by Clarissa West-White, Editor, SLATE Update
March 2009
In the last two years, NCTE was summoned to assist teachers throughout the country address 127 book challenges. This total does not include the plethora of challenges to student newspapers, inquiries from various sources, letters of complaints from parents, and interviews with reporters.
Book challenges regarding such as Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Lowry’s The Giver have long raised the ire of parents, but a number of the challenges concerned other published works such as Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Morrison’s Song of Solomon. To this end, we solicit rationales for books you have added to your curriculum over the years and are not a part of the two-CD collection of rationales produced by NCTE. These works may be a part of your summer, class or AP reading list, class or school library, or books you are contemplating teaching. This process has also brought to our attention the need for clear book adoption and challenge guidelines. Because the process varies from state to state, county to county and district to district, we are interested in collecting book adoption procedures as well.
When I began my teaching career, I had free range of book selection. No one informed me I could not teach a certain book, or provided me a list of “banned books” or a set of guidelines for selecting appropriate texts, procedures for adopting the text or how to challenge texts selected. I have upon reflection wondered how the school or I would have addressed a challenge. I also wonder whether or not students were reading appropriate literature or viewing appropriate movies, although I clearly recall statements about copyright issues with movies and seeking approval before showing a film, it was seldom enforced.
To find out how to write a rationale, read the PDF. You can forward rationales to Mille Davis at NCTE headquarters..