Right Wing Seen Gaining in Bid to Ban School Texts

Religious extremists and members of right-wing organizations are gaining in their battle to ban or censor library books and to restrict sex education in schools, an anti-censorship group said in a survey released today.

“I want to emphasize that what is at stake in the battles being fought in communities across the nation is more than just the fate of a few novels or a textbook or two,” said John Buchanan, chairman of People For the American Way, founded by television producer Norman Lear.

“We are witnessing in these skirmishes the clash of two competing views of public education in America. The censors see efforts to teach our children about the world around them as a threat; the rest of us see it as a way to broaden our children’s vistas and opportunities.”

The survey found censorship and other ideological attacks on public education occurred in 42 of the 50 states. It focused on 172 incidents that occurred during the 1988-89 school year.

The West led in total number of incidents this year, 61, and California accumulated more incidents than any other state with 23.

Sex education remains a major target of the far right, which “already scored some damaging victories” during the last school year, the report said.

In South Carolina, for example, the report cited statewide restrictions that forced school textbook publishers to delete information on the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.

The report said school libraries were the target of significantly more censorship attempts during the last school year.

The main targets of such challenges were literary classics such as John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” as well as plays by Arthur Miller and Aristophanes, the report said.