Complaints About Texts Reported About Average : Education: A two-year survey finds that roughly 150 districts have fielded challenges to school materials.

Books, films and other school materials have been challenged as objectionable by parents and organized groups in about 150 California school districts during the last two years, a Cal State Fullerton professor reported Thursday in the state’s first comprehensive study on the issue.

The survey of 421 school districts also found that the number of challenges is similar to what it has been in the past.

Education Professor Louise Adler said that more than 54% of the administrators who responded reported that the number of challenges during the survey period--autumn, 1988, through spring, 1990--is about the same as in previous years.

Challengers succeeded in removing the material from schools only 13% of the time during the period surveyed, Adler found. In 71% of the cases, schools continued to use the material, or excused the child of the challenger when it was used.

About half the 300 reported challenges were based on religious grounds, including depictions of Satan or witchcraft in such classics as “Macbeth” or “Snow White.” Popular films, such as “E.T.”, and Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue also have met with challenges from people who object to their being shown at school or available in school libraries.

But far from being a trend on the rise, Adler found that people have objected for generations to what children read, something that generally goes unreported in all but the most sensational cases.

Adler presented her findings in Sacramento on Thursday to the Educational Congress of California, the California Teachers Assn. and the California School Boards Assn., the groups that help fund her work.

“This is not new--it’s been going on ever since Colonial times in this country,” Adler said in an interview.

“It’s part of having common schools that are meant for everyone in a very pluralistic society with many different religious and ethnic groups,” she said. “There’s that inherent tension there.”

What is disturbing, Adler said, is that nearly a fourth of the school districts responding lack formal policies to handle such objections. “It means that either a district will not give someone a fair hearing, or someone will just remove a text without really considering what should be done,” said Adler, a former school board member of the Saddleback Valley Unified District in Mission Viejo.

According to a national watchdog group based in Washington, censorship is on the rise in schools and libraries across the country. People for the American Way, an advocacy group opposed to what it views as censorship, documented 244 challenges nationwide during the 1989-90 school year, with California accounting for nearly a third of the incidents.

But Adler, who did her doctoral dissertation at Claremont Graduate School on challenges to school materials, said she launched the survey last year after discovering there had been no comprehensive assessment of the number and type of challenges in California school districts.

Only 40% of the state’s districts responded. Of these, 35.6% reported challenges and only about a fourth were covered by the media, the survey shows.

The most-questioned text or material was the “Impressions” reading series for elementary school youngsters. “Satanic” and “witchcraft” were the most-cited words used by those raising objections. “Religious conflict” was the second-most used term. More than 65% of the challengers were parents, and many of those were members of religious groups.

Ed Foglia, president of the California Teachers Assn., said the findings show that the threat of censorship is rife in California.

“These attacks are not just plain challenges,” Foglia said. “They are a direct attack on our democratic and educational institutions. . . . And it’s not happening in just a few places. It’s happening across the country.”

But the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, whose Anaheim-based Coalition for Traditional Values led the fight to remove the “Impressions” series in at least 10 school districts around the state, accused Adler of deliberately downplaying the breadth of the movement.

TARGETED SCHOOL MATERIALS

Listed below are the books, magazines and films used by schools that are most frequently challenged by parents and other groups, along with the reasons for the challenges. Materials Frequently Challenged Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller ET (the film), Steven Spielberg Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck Halloween ABC, Eve Merriam Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain Little Red Riding Hood, a fairy tale The Lorax, Dr. Seuss Macbeth, William Shakespeare Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck Snow White, a fairy tale Sports Illustrated’ swimsuit issue Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shiel Silverstein The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum 1984, George Orwell Reason for Challenge Too Sexual: 13.3% Violence/Profanity: 12.6% Controversial: 11.9 Not Age Appropriate: 11.9 Offensive to Minority: 8.1 Out of Date/Poor Role Model: 1.5 Satanic/Witchcraft: 23.7 Religious Conflict: 17.0 Source: Cal State Fullerton study by education professor Louise Adler Compiled by Times researcher Michael Meyers