SIMI VALLEY : Schools Drop Novel Pending Panel Study

The Simi Valley Unified School District has recommended that its junior high school English teachers remove the novel “The Cay” from their lessons until a committee reviews a complaint by the Ventura County chapter of the NAACP that the book fosters racism.

The district’s curriculum and instructional material committee has sent letters to teachers asking them not to use the novel by Theodore Taylor in their classes until the committee makes a decision on the complaint, Assistant Supt. Susan Parks said.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, together with the parent of a Simi Valley student, first filed a complaint about the book in November.

But the curriculum committee’s decision on the book was delayed because the NAACP and the parent filed a second complaint in May that essentially expanded on the first one, Parks said.

The committee will continue reviewing the book when it resumes meeting in the fall, she said.

Parks said it is fairly standard procedure for the district to ask teachers not to use a book or other instructional material that is under review.

Theodore Green, who filed the complaint on behalf of the NAACP, said he is pleased by the district’s decision to temporarily stop using the book.

Green, chairman of the local NAACP’s educational committee, has said the book makes derogatory references to blacks and perpetuates racial stereotypes.

He said he recently filed a formal complaint against the use of the book in the Moorpark Unified School District.

“The Cay” is about a white boy who is shipwrecked on a Caribbean island and befriended by an older black man living on the island.

Some Simi Valley and Moorpark school officials have defended the novel, saying that the story shows how the boy eventually rejects the racial bigotry that he learned from his family.