Mark Twain is a troublemaker. Like many Americans, I first discovered this fact about Twain in high school literature class. My ninth grade English teacher had assigned "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and I was amazed when I opened the book and found some shocking preliminary advice:
"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
High school, I thought, was going to be all right after all.
Books for Teenagers Can Provoke Controversy
Of course, many other Americans don't feel the same way about those lines, or the rest of Twain's classic American novel. In fact, since 1884, when "Huck Finn" was first published, citizens have been lining up in the public square to debate just about everything in the book, from its language and artistic merit to its influence on community standards of morality.
Twain actually enjoyed the controversy his book provoked,¹ but when the debate takes place in school communities, educators and parents find the exchanges anything but enjoyable. Too often, conversations become battlegrounds, opening wounds over painful parents and schools' issues that are difficult to mend.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Let the First Amendment Guide Public Education Issues
It's true, thanks to the 45 words of the First Amendment,² that we all have precious individual freedoms, like the freedom to voice our opinions or petition for change in our communities. How we go about airing those concerns and framing those arguments, however, is up to us.
It is possible for Americans to debate their differences with civility and respect--even when the issue is as divisive as "objectionable" material in schools. But school communities first need to understand and model certain civic principles every day.
The first step in that direction? Living up to the spirit of the First Amendment: It isn't the sole property of the judges and lawyers, and it isn't only about individual rights. Americans have an equally important responsibility to guard the rights of others, even those--and especially those--with whom they disagree. That may be difficult to do, but think of it as a selfish impulse; after all, once one community loses their right to speak, yours could be next. And when citizens take their civic duty seriously, and agree to debate their differences respectfully, what results is a climate much more conducive to a genuine "marketplace of ideas" where people can live with their deepest differences.
Foster Healthy Parent-Teacher Communication
Schools can and must create such "laboratories" of freedom and democracy, where everyone in the community feels they have a voice and a chance to be heard. Here are three ways to make that happen:
- Encourage all voices to be heard.
Parents today, rightly or wrongly, sometimes feel public schools don't respect their values or voices. As a result, parents and administrators often have difficulty finding common ground, in part because they see each other as adversaries.
One way school officials can address this, in the spirit of the First Amendment, is by encouraging the airing and accommodation of all viewpoints on decisions that shape the life of the school. For administrators, this means soliciting the community's input whenever possible, particularly from parents who have felt disconnected in the past.
Of course, there are some requests no public institution can accommodate, but whenever it is reasonable and feasible, administrators should try to do so. This means, for example, that while the school may have a compelling interest in teaching its students about the classics of American literature, it does not necessarily need to force all its students to read "Huckleberry Finn."
- Be proactive before conflicts arise.
When it comes to the curriculum, conflicts tend to develop when a school sees a piece of literature as important and instructive, while a parent interprets it as dangerous and corrupting.
In debates like these, parents and administrators may never be able to agree on their core ideological differences. But when school leaders have a process in place that helps ensure all complaints will be handled fairly and fully, most parents, even if their requests cannot be met, will be more likely to support the school in its efforts.
There are several ways to set up such a process. For example, in the seminal publication Finding Common Ground, Dr. Charles Haynes advises school leaders to:
- Include a broad range of community perspectives on any committees that draft comprehensive policies and/or curricular standards;
- Put aside labels and stereotypes, and take seriously all positions;
- Go beyond asking, "What is legal?" and begin asking, "What is the right thing to do for my community?" and, "What best protects the conscience of every student and parent?"³
These recommendations are a great start, and the potential for common ground does exist. In order to turn recommendations into practices, however, all members of a school community need to model and apply a crucial third principle every day.
- Take responsibility to guard the rights of others.
When people honor and protect the rights of everyone, even those with whom they disagree, they create a level of trust where philosophical differences can no longer divide a community against itself.
Respect and Trust Can Solve Many Major Education Issues
For school officials, this means doing whatever they can to protect the conscience of every parent and student. Some schools are already doing this by providing "opt-out" assignments for families that find certain books objectionable. Other schools have gone even further, by providing "opt-in" forms for events likely to cause controversy, such as the showing of an R-rated movie. When educators make these kinds of efforts, the whole community benefits.
At the same time, parents must respect that what is inappropriate for one child may not be inappropriate for another. It is one thing to insist that your child be given an alternative reading assignment; it is quite another to demand that all children be forbidden from reading a book. The First Amendment protects our individual rights, but one person's convictions cannot trump the democratic process when it comes to making decisions about the curriculum.
Parents, teachers, and school administrators all have the same objective in mind: to encourage the development of caring, thoughtful, informed young men and women. And school communities become much stronger when all parties work together to achieve that goal.
Sometimes, as any good English teacher would tell you, it all comes down to the way you say it.
Sam Chaltain is the Coordinator of the First Amendment Schools project, a new school reform initiative co-sponsored by the First Amendment Center and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Endnotes
- As Twain saw it, when libraries or schools ban a book, they "cause [people] to read it, out of curiosity, instead of merely intending to do so . . . and then they will discover, to my great advantage, that there is nothing objectionable in the book after all."
- In case you've forgotten the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- Charles C. Haynes & Oliver Thomas, Eds., Finding Common Ground, 3rd Edition: First Amendment Center (Nashville, TN, 1998), 52-53.