Censorship: Maya Angelou, sex education, and evolution

I was once told by one of our local ANTI friends, who was a candidate for our VUSD school board in 1998, that "information once given could never be taken back". This school board candidate thought giving full information to our students was a bad thing.

Certainly some information is age appropriate, but withholding vital information from students is not the function of fact based public education.

That 1998 candidate was talking about our Sex Education Curriculum when he told me about his fear of information getting to students. He was specifically afraid of middle school and high school students getting birth control information. Having seen seventh grade girls (very few but some) bringing their babies back to school to show their friends and teachers, I disagree with him about the importance of a birth control component of sex education.

Our friends in the ANTI camp have also disagreed with information about science being taught in middle school and high school, especially evolution and specifically what we know about the fossil record and genetic record of human evolution.

I was able to teach the unit on human evolution to my middle school students only after I showed our vice principal the State Curriculum Guide that included human evolution in middle school. After several of our ANTI friends complained that human evolution should not be taught and their children attempted to disrupt all teaching of evolution in our middle school science classrooms, our VP had been ready to instruct the Lincoln Middle School Science teachers to de-emphasize evolution and leave out any mention of evolution in regards to humans. I was only able to continue the teaching of evolution because of what I showed him in the state wide guide. This incident happened before the California Standards were adopted.

Our current California Standards for Science do NOT mention human evolution. Our ANTI friends were successful in stripping it out at the state level when the Standards were adopted. Censorship can work.

Information can be withheld. Students can be denied a full fact based curriculum. The current California Standards in Science are an example where our ANTI friends won a huge battle in the science censorship war. Hopefully brave middle school or high school science teacher still teach what we know about the record of human evolution and have not stopped because the subject was stripped out of the new Standards.

Book Censorship has been another favorite for our ANTI friends. With that in mind I share two articles from the Orange County Register and a school board member and ex school board member advocating book censorship. They want Maya Angelou's book, Why the Caged Bird Sings taken from the school library.

Trustee: Ban Maya Angelou autobiography from libraries
Locals express concerns about "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which includes a rape scene of an 8-year-old.
BY ANNIE BURRIS
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

HUNTINGTON BEACH – An autobiography by renowned author Maya Angelou has become the latest book in Orange County to be challenged as unfit for school libraries.

Judy Ahrens, a former Westminster School District trustee, took to the podium at Monday's Huntington Beach City Council meeting to read a scene from Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' that details the rape of an 8-year-old girl. The reading was a demonstration on why the book should be banned, she told the audience.

"I would like to say I don't wish to read this material … but for the sake of the innocence of our children … sometimes we have to do things in life we are uncomfortable with," Ahrens said during the meeting which is televised on the city's cable channel.

The best-seller is the first volume of Angelou's autobiographical series and was the third most challenged book in schools during the 1990s, according to the American Library Association.

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,'' published in 1970, is a memoir tracing Angelou's childhood in a rural community during the 1930s. The theme of the book is using "the power of education and literature to save oneself from a bad living situation and overcoming adversity," said Deborah Caldwell, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom with the American Library Association.

"There is this rape scene in the book but it is part of the larger theme where the character overcomes such obstacles to become a better person," she said. "Denying the entire community access to the book is a real issue especially when it is a publicly funded library."

Read the rest of the article at the Register's website:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/school-book-ban-2616544-maya-trustee
NOTE: This article has been taken down from the Orange County Register site. I discovered it missing on October 22, 2010 but found the same article reprinted here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2367631/posts

Additional note written on October 22, 2010:

Below is a comment posted by someone calling himself John Briscoe. John Briscoe is the name of the school board trustee who according to the Orange County Registrar advocated for the removal of the Maya Angelou book, Why the Caged Bird Sings. See the above link to read what the Orange County Registrar said about John Briscoe or read what is posted at the end of this blog to get a clearer view of the kind of angry ignorance that has become so powerful in our educational system and now seems to control our country as well.


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Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Poll: Readers don't want Maya Angelou's book banned
About 1,800 online readers voted; 85% oppose ban.
BY ANNIE BURRIS
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

HUNTINGTON BEACH – Readers who responded to an ocregister.com poll overwhelmingly oppose a ban of Maya Angelou's book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" from public school libraries.

About 1,800 people voted in the poll in two articles about efforts in Huntington Beach to pull the autobiography from Ocean View School District's middle school libraries.

About 85 percent of readers said not to ban the book and 15 percent said to pull the book from the libraries, according to the poll, which was posted Tuesday morning.

Judy Ahrens, a former Westminster School District trustee, took to the podium at Monday's Huntington Beach City Council meeting to read a scene from Angelou's book that details the rape of an 8-year-old girl. The reading was a demonstration on why the book should be banned, she told the audience.

John Briscoe, an Ocean View School District trustee who headed the presentation, said he and Ahrens went to the City Council to publicize a matter of interest to the community.

Angelou, who is scheduled to speak at UC Riverside Thursday, recently talked with the Press Enterprise about banned books.

"I'm always sorry that people ban my books," she told the paper. "Many times I've been called the most banned. And many times my books are banned by people who never read two sentences. I feel sorry for the young person who never gets to read.”

There were more than 150 comments under the two stories.

Cathytrout wrote that the book changed her life.

"A babysitter molested me when I was 7 years old, and I carried the shame of that like an albatross around my neck," she wrote. "Then I found this book. I read about the pain of another little girl, and it pulled me out of my darkness. Her words released me from my own cage, from my shame. Those who decry this book don't know why Maya sings."


For the rest of the article see the Orange County Register website here:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/book-school-wrote-2617870-children-angelou