Should "community standards" play a part in what is taught in the classroom? This is the question we asked Highland Park, Tx. school officials in a February 6 letter about new proposals to deal with controversies over certain reading materials.
The Charlie Hebdo massacres prompted worldwide calls to embrace and celebrate artistic freedom. But actions speak louder than words. As demonstrations in support of free speech were held in Paris and we all reconfirmed our commitment to an open exchange of ideas, two cultural spaces in the United States-– one a library, the other a university-– censored artwork.
Last December, a guidance counselor in rural Pennsylvania read a children’s book about a dress-wearing boy to a kindergarten class without advance notice to the parents, upsetting some residents in the district.
Gilbert, Arizona was a censorship flashpoint last year, when the school board tried to remove pages from a biology textbook. This year they beat back an effort to remove the classic novel Beloved from an AP reading list.
A Florida lawmaker who last year introduced a bill strengthening local control over public schools wants to make a right-wing documentary required viewing.
As a number of schools across the country let students watch Ava DuVernay’s rapturously acclaimed Selma for free, one school in Alabama didn’t let its students see the movie at all. The reason? The film contains profanity and “racial slurs.”
Hanover School District’s Fix Could Actually Make Things Worse NEW YORK, January 13, 2015 — The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is cautioning school officials in Hanover County, VA that policy changes intended to reduce complaints about instructional materials could actually do the opposite. At a school board meeting tonight, three changes to board policies are being mulled over in response to controversies surrounding the use [...]
School officials resisted a challenge to a documentary film. But their new policies on instructional materials, while intended to reduce complaints, could actually do the opposite--giving would-be censors more power over what is taught in class.
National Coalition Against Censorship Contact: Peter Hart 212.807.6222 // c: 732.266.4932 // [email protected] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: First Amendment Groups Say No to Proposed Book Rating Policy in Appoquinimink NEW YORK, January 12, 2015 — The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is urging Delaware's Appoquinimink School District against adopting potentially restrictive book assignment and checkout policy. The district’s new system proposes to [...]
Update: Victory for KRRP! The Appoquinimink School District has chosen not to implement new rules that would have allowed parents to sign forms barring their children from reading anything deemed too “mature.”
In October, a few school board members in Gilbert, AZ attracted national attention when they voted 3-2 to yank two pages from an honors Biology textbook. Thankfully, redaction is off the table after the most recent board meeting.
UPDATE: After receiving NCAC's letter, pastor and school board member Shaun Fink has struck back against NCAC. Contrary to his earlier public statements, Fink now claims that he never called for the exclusion of materials on LGBT content or STD, HIV, and pregnancy prevention. At December 2's health curriculum subcommittee meeting, he also characterized NCAC's letter as a form of intimidation for the [...]
Late in September, in observance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles on Surveillance, NCAC noted thematic links between the NSA’s far-reaching surveillance tactics and those of public schools in the country. There, we observed that the underlying impulses behind surveillance on the national level and on the local level were uniform. This need to monitor and [...]
NCAC is joined by the American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the National Council of Teachers of English, PEN American Center, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators in a follow-up letter sent to the Highland Park Independent School District in TX. In the letter, we urge [...]
Today, NCAC was joined by the American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression (ABFFE), the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (ALA), and PEN America in a letter sent to the Kings Canyon Unified School District in Reedley, CA. In the letter, the signatories expressed [...]
(UPDATE: Good news! The students organized and managed to stage their performance at a local playhouse, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign.) NCAC and other organizations committed to artistic and intellectual freedom sent the below letter to Maiden High School in response to the cancellation of the scheduled January production of John Cariani's Almost, Maine due to concerns about the play's content. Although [...]
A call to "reject any proposal to restrict the curriculum of students to accommodate the views, values and preferences of some, and instead to rely on the professional judgment of educators."
NCAC along with seven other other free speech organizations sent a letter to the Riverside Unified School District urging the School Board to reinstate The Fault in Our Stars by John Green to middle school libraries. A reconsideration committee voted to remove the book after a parent of a middle school student raised objections to the novel's language and sexual content. The [...]
Author John Green’s work has once again come under the censorship chopping block, this time in Riverside, California. His award-winning love story, The Fault in our Stars, was taken out of middle school libraries because the novel’s subject matter involves two terminally-ill teens who use crude language and have sex. “I just didn't think it was appropriate for an 11-, [...]
UPDATE #1: Good news--the plan to 'review' AP History has been scrapped. *UPDATE #2 : The controversies in JeffCo have still been brewing since NCAC's intervention. The district decided to establish a committee comprised of two board-appointed members, along with students, teachers, and curriculum experts selected by the District. The district hopes that that the issue regarding the curriculum will be [...]
NCAC joined forces with author Cory Doctorow earlier this year to intervene on a challenge to his book Little Brother in Pensacola, FL. The following article by NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin, featured on Doctorow’s Boing Boing website to kick off Banned Books Week 2014, discusses the book banning epidemic that always seems to sweep the nation as kids go [...]
Last Friday, NCAC and a number of other organizations devoted to free speech considerations in education, drama, and literature sent a letter to the South Williamsport Area School District calling on them to reverse their cancellation of Monty Python's Spamalot, which had been called off due to "homosexual themes." As we sent out the letter, we learned that Dawn Burch, [...]
UPDATE: We've just heard that, in apparent retaliation for speaking about the cancellation of the play, drama teacher Dawn Burch, has been just fired. Stay tuned for action alert and letter to the school board. In a letter sent to the South Williamsport Area School District today, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), the American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression, the [...]
Sex-Ed was always and will always be the proverbial Catch-22 of every pre-teenager and teenager’s education. They want to know about their bodies: how it works, what’s in store for the future, and whether what they are going through is normal. But we need to face the facts: it’s an awkward subject that no one wants to discuss. Luckily, author [...]
NCAC has proudly signed onto the list of 13 Necessary and Proportionate principles, part of a global effort led by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on mass surveillance. This week marks the one-year anniversary of the drafting of the principles. The list of principles proposes a set of guidelines that governments around the world should adhere to if [...]
The parent of a Waukesha School District high school student has requested that The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher be removed from the district’s libraries, insisting that both novels should be restricted to adults over age 18. This is not the first time that the Waukesha School District has been attacked by parents claiming [...]
The brother of an incoming senior in New Eagle, PA has formally requested the removal of the award-winning dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood from the Ringgold High School summer reading list, complaining about the novel's “adult nature” and “grossly inappropriate conduct.” The board’s vote to suspend the book was mitigated by the August 12 decision to rescind the book’s [...]
Two weeks ago, NCAC's Kids' Right to Read Project and other organizations sent a letter to the Cape Henlopen school district in Delaware expressing serious concerns over the removal of Emily M. Danforth's award-winning novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, from a summer reading list for the high school's college prep and honors classes. This week, we enlisted the aid of [...]
A parent in Waukesha, WI has formally requested a district-wide ban on John Green's award-winning and beloved novel Looking For Alaska, reportedly claiming the book is "not suitable for teenagers." It's worth noting that the book won the American Library Association’s prestigious Michael L. PrintzAward, which is given annually to “the best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit.” [...]
Update July 30: The school board has voted 6-1 to eliminate the entire summer reading list for incoming students at Cape Henlopen High School. Rather than reinstate Cameron Post, they will " return to the district's previous summer reading requirements, which demand college preparatory students read one book for the summer and honors students read two books," according to Delmarva Now. Update [...]
Update 7/16: Paper Towns has reappeared on the latest version of the John Long Middle School summer reading list! Previously: NCAC's Kids' Right to Read Project has expressed concerns over the removal of John Green's award-winning novel Paper Towns, from the 8th grade summer reading list at John Long Middle School in Pasco County (FL). A parent who objected to sexual content and references in the book expressed her concerns in an email to a member of the school board, who in turn forwarded the message to school officials on Friday, June 20. By the following Monday, the book had been removed from the reading list, even though the objecting parent did not request the book’s removal, but merely complained because she had not been alerted to its content.
NCAC's Kids' Right to Read Project has sent a letter to the Murray Independent Schools district in Kentucky regarding the decision to remove the novel UnWholly from 7th grade reading at Murray Middle School, and the ongoing conversation about book challenge policies and how they are implemented in the district. The parent of a student complained that the book’s content [...]
In a letter sent today, NCAC’s Kids’ Right to Read Project expressed concerns over the cancellation of Cory Doctorow's novel Little Brother, as the assigned text for Booker T. Washington High School's school-wide summer reading program. The letter points out that "the book was selected after an extensive process by the professional staff", yet the program was cancelled despite "no formal [...]
No lie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian will likely face another challenge, this time in Brunswick County, North Carolina, where the The Color Purple was challenged earlier this year. NCAC sent a letter in the Color Purple case and the book was ultimately kept. A formal challenge has yet to be filed regarding Absolutely True Diary, though NCAC sent the below [...]
NCAC's Youth Free Expression Project sent a letter to the Newfound Area School District warning of the "constitutionally suspect" dissolution of a high school student film club. The official reason for disbanding the club was its supposed failure to advance "student performance in core academic subjects like reading and mathematics” or “complement their regular academic program.” But in conversation with [...]
District 196, serving the Rosemount – Apple Valley – Eagan regions near the Twin Cities, has announced that the committee convened to decide whether the book Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You should be retained in the district's libraries has voted 10-0 to keep the work. A parent challenged the book for the use of the word "retarded" in the story. The review process [...]
Update: The book as been retained. Click here for details on the decision. Barthe DeClements' award-winning Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You has been challenged for a school library removal in Rosemount - Apple Valley - Eagan Public Schools (District 196) near the Twin Cities in Minnesota. A parent filed a complaint over the use of the word "retarded" in the [...]
According to Fauquier.com, a Fauquier County Public Schools review committee has unanimously rejected a book challenge that would have removed David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing from the high school library. NCAC's Kids' Right To Read Project sent a letter to the school board prior to the meeting, warning that removing the book based on objections to the content was a disservice [...]
NCAC's Kids' Right to Read Project has sent a letter to the Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware to warn against labeling Aldous Huxley's 20th Century classic Brave New World as potentially "inappropriate" for some Advanced Placement English students, as has been proposed by school board members. Though no one on the board has yet proposed that the book be removed [...]
