By Romy Carver
I am a Tillamook High School alumnus, raised three Tillamook High School graduates, and currently have two students in Tillamook Schools. I am deeply embarrassed for our community by the current situation involving the Tillamook School Board and District.
I arrived at tonight’s School Board meeting to find a packed parking lot and a standing room only crowd.
I am embarrassed, but not surprised, by the School Board decision to remove a book from the 10th grade Honors English curriculum, because of “sexual content.” I read the entire book: “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents.” It is a well written account, by acclaimed author Julia Alvarez, of four Dominican Republic sisters who immigrate to the United States as children. A couple of speakers at tonight’s School Board meeting read cherry-picked passages out of context for effect. Their biggest concern was a passage about a girl who encounters a man trying to lure her into his car. She goes to the window, thinking he wants directions, and sees that he’s naked from the waist down and is touching himself. There is a brief description of what she sees, through the eyes of a child who doesn’t understand what is happening.
I had heard that someone described this as “pornographic.” At the meeting, one speaker went as far as to declare that anyone supporting this book is a “sexual deviant.”
Pornography is defined by Merriam-Webster as “material (such as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement.” How disgusting that anyone would consider this and other passages about young girls sexually exciting. This relates the experience of a child dealing with a sexual predator, and if you think that’s pornography, you have a problem.
I am extremely embarrassed that we are even having to talk about book banning in our local schools — what is this, 1952? Some are saying it’s not a “ban,” but I don’t know what else to call it when it’s removed from curriculum because some people were “uncomfortable.” This curriculum review committee seems to have been thrown together in a very suspicious way, and our board caved to them. Did the entire committee and board read the entire book? I highly doubt it.
As I stood there, I thought about books that I had read in my English classes:
Johnny Got His Gun: the main character being masturbated by a nurse.
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest: the abuse of mentally ill people, and a freshly lobotomized man being suffocated by a pillow.
Lord of the Flies: schoolboys stranded on an island descend to brutality and murder.
The Great Gatsby: adultery, illegal moonshining, and murder.
To Kill a Mockingbird: racism, incest, rape, and the murder of an innocent man.
Of Mice and Men: adultery, animal abuse, and murder.
These are disturbing themes, but they are about life, and created important conversations that helped us to understand life outside of our bubble, a critical survival skill. Our older teens in Honors English are certainly mature enough to understand more mature themes. “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents” was never required reading and is far less disturbing than the books mentioned above.
The Bible itself contains depictions of crucifixions, beheadings, death by stoning and other tortures, incest, rape, murder, and every imaginable sin.
Does that mean that if our kids read disturbing things, they are going to go out and do those things? Or does it mean that they are learning about the world as they move into adulthood, and that life is sometimes ugly and complicated?
What kind of kids do we want to raise? There’s a reason people ban books, and it’s not to “protect the children,” no matter how they try to frame it. What’s next? This never ends with just one book. These actions set the stage for further banning of materials based on an extremist agenda and it must stop.