An open letter to the MV Curriculum Committee
I am disappointed that your committee voted to recommend removal of The Perks of Being a Wallflower from the English curriculum. I encourage you to reflect on your thinking and to reconsider this decision. I commend you for keeping the book in the library, but I question your banning it from classrooms.
Yes, the book challenges readers to consider tough issues. But let us not, either as a school district, or as a democratic society, be afraid of tough issues. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “every idea is an incitement.” I believe he meant that if censorship is our response to any idea that is controversial or uncomfortable, we will soon be a society that is afraid of all but the most banal ideas.
I am sorry to see that the committee was intimidated by the label “pornography,” used by the parent who challenged the book. “Pornography” is an emotionally-loaded word and it has such a broad meaning that even Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said he could not define it. It has become shorthand for material we don’t like with people we don’t respect and ideas we don’t wish to consider.
I am concerned, too, with the message that you are sending to your teachers. They deserve to be trusted and supported in their curriculum choices. Not blindly of course, but in this case, your English teachers made a good decision, which you undermined.