Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" is okayed

11th graders know more than you think and exposed to far more graphics than Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Next year, Lolita will be approved.

"'In Cold Blood' approved for AP students in Glendale"

The 4-0 school board decision capped a months-long debate among administrators, teachers, students and parents over whether the violent nonfiction novel was appropriate for teenage readers.

by

Megan O'Neil

October 9th, 2011

Los Angeles Times

A literary brouhaha over Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" has ended as Glendale Unified school board members voted recently to approve the book for advanced placement students.

The 4-0 decision capped a months-long debate among district administrators, teachers, students and parents over whether the nonfiction novel was appropriate for teenage readers. School board member Mary Boger, who had spoken out against including the book on the list of approved reading material, abstained from the vote.

"I think the board did a service to the community by talking about the importance of literature in the public school curriculum," said Holly Ciotti, a longtime English teacher at Glendale High School. "Not only am I looking forward to assigning the book to my AP students, they are chomping at the bit to read it."

"In Cold Blood" became a point of contention last spring after Ciotti requested to add it to a list of books approved for AP language, a course that enrolls top 11th-grade English students and focuses on rhetoric and debate.

The book — first published in 1965 and widely read by high school and college students throughout the country — received unanimous approval from the district's English Curriculum Study Committee. But it raised red flags with the Secondary Education and PTA councils.

Some board members, charged with the final decision, also expressed strong reservations, including whether the book, which details the brutal murder of a Kansas farmer and his family, is too violent for a young audience. They also worried about how the district would provide a suitable alternative for families who did not want their child to read it.

The debate, which expanded beyond Glendale Unified, irked at least some community members. During the school board meeting Tuesday, Franklin Elementary School parent and former school board candidate Jennifer Freemon criticized what she described as a lack of respect for teachers' professional expertise.

"My concern is that all of this that is coming out has really made Glendale look like a subpar district and not the academically rigorous district that we are," Freemon said.

Boger said she chose to abstain because she could neither recommend the book nor deny anyone the opportunity to read it.

"Yes, I know our AP kids are smart," Boger said. "But as the mother of several AP students, I can unequivocally state that 'smart' does not mean 'mature.' And yes, I know the book may appear on the AP exam. However, I have yet to hear of one of our students failing an AP exam because they had not read the book."

Other board members acknowledged the weighty nature of "In Cold Blood" but ultimately supported it.

Board Vice President Christine Walters said she has seen video games in her family room that are more gory than the book, adding that reading "In Cold Blood" gives students an opportunity to discuss violence in a mature context.

"It humanized everybody that was involved in the whole story," Walters said. "The reader knows a lot about those that were victims, the reader knows a lot about those who committed the crimes. The reader knows a lot about what the reaction was in the community, the fear that was created."

"Slaughterhouse Five"...nostalgia from Ken Paulson

Kurt Vonnegut

"'Slaughterhouse Five' ban should make school blush"

by

Ken Paulson

August 15th, 2011

USA TODAY

It's rare that book banning makes me nostalgic.

Yet the news last month that the Republic, Mo., school board banned Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five brought me back to 1969, the year the book was published and my freshman year in high school.

Slaughterhouse Five was the cool new book and, along with the 1966 republication of The Hobbit, was destined to be seen under the arms of high school students everywhere. As a 15-year-old, I found the book to be very challenging; it explored difficult concepts such as free will and fate in an unconventional narrative. Forty-two years later, I still remember it as a thought-provoking and powerful novel.

Wesley Scroggins, a Republic resident and professor at Missouri State University, saw the book differently, and urged the school board to ban Slaughterhouse Five along with Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak. In a column for the Springfield News-Leader headlined "Filthy books demeaning to Republic education," he wrote: "This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The 'F-word' is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ."

Scroggins' stance raises a number of important questions. First of all, do sailors still blush?

Second, in a society in which movies rated for a high school audience include extensive profanity and violence, and where three of the top 10-selling songs featured the F-word in their titles, how can coarse language in a book published the year we first set foot on the moon be considered a threat? What's next? Louie, Louie?

The literary merits of Slaughterhouse Five are clear. The novel was widely praised. Time magazine calls Slaughterhouse Five one of the 100 best contemporary novels in the English language. In its initial review in 1969, the magazine said, "Vonnegut has a forbearing, thoughtful sense of history, and he is working here — as in all his books taken together — on a vast, loosely linked metaphorical mosaic that portrays the condition of man."

Of course, the Republic school board is not the first to ban the book. In fact, it was one of the books at the heart of a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1982 on the removal of books from public school libraries. In Island Trees School District v. Pico, a Levittown, N.Y., school board removed several books from the high school and middle school libraries because they were "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy." The U.S. Supreme Court held that while school boards have considerable discretion in setting a curriculum, students have a First Amendment right to access information in the school library. Once a book is on the shelves, board members can't remove it just because they disagree with the ideas it puts forth.

Did the Republic school board violate the Constitution? It depends. The board kept Speak in the classroom, banned Twenty Boy Summer and jettisoned Slaughterhouse Five because of its crude language and adult themes, according to the News-Leader. Scroggins had complained about both profanity and the story Vonnegut told. The board could target the former, but not the latter.

Battles over books extend well beyond Republic, Mo. In recent months:

•Administrators at Franklin Central High School near Indianapolis confiscated Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon from 50 juniors after a parent complained about profanity, sexual content and insulting language. The book was later reinstated.

•The Cheatham County, Tenn., school district restricted access to an anthology that excerpted Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, by Paul Monette, after a middle-school parent filed a complaint.

•Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich, was removed from a personal finance course by the Bedford, N.H., school district after two parents complained that it was anti-capitalist and anti-Christian.

•And in a sign that book controversies know no age limit, the Channelview, Texas, Independent School District removed the Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by Dav Pilkey, from its grade schools because of a reference to "poo-poo head."

Challenges to books in schools are still prevalent enough that the American Library Association and a coalition of book and anti-censorship organizations continue to hold Banned Books Week (this Sept. 24-Oct. 1). The ALA says books in schools and libraries were challenged 348 times last year.

Legal issues aside, a school board that bans a widely respected book from high schools because of concerns about coarse language sends some unfortunate signals. It's in effect saying it doesn't trust the principal, teachers or librarians to make sound decisions concerning the school's curriculum. And it doesn't see its students as the young adults they are, with inherent rights and the ability to grasp important ideas and challenging concepts, despite the presence of profanity.

The irony is that today's high schools are full of students engaged with video games and engulfed by social media. Why would we ever build a barrier to reading a book?

[Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center, is a former editor of USA TODAY and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.]


Book censorship battles continue

Book censorship battles continue

"Vonnegut library will ship banned book to Missouri"

by

Tom Lobianco

August 5th, 2011

The Associated Press

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library stepped into the fray after a Missouri high school banned one of the Indiana-born author's best-known books.

The Indianapolis library plans to ship copies of "Slaughterhouse-Five" to families in Republic, Mo., who ask for them, Library executive director Julia Whitehead said Friday.

Republic's school board last week banned the 1969 cult classic that portrays the cruel absurdity of war from Republic High School. The school board also banned Sarah Ockler's "Twenty Boy Summer."

Whitehead says she's been working with the Indiana and Missouri chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union to send up to 150 copies of "Slaughterhouse-Five" to the Missouri town. Four families have requested copies of the book already, she said, and the library plans to begin mailing them next week.

Wesley Scroggins, a Missouri State University professor who home-schools his children, petitioned successfully to ban the books. Scroggins said previously that the books' content is profane and violates teachings of the Bible.

But Republic school superintendent Vern Minor said he suggested the school remove the books because they are better suited for college students.

Scroggins and Minor did not return calls for comment Friday afternoon.

"Vonnegut always thought it was important for all Americans to be able to participate in the democratic process," Whitehead said Friday. Students who are almost old enough to vote and fight in wars are responsible enough to handle Vonnegut's classic novel about war, she said.

Scroggins argued in a column in the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader last year that Vonnegut's book mocked Jesus Christ and was filled with enough profane language to "make a sailor blush with shame."

But a story about the horrors of the fire-bombing of Dresden during World War II would be unrealistic if it didn't have graphic reactions to war and violence, Whitehead said.

"It wouldn't be realistic if it didn't have profanity," she said.

Slaughterhouse-Five [Wikipedia]