Board Bans âCatcher in the Ryeâ From High School English Class
Boron High School students will not be studying âThe Catcher in the Ryeâ this year because of a recent school board decision to remove the critically acclaimed novel from the school reading list after some parents said its content was unsuitable for teen-agers.
But later this month, students in Shelley Keller-Gageâs English class will read âFahrenheit 451,â Ray Bradburyâs novel about a future in which government has banned individual thinking, television dominates society and firemen burn books.
Keller-Gage said Monday that the presence of âFahrenheit 451â in her curriculum is not intended as retaliation at the Muroc Joint Unified School District board for banning the study of âThe Catcher in the Rye,â J.D. Salingerâs 1951 novel about the adolescent crisis of Holden Caulfield. The district serves about 3,000 students who live in and around Boron, a desert town in the northeastern Antelope Valley.
âI taught âFahrenheit 451â last fall,â Keller-Gage said. âIâm not doing it in relation to the school board decision. It is an ironic coincidence, you might say.â
Parentsâ Campaign
In May, a group of parents mounted a campaign against âThe Catcher in the Ryeâ when Keller-Gage was teaching it to freshmen and sophomores, although the book had been taught for several years without incident. Opponents criticized the bookâs profanity, saying the novel was blasphemous and promoted anti-family values.
Last month, the school board voted 4-1 to remove Salingerâs novel from a 70-book reading list for high school students. However, the book remains in both the school and local libraries, where it has gained more readers because of the controversy, school officials said.
The teacherâs quiet and passionate defense of âThe Catcher in the Ryeâ has made Keller-Gage, a 35-year-old Boron native, the subject of newspaper and television profiles focusing on a nationwide rise in efforts to ban books in public schools.
âItâs a dangerous step,â she said of the ban. âItâs a few townspeople telling us how to teach our kids. It isnât something I asked for, but it is a cause that I believe in and I do believe there has been an injustice done.â
Keller-Gage, who gave students the option of studying alternate books if their parents objected to the Salinger novel, said the board has suppressed a widely taught literary classic. The book is known for the funny, poignant and foul-mouthed narration of Caulfield, a troubled preparatory-school student from New York who has become a quintessential antihero of American literature.
Keller-Gage said the chronicle of Caulfieldâs adolescent odyssey drew special interest from her teen-age students, including some who shun books regardless of their content.
On the other hand, school board President Jim Summers said he reread the book recently and was not impressed. âI had a hard time staying with it,â he said. âI donât know who considers it a literary classic.â
And he said the board decision has drawn far less interest from district residents than from outsiders and the media.
âWe Restricted Itâ
âI donât consider this a ban,â said Summers, who owns a local service station and spoke highly of Keller-Gage as a teacher. âWe restricted it, thatâs true. But the book is in the library. More kids are going to read it now as a result of all this. . . . And theyâre going to get a fine education without that book on the reading list.â
Summers said he did not think the removal of the book would result in new efforts to exclude books from the curriculum. He said he had no problem with Keller-Gageâs comments on the matter or her decision to teach âFahrenheit 451.â
Summers said the action was justified because of complaints from at least 20 parents. Keller-Gage said the parents of about 10 out of approximately 150 English students complained initially, and said opponents of the book declined her request to discuss the book at subsequent parent meetings.
Local resident and religious activist Patty Salazar said she supports the board action because the novel âdoesnât belong in a public high school.â
âIt uses the Lordâs name in vain 200 times,â she said. âThatâs enough reason to ban it right there. They say it describes reality. I say letâs back up from reality. Letâs go backwards. Letâs go back to when we didnât have an immoral society.â
The novelâs profanity and sexual references drew scandalized reactions in the 1950s but the criticism faded as literature and movies of the 1960s and 1970s made it seem tame in comparison, according to The Dictionary of Literary Biography. The dictionary said the novel is considered a prominent work of post-World War II American fiction.
But in recent years, âThe Catcher in the Ryeâ ranks along with works such as Chaucerâs âCanterbury Talesâ and John Steinbeckâs âOf Mice and Menâ among the books most frequently challenged in schools and libraries on religious or moral grounds, according a report last year by PEN, an international writers organization. PEN and other watchdog groups have warned that such censorship is on the rise and represents a threat to constitutional rights.
Salazar and other opponents of the book said they had not and would not read it. Boron High School senior Nathan Cathcart criticized that as a âridiculousâ mentality leading to a âdumb mistakeâ by the school board.
Test Questions
Cathcart, 17, described himself as an avid reader and a fan of âThe Catcher in the Rye,â which he studied at the school as a freshman. He pointed out that questions about the book will appear on national exams for the advanced placement English class he is taking.
âEducated people have looked at this book and recognized that it has literary merit,â he said. âOther books make reference to Holden Caulfield. . . . The students donât realize the greatness of this issue. It could start as something small and work its way up.â
Cathcart said the school board has taken away the rights of children to study the book with assistance from teachers and the rights of parents to decide whether they want their children to study it, since the teacher had given them a choice.
As to the potentially detrimental effect on teen-agers of profanity and sexual references, he said: âAt that age, they know the words. In junior high, in fourth and fifth grade they know the words, and they say them to impress each other. When I walk down the hall I hear kids in junior high say more cuss words in a minute than I say in an entire day.â
Little Opposition
Cathcart and Keller-Gage said they hope the school board might still reconsider its decision, but Summers said there are no plans to do so because there has been little opposition in the community.
While Keller-Gage says she has received support from students, teachers and strangers who have written her letters, she said she has not yet discussed the issue in class. She said she may allude to it when her classes begin studying the themes of censorship and governmental control in âFahrenheit 451â later this month.
Some elements of the grim future depicted in âFahrenheit 451â have come true, Keller-Gage said. She cited Bradburyâs portrait of âlack of communication in families, devotion to television and disregard for human life.â She drew a parallel between the novelâs scenes depicting drivers who run down people for sport and the real-life random cruelty of drive-by shootings.
When asked if the success of campaigns against âThe Catcher in the Ryeâ and other books also reflect fulfillment of Bradburyâs prophecy, she said: âI hope not. Itâs possible. The censorship does come out of a desire to protect our youth.
âI just donât feel it is the right way to do that.â
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