By David K. Shipler
About a
year ago, a mother in a wealthy suburb of Dallas filed a formal complaint
against the use of my book The Working Poor: Invisible in America in advanced placement English classes at
Highland Park High School. A review committee was formed, but she thought its
membership was stacked against her and so withdrew her challenge. That was the
end of the story.
Or was it? Not
quite. Six of Highland Park’s eighteen English teachers resigned at the end of
the year, mostly because of the controversy, which involved seven books
altogether and had brought “panic attacks, meltdowns, or outbursts of volcanic
anger,” one told me. Going forward, teachers were required to write long
rationales justifying the readings they wished to assign, which were then
submitted to panels of community residents. Only the principled, daring, and
resolute could resist the temptation of “soft censorship” as a way of avoiding
controversial works by not choosing them in the first place. This must happen
invisibly all across the country.
So even victories over those who
try to have books removed have unseen costs. The classroom can be invaded by
stress, bureaucracy, politicization, and a sense of danger. Education has
“become very unsafe,” said Brian Read, an English teacher in Plymouth-Canton,
Michigan, whose selections for AP English—Beloved
by Toni Morrison and Waterland by
Graham Swift—had survived an angry challenge by a small group of conservative
parents who hadn’t read them.
