Edwardsville High School - Tiger Yearbook (Edwardsville, IL)

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16 STUDENT LIFE

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Everybody Needs One! Friends play a major role in our lives. They help us when we’re down and make us feel better. If things get shaken up in their lives, they know they can come to us. Friends are there to share a bad mood or a good joke, sad times and fun times. Here’s a look at some of E.H.S. ’s friends: STUDENT LIFE 15

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In Corning, New York, a small group of parents ask that Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Death of a Salesman, be removed from their local high school curriculum because it contains “gutter language” and “condones stealing.” Environmentalists in Oregon attempt to ban a fourth grade social studies text they claim is “pro-industry.” Parents in Church Hill, Tennessee, challenge the entire reading program of their children’s school district. Among the books in question: The Wizard of Oz and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Across the United States the debate is raging: Who will decide what students read and study? Usually matters like this are decided by those who reflect the majority opinion — elected and appointed officials and school boards. But such officials find it increasingly difficult to make decisions on education when threatened by lawsuits brought on by small groups of disgruntled citizens. People For The American Way (PFAW), a civil-liberties watchdog group, seeks to promote freedom of the press and freedom of speech. In 1987, the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, the group has taken an active role in the current debate over censorship in America’s public schools. We asked PFAW President Anthony Podesta about it. How prevalent is censorship in the U.S. today? We’ve done a survey of censorship in the public schools every year for the last five years, and we’ve found that things have gotten worse. There have been book and record bannings in every state — books are being removed from high schools and public libraries, and textbooks are being censored. And not only are there more incidents of attempted censorship today, but the attempts are twice as likely to be successful. Even if the initial lawsuits are successful, aren’t cases like these routinely overturned to higher courts? They might be, but the problem is that no matter what happens with the lawsuits, material gets taken out of the books. We’ve just released a study of civics and government textbooks to coincide with the bicentennial. Watergate? You can barely find it. Civil rights? It might as well not be there. Anything that might be controversial gets taken out. Is the problem that textbook publishers shy away from printing anything that might involve them in controversy and costly lawsuits? Yes. There’s a short story called “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, which came under attack a few years ago as depressing and anti-Christian. The Texas state school board announced that it would no longer buy any textbook that contained “The Lottery.” Now it’s almost impossible to find. We can’t find a single literary anthology published in the U.S. today that has an unexpurgated version of Romeo and Juliet. Several publishers of high school dictionaries have even started taking words out of dictionaries. In talking about censorship, aren't we also talking about the rights of parents to have a say in what their children read or study? We think that the whole climate of trying to restrict things from teens in this country is deplorable. Over a whole range of issues you end up with small groups successfully taking books out of libraries and material out of texts. The publisher of the most widely used high school health textbook in the country does not even include a chapter on human reproduction. In Texas, which has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country, we got the state board of education to reject the book for that reason. What does PFAW do to respond to attempts at censorship? Lobbying, litigation, public education, and research. We also have a staff of people who are there just to help teachers, parents, and students who are concerned about censorship. If a local group attempts to ban a book in your town, you can call us up and we’ll try to prevent that from happening — before it goes to court. Does your organization have any specific plans for the bicentennial of the Constitution? Besides releasing our textbook study, we’re planning an all-day reading of the Constitution on September 17 at Federal Hall in New York — where the first Congress met. Celebrities, kids, and judges will be doing the reading. And we’re planning a series of radio spots that will be available to schools. People like Kathleen Turner, Walter Cronkite, and Martin Sheen will be doing two-and-a-half-minute readings from the Constitution and other historic documents. — Robert Love The following is a partial list of books that have been challenged the most often in the past five years, as compiled by the Washington-based anti-censorship group People For The American Way. 1. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier, has been formally challenged nine times since 1982, including twice last year. 2. and 3. (tie) “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J. D. Salinger, and “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck have both been formally challenged at least eight times since 1982. 4. and 5. (tie) “A Light in the Attic,” by Shel Silverstein, and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain, within the last five years, have both been formally challenged at least seven times. Reprinted from SEVENTEEN® Magazine. Copyright © 1987 by Triangle Comm. Inc. All rights reserved. STUDENT LIFE 17