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RISE IN CENSORSHIP

Reagan and the First Amendment

Ronald Reagan spoke to a religious group in Dallas on 22 August 1980 during the presidential campaign: "When I hear the First Amendment used as a reason to keep traditional moral values away from policy-making, I am shocked. The First Amendment was written not to protect the people and their laws from religious values, but to protect those values from government tyranny." Before this group candidate Reagan also claimed there were "great flaws" in the theory of evolution, and he suggested that along with the scientific version of creation, public schools should teach the biblical story of creation. Not surprisingly, after the election a significant rise in the number of objections to textbooks and curriculum occurred nationwide, evenly distributed across both city and rural areas. By the year 1985-1986 the organization People for the American Way recorded 130 attempts to censor classes, texts, and library books—a 33 percent increase from the previous year. Literature classes were the most frequent targets, then science, health, sex education, and drug education classes. These censorship attempts were primarily from the religious Right, but there were also significant censorship efforts from the Left, primarily in California.

"Secular Humanist" Theology

Mozert v. Board of Education, a censorship suit in Tennessee, was representative of the overall climate of attacks on school readers in the 1980s. A group of self-identified "born-again" families, led by lay minister Bob Mozert, protested their children's exposure to Holt publishing company's fifth-grade readers. More than 1,117 pages of depositions cited the plaintiff's more than 400 separate objections to the Holt series; among their complaints were that the stories did not "confine themselves to the domain of knowledge and facts educationwise" and instead encouraged the process of imagination, which "distracts people from the Word of God." "Once the mind is open to imagination," plaintiffs testified, "all kinds of alien thoughts may enter and a soul may be lost." Jack London's story "To Build a Fire" one of the selections in the Holt reader, was offered as a perfect example of indoctrination into "secular humanism," defined as the belief that man has the power to save himself. In London's story a man trapped in the wilderness freezes to death, and plaintiffs insisted that the story taught that survival depends on what people do rather than on God's will.

The Legal Arguments

The defendants in the Mozert case argued that there was a difference between indoctrination and mere educational exposure, that the lawsuit failed to distinguish between mentioning an idea and teaching it as truth. The topics covered in the Holt readers, they said, were common in U.S. society, and they challenged the plaintiffs' rights to pressure the public schools into avoiding subjects that all children encounter outside of school. The plaintiffs countered by saying that the act of reading this objectionable material—the opening of the book, the moving of their eyes across the page—was forbidden by their religion. They could not, they argued, be forced to forfeit their government benefit of a free public education as a consequence of their refusal to commit an act forbidden by their religion.

The Ruling

Although the Tennessee judge ruled for the plaintiffs, in 1987 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling 3-0. This panel cited the following principles in overturning Mozert 1) freedom of religion is no protection against mere exposure to opposing ideas; 2) the state has a compelling interest in promoting religious and social tolerance; and 3) school boards have the authority to determine curriculum within broad parameters. In many of the censorship suits filed against reading materials for elementary children during the 1980s, these general principles were upheld.

The Smith Case

Another representative case of censorship against secular humanism gathered national attention in the 1980s. However, in this lawsuit, Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County (Alabama), the plaintiffs wanted the court to declare that secular humanism was actually a religion and should be either removed from schools entirely or balanced by inclusion of Christian teachings in the curriculum. Also, unlike Mozert, this case challenged not one textbook series, but forty-five different texts used in social studies, history, and home-economics courses. The National Legal Foundation, affiliated with the Christian Broadcasting Network owned by Pat Robertson, funded the plaintiffs in this effort to prove that "every topic is in some way religious—any view which contradicts biblical absolutism is part of the religion of secular humanism." On numerous occasions Robertson preached about the Smith case on the 700 Club, his television show, and by 1985 the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way joined in funding the Smith defense.

Smith Case Accusations

A sample specific objection listed in the Smith case included the "family life" chapter found in a home-economics course that promoted a positive self-image, decision making, and personal responsibility. The National Legal Foundation supplied as an expert witness psychologist Dr. Williams Coulsen, who testified for five days. His testimony included the argument that this chapter could encourage delinquency in those "who do not deserve to have self-esteem." He testified that encouraging teens (whom he referred to as "little children") to think independently violates parents' rights, and also submitted that the implication in one home-economics chapter that teens would grow up and choose their own careers was a violation of parents' rights. It is wrong, he said in later testimony, to tell a student he can decide between right and wrong. Asked whether teens who are offered drugs have to make a choice, he answered, "No, they can fall back on the commandments." When a defense lawyer asked whether teens who fall back on the commandments are making a choice, he asserted, "No, not if they are well trained. If they're well trained, they have no choice. They cannot but do the right thing."

Ruling on Smith.

Although a lower court ruled in favor of Smithy an appeals court reversed that decision. The reasoning was that mere exposure to instruction is not unconstitutional simply because it happens to coincide with ideas the plaintiffs call humanistic. The court ruled that "appropriate secular effects" of teaching included independent thought, tolerance, self-respect, self-reliance, and logical decision making. The case ended there. By this time Pat Robertson had become a national presidential candidate, and he was trying to build up his image as a political, as opposed to a religious, figure. The publicity engendered by appealing this case to the Supreme Court would have focused national attention on his 700 Club statements and the testimony of the trials.

Publishers' Responses to Smith and Mozert.

Although these cases failed to end the precedent that public schools may set their own curriculum, the Smith and Mozert arguments had significant effects on schoolchildren nationally. The passages the Mozert plaintiffs had high-lighted in court were removed from the Holt readers, and the other major textbook publishers made so many changes that Mel Gabler, the most famous Texas text-book censorship leader, deemed the 1987 texts "much more balanced." The publishers' responses illustrated the two realities of protracted textbooks lawsuits: 1) regardless of legal outcomes, a nationally publicized case can have direct effects on text content; and 2) litigation, combined with market forces, encourages publishers to produce texts that will satisfy buyers in the two largest, highly lucrative state contract areas of California and Texas. Because California is generally liberal, whereas Texas is generally conservative, publishers eager to offend no one produced texts that were bland and unfocused. Market decisions, not academic standands, drove text publishing in the 1980s, and therefore children in every state received texts that were essentially censored by lobbyists in California and Texas.

Social Content Standards

By the early 1980s text-book publishers had begun to adjust to California's new "social content standards": materials in that state's texts were required to show men and women in all types of roles; demonstrate the contributions of numerous ethnic groups to the development of the nation; show the necessity of protecting the environment; and demonstrate the ill effects on humans of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. Another provision, known informally as the "junk-food law," emphasized the importance of a balanced diet. Because of California's disproportionate share of the lucrative textbook market, these standards became national by default. An example of the standards in use is illustrated by the adaptation of Patricia Zeltner's short story "A Perfect Day for Ice Cream," originally published in Seventeen magazine, for a junior-high-school anthology of literature. Because of the junk-food law, publishers deleted references to burgers, pizza, and ice cream. They also changed the title to "A Perfect Day," removed the expression kamikaze ball, and deleted an argument between siblings and a reference to Gloria Steinern. When the author protested the changes, she was informed by the publishers that they had been made in anticipation of California's complaints about junk food and ethnic stereotyping, as well as Texas's complaints about family conflicts and feminism.

Censorship in Science

California was also a battle-ground for science-textbook censorship during the 1980s as conservatives argued that offering the theory of evolution as fact violated their religious rights. The creationism-evolution controversy reached California state courts in 1981 when the Creationist-Science Research Center joined other plaintiffs in a lawsuit, Seagravesv. California, over educational policy. As a result of this suit, the court ruled that science teachers must offer alternatives to Darwin's evolutionary theory: "Dogmatism must be changed to conditional statements where speculation is offered as an explanation for the origins of man." In California this ruling was followed by a blizzard of protests about the teaching of evolution; this storm of protest from both sides lasted from 1981 to 1989.

Scientists Weigh In

At California's public hearings sponsored by the state board of instruction in 1985, creationists blamed the general decline in academia and morals on the teaching of evolution in the schools. California scientists, who attended the hearings in record numbers, argued that the protesters did not grasp the scientific process, particularly the word theory. A scientific theory, they explained, is not just any unproven idea; it is a hypothesis that has withstood empirical testing and is subject to further testing. Evolution, they said, has withstood so many tests that virtually the entire scientific community accepts it. Creationism, on the other hand, is a religious belief that is not subject to testing. Therefore, they argued, giving equal weight to each in textbooks would be misleading. The compromise that was reached produced textbooks that satisfied nobody. Finally, in 1989, California put an end to the wars by adopting textbook guidelines requiring that evolution would be taught as the only scientific theory of human origins. Ironically, the Texas Board of Education had voted unanimously in 1984 to repeal a ten-year rule restricting the teaching of the theory of evolution. Because Texas spent approximately $65 million per year on texts (more than 10 percent of the market) publishers had hurried to fit the new Texas standards. By the end of the 1980s science books more explicitly and persuasively outlined evolutionary theory. This nine-year struggle effectively illustrated the fact that the scientific community does not decide how science is taught in elementary and secondary schools—publishers do.

Huckleberry Finn.

In 1985, the one hundredth anniversary year of publication of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain's classic narrative about the friendship between runaway Huck and runaway slave Jim became the subject of intense controversy over perceived racism in the novel. Led by Chicago black educator John H. Wallace, the first censorship case occurred when black parents in Waukegan, Illinois, succeeded in having the book taken off the required reading list. A significant number of school officials followed suit, banning Huckleberry Finn from their required curriculum (though not from their library collections) because it "serves to legitimate the word 'nigger' and humiliate students who are forced to read it aloud." Wallace, who concluded that "the novel is the most grotesque piece of racist trash ever written," cited the fact that characters in the book casually utter racist remarks and frequently use the word nigger as evidence of the fact that Twain's novel is unfit for teaching in the schools. Literary scholars promptly jumped to Twain's defense. Typical was Shelley Fisher Fishkin of Yale University, who cited a recently discovered letter in which Twain agreed to pay a black student's law school tuition. "We have ground the manhood out of black men and the shame is ours, not theirs," Twain wrote, lending credence to those who view the climax of the novel as clearly antiracist. In this scene Huck rejects the conventional morality of the day and decides not to turn in Jim, the runaway slave. This debate was not confined to the educational community. Wallace appeared often on national television to denounce the novel (though he did not often mention that he had printed his own version of the novel, which was for sale to the schools), and prominent columnist James J. Kilpatrick was one of numerous columnists who commented on the controversy, writing in his column that "A school superintendent in Kinston, North Carolina, last month threw Huck Finn out of his classrooms. I think the gentleman acted properly." The debate raged on into the 1990s, and, as Huck Finn himself said, "It shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time."