Hacking Huck & Rewriting HistoryA Brief History of Censorship & Textbook Controversy in American Public Education

Japanese Textbook Controversy

Although my primary focus is on censorship in American public education, it might be helpful to take a brief look at the subject in another culture.

“Three times in postwar Japan, the government has waged critical challenges to history textbooks in attempts to tone down or delete descriptions of Japan’s wartime aggression, especially atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre. The first challenge occurred in 1955, and the second took place in the early 1980s. The third began in 1997 and continues unresolved to this day.” 1

1. “Reconciling Narratives of the Nanjing Massacre in Japanese and Chinese Textbooks,”

Tokushi Kasahara

Two VisionsWe tend to think that textbooks are designed to have the maximum educational impact; however, they are designed to create profit. Textbook publishers, therefore, pander to protesters, and the two biggest markets determine the content of textbooks for the rest of the country.

The RightIdealized vision of the pastTexasReligious Fundamentalists

The LeftEgalitarian vision of the futureCaliforniaPolitically Correct Activists

Problems with Censorship

“By what logic can people defend their own freedom of expression while denying the rights of others to state facts and beliefs?” 1

“[…] all this activism had made the textbooks dull. Studies showed that they also had a simpler vocabulary, that they had been dumbed down at the same time they were being ‘purified.’ With everything that might offend anyone removed, the textbooks lacked the capacity to inspire, sadden, or intrigue readers.” 2

1. What Johnny Shouldn’t Read Joan Delfattore, pg 8

2. The Language Police Diane Ravitch, pg 111

Problems with Censorship cont’d

Consider the following passage from Byron’s Don Juan, in which we here how Juan’s textbook was sanitized, but all of the lewd parts were added at the end in an appendix:

“Juan was taught from out the best edition, Expurgated by learned men, who place,Judiciously, from out the schoolboy’s vision, The grosser parts; but fearful to defaceToo much their modest bard by this omission, And pitying sore his mutilated case,They only add them all in an appendix,Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index.”

For there we have them all at one fell swoop, Instead of being scatter’d through the pages;”

“Think about the strange contradiction in the life of a high school student today. At home, she watches television and sees news about terrorism, hijackings, famines, and political upheavals. She goes on-line, where the Internet gives her access to anything and everything. She goes to the movies, where she enters a world of fantasy, romance, passion, excitement, and action. She listens to music and hears the latest hip-hop, rap, or heavy metal performers. Before she falls asleep, she gossips with her friends. Monday through Friday, she goes to school. There she will open a literature textbook to a story that has been carefully chosen for its inoffensive language.” The Language Police, Diane Ravitch, pg 162.

Two Types of ProtestFundamentalist

Conservative Christian parents, or sometimes just citizens, protest, their protest gains momentum, and they are indoctrinated/assisted by a national organization of powerful political benefactors. Their actual cases are often lost, but the publicity causes textbook publishers to sanitize their content.

Politically CorrectThe state of California’s social content standards generally cause textbook publishers to expunge parts from literary works, or to avoid certain works of literature altogether. This sanitization sucks the content out of any kind of E.L.A. program like a weasel sucks the content out of an egg.

Mechanisms of Censorship

Fundamentalists

Organizations

State Organizations

States

Market Forces

Textbook Publishers

A citizenry complicit through silence

Protests & Court CasesVicki Frost 1983 Tennesee. Fundamentalist. Has a problem with Martians in her daughter’s homework

->National Orgs ->COBSCWA CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA (LaHaye) Michael FarrisEventually becomes

MOZERT v HAWKINS COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS‘Secular Humanism’ did not hold up, the

fundamentalists lost the case to the first amendment, which according to Williams v. Board of Education of the County of Kanahaw, “does not guarantee that nothing offensive to any religion will be taught in schools.”

NEVERTHELESS, HOLT, the textbook publisher, SANITIZED.

Market Forces

Texas on the right & California on the left are the two biggest markets for textbooks, therefore:

Textbook Publishers invest millions in developing new series that may or may not succeed. They avoid controversy at all cost, & — especially in Texas & California— very willing to bed to activist groups, and appease rather than risk failure. They create consultation boards who revise. In literature this results in a massive hacking and slashing of anything remotely offensive to any group.

Hacking Huck & Other Crimes Against

LiteratureSuppression – When books / stories are banned, removed from libraries or curriculums, or removed from anthologies

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been since it was published, and continues to be, the most widely suppressed book, despite comprehensive scholarship that consistently disproves the fears of its censors. 1

Abridgment – When books or stories have offensive passages or parts expunged. Most often, this is not made clear to any of the readers (teachers, students, parents, &c.)

Also known as “Bowdlerization,” after 19th century Shakespeare censor. Often victims believe they are reading the real Chaucer, or Twain, or Shakespeare, &c..

Not one state identifies specific works of literature or specific authors that all children should read.

Four have recommended reading lists (CA, MA, IN, NY) have recommended lists, and only eight mention specific works or authors in their E.L.A. standards ( MA, CT, MS, AL, CA, DE, AR, UT). Most state standards treat ALL written word as literature. One Prentice Hall book (Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes) has an excerpt from Xena: The Warrior Princess in it.

1. The Jim Dillema: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn by Jocelyn Chadwick Joshua

Rewriting HistoryCurrently enjoying a period of relative sanity after frenzy of 1970s Revisionists.

The social upheavals of the 1960s (a reaction to the idyllic ‘50s and the turmoil of the Vietnam War) caused progressive activists to rearrange “not just the surface, but also the character of the United States”1

However, textbooks are still blatantly sanitized by publishers, at the demand of market forces.

History is a process, a mystery, a puzzle to be solved. When history teachers rely on a single text, or a single publisher, they are presenting a sanitized subjective world-view. Students don’t remember History class because it’s boring: they “spot the scam.”2 Passionate teachers, who use a multitude of sources (both primary and secondary, are the only hope.

1 America Revised Frances Fitzgerald

2 The Language Police Diane Ravitch, pg 156

Possibilities for Resistance

Professional Organizations?

Advocacy Groups?

Muckraking Books?

A Rational Citizenry: Conservatives, Moderates, & Liberals alike?

Censorship is Orwellian, Kafkaesque: the mechanisms are ingrained; they have become common sense. “It works best when it permeates ones consciousness and no longer needs to be explained or defended.”1

Possibilities for Resistance

CompetitionThe state textbook adoption process is bogus. Texas and California act as cartels, bullies, pressuring the publishers into compliance.

Transparency (“sunshine”)The public needs to know how all of these decisions are made. Publishers and all levels of government—Federal, State, and Local—as well as school boards and districts need to be made transparent for public review. Publishers should make their Bias/Sensitivity reviewers curricula vitae public. The panels should include teachers of the subject. The decisions should be reviewed by laypeople.

Teachers need to be better educated, not just in the art of teaching, but in their subject areas. If teachers didn’t need to rely on textbooks, if they were devilishly passionate about their subject, and enslaved to that passion.

OUTROMusic by M.C. Paul Barman

“Senioritis” from It’s Very Stimulating

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