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Leonard Hall bans 64 booksCategory 3 literature can't be used in county classroomsU Category 3 books are books that do not meet the Bay County Schoo! Board policy for classroom teaching and will be available for alternate selection only, yy-- Leonard HallJENNIFER LINN $Staff Writer IBay County School Superintendent Leonard Hall on Thursday banned 64 works of literature from classroom teaching.Those 64 works all fell under Hall’s Category 3, the most strict of the three groupings devised by the superintendent to ease the burden of selecting what supplementary teaching aids will and will not be allowed in the classroom.Among them are Shane, The Red Badge of Courage, The Call of the Wild, Wuthering Heights, Animal Farm and, ironically, Fahrenheit 451, a Ray Bradbury novel about banning books.“Category 3 books are books that do not meet the Bay County School Board policy for classroom teaching and will be available for alternate selection only,” Hall stated in a prepared release.The categories are divided thusly: the first are works that contain no profanity or intimate sexual encounters; the second are works that contain a sprinkling of profanity; and the third category contains works that use what Hall terms “a lot of vulgar language” and the curse “goddamn.”Hall approved, based on written rationales from teachers,those supplementary aids in Categories 1 and 2.Hall’s press conference, scheduled for 2 p.m. and to last for 15 minutes, was cut short to just five minutes because Hall refused to answer any more questions from the media.“This is my recommendation,” is all Hall would say — as he shook the two-page release — after his abrupt conclusion of the press conference.His limited explanation for banning the books from classroom use centered on the “alternate book selection process” used at Mowat Middle School and Mosley High School.“Category 3 books are approved as alternates so that thosestudents who would like and feel that those materials are appropriate” may use them for “individual instruction.”That individualized instruction, Hall said, is the same program used by teachers at Mowat and Mosley for the past six years.“They (teachers) felt it very fair to everybody and workable. It’s the same procedure. The student goes to the teacher and says, T want to read something different,’ ” he said.However, Mowat English teachers Gloria Pipkin and Alyne Farrell said what Hall has labeled as the “alternate book selection process” is a “perversion” of that process.Pipkin and Farrell became im-meshed in the book-banning controversy last year when they fought for the use of I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier and About David by Susan Beth Pfef-fer in their accelerated classes. However, those two books were removed from the school and stand a good chance of never being discussed in the classroom. Hall, during the press conference, speculated those two books would fit into Category 3.“It is not the same procedure,” Pipkin said. “I’m not sure that Mr. Hall understands the alternative book process. It was never used to keep books away from children. It is a perversion of our alternate selection process.”As defined by Pipkin and Farrell, Mowat’s alternate selection process was used only when a student objected to studying a book the rest of the class was studying. That child, with parental permission, could select another book dealing with the same ideas and situations. However, the teacher could offer guidance in that selection process and discuss the book with the child in class.According to Hall, “The student will voluntarily request an alternate selection, and the parents will write that they request an alternate selection; that alter-^ See Books, 2A
Newspaper Details
Panama News Herald
Panama City, Florida, US
Fri, May 08, 1987
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Star A.
AL, USA 02 Jun 2024
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