Yes there is an Eastern bias disease in the country and I admit to being infected. However, it is rarely a surprise to find the book burners and speech censors of the Religious Right gaining more traction in the South and Midwest than in the Northeast. No one in New York or Hartford would, for example, seriously suggest that sex education be limited to abstinence. Few people in Connecticut complain if the local high school football game doesn't begin with a lengthy prayer.It’s no accident that the Scopes-Monkey Trial was held in Tennessee and not in New Jersey.
The item that brought this issue to light today was a ruling by the Georgia Board of Education upholding a decision to permit the Harry Potter books to remain on the shelves of school libraries. The decision came as a severe blow to Laura Mallory, who has three children in the Gwinnett Georgia school system (What? no home schooling?). Ms. Mallory is convinced that the J.K. Rowlings novels promote witchcraft. And you all thought the only wizards that prospered in Georgia wore white robes and carried crosses instead of wands!
Come to find out that the Potter books are under attack with fair frequency. Specifically,their suitability as reading material for kids has been called into question on 115 separate occasions since 2000. That's more than the Wizard of Oz. The runaway success of the books and the films is probably the reason.
In a free society of 300 million folks, the ranting of a few kooks should hardly provoke any sort of reaction, except that in some sections of America (there's that bias again) this sort of nonsense actually gets a hearing. My guess is that the bible-pounding citizens of Missouri and Nebraska assume that, because they treat the bible as the literal word of God, children will do the same with Harry Potter. These are the same people who wanted Superman taken off TV because they feared that children would tie a towel around their necks and attempt to fly from the garage roof. (OK. So a few dimwits actually tried but I wasn't seriously hurt.)
Children have a thing called imagination. Most appear to understand the difference between real and make-believe. (Perhaps they could recommend a reading list to Rev. Falwell.) The Road Runner makes children laugh; not attempt to drop a safe on their friends. Sponge Bob presumably is not causing kids to attempt to live at the bottom of the pool. The stupidity of these protests is that the Harry Potter books only use sorcery as a device to tell a magical tale of a young boy coming to grips with who he is. Seemingly the absence of a "deus ex machina" moment offends the God squad who thinks that nothing happens without Divine guidance.
These over-protective parents do more harm than just waste time at the local PTA meeting. They make school boards skittish about introducing new material into the libraries. The books should be chosen for their diversity of ideas, not conform to any one group's idea of what is suitable. Here's an idea: if you don't want your child reading a particular book, be a parent and tell him/her not to read it. If you don't want Suzie to read, "Sally Has Two Mommies" by Mary Cheney, make your feelings known. Just don't march down to the school board and superimpose your prejudices on everyone.
Anyway, hats off to Georgia. First, they took the stars and bars off the state flag (and only 150 years late) and now this. We Northeastern know-it-alls may have to revise our prejudice. Where stands Georgia on evolution and condoms?
1 comment:
There ain't no such thing as evolution and I will be moving from my single wide into a condom if I can get that job at Wat Mart.
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