CENSORSHIP WATCH : Thanks but No Thanks

Gov. Pete Wilson has told the state Board of Education that it has no business censoring the content of state reading tests. He’s right. Too bad that Wilson--who appoints the board’s members--didn’t make his views known sooner. Then presumably the board could have spared itself an embarrassing public blunder.

The mess started after the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition read a published excerpt from “Roselily,” a short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker that was being used on state reading tests. The excerpt presents the thoughts of an unmarried mother as she stands at the altar for her wedding. The conservative religious group complained to the Board of Education that the work of fiction was potentially “anti-religious and anti-clergy.” A state spokeswoman later said the story was removed because the publicity gave students advance knowledge of the contents of the test . . . and because of the controversy.

But that wasn’t the last of the astonishing misjudgments. A passage by author Annie Dillard that included a description of a snowball fight was pulled after being labeled as violent. The board yanked a second work by Walker, an essay on the life of a horse, because, according to a board member, it was “anti-meat eating.” Amazing.

Not surprisingly, on Monday Walker declined to accept the Governor’s Award for Literature. Wilson has asked her to reconsider, saying he doesn’t endorse the board’s censorship. Let’s just hope the board in the future will be making decisions that are “anti-stupid.”