“It’s not about the author or the awards,” said Murphy, a mother of four whose eldest son had nightmares after reading “Beloved” for his senior-year Advanced Placement English class. “It’s about the content.”
The Fairfax County School Board voted Thursday against hearing Murphy’s challenge, but she vowed to continue her quest. She said she plans to take her complaint to the Virginia Board of Education, where she will lobby for policies that will give parents more control over what their children read in class.
The Murphy case raises complex questions about constitutional rights, academic freedom and the preservation of childhood innocence. It’s mainly for those reasons that book challenges have been the subject of controversy for decades.
A Lake Braddock Secondary School Parent-Teacher-Student Association member, Murphy, 45, has been seeking for six months to have “Beloved” banned until new policies are adopted for books assigned for class that might have objectionable material.
The odds were stacked against Murphy’s challenge from the beginning, and she knew it.
Fairfax County schools in certain cases have limited books for distribution only to older students, but it has never banned a book outright. According to records, the School Board has reviewed just 19 books since 1983.
If teachers wish to show excerpts from an R-rated movie in class, such as the 1998 film adaptation of “Beloved,” starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover, they must notify families two weeks ahead and receive written permission from parents. The school system uses content filters to monitor what students can access on the Internet. But for books, teachers don’t need to give notice.
“I’m not some crazy book burner,” Murphy said. “I have great respect and admiration for our Fairfax County educators. The school system is second to none. But I disagree with the administration at a policy level.”
An epic tale of slavery and survival, “Beloved” is told from the point of view of a mother haunted by the death of her child — a 2-year-old girl she kills to save from a life spent in bondage. The bestseller, published in 1987, is one of the most challenged works in the United States, ranking 26th on the American Library Association’s list of top 100 most frequently banned books of the past decade.
“It’s a painful part of the African American history in parts of this country,” said the ALA’s director, Barbara Jones. “A lot of parents understandably want to protect their children from that. . . . However, we would strongly advise people to read the book as a whole before they make a judgment.”
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