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A central issue in the Virginia election that was held last Tuesday was education and the role of parental or governmental censorship.

One of the ads for the Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, displayed the mother of a high school senior upset by the assigned reading in his advanced placement, college-level American literature class. She claimed that the graphic depiction of slavery in it was deeply unsettling, even for this advanced student.

It turns out that the book in question was Beloved by Toni Morrison, a book that won the Pulitzer Prize and is considered a masterpiece of American literature.

Yes, novels are unsettling. Crime and Punishment is unsettling in its examination of the mind of the criminal. Madame Bovary is upsetting in examining adultery. Oliver Twist is disquieting as an examination of class and poverty.

The realistic novels of Eli Wiesel and other Holocaust authors include profoundly troubling accounts of violence. Morisons book is in part a story of the brutality of slavery.

Are stories of the Holocaust, of slavery, too problematic for our advanced students?

Is it not our responsibility to challenge students with provocative readings? Critical Race Theory, the product of hundreds of prominent scholars, offers a significant, if unorthodox, approach to law, civil rights and the role of race in society.

We need not agree with its premises or conclusions, many of us will not, but as open and concerned citizens should we and our advanced students not wrestle with its arguments, along with other outlooks.The culture wars now going on in school boards are deeply troubling. Where might this lead: to censorship and book burning, a favored practice of totalitarians? Or, to a meaningless or false orthodoxy?

Rather than disrupt school board meetings, we must work through elected representatives and those appointed by them for their expertise in education. Populist assaults by angry and often uninformed parents, and the hysteria that they may produce, can become daggers aimed at the heart of American democracy.

Howard Rock

Brevard

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Culture Wars - The Transylvania Times - The Transylvania Times