Is there a difference between a “banned” book and a book that parents decide they don’t want their children to read?
Here’s why I ask: According to the Modesto Bee, a teacher in California assigned a book called “Bless Me, Ultima,” saying it was an “important story that connects with teens.”
A parent complained about the book, calling it anti-Catholic and inappropriate. The Superintendent responded by yanking the book from the class. Now, he hadn’t read the book, a fact which irked some. But when he finally did read the book he said he agreed with the parent that the story was disturbing.
So there was a public meeting to which a heap of parents showed up and guess who else? The ACLU. “It makes me wonder, can any family object to any book for any reason?” asked Tony Spears, president of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “I can’t think of a book, I can’t think of a newspaper article that’s not offensive to some people.”
Most of the folks there defended “Bless Me, Ultima,” a book by Rudolfo Anaya about a Latino boy reconciling his thoughts about American Indian religious traditions and Roman Catholicism.
So here’s the deal on the book according to Wikipedia:
Set in the small town of Guadalupe, New Mexico during World War II, this novel follows the story of Antonio Márez, a young boy who meets a curandera named Ultima. The main plotline involves Ultima’s struggle to stop the witchcraft of the three daughters of Tenorio Trementina, the main villain. In the story Antonio, who is witness to several deaths, is forced to deal with religious and moral issues.
As Antonio grows up, he finds that he must choose between the two opposing families from which he came: the Márez; wild and untamed vaqueros from Antonio’s father’s side, and the Lunas; quiet, religious farmers from whom his mother descended. His father wants to help Antonio make his own choice about his future. His mother’s dream is for him to become a Catholic priest, but over the course of the novel Antonio becomes disillusioned with the faith and through Ultima learns of the broad awareness and possibilities of other gods. Much of the novel is spent with Antonio trying to reconcile Native American religion with traditional Roman Catholicism as well as the Lunas with the Márez.
In this story Antonio asks questions concerning evil, justice and the nature of God. He witnesses many deaths, which force him to mature and face the reality of life. Ultimately, the Catholic Church, dominated by female imagery, by concentrating on the Virgin Mary and a vengeful Father God, on ritual and superficiality, is unable to answer Antonio’s questions. There is an unawareness throughout the novel of any Biblical concept of Christianity. Realizing that the Roman Catholic Church represents the female values of his mother, Antonio cannot bring himself to accept the lawlessness, violence and unthinking sensuality which his father and older brothers symbolize. Instead through his relationship with Ultima, he discovers a oneness with nature, with no value judgments.
A world without value judgments? This book obviously wasn’t written for teens. It was written for idiots.
But I’m interested in the question of whether parents and school officials can make a value judgement on what children read without it being called the b word. All in all this seems like a tempest in a teapot but I think it can be generalized to the point that those who wish to make value judgments for their children will be seen as banning books and rebuffed time and again. At some point, does it leave any choice to parents but to remove children from the public school system if they want any say whatsoever in what their children learn.
January 7, 2009 at 7:06 am
“At some point, does it leave any choice to parents but to remove children from the public school system if they want any say whatsoever in what their children learn.”
Well, as we homeschooling types would say, Q.E.D.
🙂
The book sounds dreadful, like most of the dreck pushed at students these days on the grounds that polytheism, atheism, pantheism, and similar follies are relevant to their lives, while Christian thought is explicitly banned on the grounds that it’s illegal for it to be. At least in school.
January 7, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I can’t even imagine a sane adult telling a child that making no value judgements is the key to happiness. It seems to me to be crazy and the quickest way to assure that child a terrible life.
January 7, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I agree with you completely.
A while back I posted on this type of thing, and I think it does the whole censorship/book banning debate a huge disservice when parental challenges to required reading are included under the heading of “banning”.
I think parents should have the right to say that their child should not be forced to read a particular book. This is very different than a person saying that no one should be allowed to read the book. As long as the two keep being equated by groups like the ACLU then parents who try to look out for their kids best interest will always look like the bad guys.
January 7, 2009 at 2:27 pm
One wonders why parents would keep their child in a school that would push this, and many other, idiotic books (not to mention all the other antics that go on in public schools). Perhaps a little sacrifice is in order – send them to a Catholic school you trust or teach them at home. Guaranteed they’ll get a better education.
January 7, 2009 at 3:28 pm
The 9th Circuit has already said parental rights stop at the school door and, in Canada, it’s a hate crime to remove your child from the classroom if the topic is one you find immoral or offensive (i.e., homosexuality).
Liberals think the only “parental rights” are the right of a woman to abort and the right of a man to be a sperm donor. After that, they think it takes a village (read: liberal government) to raise your child, ’cause they know better than you!
January 7, 2009 at 3:44 pm
If it were an atheist mother who objected to this book rather than a Catholic whose side would the ACLU be on?
January 7, 2009 at 3:57 pm
“…the Catholic Church, dominated by female imagery…”
I have been reading a lot of Chesterton lately, and boy is he a smart dude. Just last night I was reading in Orthodoxy about his discovery of the fact that Christianity is so often attacked from opposite sides. Christianity is both passifist and the mother of all wars, etc.
So, Bless Me, Ultima treats the Catholic Church as being soked in feminine imagery, while the Da Vinci Code treats it as rejecting all things woman.
There is nothing new under the sun.
January 7, 2009 at 5:00 pm
At the Catholic high school I attended, this book was assigned in some English classes, though not in any of mine. I helped a friend who was making a movie for a project related to the book, and I was concerned about the acceptance of ‘other gods’ over Catholicism. I can’t comment on the content, since I didn’t read it (though a sibling had to) but I was happy I wasn’t reading it-similar books generally leave me quite irked.
This book is probably only going to be assigned in high school when a student’s mind should, in my opinion, be able to process views opposite their own. I’d almost rather have a student be introduced to a book containing harsh views on the Church in a class which will require them to read the book critically than to have them read a similar book on their own and without the assignments which force them to look at it as book and not something else. I’m not advocating throwing anti-Catholic literature at students, but suggesting that when it happens, there is an opportunity to make some good of the situation. However, I shudder at the thought at a book like Bless Me Ultima could be someone’s only experience of Catholicism.
January 7, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Come on now, they aren’t saying it’s ALWAYS wrong to make a value judgement.
Value judgements against Catholicism are always OK.
;-I
January 7, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I like to think that a young adult, being assigned a book like this, would spend part of his report in refuting its central premises, incorrect assumptions, and shoddy conclusions. That, of course, is too much to ask of some students; also, since the faith is weakly observed in so many places, it’s less likely for a student to have the correct information to do such a thing even were he capable.
In any case, I’m not comfortable with the idea that a parent could simply yank the book away and refuse to let their student read the material – in the same way that I dislike the idea of parents who constantly fret that their kid should ever suffer a boo-boo or an unkind word; in the same way that I detest the modern trend toward not letting kids learn how to deal with not being winners who are the best in everything every time. Sooner or later we all bleed, cry, fail, and suffer unjustly. Christ never promised to bubble-wrap us so we are never jostled in any way.
This may be a case where everyone’s wrong – the teacher for assigning it, the student for running to mommy, the parents for stamping their feet, and the ACLU for crying “censorship” for the jillionth time where none exists. Let the kid disagree with it and argue his point. He’ll learn far more about his faith and about the truth by fighting errors than by never hearing them.
January 7, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I’m not a fan of book banning or censorship. However, parents certainly have the right to question what their children are being taught in public school. The School System wants parents involved until the parents actually oppose something the school is doing. Currently we live in a small community where our school board members are all familiar. We’ve been lucky to be able to address issues with our principal and have them handled carefully. However, we always closely monitor the situation and in fact are prayerfully contemplating homeschooling our younger children. This insanity must stop.
January 7, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Banning a book means making it so that nobody can read it.
Being particular about the content of a school library is not banning. Unless they consider not having the kuma sutra and playboy magazines at a school library banning.
Though you have to wonder where was the ACLU when school libraries were banning Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
January 7, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Okay, folks, anyone who does not vote in federal, state, local, and, very importantly, school board elections, please get off the air; you’re irrelevant. Democracy is for participants, not for the passive.
Those among you who do vote in federal, state, local, and school board elections, please carry on.
— Mack, evil, wicked, godless, satanic, condom-distributing (do you REALLY believe all this?), America-bashing public-school teacher. I am in truth an ordinary man, rather boring, a heterosexual, happily married, Viet-Nam veteran, Catholic convert, Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist, and the descendant of Native Americans, French, British, and God knows what else.
Don’t stereotype others; it’s un-Catholic.
January 7, 2009 at 11:33 pm
I. Making value judgments is bad and incorrect
II. The statement, “Making value judgments is bad and incorrect.”
III. Ergo…
Sorry public school, forgot logic and reason are not permitted.
January 7, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Ehhem, II. The statement… is a value judgment.