Virginia Regulatory Town Hall View Comments

Department of Education

State Board of Education

Regulations Governing Local School Boards and School Divisions [8 VAC 20 ‑ 720]

Action	Amendments Regarding Use of Controversial or Sensitive Instructional Materials
Stage	NOIRA
Comment Period	Ends 1/15/2014

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1/15/14 1:04 pm

Commenter: Michael Keller

Reject Amendments Regarding Use of Controversial or Sensitive Instructional Materials

I thank you for the opportunity to address and voice my concerns about the proposed amendment requiring teachers to advertise the "controversial or sensitive instructional materials." They've all been stated in the massive outpouring of comments that precede this one. In the interest of presenting something orginal, I think Ray Bradbury, who wrote a book about this very concern, said it best. I'll let him take it from here. The following excerpt may be found in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It's part of Captain Beatty's lesson to the reader about why the public stopped reading.

Mildred went out of the room and slammed the door. The parlour "aunts" began to laugh at the

parlour "uncles.",

"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more

minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants,

chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans,

Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this

play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics

anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All

the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock

up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the

damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said.

But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the

three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the

Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!

Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks

to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old

confessions, or trade journals."

"Yes, but what about the firemen, then?" asked Montag.

Taken out of context, this might be considered offensive. But will I next be asked to burn books? It feels this way. Because if we ignore or are shielded from any book, what's the difference? It's as good as burned already.

CommentID: 30714