A key component in the ongoing effort by American public education to make kids dumber is the removal of entire chunks of relevance from various curricula to craft a narrative more conducive to, and comfortable for, the liberal version of things. It is most often done in the history books, where the more integral stories are excised and replaced with a focus on fringe events or people.
Literature is another convenient target. Book banning is generally considered the kind of thing that totalitarian societies run by tyrannical fascists do, but every fascist has to get his or her start somewhere:
Two classic American novels have been temporarily pulled from book shelves in Accomack County Public Schools.
Superintendent Warren Holland confirmed to 10 On Your Side that a parent filed a complaint about “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Earlier this month, a parent voiced concerns to the school board about racial slurs in both of the novels.
“Right now, we are a nation divided as it is,” the mother is heard saying in an audio recording of the meeting on Nov. 15. She tells the board that her biracial son, a high school student, struggled getting through a page that was riddled with a racial slur.
“So what are we teaching our children? We’re validating that these words are acceptable, and they are not acceptable by any means,” the parent said.
Victoria Coombs, a mother of two, told 10 On Your Side she agrees that books with offensive racial slurs should not be read in schools.
“It’s not right to put that in a book, let alone read that to a child,” she said.
But other Accomack County residents told 10 On Your Side that banning a classic for offensive language can be a slippery slope.
“I don’t want to see it happen because if you start with one racial word in a book and have to go on and on and on and pretty soon you’ll be burning books left and right,” R. Kellam said.
You read that right: “a” parent complained.
All because she is incapable of teaching her child the meaning of context. Because of one parent’s failure, the superintendent will deprive school kids of the ability to study two of the most seminal accomplishments in American literature, both of which are snapshots of the racial attitudes of the country at the time and double as history lessons.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn isn’t just an important work in American literature, it may be the most important. Don’t take my word for it, ask Ernest Hemingway:
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”
Obviously, the superintendent is motivated by political correctness and not an interest in education. Even if the school doesn’t end up banning the books, it’s embarrassing that it even got this far.
If it does, the slippery slope effect will indeed become a reality. Who gets to be the arbiter of which words are and are not offensive?
As with most of these PC crusades in public schools, it’s really about the parent. The child is just being used as a pawn in mommy’s (or daddy’s) need for attention. The woman at the center of this would rather take the time to act out her social justice fantasy than explain why these novels were important at the time and have endured to become classics.
Her selfishness shouldn’t be the guide for the curriculum of an entire school system.
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