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By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
Parents concerned about the quality of books their children must read in school don't deserve the ridicule and condemnation that rain down on them.
But, as surely as Columbus Day shows up every year, October brings with it Banned Books Week, the annual high-minded whacking of such parents for their supposed intolerance. Dare disagree or suggest that teachers and school administrators are making children read age-inappropriate material and you run the risk of being labeled reactionary, illiterate or worse, a conservative Christian.
Of this haughty nastiness, we have no finer example than John H. Kinzie Elementary School on the Southwest Side, where some parents objected to 7th graders being required to read Robert Cormier's "The Chocolate War."
It's a controversial book about Catholic high school students being terrorized by autocratic religious brothers and an unchecked secret society of physically and psychologically brutal students. In one chapter, a bully nearly beats another student to a pulp in front of the entire student body of 400 cheering, bloodthirsty boys, with the head brother's snickering approval.
Some parents don't care for the book's casual handling of sexual themes, such as masturbation, but that's the least of the book's problems. Worse, in this book, victimizing boys and girls is its own reward.
So, when several dozen parents protested that the book was on the required reading list, Kinzie Principal Sean Egan arrogantly told them, in effect, tough. "I don't tell you how to run your family," he said. There is a legitimate issue of who controls a school's curriculum: educators, parents or -- perish the thought -- a combination of both working together in a spirit of cooperation and caring. In many schools where this conflict erupts, parents are allowed to excuse their children from reading the offending text.
This doesn't mean that the book is removed from the school's reading list or library. Despite suggestions floated by the American Library Association -- sponsor of Banned Books Week and extremist advocate of the rule that "children should be able to read whatever they need or want" -- this isn't censorship.
But at Kinzie, even suggesting that your own children can be excused from the reading is verboten. In a letter, Egan warned parents not to. Doing so, he wrote, "could have a significant negative effect on the final course grade."
Elsewhere, this is called blackmail. Let's see, how often have we heard complaints about parental non-involvement? Especially, when student performance is low. "Where are the parents?" "Do they even care?" "We can't get them interested in what's going on in the classroom."
Apparently, parental involvement is appreciated only on the school's terms. Yes, I know, the book supposedly is a groundbreaking masterwork of young adult literature. (Even though Cormier wrote it for an adult audience; it wasn't until his agent informed him otherwise did he know he had actually written a book for adolescents.)
Contributing to the book's cache are attacks on it by "would-be censors" and its frequent appearance on the ALA's most "challenged" list, based on the reasoning that if the troglodytes are against it, it has to be good.
I'm not impressed. Cormier writes well, despite the confused point of view. But it's like "Catcher in the Rye"; when you grow up and reread it, it seems sophomoric. It makes you wonder: Is this the best that English teachers could find?
There's also the portrayal of the Catholic brothers who teach at the fictional high school. It takes more than a suspension of belief to think that such a sadistic, moronic faculty could be running this or any school. Or that they would sit by while letting a secret club of callous students victimize other students. Having graduated from a high school operated by the no-nonsense Christian Brothers, I see the book's portrayal of teaching brothers as hackneyed, cruel and unfair.
But the book does a fine job of making 7th grade boys worry about what supposedly awaits them in high school: sadism. Letting high school juniors and seniors read it is less troubling because they have real-world experience to judge the book for the laughable rubbish that it is. For 7th graders, the book just isn't age appropriate.
The book strives to teach the importance of thinking for yourself and standing on your own, the way the protagonist, Jerry, refused to sell chocolates for a school fundraiser. Too bad. Among the fawning education and ALA wisdom givers, is there not a single protagonist to do the same and say the book doesn't belong in 7th grade?
