Even In Fiction There Is Truth
(This is a speech I gave at the meeting of my local school board. I changed the end paragraphs to reflect the classroom realities of allowing the opt-out when the speech was given. I have included that text at the end of the post.)
Here is a list of things I am not:
A caterpillar of any appetite
A young girl in Nazi Germany
A member of the everlasting Tuck family
A teenage orphan on Prince Edward Island
A 20-something gay man living with AIDS in early 1980s
A boy who had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
Holden Caulfield
I was able to experience these lives and situations of love and loss and life vicariously through books. They - and thousands more over the years - invited me to live beyond my little reality in the suburbs of Chicago. And these realities - comfortingly familiar and thrillingly new - were delivered into my hands by teachers and librarians over my scholastic career, twelve years of which was spent here in this district.
But now I fear things are breaking in ways that may never heal. Recently the Supreme Court ruled that parents can opt their child out of learning certain themes that exist in books that may be used in classroom curricula. These themes are usually conveyed through fiction but that doesn’t make them any less real, even if some parents literally pray they weren’t. As Americans these parents have the right to withdraw their child from anything they deem inappropriate. But I fully believe that to do so robs the child of the lived experience of others, which it is safe to assume they have yet to encounter. The classroom, at all levels of education, is a safe place to learn new things. If done correctly this will spark questions. Maybe they’re addressed in the classroom or maybe they’re asked at home. But aside from “Can I have more candy?” a child’s favorite question is “Why?” THIS is where a child can grow in mind and outlook or continue to be stifled, their curiosity being tamped down to the point of lifelessness. This is not hyperbole. “Why?” is the most consequential question in human history.
But children need to be allowed materials, stories, and experiences that foster not only the questions, but an answer as well. And as any teacher worth their paycheck will attest that answer will often resolve in another “But why?” And THIS is how you foster a life long learner. One who reads to learn; one who began learning by reading a veritable United Nations of stories in books supplied by teachers who wanted nothing more than to hear twenty students read the last page, think for a moment, and say “Okay, but why?”
There will never be a final answer to that question, nor should there be. As a professional writer (thanks in no small part to my school librarian and honors English teacher at B.J. Ward Middle School) one answer I give my kids is that even in fiction there is truth. But if children are never given the opportunity to read the books in which those realities reside how are they ever going to find it?
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(Below is the alternative text I replaced the final two paragraphs with, which is what I said at the meeting)
More to the point, in respect to the classroom itself, allowing parents to opt out of specific aspects of a lesson plan adds a burden to the teacher that they can ill afford to shoulder. They are required to create a secondary lesson plan specifically for the opted out student, including gathering or creating all materials, creating tests, and grading. Then the school staff needs to scramble to have someone available to distribute the materials to the opted out child and supervise them for the time needed. While this seems easy on paper I don’t have to tell the board how many hours and days of planning this will take even for just one student. And I haven’t even touched on the impact being singled out in this way will have on the student themselves. Bullying is always an issue, even in the safety of this district.
I implore the board to consider the repercussions of allowing parents to opt kids out of classroom curricula. I know there are issues you’re privy to that I will never be and thus are better informed. Please use that information to make the best choice for all kids because all kids deserve to be informed of real life, even the parts their parents wish didn’t exist.