Students Speak Out Against Textbook Censorship.

WITNESSES; HIGH school students; MEETINGS; SCHOOL boards; TEXTBOOK censorship

This article presents edited testimonies made by students from Buffalo City Honors High School at a 1986 meeting of the Buffalo Board of Education to prohibit the use of the home economics textbook Family Matters: Concepts in Marriage and Personal Relationships. First to testify was Alexander Des Forges. I have read this book and its entirety, and I realize that sections of it are offensive to some members of our community and to members of other communities. Some sections of this book are offensive to me. However, no one I know claims that any textbook is perfect. To further suggest that teachers are capable of teaching only what is inscribed in the book is not only ridiculous but insulting to all teachers. Students in public schools must not be indoctrinated with a single approved point of view but should be exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints. The truth can only make itself clear in the open--falsehood loves secrecy. Schools are for discovering things, not for covering them up. Next to testify was Sarah Averill. I find it surprising that anyone who has read this textbook feels that it pays no attention to religion and, much less, that it presents secular humanism as a religion; the book does not even present it as a philosophy.