Café Scientifique wasn’t the only excellent event on the schedule last night. As part of the 2005 Banned Book Week our fine library hosted a reading last night from various banned books. WeatherGirl, Sub-Evil Boy, and I hoofed it over there ASAP after Café Scientifique wrapped up and enjoyed a pleasantly subversive end to a busy evening.
We missed the first 10 minutes or so, coming on a nice (if overly long) reading from The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. There were then readings from a whole host of sources which had been banned at one point or another, including some Shel Silverstein poetry, Gone with the wind, Joyce’s Ulysses, and a short bit from Harry Potter and the goblet of fire that was chosen, introduced, and read quite nicely by Sub-Evil himself.
A definite highlight, though, was a wonderful poem Dave shared entitled “Scab sandwich”. His father apparently composed this gem and penned it in a friend’s school science book back in the day, and when it was discovered at the end of the year when they returned their books, the teacher was sufficiently grossed out that he had that copy of the book removed from circulation. Unfortunately I can’t quote the poem from memory, but we’ll try to get Dave to pass it along. For now, suffice it to say that Sub-Evil thought it was truly hilarious…
Growing up in Texas, me and book banning go way back. Like the time my school district ordered several dozen perfectly good, brand spanking new dictionaries destroyed. These had been sent by publishers as evaluation copies but were discovered to have “bad words” in them. The review commitee apparently didn’t notice that they were in fact the same “bad words” that filled the dictionaries that were currently in use in our schools. Craziness of a high order. And then there was the time that in a fit of proto-blogging back in the days of Usenet I went off on a long rant on this subject that (through no efforts of my own) later ended up on rec.funny and can still be found on their archives. Ain’t life strange?
Texas book banning always makes me think of Mel Gabler. There was a scary old man, who may have been behind the dictionary banning.
I don’t remember any specific connections to Gabler, but based on their web site they certainly reminded me of way too many people, and I could certainly imagine that they influenced many of the people that worked to drain all thought from the life in our school system.
The dictionary story is not all bad, though. The woman who was in charge of English and Social Studies for the school district (and who told us this awful tale) managed to (under the table) save a substantial number of the dictionaries and distribute them to students from poorer families.
In many ways that sums up my experience in the Wichita Falls, Texas, schools. There were many people of good will who were really trying to realize some vision of education as a tool to open doors and enable students. They were, unfortunately, embedded in and constantly fighting a system and culture who’s primary trends were to impede original thought and discourage true learning and growth.
My best friend in high school was Pang Chen, whose family had come to the U.S. from Taiwan when he was 13, and who spoke precious little English when they did. Five years later he graduated second in his high school class, and it was so clear that he should have been first that the school system changed their GPA calculation rules specifically to prevent that from happening again. He’s an extremely talented mathematician, and lead our high school math team to tromp pretty much all opposition in the state. But while the football team travelled in air conditioned buses and were treated to steak dinners, we typically travelled in the cars of a couple of teachers who gave up a huge amount to make our success possible and paid our own meals at diners. Pang was named outstanding math student of the year by the state association of math teachers, and went on to get a double major at CalTech and then a PhD at Stanford under Knuth, blah, blah, blah.
The year after he graduated (which was my senior year), the District Superintendent had to gall to hold Pang up as one of the success stories of the District the previous year! Given that we’d never perceived any meaningful support from any part of the school above the teachers that coached us and travelled with us, for the higher ups to then claim any sort of credit for what people like Pang accomplished just frosted me mightly (and obviously still does).
So huge thanks to those great teachers (I should blog about you someday), but a big rasberry for the system that, if we were lucky, just stayed out of the way.
Hmph.
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