Staff editorial: censoring teachers doesn't educate students

Shelley Evans-Marshall, a high school English and creative writing teacher in Ohio, was heavily criticized after parents objected to the readings she chose for her classes.

Evans-Marshall assigned her English classes a project in which students had to choose a book from a list of banned novels, analyze the reasons why they thought they were banned and conduct a debate about the reasons for its prohibition.

The school where she worked fired her after the principal of the school got in several feuds with her over the curriculum that he said “challenged community standards.”

She sued.

Last Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled that teachers do not have the right to free speech in primary and secondary curriculum.

The court’s decision contradicts the goal of most teachers, which is to educate their students in the most well-rounded and informative manner. Censoring topics does not provide students with a competitive education and does not prepare them for college.

Students were not required to study one particular book; they were given a list from which they could choose. This is comparable to the way that many schools run their required summer reading programs.

Furthermore, the students were not studying the book itself — its themes, characters and symbols — but rather the reasons for it being banned. Analyzing the logic behind censorship is not drilling a certain standpoint into students; it is encouraging students to think outside of the box and consider all aspects of a situation.

One of the books in particular, called “Heather Has Two Mommies,” caused an uproar among parents.

After multiple complaints from conservative parents, the principal made Ms. Evans-Marshall withdraw the book from the list.

Ms. Evans-Marshall then told her students, “[you] are in a unique position to. ...use this experience as source material for [your] debate because [you] are in the ... position of having actually experienced censorship in preparing to debate censorship.”

With the majority of high school readings hailing from the classical period, it is a much needed change for books taught in schools to be relevant to modern society.

In regards to the extreme bullying that is plaguing both grade schools and universities today, it is unfortunate that “Heather Has Two Mommies” was seen as inappropriate and not as a tool to teach tolerance, which should be one of the most important goals of schools across the nation.

The role of educators should be to expose students to every perspective possible and provide the information they need to develop their own informed opinions about various topics. Awareness is not bias — it is simply the result of an effective education.

By censoring topics, the school board and courts are doing students a disservice.

Schools should be committed to opening our students’ minds, not protecting them from controversial issues. That only closes their minds.