Pennsylvania School Board Restricts
Excessive, Explicit Titles
The Tamaqua (Pa.) Area school board approved April 19 the establishment of a restricted-materials section in the district’s middle-school library for books that contain what officials deem to be questionable content. Only students with parental permission will be able to access titles shelved there—echoing a policy already in place at the high-school level. The restricted section immediately debuted with Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, and We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier; the titles were also moved to the already-established restricted area of the high-school library. All three titles had been challenged last fall.
District Superintendent Frederick Bausch said in the April 20 Allentown Morning Call that the new policy affords people a mechanism with which “to raise a concern and gives us a way to deal with it.” The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom Director Judith Krug disagreed, telling the paper she objected to the vagueness of the policy section stating, “Materials containing passages of excessive violence and explicit sexual activity are not appropriate in any school.”
Posted April 30, 2001.
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