Pornography in the schools

By: Johnathan Skidmore
Copy Layout Editor

This past Tuesday, Sept. 26, Susan Van Kirk, lecturer in communication and theater arts, gave a lecture about an incidence of possible book banning which affected Monmouth High School as well as the city of Monmouth a few years ago. In this incident, a book was almost banned as a result of a simple misunderstanding. The book which was almost banned was Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions.”

According to Van Kirk, who was an English teacher at Monmouth High School at the time, one of her students decided to write a book report on the novel. When the student’s parents discovered this book in their daughter’s room, they were greatly disturbed at its contents. The irate parents confronted the school, proclaiming that the novel was “pornography.”

The parents were under the impression the book was a required reading for the class, which it was not. The parents appealed to the school district requesting that his book be removed from the high school library. They also requested the school district allow a group of parents to go through the high school libraries and remove any material they deemed distasteful. The local media, including “The Review Atlas;” “The Register-Mail” and WQAD Television out of the Quad Cities, sided with the parents on this issue. During the course of six weeks, the issue was openly and heavily debated.

In response to the heightened media frenzy, Van Kirk sent some newspaper clippings and a letter to the author of the novel in question and received a “lovely letter” in response from Vonnegut himself.

After this tumultuous period, the school board finally decided they would not allow the book to be banned from the high school and denied the parents’ request to enter the high school libraries to remove any objectionable material.

Van Kirk was very happy with this ruling, stating “after six weeks, the whole incident resulted in a good ending for intellectual freedom.” She continues to tell this tale in her Foundations of Education courses, citing it as demonstrating “some of the pressures that occur in school districts when various groups want to determine curriculum.”