A Tree Grows in Eden
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union A TREE GROWS IN EDEN BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS The people of Ridgefield, Connecticut, the town next-door to mine, are angry with one another. The can't seem to agree on what they...
...Recently a group calling itself the Concerned Parents--consisting of either sensible traditionalists or crazed Rightwingers, depending upon one's point of view--demanded that East Ridge Junior High School remove a dozen controversial paperbacks from the classrooms...
...indeed, they can be dangerous...
...To date, no teacher has tried...
...The "garbage" they wanted removed included: Voices of Dissent, essays by Eric Sevareid, Martin Luther King, Max Rafferty, George Wallace, Malcolm X and others...
...They are asking the schools to "go back to basics," meaning not only the three Rs but the sort of mindless pride-of-country our schools have traditionally taught...
...I've tried to satisfy both extremes," Weingast says, suggesting that in matters of censorship there is a golden mean...
...He objects to Police, Courts and the Ghetto because it paints "a pretty grim picture...
...He is asking for no more than the American public school system has traditionally delivered...
...he wants to know...
...Ridgefield is not precisely what it appears to be, though...
...Like so many textbook writers who followed him, he depicted America as a political Eden without a serpent and without a Tree of Knowledge--i.e., a sense of evil...
...Unfortunately, the Concerned Parents of this world seem to want neither relevance nor critical thinking...
...Why can't the school teach them the things we believe in...
...Some of his opponents in town were delighted to inform him that Jack London was a confirmed Socialist who spent time in jail for advocating violent revolution...
...They sing the sad song of cynicism," says another...
...He began, years ago, by washing down airplanes in drafty hangars each day and going to school each night...
...Playing it Cool, writings by Sam Levenson, Robert Frost, Dick Gregory, et al...
...Yet one wonders whether these contemporary subjects are being taught in a manner that gives students a sense of history and not simply a sense of outrage...
...Last year," begins a characteristically fatuous world history text, "the hearts of many boys and girls beat a little faster as they read about the great achievements our ancestors made in building the Western Hemisphere...
...But everybody on both sides has gotten so glandular...
...They do not object to Formosa being portrayed as an island of hope...
...In his introduction to The Government Class Book, a civics text published in 1859, Andrew M. Young wrote, "To preserve and transmit the blessings of constitutional liberty, we need a healthy patriotism...
...Under this ruling, if a teacher wants to use any of the shelved books, he will have to get "special written permission" from his principal and department chairman...
...It is a good question, and when it is posed by the residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant or by the Amish of Wisconsin, most liberals think they know the correct answer...
...A few months ago the Sharps' 12-year-old daughter, Laurie, was asked by her English teacher to participate in a classroom debate on whether or not pot should be legalized...
...One gets the impression that Ridgefield's average citizen would agree with Longfellow's complacent rhyme: "A town that boasts inhabitants like me/ Can have no lack of good society...
...these parents assured their fellow citizens in a full-page advertisement in the local weekly...
...In the case of the Ridgefield books, for example, they have had considerable success...
...Police, Courts and the Ghetto, a discussion of police relations with black Americans...
...In both manners and motives they resemble the parents of Ocean Hill-Brownsville...
...These are the major concerns of the Concerned Parents...
...Norman Little, an airlines pilot who leads the Concerned Parents, has called these books "the lowest form of educational materials on the market...
...Our textbooks today, despite a good deal of educationist rhetoric to the contrary, are often just as misleading...
...Most of the paperbacks deal with "now" topics--racism, poverty, drugs--which students tend to feel are more "meaningful" than Euclid or Ivanhoe...
...He thinks children should read "traditional" books like Jack London's Call of the Wild...
...Weingast came to Ridgefield four years ago ("I've learned to love small-town life...
...it may even be helpful...
...I read an elementary history text not long ago that described Formosa as "an island of hope and freedom...
...The schools here try to teach that dissent built America," says Arlene Sharp...
...the book-banners, meanwhile, insist he has not caved in enough...
...I know of a high school course in critical thinking--not in Ridgefield--that has turned into a course in critical feeling...
...Warren Sharp and his wife are active in the Concerned Parents...
...That's why my kids can live in Ridgefield, because of the opportunities...
...It seems to symbolize, in Heywood Broun's phrase, "the swaggering underemphasis of New England," a Yankee Eden that is both innocent and smug...
...but it is certainly not critical thinking...
...I wouldn't like it," he said, "but if it was an assignment, I'd do it...
...His teaching staff and a growing number of residents accuse him of having caved in to Right-wing pressures...
...It looks like a painting by Norman Rockwell--a gracious New England village of stately mansions, thick maples and quaint shops which sell old pewter pots and heavy fireplace tongs...
...Gradually he worked his way up...
...They teach conflict and Communism...
...To Laurie's parents the assignment was an all too typical example of the school's forcing its dangerous opinions down their child's throat...
...Andrew M. Young wrote his book on the eve of a Civil War that came close to wiping out "the blessings of constitutional liberty...
...But in this instance he has let his guard down...
...The lieutenant told them the teacher was wrong...
...The can't seem to agree on what they should tell their 5,700 schoolchildren about America...
...Why don't we teach patriotism...
...Why should we let the schools come between us and our children...
...He had already survived 35 years in the political jungle of the Newark school system, so we may assume he knows something about the art of self-defense...
...As civil libertarians these parents are not very useful...
...They could undo what I'm trying to do with my children...
...But he had opportunities in America...
...If revolution comes, whose children will man the barricades...
...To a visitor Ridgefield seems not at all glandular...
...My son, unlike the Sharps, considers himself to be disdainful of authority, yet here he was playing Billy Budd to Laurie Sharp's Jerry Rubin...
...Some days the students form a circle and touch each other...
...and another that treated our A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as necessary expedients, without bothering to suggest there was another way to look at it...
...Louis Garofalo's grandfather was a ditch-digger...
...Their style is strident, their judgments harsh...
...The trouble comes when one's efforts to inspire "a healthy patriotism" lead to distortions...
...As watchdogs of a national educational system given to faddishness--a system that sometimes seems more eager to be "relevant" than to be right--the Concerned Parents could do us all a service...
...To many residents who grew up poor and now are reasonably comfortable--or would be were it not for large mortgages and rising taxes--Ridgefield is the American Dream come true, the payoff for years of hard work and penny-pinching...
...Today's passion for "relevance" can be just as silly as yesterday's passion for patriotic pap...
...Surely an admirable notion...
...Such books have long been the despair of intelligent teachers, and in recent years some schools have either abandoned them altogether, or at least supplemented them with other materials, especially paperbacks...
...But they don't teach that in the schools any more...
...Little's views on education may be based on his childhood memories...
...Or they reduce debatable political questions to simplistic levels...
...If questions were raised, they were quickly and definitively answered...
...Louis Garofalo is equally unhappy...
...If it has few poor, it has many stragglers, uptight blue-collar workers and newly christened executives, whom inflation and pride have forced to live beyond their means...
...Against that awful day, Garofalo and his fellow toilers are giving the best years of their lives...
...I do not believe," he said in part, "that pupils' patriotism and loyalty are endangered, provided the material is judiciously taught...
...The Sharps had successfully brought police powers to bear on the school curriculum--a rather stunning case of overkill...
...To recognize difficulties and to deal with them realistically is one sign of successful adulthood...
...Ridgefield schools are not exactly the cutting edge of the educational world, but they have introduced some interesting paperbacks in social science and English classrooms...
...What they want is a school system that reflects their biases...
...The Concerned Parents consider these books spiritually subversive...
...Why do our schools get involved in controversial subjects...
...he said a debate over the legalization of pot was comparable to a debate over the legalization of larceny...
...Then he telephoned a school official, and the debate was canceled...
...That's not true...
...I can visualize the day when we have an entire graduating class going into social work...
...They tear down America," says one parent...
...But then he issued orders that most of the books under attack either be moved to the senior high school or else be shelved...
...After I heard the story I asked my 13-year-old son, who favors the legalization of pot, what he would do if his teacher asked him to make a case for the contrary view...
...One can see their point...
...Nowadays, he complains, the schools raise questions that are "out of place...
...But the teacher told her not to worry--the important thing was to learn how to make a persuasive case...
...A local insurance broker, he is president of Ridgefield's Taxpayers' League, which frequently opposes increases in school budgets...
...Warren and I believe that there's nothing we can't have if we work hard enough for it...
...They see the public school system as a state-supported conspiracy bent on alienating their children and teaching them "an unacceptable value system...
...after all, a nation that fails to appreciate its liberties will not keep them for long...
...asks Arlene Sharp...
...Yet not once did he suggest to his readers that slavery was a political issue...
...But what Little is trying to do with his children may be impossible...
...That is interesting...
...I do not believe that youths' love of their country becomes attenuated by realization that their country is grappling with grievous problems...
...They wave the flag in a manner that renders the flag ridiculous...
...Laurie was supposed to argue for the affirmative, a position which ran contrary to her views...
...They rush from meeting to meeting, write letters-to-the-editor, issue manifestos, organize citizens, and call for the banning of books and the dismissal of teachers...
...Their response was interesting: They consulted with Ridgefield's police lieutenant in charge of narcotics enforcement...
...In any case, these are precisely the sort of subjects Garofalo and his friends seek to expunge--in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons...
...In those days the schools often taught certitudes...
...for what they fear most is powerless-ness and what they crave most is control of the schools...
...Hard work built America...
...He kept his readers innocent...
...School Superintendent David Weingast's response to the book-banners at first seemed to be thoughtful...
...and Tomorrow Won't Wait, stories and poems by Pete Seeger, Evtushenko and others, as well as selections from The New English Bible...
...The basic issue is not book-burning but garbage removal...
...Sometimes they get their way...
...To the teacher, of course, it was simply a matter of putting process--learning how to debate--ahead of substance...
...The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently exempted Amish children from schooling beyond the eighth grade, on the grounds that public high schools "teach an unacceptable value system" to Amish children, which results in "a psychological alienation of Amish children from their parents...
...they do object to Harlem being portrayed as an island of despair...
...Sharp, like Norman Little, is an airlines pilot...
...It has been one of the objects of the writer to bring to view the excellencies of our system of government, and thus to lay, in the minds of youth, the basis of an enlightened patriotism...
Vol. 54 • March 1971 • No. 6
