Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is deeply ironic, then, that news broke this week of a Tennessee school board removing a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from its curriculum—one of many recent attempts across the U.S. to ban or restrict books about marginalized groups.
Maus, by Art Spiegelman (Bookshop; Amazon), is about his parents’ experience with antisemitism in 1940s Poland and their internment in Auschwitz, told as flashbacks as Spiegelman later urges his father to tell their story. It had been taught in the eight and ninth grades in the McMinn School District.
At a January 10th meeting, two assistant principals explained how the book was used as a foundational text for the discussion of the Holocaust, but the McMinn County Board of Education nevertheless voted unanimously to remove it. The initial objections were to “eight curse words” and one image of a nude woman, according to the meeting minutes (PDF), but one board member expressed concerns with the broader content of the book as well.
Board member Tony Allman noted that if students said any of the eight objectionable words at school they would be disciplined, and asked if the book therefore violated district policy.
Several instructional supervisors offered responses in support of Maus. Melasawn Knight said:
I think any time you are teaching something from history, people did hang from trees, people did commit suicide and people were killed, over six million were murdered. I think the author is portraying that because it is a true story about his father that lived through that. He is trying to portray that the best he can with the language that he chooses that would relate to that time, maybe to help people who haven’t been in that aspect in time to actually relate to the horrors of it. Is the language objectionable? Sure. I think that is how he uses that language to portray that.
Steven Brady, another instructional supervisor, added, “We are not promoting the use of these words, if anything we are promoting that these words are inappropriate and it’s best that we not use them.”
And Instructional Supervisor Julie Goodin also observed, “You know I have an eighth grader and even if you did pull this book I would want him to read it because we have to teach our kids…. Are we going to be teaching these words outside of this book as vocabulary words? No.”
Knight noted that when she was a teacher, many other books she taught also had foul language, including Bridge to Terabithia, The Whipping Boy, and To Kill a Mockingbird, and while that didn’t justify “foul language,” every curriculum has similar issues.
Allman also objected to the fact that Spiegelman had once done graphics for Playboy. “You can look at his history, and we’re letting him do graphics in books for students in elementary school. If I had a child in the eighth grade, this ain’t happening,” he said.
Allman seemed to object to more than the eight words or the nude, however, saying, “We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff. It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy.”
Goodin responded, “I was a history teacher and there is nothing pretty about the Holocaust and for me this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history…. For me this was his way to convey the message.”
Brady observed, too, that the instructional module on the Holocaust, anchored by Maus, offers not only preparation for high school history classes, but also “an opportunity in this curriculum for us to teach habits of character.”
The board discussed whether enough of the book could be redacted without violating copyright, and decided that was not feasible. A motion was made to remove it and “challenge our instructional staff to come with an alternative method of teaching The Holocaust,” but that motion was tabled in lieu of another, which passed, simply to remove the book. It is unclear what, if anything, will replace it; Brady told the Board that there was no book that could do so “without redoing this whole module.”
As a Jew and a queer person, this angers me to no end. Discussing a topic does not mean “promoting” it—indeed, it can often mean the opposite. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in fact tweeted yesterday:
Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors…. Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.
I’ll also quote Spanish philosopher George Santayana, who observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Go read about the 1933 burning of books, many by Jewish authors, in Nazi Germany. Then consider the increasing efforts around the U.S. to ban or restrict books about marginalized communities, as I wrote about last week, as well as efforts in many states to restrict such topics in the curriculum (including the historical and systemic impact of racism and other forms of bias). Are the situations exactly parallel? No. But such widespread efforts of censorship should still worry us all.