Letter to the editor

Well, my letter to the editor has been a hit. So far.

I received an email from a teacher in southern MN who had the editorial passed to him from his principal/super intendent because they thought he might find it interesting. Imagine that! Support from an administrator.

I wonder what that's like.

He agreed with all of my points.

Kristie said that she thought my previous post on the letter had some things missing. So I'm including the revised editorial here. If you've read it, skip it. If not, let me know what you think

To Whom It May Concern:


My grandmother, Myrtle Baril, taught for many years at Knox elementary. Yet, as a student in Red Lake Falls, Myrtle was suspended from high school in the 1920’s when she was the first girl to cut her hair short and wear pants. When my mother was in high school in the ‘50’s, the girls had to kneel in front of the principal to see if their skirts covered their knees.

At the honors banquet last spring, I mentioned how proud I was to teach in a society that was more tolerant and open minded than the ones my grandmother and mother grew up in.

That has all been called into question now.

Isn’t it ironic that my junior English students are reading Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, Fahrenheit 451? It is about a dystopian society in which all books are illegal and burned. Bradbury wrote this book in 1954 as a warning about the dangers of censorship and mindlessness run amuck.

There is a passage from that novel that can sum up the reason for teaching the book Kaffir Boy in our freshman English classes. So the passage isn’t taken out of context, I’ll fill you in on some key information. The protagonist, Montag, who is a fireman, and has been illegally hording books, is telling his wife why they should finally begin reading the banned books: “’We need to not be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?’”

Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane, is an autobiography that has come under fire for a sexually graphic scene. There is no defense of this scene; it is vivid and appalling.
But that is the point. Sometimes we need to be really bothered.

As a young boy in South Africa under apartheid, the author is starving. One day Mathabane is enticed by some boys who allow themselves to be sodomized in exchange for food. When he realizes this, the author does the right thing; he turns and flees. This is the impetus the author needs to escape the poverty and oppression of South Africa.

As professionals, our teachers examine the scene for what it is -- disgusting and traumatic. Students do not read it for the sexual imagery. Instead, students focus on how the author made the right choice and how it impacted his life.

Shall I not teach Night, an autobiographical account of Elie Wiesel’s survival of Auschwitz. It takes Wiesel all of six pages to recount how he is first exposed to the horrors of the Nazis: an older man from his village is rounded up by a death squad and witnesses the Gestapo ordering people to dig trenches. They are then shot and dumped into those ditches. Before the man flees, he sees soldiers toss infants in the air and open fire. Given that the number of published books refuting that the holocaust even happened is now over 100, reading the novel is absolutely necessary. If I’m not mistaken, that has been the same message of our history and choir departments for some time now, yet who ever has raised any objections? Sometimes we need to be really bothered by something, so we won’t let a holocaust happen again.

The real issue is not one passage from one book. The real issue is about censorship and questioning curriculum. Parents have the right to do this. For their children. Not for every child in an entire school.

What is next?

My juniors are set to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize, yet it deals with blatant racism and violence. It is also one of the most banned books in America. Sometimes we need to be really bothered by something, so we won’t let Jim Crow and intolerance happen again.

As part of a local history grant our school district received, some teachers met with the author of The Lynchings in Duluth, Michael Fedo. His book, as the title suggests, chronicles the lynchings of innocent African Americans in Duluth in 1920. Fedo’s book features a very famous picture of the lynching where a crowd has gathered around the bodies. This is horrifying and appalling. Yet, such an atrocity happened in Minnesota. What a powerful segue into To Kill a Mockingbird. But is it now not a viable source?

Isn’t teaching about making relevant connections? Students constantly bombard me with Why do we have to learn this? When am I ever going to use this? Teach me about something relevant? I never have to deal with those questions after showing them the Duluth lynching picture and discussing it. Suddenly, the horrors of Lee’s novel are all too real. Sometimes we need to be really bothered by something, so we won’t let hate crimes and mob justice happen again.

Last spring a speaker was brought to school and not only were all our students required to attend but students from other districts were also bussed in. The speaker had a very relevant message about sexual harassment and abuse. I think the students needed to hear it; indeed, many had their eyes opened. They listened to an audiotape of an actual rape. Later the speaker then asked the audience if they were guilty of referring to women as . . . and he went on to use very derogatory nouns. Yet, no parent permission forms were sent out. No objections were raised either. Yet, it was just as sexually explicit as the scene in Kaffir Boy. Our administration made a professional decision, and there is no denying the impact it had on students.

In class one of my students admitted that he felt ashamed as a male after the lyceum. Here was a teachable moment. Shame was not the intention. The point was to have students’ eyes opened to what goes on around them and in their world. They needed to be really bothered by something, so they will not let sexual abuse happen again.

As professionals, the real goal of every book, story, essay, and play we read is to have our students’ eyes opened to the world around them. But every once in awhile, we need to be really bothered by something . . .

Sincerely,



Kurt Reynolds
English Teacher