Dear Editor:
A public debate should be held
I was sadly disappointed at Mr. Greg Bell’s letter published Sunday.
His letter not only shows a lack of awareness of Ted Benke’s character and place in our community, but it profoundly undercuts Mr. Bell’s own position by stooping to name-calling. I have known the Benkes for several years, and they are hardly the uneducated ruffians, or worse, they have been painted to be.
To name one example only, both the Benkes, along with their younger son, appeared in the Carnegie Players’ summer production of “Oliver,” a musical about, among others things, the moral impact of drunkenness, of prostitution, and of murder.
Does such behavior strike the thinking person as that of people who are afraid of evil in literature?
The Benkes are hardly narrow-minded. They are people committed to practicing one of the great traditions of this country: the freedom to state one’s position and work for public change.
Mr. Bell’s smear technique is to tar good people by associating them with Nazis — “doktor,” “book burnings,” and so on. A travesty, indeed. Such an analogy can go both ways. After all, the Nazis refused to let honest dissent come forth, took away the power of parents to make decisions in good conscience for their children, and created institutions that were profoundly unresponsive to the people and public they were originally created to serve.
Nothing would serve our community better than to have a public debate that truly listens to the concerns of all its citizens and respects the consciences of its parents.
Nothing would also serve our community better than to have its families clearly informed about the curricular choices of its teachers.
I say this as an educator who often helps my own students think through and critique difficult literature that encounters great evil.
As a teacher of literature, I believe people like the Benkes deserve to be treated with respect and decency.
No one, on any side of this debate, need be a Nazi here, if we will treat each other fairly and honestly. That is a definition of “broad-mindedness” of which Cleburne can be proud.
Dr. Philip Mitchell
Cleburne
Parents are shielding children
Dear Editor:
An open letter to the Cleburne community:
“All Quiet on the Western Front” is a title that sounds familiar to many of you. It was not just an Oscar winning movie from 1930, but also a best selling novel.
It was written by Erich Maria Remarque in 1920, a German World War 1 veteran, and depicts the extreme separation German soldiers felt from their country during the war. It told of true emotion, true heartache, and true struggle of war.
One of the main characters is killed while reaching to grab a graceful butterfly, and in the great words of Remarque “he could not have suffered long.”
Despite the book’s overwhelmingly positive reception aroung the world, in 1936 the book was banned by Nazi Germany for being detremental to the cause. A fascist group of people banned a literary masterpiece because it was against “their cause.”
I was astonished to read the other day, that fascism was once again live and well in my hometown of Cleburne. Only this time, instead of being called the Third Reich, they go by the title of Concerned Parents and Citizens. Though this groups fascism is disguised as a Neo-Conservative agenda, and a mission to do good, make no doubt that these people are not spreading a message of thoughfulness and goodwill, but instead one of intolerance and naiveté.
CPAC believes that by removing “Pillars of the Earth” from the curriculum at CHS, that they are shielding children from a book that may corrupt them or go against their personal morals. I would like ask these people, how is this any different than Adolf Hitler shielding the German public from “All Quiet on the Western Front”?
The argument has been made that these are still children. That children from a public school should not be subjected to such material.
I wonder if any of these same parents make this argument about the Bible. I would like to invite readers of this message to go read Ruth 3: 3-4. If that is not enough sexually graphic literature, then please also go read Judges 19:22-30. Both of the messages are as graphic if not more graphic than what is in “Pillars of the Earth.”
Where is the outrage from this group of parents and citizens about the Bible? There is none. In fact, members of this group have lobbied to have the biblical account of creation taught in public schools.
To review, students are assigned a choice of books to read for English class, and the parents are up in arms because it goes against their personal morals.
These same people want to force the students to be subjected to material that may go against their families personal morals in science class?
Though I may never understand fascism because I have yet to live through it, CPAC may be on their way to embracing the same ideaology. What is right for one, is right for all, is it not?
Maybe one day, instead of worrying about what these 17- and 18-year-olds are subjected to while reading, these parents can take a good look at what they are subjecting their children to every day.
Heil mein CPAC. Heil.
Tyler Shanklin
Fort Worth
Bible also contains objectionable material
Dear Editor:
In response to the removal of “Pillars of the Earth” from the senior reading list:
Thank you, Stu, for having the cojones to stand up for what is right. In addition, those who know you do not question your integrity; it is the reason that we voted for you.
Everyone should be exposed to great literature, period. Most “book banners” are people who indoctrinate their children with stories of murder, sex with multiple partners, sodomy, child killing, rape, beheading and destruction.
However, this is OK because it is in the name of religion.
Should the “Song of Solomon” be banned from the Bible due to its sexual content?
Moreover, what about Lot offering his virgin daughters to the sodomizing crowd?
How does one address the issues in the Bible when it comes to children?
You use them to teach. Teach about good, evil, and the ultimate faith that in the end good always triumphs over evil.
If there is a Bible in the CHS library, you had better hide it, lest it be pulled for containing objectionable material.
LuAnne Leonard
Cleburne
Racy book did no harm
Dear Editor:
When I was a senior in Cleburne High School in 1978, I was enrolled in an advanced honors English-Literature class known as “Reading Enrichment.”
We had a reading list of books we could choose from before writing our critical review of the book. I absolutely loved that class and our teacher Mrs. Denning.
A book called “Forever Amber” was recommended to me. But I had to have a family member, in this case my grandmother Nell Conover —a librarian — sign a release form.
It was a book about a child born out of wedlock, who rose to become one of the paramours of King James but who forever longed for her handsome captain at sea. And yes, there were sexual scenes depicted in the book, but nothing as racy as you get in one of those books with the Italian guy on the cover!
It also contained much historic information about the period, including some rather gruesome revelations about the bubonic plague and the treatments used, as well as depictions of the horrors of “debtor’s prisons” during that period.
When I asked my grandmother to sign the release form, she laughed her heart away.
“How ridiculous!,” was her response — this was a die-hard Republican, and did I mention, a librarian?
She willingly signed the release form, and as I recall, she mentioned the matter to then Superintendent Don Smith.
She then revealed to me that when the book was first published in the 1940s, her women’s reading circle had to pull the blinds down when they read this, as well as other rather risqué novels for their time.
Now, that was in the 1940s, and here we are 70 years later, with people complaining about a very well-written book, “Pillars of the Earth.”
If you do not want your children to read such a book, fine, but do not take it off the reading list if it is recommended by professional educators. We need more well-educated and well-read students, not fewer.
Why not re-institute the requirement that parents or guardians sign a release form?
Oh, but that may be too hard, because then they would actually have to read the book in its entirety before lodging their objections.
I can just hear my grandmother now. She would be one of the first people to sign up to speak her three minutes before the board.
And, I can already hear her voice now, a lady who loved to read and who enabled others to read — and for more than 50 years helped open her students’ minds — and boy, would she be giving the school board and the new super Hades over this flap.
If Nell Conover could handle it, I think that parents and administrators of today could and should be able to handle it. She was born in 1908; it is 2009.
At 101, Nell Conover would still be a formidable foe against this type of censorship.
Bill Conover
Cleburne
Book not appropriate for underage
Dear Editor:
I found that Greg Bell’s letter to the editor (“A Return To The Middle Ages?”) both self-indulgent and melodramatic as he invoked the horrors of Nazi Germany in his description of Dr. Ted Benke’s effort to challenge the inclusion of the controversial book, “Pillars of the Earth,” in our children’s required summer reading list.
Mr. Bell was rude and disrespectful to Dr. Benke, who not only speaks for himself but for a large group of parents and concerned citizens who all believe that we have the right to determine what is appropriate for our children to read and what is not appropriate. We have been labeled as small minded, uneducated and unintelligent by those who seek to keep this book in the Cleburne High School curriculum, and I assure you that is not the case.
We are actually “parent minded” and must now question whether or not those employed by the CISD, who are willing to fight to put this obscene material into the hands of our children, are capable of being the trusted stewards of our children’s education that we once believed them to be.
It is not our desire to infringe on anyone’s First Amendment rights, and we don’t want the book removed from the library, we only want to question whether or not this book is appropriate for children under the age of 18. In our view, it is not.
Mark and Jan Swanson
Cleburne
