Censorship

[Tom Ross <tross@AITKIN.K12.MN.US>]

Folks, Victoria, I in no way am likely to judge the Media Specialist of Apple 
Valley, I do think their board minutes give us an understanding of the depth of 
this battle for them and anytime you are in that type of battle it is a horrendous 
pressure on your life. You can hardly sleep or eat when you have to go through 
things like this. In fact I honor them for standing up to their convictions. And if 
you remember how I started this link, I started by leaning in their direction and 
afterward being called on by a student to reconsider. We face Censors every day, 
from within and without, and sometimes we need to stop and ask ourselves if we are 
censoring because of our ideologies. I might have done that without realizing it 
had a student not encouraged me to look deeper inside and out in order to find a 
more equitable answer. When I first started researching this issue, I did find 
their year long struggle on the web and it compelled me to look more deeply into 
the issue. It compelled me to ask the larger community of LM-Net. That is why I am 
referring to their struggle

One other note: as our Native American friend pointed out the Dominant culture 
often suppress the sub culture. In fact, I think I would be hard pressed to find 
supportive reviews on the Sub-culture "Fundamentalist Christians" books about 
Creationism. They are not popular people right now and so I don't think I can rely 
heavily on reviews about their books from people in the main-stream of our society. 
If I were to think that the average reviewer could rise above a Dominate-Culture 
point of view and judge their books fairly then I would have to think they did they 
same when they mis-judged the literature of African, Hispanic or Native Americans. 
From what history has taught me, I would have to lie to myself about our own 
cultures racism. So I would have to ask Fundamentalist about what they feel most 
reflects their point of view, just like we should have asked Native Americans about 
material that supported their culture when it was not popular to have Native 
American Literature. Otherwise I would have been just another White Liberal pushing 
my idea of what Native American Literature should be. Now this works for inclusion, 
but we must we wiser than we were in the past when we handle exclusion. Here is an 
example of what could have gone wrong, but I think is turning out alright.

One English teacher, our Teacher of the Year, is being challenged for using, "To 
Kill a Mocking Bird" because a distinguished African-American Pastor in our 
community feels it makes African-American people look bad. I don't understand why 
he feels that way about this book, but I understand his pain and I have an 
obligation to look deeper at my collection and my heart in order to keep it 
balanced, sensitive, yet responsible. There is something in almost every major Idea 
that people disagree with. If I just pull "To Kill a Mocking Bird." at his request 
though, I will have to clear my shelves, and my students would be confined to 
ignorance. The list of books that have ideas that are offensive to one group or 
another is overwhelming. We can't use that as our only criteria for selection. The 
measure is then much more complex and that is why we have a "reconsideration 
policy." Sometimes, we need to have more input on these complex issues. Our 
reconsideration committee decided to keep this book in our curriculum, but to 
encourage discussions about the very issues this pastor brought up. We chose to 
help our students think more deeply and with greater compassion to this 
African-American's point of view.  So far-so good.

If we operate in a vacuum, then we're going to get into trouble. That is one of the 
reasons I brought this issue up on LM-Net. I needed not to operate in a vacuum on 
this issue about Creationism. Together we can be much more effective than alone or 
even just within our district. This is the power of the "Global Community." Because 
I don't have all the answers, because I am not finished growing even after 21 years 
in this business,  I can go to a place like LM-Net and get a broader perspective. 
Folks, this is the gift of a free society where freedom of speech abounds.
Thanks again

Tom

Tom Ross
Director of Library/Media
Aitkin Public Schools
306 2nd St. NW
Aitkin, MN  56431
218-927-2115 ext. 207
tross@aitkin.k12.mn.us

Fax Wave 209-882-5565

"Another day, another reason to be thankful."   :-)

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