Open Letter to the Matanuska-Susitna School Board Members
Contributed by Bonnie Lembo
1342 West 12th Ave.
Anchorage, Alaska 99501-4253
907-278-2725, lembob@gci.net
May 12, 2020
Thomas Bergey
Sarah Welton
Ryan Ponder
Ole (Richard) Larson
Kelsey Trimmer
Donna Dearman
Ray Michaelson
Dear Members,
I hope you will consider my comments on the banning of certain books from the high school curriculum. I do not live in the Valley, but your actions have been reported in the national and international press and are therefore of concern and embarrassment to all Alaskans.
Your objections to the banned books are based on themes that some members of the board found harmful to young minds. But those same difficult themes and more, are also found in the Bible: sexual assault, incest, slavery, war, torture and other forms of violence, drunkenness, hatred and persecution of "the other". For consistency, not only will you have to ban the Bible, but also Shakespeare. His plays depict disturbing behavior: murder, torture, war, suicide, ghosts, cross-dressing and anti-Semitism. Next on the chopping block will be the great American author, revered throughout the world, Willa Cather. Her writings have variously described animal torture, murder, infidelity and slavery. If to escape a charge of being "anti-white", any book that depicts some white people at some time acting badly toward others, then you will surely have to ban Cather's masterpiece "Death Comes for The Archbishop". Set in the 19th century in the Southwestern US, in a small part of the book, with meticulous historical accuracy, Cather portrays the actions of white settlers and the U.S. government engaged in war and genocidal violence against Indians and Mexicans in order to steal their ancestral lands.
What is left for the young adults to read, analyze and discuss for literary merit and historical accuracy? Perhaps the school board members should submit their own proposed reading list with only books that will not contain any objectionable behavior. But dummying down the curriculum in that way will hinder students from doing well on college entrance examinations and essays and getting into top colleges. The school board should not be doing such a disservice to bright, ambitious students and their parents.
To say that the books are not being "banned" or "censored" because the students can get them elsewhere is disingenuous. The purpose of reading books in an educational setting, is for students to gain competence in analyzing a work of literature, writing book reviews, defending their views in essays and discussions among teachers and fellow students. In other words, to learn.
It seems to me that the school board members have become like the "helicopter parents", who are derided for trying to protect their "snowflake" children from anything that is unpleasant. Which individual parents can already do by saying they do not want their children to read a particular book. The school board action bans the books from ALL students, even those whose parents do not object to them. Throughout history, censorship has been a favorite tool of dictatorships. Because as all dictators know, the way to control people is to narrow their minds, and the way to narrow minds is to limit what people are allowed to read and hear and believe, and to erase all history that does not support their favored political ideology and sometimes, its supporting religious dogma.
I have one question for the school board members, which I think you owe it to the public to answer. If you don't love literature, why did you run for school board ?
Yours truly.
Bonnie Lembo
cc: Letters to the Editor, The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman
The People's Paper
