03060
>Telephone: 603/589-3004
>Fax: 603/594-3464
>http://www.gonashua.com/
>
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>Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>

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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>