Book still suspended from Crook County classrooms
But the disputed work will be in the library
Published: January 13. 2009 4:00AM PST
PRINEVILLE — The award-winning book that was suspended from a Crook County High School classroom last month after a parent complained it was offensive, will remain out of the classroom until the school district can revamp its policies.
About 60 people turned out Monday night to the Crook County School Board meeting and about 15 testified about the book. The board then voted 4-1 to continue the temporary suspension, while making the book available to students in the library.
In December, Hank Moss picked up the book his 14-year-old son, Jozee, was reading for an English assignment. Moss said he was shocked by what he read in “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” A few days after photocopying some pages of the book and showing them to school board members, the book was pulled from the classroom and school library.
A New York Times best-seller and a National Book Award winner, the book was written by Sherman Alexie and is about a boy growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend an all-white school. The protagonist in Alexie’s book discusses masturbation.
A committee made up of teachers, the public, an administrator and a librarian reviewed the book and voted 4-1 to recommend the school board reinstate the book without restrictions. School board members did not have to follow the committee’s recommendation.
Sten Swanston, a counselor at the high school, asked the school board members to retain the book.
“I know tonight we’re talking about issues with sex and racism, and I spend a great deal of time with students who suffer from being sexually abused, from poverty and family dysfunction,” Swanston said. “If you sit at the tables in our lunch room, you may be shocked. I’m shocked at times. … If we do not have a forum to discuss these controversial issues, students will discuss them among themselves and make false assumptions. … By banning this book, the problems won’t go away, and we need to wrestle this head on.”
But the freshman high school student whose father was at the heart of the controversy, said he didn’t feel the book was appropriate reading material.
“Personally, I think we’re having two things taught to us,” Jozee Moss said. “We have the principal telling us, ‘I don’t want you cussing in this way or you’ll get a referral.’ And yet this book talks about all these things in crude ways.”
Audience members said Moss should have followed the district’s policy, and instead of going straight to the administration he should have discussed it with the teacher so his son could have opted out of reading the book. But at the same time, others said the teacher should have notified Moss that his son was assigned controversial reading material.
School Board Chairman Jeff Landaker was the lone vote against the motion to suspend and wait for further review.
“The reason I voted no is because this issue has already taken one month’s time,” Landaker said. “And it’s at a time when, in my opinion, we have more critical issues facing us. We have a financial situation where we’ve had to cut 10 days off the school year and are facing a million-dollar budget shortfall next year. Now, it’s going to take two month’s time to address this, and I think we need to move on.”
The school board and Interim Superintendent Rich Schultz said he would be going over all the policies and procedures for reading material and updating them. He also said another committee made up of a librarian, an administrator, a board member, some teachers and parents will work on the board’s policies, which haven’t been changed since 1994. Schultz said he hoped the board could again discuss the matter by March.
“It’s up to the parents and educators to help a kid prepare for what is outside of Crook County,” said Rick Steber, who was a citizen who urged the board to keep the book as part of the high school’s curriculum.
“Remember when our parents were going to ban rock ’n’ roll?” Steber said.
Lauren Dake can be reached at 541-419-8074 or at ldake@bendbulletin.com.
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