Minister Seeks to Silence Class’ Reading of Play

Bothered by the casual profanity in the play being read aloud by her Escondido high school English class last month, a 17-year-old senior mentioned her concerns to her father and asked for his opinion.

As her father, a minister, glanced through the play’s opening act, he said that he “found myself becoming as offended, if not more so, as my daughter had been.”

“There were frequent vulgarities and profanities, and God’s name was constantly being used in vain,” said the Rev. Billy Falling, the founder and head of the Escondido-based Christian Voters League, a fundamentalist religious-political group. “We don’t use that kind of language in our home and my daughter certainly doesn’t use it, either. It struck me that this was a totally inappropriate book to be read aloud in class.”

Unimpressed by Praise

The play in question was Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Death of a Salesman.” Clearly unimpressed by the literary accolades accorded the play during the past 40 years, Falling has seized upon the recent episode at Orange Glen High School, hoping to use it to launch a crusade aimed at preventing Miller’s work and conceivably many others from being read aloud in local classrooms.

Next week, Falling and his followers will ask the Escondido Union High School District Board of Education to adopt a policy stating: “No student shall be asked to read aloud in class materials that use God’s name in vain, profanity or vulgarities. Neither shall teachers or administrators use God’s name in vain, or use speech using vulgarities or profanities . . . before the students of this district.”

With CVL members circulating petitions in support of the proposal, Falling said he hopes to present thousands of signatures to the school board at its June 28 meeting to demonstrate that “there’s a tidal wave of emotion out there on this issue.” If the board rejects the measure, Falling warns, he may mount a recall campaign against its members.

That prediction and related warning, however, may prove to be as hyperbolic as some of Falling’s goals for the CVL itself. Established 4 1/2 years ago, the CVL was envisioned by Falling as a Moral Majority-type movement to transform American politics by refocusing attention on “traditional values,” a scenario based on forecasts that the group would swell to hundreds of chapters and 1 million members nationwide by 1990.

Today, however, there are only 11 CVL chapters in California--four of them in northern San Diego County--with a total of about 1,100 members. Said Falling: “Our plans to go national have been pushed back a bit.”

With that less than meteoric rise as a backdrop, some observers have suggested that Falling perhaps hopes to capitalize on the present controversy to spur the CVL’s growth--an allegation that causes the former Assemblies of God pastor to bristle.

Acting as a Parent

“I’m not doing this as a CVL officer--I’m doing it as a parent,” said the 49-year-old Falling, an imposing, husky 6-footer with thick, dark hair. “But one reason there is a CVL is so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time an issue like this comes along. It gives us an effective method to have our voice heard.”

Sensitive to public perceptions, Falling emphasizes that he is not seeking to ban any books from classrooms, but rather only to prevent ones that include profanity from being read aloud by students.

“We’re not a bunch of book-burning censors with a list of books we’re trying to get off the shelves,” Falling explained. “People have a right to read what they want. But they shouldn’t be forced to read aloud something that offends them or is contrary to their beliefs. The issue here isn’t book titles or censorship. It’s profanity.”

Others, however, view the distinction between a classroom prohibition on reading books aloud and an outright ban to be a rather thin one. Adoption of the former, they argue, represents a step toward the latter.

“It certainly opens the door to the censorship issue,” said Dan McLeod, chairman of San Diego State University’s English department. Falling’s “idea may seem innocent enough, but it could lead to much more serious and distasteful things better left alone.”

Falling’s proposed restriction, Orange Glen Principal Ed Brand added, would “seriously undermine a book’s effectiveness and take away a valuable teaching tool.”

Agreed With Daughter

“Many teachers believe that reading aloud is critical to improved comprehension, to improving reading skills and that it helps to make classes more lively,” Brand said. “It really would tie teachers’ hands.”

The Escondido controversy was spawned by the discomfort that Falling’s daughter Becky felt when “Death of a Salesman” was read aloud by students in her 12th-grade English class last month.

After his daughter mentioned the incident to him, Falling read a portion of the play’s opening act and quickly seconded his daughter’s reaction to the expletives sprinkled throughout the script. Although he read only Pages 11 through 24--roughly one-fifth of the play--that was enough for Falling because, in those pages, he found dialogue laced with words such as goddammit , hell and sons of bitches .

“I’d read enough to know I didn’t want to read any more of it,” Falling said. “I found the language offensive, disgusting.”

At a meeting with school officials, Falling asked that his daughter be removed from the class and given an alternate reading assignment. Orange Glen administrators complied with that request, and Becky Falling--who did not wish to be interviewed--spent the final three weeks of the academic year in the school’s library reading another book.

“As soon as someone made us aware of the problem, we remedied it within five minutes,” Brand said. “I think we handled it reasonably and responsibly.”

Literal Interpretation?

Falling, however, also made an additional request of his daughter’s teacher: that she cease asking all students to read aloud from “Death of a Salesman.” When the teacher refused to do so, Falling forwarded his proposed policy to the Escondido school board, and has been granted 10 minutes--he had sought an hour--to argue in its behalf at next week’s meeting.

From Falling’s perspective, his proposal is simply a literal interpretation of a state education policy that forbids the use of profane or vulgar language in classrooms by either teachers or students.

The reading aloud of such language in books, Falling argues, “desensitizes” students to the impropriety of such behavior and “almost puts the state’s imprimatur on that kind of offensive language.”

Escondido Union Supt. John Cooper, however, argues that the acceptable parameters of literature are “entirely different” from those governing classroom behavior, adding that it is incongruous to apply the standards of one to the other.

“Many classics and widely respected books contain language that would be completely inappropriate if used by school employees,” Cooper said. “ ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ I suppose, is probably the most celebrated example of that.”

‘Meant to Be Heard’

In the eyes of SDSU’s McLeod, the particular circumstances from which Falling’s case arose vividly demonstrate the inadvisability and potential pitfalls of his proposal. While students’ appreciation of any written work would be seriously harmed if they could not read it aloud, McLeod said, the effects would be “particularly devastating” in the case of a play such as “Death of a Salesman.”

“A play is meant to be heard--the sound of a voice is what fleshes out the bare script,” McLeod said. “Plays or poetry come alive when they’re spoken. That’s also one of the keys to interpretation. You can tell by the way someone reads something if he understands it.”

More significantly, while those who seek to “sanitize” classroom curriculum profess that doing so would enhance the quality of education, their efforts, if successful, could have exactly the opposite impact, McLeod argues.

“If people object to occasional profanity in literature and try to keep high school students from being exposed to it, kids probably will develop more contempt for the unreality of school than they already have,” McLeod said. “Schools are already criticized by students for not jibing with the world as they know it. Trying to strip away any potentially offensive words in literature would make the whole experience even more otherworldly.”

Aware that civil libertarians and most educators object to his proposal, Falling said he hopes to be in a position where “political realities” could magnify the strength of his theoretical arguments at next week’s school board meeting. His hope, Falling said, is to go to the meeting with more signatures on his petitions than there were votes in the last school board election.

“We’d like them to know that there are enough people upset over this to put together a recall if they persist in shoving these things down our throats,” he said. “That’s hardball. But we’re ready to play it.”

Routine Exposure

While not discounting Falling’s sincerity or concern over the issue, many local educators appear to believe that he has, as one put it, “made a very big deal . . . out of a few hells and damns .” Most students, they argue, probably are routinely exposed to far more profane language in their everyday lives.

“I don’t doubt that this minister and his daughter are offended, and I sympathize with them, because I also find casual profanity to be very disturbing,” McLeod said. “But when you measure their feelings against the ‘What else?’ aspect, the questions of what this could lead to . . . I’d rather have a few hurt feelings.

“Besides, if this girl was so offended by the words she heard read from ‘Death of a Salesman,’ I’d guess that what she hears in the hallways every day must really turn her ears red.”

Trying to turn that “real world” argument back upon its advocates, Falling contends that it supports, not weakens, his position.

“If schools want to teach about the real world, then they ought to show students that it’s composed of two parts, good and evil,” he said. “I know which side I’m on. And it’s not the same side as anyone who defends profanity.”