Jamie LaRue Wins 2004 NCTE/SLATE Intellectual Freedom Award

by Julie Bailey and Carol Sullivan

In one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, the director of the public library system is championing intellectual freedom—supporting teachers and school boards in book selection and alerting students and other library patrons to privacy issues regarding Internet use. 

In Douglas County, Colorado, Jamie LaRue’s consistent support for intellectual freedom has been most evident in his defense of secondary classroom teachers’ choices of classic literature and thoughtfully-selected, subject-related R-rated films. For his efforts, LaRue is this year’s winner of the NCTE/SLATE Award for Intellectual Freedom.

LaRue, who has served as director of the Douglas County Library System since 1990, was nominated for this award by the Colorado Language Arts Society (CLAS). In nominating LaRue, CLAS cited one of his weekly newspaper columns in which he responded to parents who would censor John Gardner's Grendel and Grimm Brothers fairy tales by stating, “I would argue that the great value of a high school English class is precisely that it exposes young people to the full range of adult literature, which by necessity includes much that is harsh and difficult . . . .  Labeling the classic—predicated on the incidence of sex and/or violence—ultimately focuses on irrelevancies. It obscures the real value . . . of a particular book, burying it in the prejudice and temerity of the hour.” (The Douglas County News-Press, February 8, 1997).

In another column, LaRue defended the position of secondary history teachers who wanted to use appropriate R-rated films (such as Schindler’s List) to supplement their teaching. In preparing his response, he chose to address two questions: First, can a movie of disturbing content—language, sexual behavior, and violence—ever be appropriate for a classroom? Second, who decides?
 
In responding to the first question, he suggested his readership imagine a class studying World War II, perhaps in a school where there is a “trend toward anti-Semitism, and a recurrent claim that the Holocaust was a hoax.” Viewing Schindler’s List in such an environment, he contended, “could have a direct bearing on the curriculum of the school, not to mention its intellectual environment generally.”

In tackling the second question of who decides, LaRue stated that since “there are no agreed upon national standards for either curriculum or teaching materials,” that responsibility falls broadly upon the local school board, and, more practically, “it is the individual responsibility of the specific teacher. That is what some people see as the strength of public education in America: local control. The local board sets content; local teachers deliver it.” (The Douglas County News-Press, January 31, 1996).

Within his professional community, LaRue’s articles on censorship, Internet filtering, and the responsibilities of our public libraries have been published in The Library Journal, Colorado Libraries, and The Wilson Library Journal. Selected by his peers as Colorado Librarian of the Year in 1998, LaRue has spoken nationally on the topic of intellectual freedom, offering workshops and keynote speeches with such captivating titles as “The New Inquisition,” “Unraveling the Web: Who’s Watching What the Kids Are Watching?” “Filters: The Good, The Bad, and The Bizarre,” and “The Sound of Silence: Censorship at the End of the Twentieth Century.”

In supporting intellectual freedom, not only does LaRue remind teachers and librarians of their roles in this important tenet of their profession, but he also provides the public with a better understanding of intellectual freedom issues and our basic rights as American citizens.

This article was co-authored by CLAS members Julie Bailey and Carol Sullivan. Bailey, who serves as secretary for her local NCTE affiliate, recently retired from teaching in the Douglas County School District. Sullivan, a former CLAS President, is a retired teacher, freelance writer, and advocate for public education.