The school board in Republic, Missouri voted to ban two books from the school library after a religious complaint:
Shortly before 9 p.m. Monday, the school board voted 4-0 — three members were absent — to keep Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak,” an award-winning book about date rape, and remove Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” and Sarah Ockler’s “Twenty Boy Summer.”
Wesley Scroggins, a Republic resident, challenged the use of the books and lesson plans in Republic schools, arguing they teach principles contrary to the Bible.
A typically clueless school board.
Board member Melissa DuVall said districts make decisions every day about what to keep and what to exclude and this is no exception.
“We are not going to make everybody happy — and rarely do we,” she said.
“What we have to be proud of is we took a complaint, we took is seriously and we gave it due diligence.”
No, you should be ashamed of yourself for giving in to know-nothings and moral busybodies who hate learning and love controlling other people in the name of God.
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Chiroptera
August 4, 2011 at 11:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wesley Scroggins, a Republic resident, challenged the use of the books and lesson plans in Republic schools, arguing they teach principles contrary to the Bible.
Since this was part of the complaint, is this good evidence (in a legal sense) that the school board is violating the Anti-Establishment Clause?
imrryr
August 4, 2011 at 12:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So… when are they going to ban the Bible for teaching principles contrary to the Bible?
MIchael Heath
August 4, 2011 at 12:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I read Slautherhouse Five and all of Vonnegut’s other books published up to 1978 within months of graduating from High School (where I was raised fundie though it never really took). I’d rented a furnished apartment which contained the full set plus Catch-22 and Tom Robbins’ books which I also enjoyed.
What an eye-opening experience that period was for me. I can understand why Christianists and other conservatives who understand Vonnegut’s perspective feel so threatened. Of course that perspective should obligate the government to not only keep such books in public school libraries, but actually make use of them in their curriculum. (Robbins is probably better suited for college.)
rork
August 4, 2011 at 1:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Agree with Heath. Slaughterhouse was deemed age inappropriate, but it was quite appropriate for me and my friends at that age. I recommend Cat’s Cradle to the kiddies too. I was raised howling atheist, but was nearly converted to Bokononism.
“All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.”
LightningRose
August 4, 2011 at 3:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
God made the idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-Mark Twain
jackpantalones
August 4, 2011 at 3:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The school board seems to be confused. Superintendent Vern Minor says “the discussion we’ve been having was not are these good books or bad books,” but sums up his objections to Twenty Boy Summer with “I just don’t think it’s a good book.”
I see no mention in the linked article of the best part of the story, which is that the guy who filed the initial complaint is actually a college professor (at a state university, not a religious school).
jackpantalones
August 4, 2011 at 3:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For those interested, here is the full text of the initial complaint by Wes Scroggins (in .pdf format):
tinyurl.com/44o5rmv
It’s actually a laundry list of complaints, encompassing everything from the offending novels to the usual gripes about evolution, sex education, and the phrase “separation of church and state.”
An appendix includes passages from the novels he doesn’t like, with the dirty bits helpfully highlighted.
dog healed my dyslexia
August 4, 2011 at 4:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library to Offer Free Copies of Slaughterhouse Five to Students in School Where Book Was Banned:
http://www.facebook.com/notes/kurt-vonnegut-memorial-library/kurt-vonnegut-memorial-library-to-offer-free-copies-of-slaughterhouse-five-to-st/10150337490470931
Occam's Blunt Instrument
August 4, 2011 at 5:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library to Offer Free Copies of Slaughterhouse Five to Students in School Where Book Was Banned:
WIN!
Modusoperandi
August 4, 2011 at 6:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Any god who doesn’t like Vonnegut is no god at all.
sizzzzlerz
August 4, 2011 at 7:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So all it takes is a single person to complain about a book in Republic and it gets banned?
Craig Pennington
August 4, 2011 at 7:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Definitely a class response.
Formerly known as Sadie Morrison
August 4, 2011 at 8:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Apparently only if that single person’s complaint relates in some manner or another to Christian conservatism.
Rike
August 5, 2011 at 1:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I remember when I was in High School (in Germany), the principal decided to forbid a certain book at school ( it was a boarding school). He made the announcement during lunch break, and after school that day, the line at the bookstore in town was all the way out the door. I had never heard of the book before, but I was in line, also…
Modusoperandi
August 5, 2011 at 5:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rike, the same thing happened the day one of our high school teachers told us he caught someone in his class reading a Heavy Metal magazine, took it from him and tossed it in the trash (“…which is where garbage like this belongs!”).
democommie
August 5, 2011 at 7:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If I thought I had a shot at winning I might just run for the School Board. My campaign slogan would be, “Everything I need to know about religion and the commieGAYmuslonazi NWO I learned in a Montessori kindergarten.”.
I wish that Philip Jose Farmer would donate some copies of “Venus on the Half-shell” or his Doc Savage/Tarzan/ The Nine treatment, “A Feast Unknown”, that might raise a few eyebrows (and more than a few reluctant KKKristianist penises) in Republic, MO*.
* I wonder, did the town’s name used to be “Democracy”?
moggie
August 5, 2011 at 8:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So it goes.
John Hinkle
August 5, 2011 at 9:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Rike:
Cool avatar. Is that a cactus?
Anyway, now if the board would just ban some books by Dawkins and Hitchens, we might make some headway in this world.
Midnight Rambler
August 5, 2011 at 8:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rike, I have to wonder if that kind of thing is related to Catcher In The Rye‘s popularity and longevity as well. Given how much I hated, hated, hated Salinger’s Nine Stories I never read it, but I suspect I’d have the same reaction to it as the South Park kids did.