Friday, July 22, 2005
Parents Have Rights Too
There is a wave of book banning spreading across the land and I fear that I may agree with some of it. I feel like one of those hapless straphangers in the New York subways being required to open up my bag and prove that I am not about to blow everybody straight to Allah’s backyard. There is a huge difference between censorship and common sense.
Laurie Taylor has been in the news lately for questioning the book selections in the Fayetteville school system libraries. She started off opposing three items, and over time the list is now over 50. How this happened is apparently an exercise in how things just get out of hand. It started with something called, “It’s Perfectly Normal” and goes on to include such immortal goodies as “The Teenage Guys Survival Guide.”
Taylor was on my show at WAI Radio (linked on the left) and you can listen from our “on demand” archives. Unlike her guest shot with Big Dave on KARN, she gets to speak intelligently with me for about 48 minutes. You get a real sense of what she’s all about and the real issues. Between the corporate twaddle and Big Dave’s boundless ego, those KARN listeners were cheated.
A lot of unfortunate misinformed people will get all worked up at anything that smacks of a new idea, any nudity, or has the slightest hint of bad language. I guess the books Taylor doesn’t like would fit into all of those categories, but none of those excuses, taken by themselves, would be a strong enough reason to restrict these widely circulated works. I’ll bet that I disagree with curtailing many of the selections on Taylor’s expanded list. Nonetheless, what I have seen shows a shocking casual attitude toward making important life decisions.
The problem, as I see it, is that the works I have seen seem to promote a casual approach to serious issues like sexual preference self-identification, respect for others, or facing consequences. Young numbskulls are being steered away from the counsel of parents, who are, in all likelihood, totally in the dark anyway. So they should figure things out for themselves? You must be kidding.
Of course, the wrong kind of people will make a hero out of Taylor. Those are the public school hating, creationist, racist, flat earth morons, and she is nothing like that. Taylor may have fallen in with a bad crowd. I don’t know, but she should not be found guilty on the basis of guilt by association. As a parent and taxpayer, Laurie Taylor has every right to be heard by her local school district. Unfortunately, this process will be an expensive mess for the schools and public trust will suffer. That raises the question as to how these apparent elitists in the education establishment have gotten so completely out of touch. Parents are responsible for the physical and emotional development of children and nobody else.
Speaking of snobs, how about Governor’s School? Now, I love the ACLU and most of the time it hits home runs, but whether or not a inconsequential bunch of smart kids and their snooty teachers get to congratulate each other over how smart and how cool they are while cooing over the script of “Angels in America” is not worth a thimble full of spit. All this energy would be better spent showing the average Arkansas parent that working hard in school is worth the trouble.
When parents stick up for their own religious and personal convictions, that is not censorship. There is nothing wrong with making the government’s school librarians pay attention. Parents have rights too.
Laurie Taylor has been in the news lately for questioning the book selections in the Fayetteville school system libraries. She started off opposing three items, and over time the list is now over 50. How this happened is apparently an exercise in how things just get out of hand. It started with something called, “It’s Perfectly Normal” and goes on to include such immortal goodies as “The Teenage Guys Survival Guide.”
Taylor was on my show at WAI Radio (linked on the left) and you can listen from our “on demand” archives. Unlike her guest shot with Big Dave on KARN, she gets to speak intelligently with me for about 48 minutes. You get a real sense of what she’s all about and the real issues. Between the corporate twaddle and Big Dave’s boundless ego, those KARN listeners were cheated.
A lot of unfortunate misinformed people will get all worked up at anything that smacks of a new idea, any nudity, or has the slightest hint of bad language. I guess the books Taylor doesn’t like would fit into all of those categories, but none of those excuses, taken by themselves, would be a strong enough reason to restrict these widely circulated works. I’ll bet that I disagree with curtailing many of the selections on Taylor’s expanded list. Nonetheless, what I have seen shows a shocking casual attitude toward making important life decisions.
The problem, as I see it, is that the works I have seen seem to promote a casual approach to serious issues like sexual preference self-identification, respect for others, or facing consequences. Young numbskulls are being steered away from the counsel of parents, who are, in all likelihood, totally in the dark anyway. So they should figure things out for themselves? You must be kidding.
Of course, the wrong kind of people will make a hero out of Taylor. Those are the public school hating, creationist, racist, flat earth morons, and she is nothing like that. Taylor may have fallen in with a bad crowd. I don’t know, but she should not be found guilty on the basis of guilt by association. As a parent and taxpayer, Laurie Taylor has every right to be heard by her local school district. Unfortunately, this process will be an expensive mess for the schools and public trust will suffer. That raises the question as to how these apparent elitists in the education establishment have gotten so completely out of touch. Parents are responsible for the physical and emotional development of children and nobody else.
Speaking of snobs, how about Governor’s School? Now, I love the ACLU and most of the time it hits home runs, but whether or not a inconsequential bunch of smart kids and their snooty teachers get to congratulate each other over how smart and how cool they are while cooing over the script of “Angels in America” is not worth a thimble full of spit. All this energy would be better spent showing the average Arkansas parent that working hard in school is worth the trouble.
When parents stick up for their own religious and personal convictions, that is not censorship. There is nothing wrong with making the government’s school librarians pay attention. Parents have rights too.
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Pat, good call. I had her on my program as well in NWA. We agreed on caring for our children, who attend the same district schools. However, when she wants to apply a rating system to books, and shut kids out, she's stepped over the line. And, I might add, I understand she sings a different song when speaking with us than she does on the Born-again stations -- she never said anything about "fighting secular humanism" on my show, but did on others. I feel she was very nice, but perhaps a bit crafty in the way she presented her side of the story -- and yes, you should look at the longer list. Unbelievably, I don't think "Catcher in the Rye" is listed.
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