{"id":687,"date":"2013-06-16T13:39:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-16T20:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bannedbooks.world.edu\/?p=687"},"modified":"2016-07-01T16:24:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T20:24:39","slug":"banned-books-awareness-and-the-earth-did-not-devour-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/2013\/06\/16\/banned-books-awareness-and-the-earth-did-not-devour-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned Books Awareness: \u201c\u2026And the Earth Did Not Devour Him\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Texas-born Tom\u00e1s Rivera<\/a>\u2019s coming-of-age story of a Mexican boy\u2019s life in a migrant family in the 1940s and 1950s, with its themes of family life and tensions, is apparently too much for the parents of a Clarke County seventh-grader and they want the book banned.<\/p>\n

They demanded that the Clarke County Board of Education overturn Superintendent Philip Lanoue\u2019s decision not to remove the award-winning book from an Athens, Georgia school.<\/p>\n

In an email detailing the complaint, Deputy Superintendent Noris Price stated, \u201cWe think the themes speak directly to many of our students. We suggest that if teachers use this book, to include a permission slip along with it so parents are aware of potential language issues or violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a compromise is not satisfactory to the parents of the student, though, according to a formal \u201crequest for reconsideration of material\u201d they filed in April.<\/p>\n

In that complaint, the parents argue that \u201cany possible value is lost with offensive language,\u201d such as a profanity-laced outburst from a man frustrated by unjust treatment and conditions migrant workers endure- in good times, migrant pay is $15 a day for adults, half that for children. \u201cAt the impressionable age of middle schoolers, purposely exposing them to this language may seem like an endorsement of it,\u201d (sic) the complaint contended.<\/p>\n

Please, I heard worse language sitting in study hall.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lanoue wrote to the parents on May 9th<\/sup> to say the book would remain available to students with parental consent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision is based on the recommendation that one paragraph does not overpower the other literary elements that (Rivera\u2019s) book can offer our students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The son of Spanish-speaking migrant workers, Rivera would later become an author, poet, college professor, and administrator- a career that culminated in becoming chancellor of the University of California at Riverside when he died in 1984 at the age of 48.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201c…y no se lo trag\u00f3 la tierra<\/em>\u201d- translated into English variously as \u201cThis Migrant Earth\u201d<\/em> or \u201c…and the Earth Did Not Devour Him\u201d <\/em>won the first Quinto Sol literary award in 1970. A California publisher, to encourage and promote Chicano authors, established the award. A movie adaptation of the novel was released in 1995.<\/p>\n

The Clarke County school board was scheduled to hear the appeal at its regular monthly meeting last Wednesday.<\/p>\n

At the first sign of controversy, they caved. They didn\u2019t even attempt to delay the matter by assigning it to a committee for investigation, or gaining community or parent insight. They simply tucked their tails between their legs and voted in a half-hearted motion to \u201curge Superintendent Lanoue to reconsider\u201d the logical compromise of giving informed parents the opportunity of opting out and instead just removing the book completely.<\/p>\n

We all know what it means when the higher-ups want you to \u201creconsider\u201d something- they have their eye on you and the pressure is on to change your mind so that you end up the bad guy and they save face.<\/p>\n

This sets a very bad precedent.<\/p>\n

If a school board so quickly adds an agenda item upon request from a single individual or family, what\u2019s next? It\u2019s clear that anything<\/em> a parent objects to or has an issue with goes straight to the board level for immediate response, where the powers that be cower to public fear and sheepishly consent to demands without so much as a candid debate.<\/p>\n

David Huff, vice president of the school board, was one of two members to oppose the ban.<\/p>\n

He said that the board should be focusing on bigger issues, such as improving graduation rates, cutting-edge technology, and the future of education, not short-term political distractions.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s absolutely right.<\/p>\n

Once you start obsessing over individual words and paragraphs and getting caught up in scrutinizing class reading lists just to satisfy the whims and insecurities of individual parents you\u2019re micromanaging your teaching staff and taking attention away from more important matters like planning and policies that are beneficial for all schools.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that the voice of these parents doesn\u2019t matter or that their concerns don\u2019t have merit, but there\u2019s more than one child in any given school.<\/p>\n

What of those other parents? Don\u2019t they get a say in the matter? In fact, if that\u2019s how it\u2019s going to be, just remove the teachers altogether and have the parents dictate curriculum for their children and yours. Soon classrooms will be a bickering minefield of parents. Too many hands in the cookie jar, as it were. Yeah, that\u2019s logical.<\/p>\n

Why stop there? How about they decide on what color the hallways are painted, how many bike racks go in front of each door- or which door, and what brand of toilet to install in the bathroom.<\/p>\n

Banning books might seem like an easy way to avoid controversy and attention, but all it really does is open a can of worms that slowly eats away at democracy and free-choice.<\/p>\n

So, where does it end?<\/p>\n

** Author\u2019s Note: In another on-going incident of censorship, the book has also been included in the many titles remove in Arizona as part of that state\u2019s ban on books dealing with ethnic studies<\/a>, which sparked outrage and \u201ccaravan\u201d events around the country, known as Librotraficante, aimed at smuggling books into Tucson schools.<\/em><\/p>\n

For more information on the Banned Books Awareness and Reading for Knowledge project and the complete list of titles covered, please visit the official website at http:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Sources: Athens Banner-Herald<\/a><\/em>
\n\u00a9 2013 R. Wolf Baldassarro\/Deep Forest Productions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas-born Tom\u00e1s Rivera\u2019s coming-of-age story of a Mexican boy\u2019s life in a migrant family in the 1940s and 1950s, with its themes of family life and tensions, is apparently too much for the parents of a Clarke County seventh-grader and they want the book banned. They demanded that the Clarke […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[70,82,106,224,288,336],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-change","tag-censorship","tag-clarke-county","tag-education","tag-migrant-workers","tag-schools","tag-tomas-rivera"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Rivera.jpg?fit=213%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1335,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/1335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbark.deepforestproductions.com\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}