Alaska School District Votes Out 'Catch-22,' 'Gatsby' and Other Classics [View all]
Source: New York Times
Alaska School District Votes Out Catch-22, Gatsby and Other Classics
School board members in Palmer, Alaska, raised concerns about language and sexual references in five books deemed too controversial.
By Derrick Bryson Taylor
April 29, 2020
An Alaska school board voted last week to remove five books, including classic American works like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Great Gatsby, from its curriculum for high school English electives because of sexual references, graphic language and other concerns.
A list of books deemed too controversial to be taught in electives including poetry, journalism, creative writing and American literature was presented at a Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District board meeting on April 22. The list cited sexually explicit material and anti-white messaging in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelous seminal memoir, and raised concerns about language and sexual references in The Great Gatsby, the landmark 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The other books on the list Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien were judged to be inappropriate because they contained mentions of rape, incest, racial slurs, profanity and misogyny.
The district, which is based in Palmer, about 40 miles northeast of Anchorage, has an enrollment of more than 19,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade and is the second-largest school district in Alaska.
Before the board members voted, 5 to 2, in favor of removing the books, Sarah Welton, the boards clerk, said at the meeting that she noticed a lot of her students lacked critical thinking skills and that removing the books could be a disservice to them.
-snip-
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/books/palmer-alaska-school-board-books.html