Last year there was a sharp jump in efforts to censor the books public school children read, a new study says. And, alarmingly for anti-censorship advocates, the book-banners were also more successful.
"The 1990-91 school year was the single worst year for school censorship in the history of our research," said Arthur Kropp, president of People for the American Way, the First Amendment advocacy group. "There were more incidents of attempted censorship and more instances where challenges were successful."What Kropp called a "snapshot" report, rather than a fully comprehensive study, showed 229 incidents of attempted censorship by individuals or groups seeking to have a book or material removed or restricted in such a way as to deny access not just to their children but for all children of a school or class. In the 1989-90 school year, there were 191 such incidents.
In addition, there were 35 incidents of what Kropp called efforts to bring "ideological or sectarian pressure" on the public schools, but which were not related to specific texts.
Many of the targets are long familiar: John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," "The Grapes of Wrath" and "The Red Pony," J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," Richard Wright's "Native Son," and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies."
They were joined by relative newcomers such as Mary O'Hara's "My Friend Flicka," Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," and Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs."
In one community, Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary was challenged.
According to the report, "Attacks on the Freedom to Learn," the Western region of the country had the largest number of incidents with 85. It was followed by the Midwest with 70. California had 36 incidents, followed by Oregon, Michigan, Illinois and Texas.
Much of the effort at censorship appears to be a highly organized nationwide attack on a literature-based textbook series called "Impressions," published by Holt, Rinehart.
It features contributions by such authors as A.A. Milne (who wrote the Winnie the Pooh stories), Martin Luther King Jr., Maurice Sendak, Laura Ingalls Wilder (who wrote "Little House on the Prairie), Dr. Seuss, Rudyard Kipling and C.S. Lewis.
"Impressions" was attacked in 45 jurisdictions during the 1990-91 school year and has been a major focus of such groups as the Eagle Forum and Focus on the Family and the American Family Association. Critics charge that its fairy tales promote Satanism, the occult and so-called New Age religion.
In a new wrinkle in the effort to supress children's reading matter, the report also found the Religious Right censors are turning to the courts in an effort to bar children from reading certain books.
The American Family Association, run by fundamentalist Methodist preacher Don Wildmon, has formed a legal arm that has filed two lawsuits challenging the use of the "Impressions" series and one of them - in Woodland, Calif. - "is shaping up to be the national test case on `Impressions,' " Kropp said.
Kropp also said that in one-third of the challenges reported in the study, book opponents had "some measure of success, meaning that books and materials were either removed altogether or that access to them was in some way restricted."
While fully 95 percent of the attacks came from those on the right, Kropp also said there were incidents from the political left as well, including an effort to bar children from reading Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" because it uses the word "nigger."