Banning books to create a narrative of utopia.
Via Helena IR:
Montana is no stranger to book challenges. Patrons of libraries and schools have cited sexual content, violence, witchcraft, seditious German influence and even an unflattering portrayal of the city of Butte in their objections to books.
A staple of many school reading programs, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was pulled from the curriculum by a Mississippi school district earlier in October because its use of a racial slur “makes people uncomfortable.” The move has made waves among educators across the nation.
The book hasn’t had a documented challenge in Montana, and Billings teachers who teach the book vociferously defended the text’s classroom value.
“If we ever take it off the curriculum, that’s when I retire,” said West High English teacher Cheryl Schamp.
That’s not on the table in Billings, but the district has had several book challenges, most recently in 2013 to Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” The book was retained.
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” a fictional story that’s loosely based on the childhood experiences of author Harper Lee while growing up in a small Alabama town in 1936, is a structural masterpiece, teachers said, but that’s hardly the extent of its use in a curriculum. The themes of the book — which is ultimately critical of institutional racism — discuss social issues students grapple with as they get older.
“I have a discussion with them before we ever start reading about the n-word,” Schamp said. “We don’t teach it in a vacuum … you get a safe environment for kids to think about those things.”
That includes teaching historical background — several teachers said they thought the time between the Civil War and the civil rights era was a gap in students’ knowledge.
“The majority of the students have no idea what Jim Crow is,” Schamp said, referring to a series of laws that limited the rights of black citizens and promoted segregation.