Textbook War in West Virginia
Humphreys, James
The people of West Virginia are victims. They are the victims of powerful and cunning outsiders, of themselves and their own kind, and of social and historical forces with regard to which they...
...Moore while he remains on the school board, but he wants out...
...Isaacs, educated at West Virginia University, says succinctly, "I want my children to think...
...The board further announced there would be the establishment of an alternative series of elementary schools featuring strict and conservative dress and behavior codes, a stress on "basic education," and an abandonment of progressive texts...
...4) From a literature series entitled "Man in Action," a wide-ranging collection of stories and articles...
...The expectation is likely to be perceived for what it essentially is, a confidence in the student that the public school might not demonstrate...
...Combined with the public announcement of support by the Klan and the Birch Society, and with conciliatory maneuverings by the school board, the conviction served to bank much of the fire of the movement...
...This is pure slop...
...It never existed, it never will...
...2) The phrase "poor bastards...
...At 34, she looks five years younger...
...Horan arrives...
...He is wearing a T-shirt, is clean shaven and has short, cropped hair...
...Both men have been threatened, Isaacs repeatedly so...
...The interview is held while the trial is pending, and so Marvin Horan now declines to speak of the charges brought by the government, other than to deny them and make vague allusions to the alleged hostility of local corporations against him...
...Do away with it...
...166 JAMES HUMPHREYS The answer comes quickly and sharply...
...What he wants in the schools, Horan explains, is a program of "basic" education that will include the three Rs, with no profanity taught in the literature, plus shorthand, typing, patriotism, and respect for authority...
...I s the statement, "All first efforts are improved by revision," blasphemous...
...There is more...
...The school board must surrender...
...Elected to the school board five years ago chiefly as the result of her crusade to keep sex education out of the Kanawha County schools, she has since established herself as the local conservative sentinel over education...
...Yes, she smiles and names her next objective: an assault upon the school libraries...
...he simply explained that God sometimes deals with His opponents in that manner...
...Their complaints fall into three categories...
...So violence was the response of some men and women when they perceived threats to their children, indeed to their way of life...
...Alice Moore has the appearance of someone once known, a pretty coed, a sorority girl...
...The movement to remove the textbooks has support throughout this Protestant, workingclass community, but the dedicated shock troops come from the rural area in the county's eastern coal-mining half...
...good Lord...
...If the books are unwholesome, indeed, dangerous in the classroom, do they not remain fatal to her world view everywhere...
...And like the Pilgrims, the protesters of Kanawha County are often not prepared to tolerate those whose religious or moral 164 standards deviate from their own fundamentalist creed...
...Alice Moore handles the press well, knowing when to flatter and cajole, and when to intimidate...
...The best instructors and facilities 168 JAMES HUMPHREYS gravitate to the urban and wealthier sections of the valley...
...The adults leave the room and shoo the children out before them...
...The best-established Christian school is that directed by the Reverend Charles Quigley...
...At the height of the protests, in late 1974, and following the violence, attendance figures indicated that 27 percent of the student body was absent...
...Alice Moore represents a smaller segment of the protest in terms of life-style, but there was, until recently with the emergence of such fundamentalist preachers as Horan, no denying that it was her movement...
...Moore speaks boldly...
...Marvin Horan operates one, which, he states, has more than 130 students...
...The unasked question hangs in the air, "And our homes...
...What can a politically dominant group, possessing the power of the state to enforce compulsory education laws, teach other people's children...
...They seem pleased to be here...
...About a mile up the hallow from the main road, past the Midway Elementary School (one of those bombed) is the white cinderblock building that serves as the center of the antitextbook protests...
...Objection: "Profanity...
...Another measure was employed by the school board: the parents were asked to sign approval slips for the disputed texts, and in the more affluent sections of Charleston there was up to 99 percent acceptance...
...3) From Joseph Heller's Catch-22, "Major Major bore a sickly resemblence to Henry Fonda...
...The interviewer then put a crucial question to Mrs...
...Loyalty to government and parents must be stressed...
...But Mrs...
...Set in an environment that might have been the creation of Faulkner or Steinbeck, the protest over some 325 secondary and elementary school books, selected by the local board of education upon the recommendation of the county's teachers, has brought political polarization and violence to this quiet industrial valley...
...The majority of public school teachers are not morally fit to be in contact with young people," claims Quigley, whose school faculty consists of "born again Christians...
...Should it be prohibited in the public schools...
...Alice Moore gained a great deal of sympathy from the public and press—including many of those who supported the textbooks to which she objected—when she demanded that beliefs contrary to her conscience not be forced on her children...
...The public libraries...
...Violence is an integral part of life in West Virginia...
...Two questions of primary importance are posed by the West Virginia conflict: What are the legitimate powers of the state in educating children of religious or social minorities...
...Liberalism is not what the parents want," she announces with the finality of a papal Bull...
...Objection: "Cursing...
...Dirty words may have provided the spark that ignited the blaze, but the elements for a conflagration were long present: a terrible sense of alienation and near-total lack of trust in a system that is supposed to care for all...
...The Reverend hesitates: "I think the Klan has some real good ideas...
...How this will affect the 175 students who now attend the school is not known...
...Moore is not a coed turned suburban housewife...
...Perhaps that is the point, that a tyranny would not allow teaching methods encouraging the young to raise questions...
...One sees that the lesson, as Quigley explains it, is firmly rooted in working-class experience and ethics...
...They're a strong organization and have fine men as officers...
...A small scar runs down her cheek, to the left of her mouth, but it enhances her looks, making her more a woman of flesh and spirit...
...Rather than wait for the county's alternate schools, many parents enrolled their children in so-called Christian schools, organized overnight...
...Yale educated, Stansbury says in defense of the books, "They give .a broad viewpoint of people and cultures and social conditions, not only in America, but around the world...
...A reporter comes away believing that if circumstances had not cast her into a marriage with a fundamentalist TEXTBOOK WAR IN WEST VIRGINIA 167 preacher at the age of 15, she would have been a remarkable woman concerned with more than complaining about dirty words...
...The odor of burning coal is in the air...
...He does say that he has been woefully misrepresented, that he is not a violent man, and that if he were he would have plunged the county into civil war...
...She would be out of school now, and a bit heavier, but still with a shy, knowing smile, and only slightly less attractive...
...Campbell's Creek Drive turns off U.S...
...Uses the word hell...
...But who in Kanawha County truly knows what the parents want...
...Objection: "Fonda played the role of the hero in movies about World War II...
...The books are a threat to the nation and they cannot be given to children under any condition...
...The students resemble their counterparts in public schools...
...On the day his successor was chosen, Mrs...
...Whether or not Marvin Horan is guilty as charged by the government isn't as important as the fact that he was charged and was, in turn, found guilty...
...Cinder-block buildings dot the roadside and everywhere the earth is visible—the hills are scarred by merciless incisions...
...The parents, with honorable intentions, want to pass on to their children an America with "absolute values," revered leaders, firm and distinct roles, behavior patterns, and expectations, and an America sharing a consensus on the propriety of fundamentalist religion...
...Can an electoral majority exile Darwin from the classroom and the library...
...or Ayn Rand...
...Objection: "Would this include the Ten Commandments...
...Stansbury vows to "fight Alice Moore all the way," but Isaacs, a quiet, friendly man with a wry sense of humor, is tired...
...And in the mines life touches closely on death...
...The battles of the union in the coal fields were as bloody as any in this` country...
...2) "All first efforts are improved by revision...
...After stating that there is no alternative to choosing between absolutism and relativism, she admits she would be content to have the schools neutral—though, by her own argument, achieving neutrality is an impossible task...
...they are less certain of absolutes...
...This is why children rebel...
...No compromise...
...The protest then escalated from appearances before the school board to wildcat strikes (which closed most of the area's mines), fistfights, threats, assaults, and the bombing of twQ elementary schools...
...One measure of support given to the protest is the number of children who were absent from the public schools as a result of a boycott called by the antitextbook leaders from the fall of 1974 until the present moment...
...There has been no full accounting of these contributed funds...
...A crude hand-lettered sign marks the headquarters...
...3) "That damned wild man...
...What are the chances for a settlement with the school board...
...Mrs...
...there are no science labs...
...In the blue-collar and solidly middle-class western portion of the county, approval ran about 75 percent...
...The board of education adopted guidelines dictated by the protesters that, if followed in letter and spirit, could easily cause the removal of the controversial books...
...There is little ambiguity, even among those who tell a visitor that the work is more difficult, the homework load heavier, corporal punishment more frequent, and grades are lower...
...There is no middle ground...
...But no one wants to talk to him, once they learn that he represents an eastern magazine of which they have never heard...
...I'm not concerned with that, now" she replies, her smile broader and deeper...
...Rolling Stone, cited simply as "a newspaper with a radical point of view," is TEXTBOOK WAR IN WEST VIRGINIA 165 found unacceptable, as are the works of James Fenimore Cooper (Deerslayer), Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Brahma"), John Steinbeck (Travels With Charley), and many others...
...Less than one in five children were out as a result of the protests...
...The early leaders of the movement, while using the complaints of obscenity and antireligious teaching to consolidate a following, are frequently more interested in the more subtle political overtones of the books...
...It had been his pathway out of the mines, and now he would help others...
...In the coal-mining eastern half of the county, miners staged wildcat strikes during that fall in what was said to be an attempt to force the books out of the classrooms, but the strikes came just before the national expiration of the mine workers' contract and may have been motivated by a desire to deplete coal reserves in anticipation of a long strike...
...q 170 JAMES HUMPHREYS...
...What about his appearance with the Klu Klux Klan, with its national leader, James Venable, and a local leader, Ed Miller, who had become active in the book protests...
...Objection: "Taking the Lord's name in vain...
...A colorful sign, emblazoned with two clasped hands, heralds "Cathedral of Prayer...
...There is another very real difference between this private fundamentalist school and the more elaborately endowed public schools: the children seem happier...
...Her response: "No...
...The Reverend Quigley is almost a caricature of a fundamentalist minister...
...It does not seem likely that the kind of primitive fanaticism that has characterized the West Virginia protest will spread widely throughout the country...
...Violence became, too, a way of expressing their anger at being forgotten, at being badly and coarsely used...
...She reverses the field later and demands that the schools teach what she simplistically terms "the values of the community...
...Why, eight to ten thousand armed men were in the palm of my hand, just waitin' for me to give them orders," he boasts...
...But the threats and violence (including a death message delivered to his young son on Christmas Day) have taken their toll, and another decent man has been driven from public service...
...The simplicity of their faith is often astounding...
...Listed below are some of the protesters' objections as found in their 500-page document: Unsuitable as antireligious: (1) "...it [the human brain] is produced by unskilled labor...
...Originally objecting to four-letter words in a literature series intended for high schools, the protest movement quickly expanded its objections and, in a 500-page report, alleged antipatriotism and antireligious teachings in the texts...
...So he reads the John Birch literature laid out in the reception area...
...Objection: The heroine shoots herself in the breast...
...This is the heart of their support for the embattled books...
...to be superior to English...
...In Charleston, the state's largest city and seat of the county and state governments, about 7 percent of the residents are black, and there are noticeable numbers of Catholics and Jews...
...The school board estimates that of the 44,000 school-age children in the county, only 400 are being held back from attending the public schools at present...
...Too many of the teachers view the sons and daughters of the miners as slow, less than desirable students...
...Several times he repeats, "No Communist nation would allow these books in their schools...
...Typical of these parents is their leader, Reverend Marvin Horan, self-styled minister, former driver of a cement truck, convicted conspirator in a series of bombings of public school buildings, buses, and private cars belonging to parents who ignored Horan's call for a school boycott...
...The blacktop road is breaking apart and cars drive slowly, dodging potholes...
...A tough question that might cost allies on either side if answered improperly...
...Many of the protesters would affirm that the statement mocks the ultimate perfection of the Bible...
...Books such as these tend to destroy absolutes and tend to cause doubts upon an absolute faith...
...Having won recognition of the right not to read, she now fights to prohibit others from reading...
...was one of the infamous Los Angeles 10 who were known Communists"), and Bernard Shaw ("Most Americans would object to having George Bernard Shaw grouped with patriotic Americans such as Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt...
...Now, for the past several months he has been supported by contributions of his followers...
...The bulk of the population is English, Welsh, Scotch-Irish Protestant...
...The Reverend has just administered a dozen solid whacks to a heavy, strapping youth nearly as large as Quigley himself, as punishment for failing to bring his books to school...
...This school, unlike most of the Christian schools, employs a staff almost entirely composed of men and women holding college degrees...
...prayers are abundant...
...The origin of man as told by Genesis is taught in the school...
...The population is urban and suburban, The author wishes to thank Kay Michael of the Charleston Gazette for sharing with him her experiences and thoughts regarding the textbook protest movement...
...Objection: "Pokes fun of democracy, Sears Roebuck, Roosevelt, etc...
...This type of exposure will produce better, more understanding citizens...
...The children are expected to work hard, complete their daily assignments, and make good grades...
...The God who gave the Bible can keep it against error...
...This faction complains that the textbooks promote rebellion and turn children against their parents and proper authority with stories of protest elsewhere (interesting that protesters should protest against this...
...Certain authors are objected to without reference to specific writings, including Eldridge Cleaver ("he is not worthy of admiring as a writer or anything else"), Norman Mailer ("noted for his contributions to depraved writing)," Ring Lardner ("a leftist sportscaster, his son...
...The objectionable passages from the disputed books are said to be antireligious, antipatriotic, and obscene or pornographic...
...Lacking a serious formal education and long employed as a semiskilled laborer, he has lived as they do...
...But, he continues, he shared the podium with the national Imperial Wizard in order to be with his people, the protesters who were also present, not to show support for the Klan...
...And for that reason alone the protesters are ultimately doomed to failure...
...Son of a coal TEXTBOOK WAR IN WEST VIRGINIA 169 miner, he has been successful in business and, out of a genuine old-fashioned sense of responsibility, he has sought to help public education...
...If a workman were to forget to bring his tools to the job, he could not expect his employer to pay a day's wages...
...the normal absentee rate for the system is 8 percent...
...Overwhelmingly, they respond that here the teachers care about them...
...not rural, and the income and educational levels are roughly comparable with national averages...
...It is speculation, but one important factor in determining student attitudes toward the Christian school such as the Cathedral of Prayer is that there is a substantially higher lever of expectation among the faculty...
...There are also objections to the alleged "prosocialistic" bias of the books, such as references to Social Security...
...The impact of his indictment and conviction, by men and women who were truly his peers, was surprising to local observers and brutal in its effect upon the movement...
...4) "Dirge," by Kenneth Fearing...
...This ultimately is the goal of those who object to gestions, common expletives, and to an admission of the reality of today's mores...
...One chieftain, critical of the fundamentalist ministers who became prominent in the protest, speaks almost solely of the political importance of school texts and admits that if the offending language was removed, but the stories and articles were otherwise unaffected, no more than 20 percent of the movement's following would remain active...
...the remainder of the instructors are parents...
...Horan is an impassioned, if not eloquent, speaker and his passion rises as he launches into a tirade against Communism...
...School becomes for these students an elaborate, expensive, and frustrating form of day care...
...Violence was required in the very act of settlement when the land was taken from the Indians...
...Her voice is soft, without the Appalachian twang...
...What she identifies as The One World Philosophers are, she claims, instigating the new and objectionable school programs...
...And at what point does the legitimate protection of minority rights become a minority tyranny...
...Later, industrialization brought enormous hardship for the workers...
...The leaders of this movement realize that the sort of reading to which they object and, more important, analysis of ideas and events will destroy the vision of the world they wish children to hold...
...They are like no other group so much as the Pilgrim Fathers who first settled the wilderness of the New England forest...
...Textbooks with four-letter words and references to Henry Fonda aside, there is little doubt that the education provided the children of the great majority of protesters is not as good as they want—or deserve...
...Other leaders sometimes give contradictory figures...
...The narrow, confined halls are loud with raucous bedlam as classes change...
...Moore was speaking with reporters...
...He now denies praying for it to happen...
...Going a step further, she now seeks to impose her beliefs upon the majority...
...She had cast the only vote against the new administrator— he had supported sex education...
...But there are differences...
...The questions remain: Are internationally recognized works of literature to be withheld from American children because such works portray life and language as it truly is, because they contain controversial or minority opinions, or because the religious sensitivities of an organized group find those works repugnant...
...This philosophy is the norm for the school...
...Offensive as being obscene: (1) "The Highwayman," by Alfred Noyes...
...Harry Stansbury and Russell Isaacs are two members of the public school board who have given support to the newly adopted textbooks...
...This is an attack on the war...
...The county superintendent of education who had favored the adoption of the textbooks resigned over lack of support by the school board...
...From such logic come inquisitions...
...Objectional as antipatriotic: (1) "The Hopi Indian language is said...
...2) "Liberty, just the word by itself, means nothing...
...Little wonder the parents in Cabin Creek or Campbell's Creek believe their children are being destroyed by a bureaucratic system that has placed a child in the sixth grade without the ability to read well or to multiply...
...But he has only one state-certified teacher...
...Objection: "Is God considered unskilled labor...
...Finding Horan isn't difficult...
...If the federal district attorney is correct, as the jury of Horan's peers believed him to be, it is in the back rooms of this building that the plot to destroy a series of schools in Kanawha County was conceived and here the arrangements were made to obtain incendiary devices and explosives...
...She is tough, resourceful, shrewd, There are many women like her, particularly in the South...
...The school doesn't plan to seek certification from the standard regional accrediting agency...
...For them there are no relative matters, no equivocations, no parables, no legends...
...they see a more complex world than do the protesters...
...Evolution also, the bugaboo of fundamentalists since before the Scopes Trial, is among their prime targets...
...These people have fallen back upon a simple and dramatic religion that promises reward for their daily suffering and gives special merit to their apartness from the bulk of society...
...Objection: "Un-American statement...
...Suffering from lower education, lower incomes, and fewer governmental services, this is the area in which the protest movement has found its heart...
...This was at a time when many parents were concerned over the safety of their children, and some clearly kept them out of school because they were afraid...
...She never completed high school, but she is a power in the politics of education...
...The report to the school board says, Disillusionment is a prime result of not having absolute values in which to believe or faith that will abide with the young person throughout any adversity...
...Horan will say no more than that in excess of $14,000 has been spent during the period of September to January...
...Horan is shown great deference, and soon he and the visitor are alone...
...High on a hill is a sign proclaiming, "Ye must be born again...
...Kanawha County, where most employment is in heavy and medium industry and governmental bureaucracies, is not typical of Appalachia...
...There is faith...
...This area believes itself ignored and forgotten, a poor cousin...
...Horan is late and the reporter has an opportunity to speak with the men and women in the outer office...
...Marvin Horan represents the great bulk of the protesters...
...Is rebellion brought about by injustice, or, as the protesters have written, through a lack of "absolute values...
...It is housed in a squat, red brick church and the adjoining building, formerly a parsonage...
...How far does parental authority extend...
...There are but two philosophies, she says, and an individual must choose: one is moral absolutism, the other moral relativism...
...For a full year now, a battle over "progressive" textbooks has convulsed Kanawha County...
...They are the victims of powerful and cunning outsiders, of themselves and their own kind, and of social and historical forces with regard to which they have no control or understanding...
...The Bible was written by holy men as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.' II Peter 1:21...
...Objection: "Questions the authenticity of the Bible...
...Do parents have the right (never mind the question of power) to prevent their sons and daughters from reading Norman Mailer...
...Unfortunately, many errors crept in, for the priest often mistook one letter for another or lost their places and omitted letters...
...Objection: "Un-American writings...
...It is a simple, uncomplicated America, without anguish, without a blemish...
...Is it possible to avoid the 20th century...
...Alice Moore is often confusing and contradictory...
...Stories critical of the nation's foreign policy or social structure will not be permitted if the textbook protesters are victorious...
...60, going east away from Charleston...
...Small and wan, pale, with dark, thick plastic glasses, short hair, and quick nervous gestures, he is best known in Charleston for reportedly proclaiming it was his prayer that God strike dead the protextbook members of the board of education...
...Local politicians who had sought to use the controversy as a campaign issue were defeated in Kanawha County, but also defeated was the judge who had sternly found many of the protesters guilty of violating injunctions regarding picketing...
...He will continue to oppose Mrs...
...Moore: "Would you accept the compromise solution of the school board's establishing alternate or optional schools, allowing use of the texts only in the established system (with parental approval...
...3) "When copies [of Christian holy writings] were needed, priest and scholors transcribed them letter by letter, word by word...
...But in this time of national malaise there is always the possibility that among segments of the population feeling themselves neglected or scorned the sad and bitter story of Kanawha County may be reenacted...
Vol. 23 • April 1976 • No. 2
