School Librarian Takes Heat for Using Profanity in Class
RSSBy Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 12/21/2009
A lesson on censorship took a disapproving turn after parents complained about a middle school librarian who used profanity and wrote it on a board during a lesson on controversial books.
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Parents complained when the school librarian at Athey Creek Middle School used profanity during a lesson on controversial books. |
But this year, the school librarian Michael Diltz chose to veer off the standard course by writing two swear words on a classroom board, ones that might be found in some banned books, and then followed by reading a chapter from Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five (Dell, 1965), which has been frequently banned from literature classes, removed from school libraries, and struck from literary curricula.
“The issue that seemed to surface the most was the two words on the board,” says Roger Woehl, the district’s superintendent.
More than a half dozen parents complained to both Woehl and the district’s school board, which issued an apology to parents. A message left for its board chair Jeff Hallin was not returned.
Diltz, who moved into his current position from the primary school two years ago and runs a literary blog called A Digital Sanctuary, has the district's full support, and will “absolutely” continue to teach at Athey Creek, Woehl says. There also are no plans to stop the class, which aims to foster discussion about the reasons why a book would be challenged or barred from a school or library and what that process entails, then reading a so-called banned book from their school library, and finally crafting a written argument on whether or not they believe the book should be banned.
Going forward, Woehl says parents will be better informed about this particular course so that an incident like this won’t happen again.
“We won’t be using profanity again in teaching these lessons, and we won’t be reading from Slaughterhouse Five,” he says. “And we will send out materials in advance and put them on the Web site. But this is an excellent curriculum, and we continue to support the teaching of the ideas around banned books.”
