Schools

Palmer, Alaska

The Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough School District in Alaska voted on April 22, 2020, to remove five classic novels from the reading list for high school elective classes. A document prepared by the Mat-Su District’s Office of Instruction, titled “High School English Electives Round 1: Controversial Book Descriptions,” gives the reasons for each challenge:

• The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, challenged for “language and sexual references”;
• Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison, “language, rape and incest”;
• Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller, “There are a handful of racial slurs, the characters speak with typical ‘military men’ misogyny and racist attitudes of the time. There are scenes of violence both hand to hand and with guns, and violence against women”;
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou, “sexually explicit material, such as the sexual abuse the author suffered as a child, and its ‘anti-white’ messaging”;
• The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien, “profanity and sexual references.”

The district also voted to remove the New York Times “The Learning Network” section from class materials.

The school district, located approximately 35 miles north of Anchorage in a vast area commonly known as the Valley, is home to 46 schools ranging in enrollments from about 20 to more than 1,000 students.

After the decision removing the books drew widespread criticism, the school board scheduled a meeting on May 6 to reconsider. Due to the COVID-19 virus, participants didn’t attend in person, but at one point, the live stream of the meeting had more than 400 viewers. Of the 58 who phoned in with comments, 48 asked the board to reinstate the books.

Only two of the speakers were Mat-Su students; both spoke in favor of keeping the books in the curriculum. They also pointed out that the board did not follow its own official procedures for how to handle book challenges.

Policy director for the Alaska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union Triada Stampas suggested that the board’s April 22 action was in violation of the Open Meetings Act.

Stampas also testified that “From the first days of our 100-year history, the ACLU has opposed censorship in all its forms. The First Amendment does not allow government to get rid of or limit the use of books or ideas just because they are controversial, unpopular, or offensive. Please understand that purging curricula of certain books and teaching materials because some parents do not or may not like them is government action favoring the opinion of some parents over others.”

At 10 p.m. and after three hours of testimony, the board voted against extending the meeting, with the books still excluded from the reading list. Reported in: Anchorage Public Media, May 7, 2020; CNN, May 7; Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, May 7; www.matsuk12.us/, n.d.