Posted December 5, 2005. Arizona Schools Chief Seeks Banning of Perks of Being a Wallflower

Arizona Schools Chief Seeks Banning of Perks of Being a Wallflower

The objection of an Apache Junction, Arizona, grandmother of a 6th-grader to an explicit passage about date rape in Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower has prompted the state superintendent of public instruction to ask schools statewide to “review the books purchased for library use to assure the contents are appropriate for your population.” In a November 22 memo, Tom Horne explained that Perks “is designated as 4th grade reading level” by the widely used comprehension-assessment software Accelerated Reader, whose assignment of “an especially large number of points for [reading] this book . . . encourages 4th graders to read it.”

“I’m not a prudish person, but even I’m shocked by this,” Horne said in the November 23 Arizona Republic after having read page 31 of the Chbosky as urged by the complainant. Horne admitted that he had not read the book in its entirety. Ironically, Apache Junction Unified School District 43 Superintendent Greg Wyman told the Republic that officials there were already aware of the book having been purchased for elementary-school collections “and we pulled it.”

Although Horne did not order Perks removed, reaction to his cautionary memo was swift and dissenting. “Families should be given the choice without the censorship,” Tucson parent Melissa McCoy said in the November 28 Tucson Citizen, adding, “Censorship is not a learning tool; censorship is a limitation.” Harriet Scarborough, senior academic officer for curriculum instruction and professional learning at the Tucson Unified School District, told the Citizen that officials there would discuss “whether removing books like that is something that we want to start practicing” after reading the entire book. “Just taking a page out of context is not going to make your complaint very valid,” she asserted.

Posted December 5, 2005.