- Jun 30, 2004
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This phenomenon walks hand in hand with the "Critical Race Theory" controversy. And this is where I throw up my hands and proclaim "America has lost its way!"
There are enough news stories, particularly about Greg Abbott's draconian demands to pull books from school libraries. Readers can post links as they wish for our edification. But I feel edified to the point of exhaustion.
I was (more or less) fortunate to attend a local Catholic boys preparatory school. There were, at any given time through my graduation, about 500 students. The school was located near the barrio, but some distance from the black ghetto known as the East Side. We had several Mexican-American classmates, but there were only about two or three African-American kids. None of the priests who taught us were pedophiles; one or two of them fell under the shadow of rumors suggesting they were gay.
The school library was one of the best you could find in the county, given the fact that this was a private school, and the public high schools followed the factory model that originated at Columbia University. Those public high-schools were well-funded during the '50s and '60s. There was never any isolation or social caste distinction between our students and theirs. We dated their girls, and they dated the girls at our sister-school across town.
Miss Bevil was a sweet little old lady who served as our school librarian. The library had acquired a complete set of the Britannica "Great Books". The Great Books included a volume of Karl Marx and another of the works by John Locke -- often called the Grandfather of the US Constitution. My sojourn as a student occurred during the early 1960s, when the Cold War seemed to be moderating until after November 22, 1963. Miss Bevil decided to pull the volume containing Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, and she also pulled John Locke, since, for some reason, Locke had never received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur of catholic prelates.
It wasn't long thereafter that all the precocious students were driven to find Marx and Locke at the local public library. So Miss Bevil's efforts only served the opposite of her intent.
Now, the LA Times recently reported that a school board in Burbank, CA, had removed Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" and -- get this! -- Ernest Hemingway's "Of Mice and Men", for dealing with the issue of race!
I thought I KNEW America! Think of it: the kids might easily pull VHS or DVD renderings from the school film library of a black-and-white Gregory Peck classic, or the cinema version of Hemingway's book with Sinese and Malkovitch. What's next? Pull the films?! The kids will find them offered periodically on basic-cable TMC presentations!
These cornpone half-wit parents send their kids onto the high-school varsity football field where they might experience all sorts of serious injury, but they're so afraid of the printed word that they seem intent on gutting every public library of our national classics if they just get pointed in that direction.
Some will recall the recent appearances of academic and author Caroline Randall Williams, spotlighted in her New York Times Op-Ed -- "You want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument". Shall these parents compel the school board to ban the New York Times? How about Mark Twain? Twain wrote a detective novel entitled "Pudd'n'head Wilson". It's underlying background plot involves two babies who look identical, switched in their cribs at birth one born to a slave-master's wife, the other to his slave housekeeper. There's no sexually-explicit content, but the central issue of Twain's concern is obvious.
Ask the same parents if we should ban Huckleberry Finn because of its historically contextual use of the N__ word. I'd like to hear the responses to that question.
This country has a rich and wonderful literature written by Titans -- some purely self-educated, like Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain.
And it appears that a bunch of ignorant, race-conscious parents want to bury it. Somewhere along the march of time, people have lost their sense of value for the Truth. Maybe -- they never understood the value of the Truth. Has our public school system failed? Why do these folks want to return us to the Dark Ages?
I recently discovered Charles Darwin's final work before his death, when I was looking for information about vermi-composting for my garden: "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms". Delightful. "Oh, no! We've got to ban it from the stacks! It's CHARLES DARWIN!! Evil! Evil! Bad -- bad!"
Back during the first decade of the millennium, a news story appeared in my local paper. Some among the public wanted to ban an oil painting from a local museum, featuring a side view of a nude woman and a breast with a large aureole. Later, another woman attempted to get the Merriam Webster's Dictionary banned from the school classroom. Her child had chosen to look up the term "oral sex" and the Webster's abridgment of the 3rd New International Websters included it.
Do I have to spend the remainder of my sunset years constantly reminded of American Ignorance?
There are enough news stories, particularly about Greg Abbott's draconian demands to pull books from school libraries. Readers can post links as they wish for our edification. But I feel edified to the point of exhaustion.
I was (more or less) fortunate to attend a local Catholic boys preparatory school. There were, at any given time through my graduation, about 500 students. The school was located near the barrio, but some distance from the black ghetto known as the East Side. We had several Mexican-American classmates, but there were only about two or three African-American kids. None of the priests who taught us were pedophiles; one or two of them fell under the shadow of rumors suggesting they were gay.
The school library was one of the best you could find in the county, given the fact that this was a private school, and the public high schools followed the factory model that originated at Columbia University. Those public high-schools were well-funded during the '50s and '60s. There was never any isolation or social caste distinction between our students and theirs. We dated their girls, and they dated the girls at our sister-school across town.
Miss Bevil was a sweet little old lady who served as our school librarian. The library had acquired a complete set of the Britannica "Great Books". The Great Books included a volume of Karl Marx and another of the works by John Locke -- often called the Grandfather of the US Constitution. My sojourn as a student occurred during the early 1960s, when the Cold War seemed to be moderating until after November 22, 1963. Miss Bevil decided to pull the volume containing Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, and she also pulled John Locke, since, for some reason, Locke had never received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur of catholic prelates.
It wasn't long thereafter that all the precocious students were driven to find Marx and Locke at the local public library. So Miss Bevil's efforts only served the opposite of her intent.
Now, the LA Times recently reported that a school board in Burbank, CA, had removed Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" and -- get this! -- Ernest Hemingway's "Of Mice and Men", for dealing with the issue of race!
I thought I KNEW America! Think of it: the kids might easily pull VHS or DVD renderings from the school film library of a black-and-white Gregory Peck classic, or the cinema version of Hemingway's book with Sinese and Malkovitch. What's next? Pull the films?! The kids will find them offered periodically on basic-cable TMC presentations!
These cornpone half-wit parents send their kids onto the high-school varsity football field where they might experience all sorts of serious injury, but they're so afraid of the printed word that they seem intent on gutting every public library of our national classics if they just get pointed in that direction.
Some will recall the recent appearances of academic and author Caroline Randall Williams, spotlighted in her New York Times Op-Ed -- "You want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument". Shall these parents compel the school board to ban the New York Times? How about Mark Twain? Twain wrote a detective novel entitled "Pudd'n'head Wilson". It's underlying background plot involves two babies who look identical, switched in their cribs at birth one born to a slave-master's wife, the other to his slave housekeeper. There's no sexually-explicit content, but the central issue of Twain's concern is obvious.
Ask the same parents if we should ban Huckleberry Finn because of its historically contextual use of the N__ word. I'd like to hear the responses to that question.
This country has a rich and wonderful literature written by Titans -- some purely self-educated, like Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain.
And it appears that a bunch of ignorant, race-conscious parents want to bury it. Somewhere along the march of time, people have lost their sense of value for the Truth. Maybe -- they never understood the value of the Truth. Has our public school system failed? Why do these folks want to return us to the Dark Ages?
I recently discovered Charles Darwin's final work before his death, when I was looking for information about vermi-composting for my garden: "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms". Delightful. "Oh, no! We've got to ban it from the stacks! It's CHARLES DARWIN!! Evil! Evil! Bad -- bad!"
Back during the first decade of the millennium, a news story appeared in my local paper. Some among the public wanted to ban an oil painting from a local museum, featuring a side view of a nude woman and a breast with a large aureole. Later, another woman attempted to get the Merriam Webster's Dictionary banned from the school classroom. Her child had chosen to look up the term "oral sex" and the Webster's abridgment of the 3rd New International Websters included it.
Do I have to spend the remainder of my sunset years constantly reminded of American Ignorance?
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