The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1963-06-14
Review by FRED M. HECHINGER
In THE REPORTER Magazine

SoiOuo, VI merely unpleasant. Lit i
part of political maturity to stifle tina
desire. In the early 1905, the Florida
Chamber of Commerce compliance
because a geography textbook con
tanned more pictures of California
than of Florida. In the Middle West
more recently, well-intentioned lady
started campaign against Robin
Hood who, by taking from the rich
and giving TO the poor, seemed to her
a Marxist in disguirse. On Long
Island, a social studies teacher cut
out of her school library books all
references to "bundling'' in a discus
sion of courtship in colonial days, thus
aiming at being more Puritan than
the Puritans and, ait the same time,
advocating the mutilation of books.
And in Los Angeles, Hearst news
paper not long ago started crusade
against an allegedly subversive music
book because it contained a "ditty
from behind the Iron Curtain. The
offensive song, "Swing the Shining
Sickle, turned out to be an Ameri-
can harvest song, vintage 1897, leav-
ing the newspaper sleuths' faces some
what redder than their target.
These are only a few examples of
the collection of censorship stories
interspersed in "The Censors and
the Schools" by two expert newspa-
permen, Jack Nelson and Gene Rob
erts, Jr., who started their research
as Nieman Fellows at Harvard dur
ing 1861 and 1862. The comic cases
are mere window dressing. They have
their point: one way to defeat the
censors is to laugh them out of court |
and sometimes this can be done, as
for instance when the Girl Scout |
Handbook came under suspicion CT |
being infiltrated by subversion.
In reality, of course, censorship
is not funny. Even though it may
often be motivated by understand
able human instincts to protect the
young and offer instant security in
an insecure world, political and
educational freedoms depend large
ly on the success in tanning such
busybody instincts.
The process of tanning the censors
nd preventing them from tearing
nd burning books is continuous
ne. When the political climate is .
as it was during the Nc
'arthy era of the early 1950s, the {
My hope is in open battle against
otalitarians posing as protectors. 1t 7
as then that even a man so gener- :
lily unconcerned about literary and i,
ltellectual issues as General Eisen- :
over was moved to an eloquent ad Q
b against book burning in am address r
, Dartmouth College.
Open attacks on books are gen f
ally made more obnoxious because il
ley attract INSCRIPTIONS charlatans sc
no consider the defense of free en- a
rprise to mean largely the protec- ,
On of their own enterprising free !.
nm to make fast buck out of hate 7"
mpaigns. Allen A. Zoll, who adorned
S lucrative academic career with a m
'ctorate purchased from a diploma re
i'll. was the classic example. A grad Of
tie of earlier profiteering through IN
ti-Semitic pro-fascism, he scared III
dollars out of panicky Il
and the medically I'M 81
formed. Less mercenary were the bf
,tives of a publication known as &C
= EDUCATIONAL REVIEWER, &c
lich sounded shrill alarms about kl
eyed subversions in textbooks. (To- re
v. similar efforts in the textbook W.
Id are being carried on by Amer I
IS Future, Inc, which has among eV
textbo staff three edi- Sc
8 of the monthly publication of lie
bert Welch.) The REVIEWER, like be
lsors throughout history, employed Gle
it's favorite technique the use Of an
elective" or edited quotations. go
IN attacking one of the favorite ou
gets of textbook censors, the high 30
DOL text on AMERICAN GOVERN cri
mt by Frank A. Magruder, the we
EDUCATIONAL Reviewer" charged that on
advocated collectivism. The proof 10
! this quotation: "By Democracy OF
mean that form of government in llsl
oh the sovereign power is in the
dis of the people collectively. The b
lble with this example" was that T