KY's Montgomery County Removes Select YA Books from Classroom Instruction

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By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 12/09/2009

The superintendent of Kentucky’s Montgomery County Schools has removed several controversial YA novels that were being used along with classics like Beowulf and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in some sophomore and senior accelerated English classes.

His reason? The books weren’t on the preapproved curriculum list and couldn’t be added by teachers in the middle of a school year without permission.

The Montgomery County High School, where it all started.

“There’s supposed to be an approved curriculum for classrooms,” says Donna McGuire, information specialist for Montgomery County Schools. “Any book that had not been approved we need to get out of [the classroom]. We only have a limited time in the class to cover materials.”

But many say the real reason superintendent Daniel Freeman pulled the titles, including Lessons from a Dead Girl (Candlewick) by Jo Knowles, Twisted (Viking) by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Unwind (S & S, all 2007) by Boston Globe/Horn Book Award-winner Neal Shusterman, is because he received complaints from parents about their inappropriate language and content.

To avoid making a decision about the quality of the books, McGuire says Freeman is letting kids check the books out at the school library and read them in book clubs—but they’re no longer available for classroom instruction.

“He said this is irrelevant because we have a procedure in place, and here is a list of books we use and these weren’t on it,” McGuire says.

But any restriction of materials, even when students can still access them in another context, is of concern to many educators and media specialists who believe that it represents a violation of librarianship and a barrier to information.

Superintendent Daniel Freeman

“And [Montgomery High School students] are very intelligent young adults, not very far away from voting age,” says Angela Maycock, assistant director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “We need to be very cautious about what we’re restricting their access to, as they’re going to be adults soon.”

Teachers can still request that the books be added to approved curriculum lists—if they ask their department head before the start of the new school year. But not every request will necessarily be granted. McGuire notes that the focus now is on raising test scores for high school students, which have fallen in recent years.

“Our curriculum at our high school has to be top notch because we have had a drop in scores for the last two to three years and we have to get the students ready for college,” says McGuire. “And that’s not happening right now.”