A group of 15 McMinn County parents, educators, students and community members has accused the McMinn County school board of violating its own rules in removing the Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” from its eighth-grade curriculum during a called meeting Jan. 10.
The group calling itself “McMinn County Neighbors” on Tuesday issued a statement calling for the board to reverse its decision on Maus and instead to take up a process to consider the material with input from the community. County school officials said some of the language and depictions in the books were offensive but they didn’t object to the topic.
The group plans a gathering at the school system’s central office at 4:30 p.m. Thursday ahead of the county school board meeting to make remarks regarding the group’s concerns about the procedural process, according to the statement.
“The board made a decision that night it did not have the authority to make,” the statement sent out by the group Tuesday said. “It ignored recommendations by its own education and legal professionals and instead proceeded with haste to a decision that seems to have been made before the meeting was even called to order.”
Following fiery blowback for the decision, the board issued a statement saying “Maus” was removed from the eighth-grade curriculum “because of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide.”
The group says board members are not playing by their own rules.
“A board must be guided by its adopted policy. Any board that disregards its own policy and makes decisions clouded by personal bias shows a clear lack of transparency and respect for due diligence. This type of behavior puts at risk the children it is charged with educating. Any board that operates in this manner is a liability to its electors, to us,” the statement said.
“After extensive review of available information at this time, we believe the school board violated their own procedures and request that they rescind the vote and commit to address curriculum changes in a way that is transparent, equitable and does not promote the message of going behind the back of the community it serves,” the statement concludes.
Officials with the McMinn County Board of Education did not respond Thursday to queries about accusations the vote to remove “Maus” was not done according to policy.
Author Art Spiegelman’s book tells the story of the Holocaust with Nazis as cats and Jews as mice, but a human character, the author’s mother, is shown as a naked corpse in one drawing after committing suicide in a bathtub. “Maus” is about Spiegelman’s father, who survived the Holocaust.
The book depicts events during the Holocaust, the mass murder of 6 million European Jews and other groups by the Nazi Germans before and during World War II. Much of the violence – and many of the curse words – shown in the book are attributed to the perpetrators of genocide.
The McMinn County Neighbors group in its statement described itself as a collection of residents with varied political backgrounds who believe the proper process and some solutions were ignored by board members.
“This decision was made with the knowledge that there was no alternative material identified to replace the book,” group members said in the statement.
“Even more concerning is that this decision came after extensive discussion on the challenged subject matter of the book which included presentations from [McMinn County Schools] staff on the significance of this curriculum to promoting deeper learning by students and the book’s purpose in it. [McMinn County Schools] staff provided the board with a clear solution to redact the challenged contextually coarse language and partial-nudity in the book that were the purpose of the called meeting. The board ignored that solution,” group members said.
IF YOU GO
The McMinn County Board of Education will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the McMinn County Center for Educational Excellence, 3 South Hill St., Athens, Tennessee.
The group, citing specific policy, also said the board ignored “critical points [made] by its legal counsel and a fellow board member, that tabling the question of the book’s removal for the night – which it voted to do, then undo – was the proper course of action thus allowing [McMinn County Schools] staff to follow policy 4.403 for reconsideration of instructional materials and textbooks.”
The group said that process, which starts with a formal complaint, “means retaining the challenged material while an ad hoc committee composed of school principals, librarians, teachers, parents and students review the material based on its merits,” according to the statement.
The Time Free Press has requested a copy of any complaints about “Maus” but so far has received no documentation.
“It is a serious process and provides a cross-section of staff and community to ensure equity,” the McMinn County Neighbors group said in the statement. “The review results in a decision that is presented to the director of schools. If complaints persist about the material, an appeal can be brought to the school board. Considering extensive discussion by the board made no mention of any of this – we assume this process never took place.”
Sales of the book “Maus” have exploded since the board’s Jan. 10 vote to remove it from the eighth-grade curriculum started drawing media attention across the country and other parts of the world and placed a spotlight on McMinn County.
A local Episcopal church hosted a book-club style conversation last week about the 1992 Pulitzer prize winner’s book because, according to a post on the meeting, “Too many Christian churches in Europe and the United States did not raise protest against the events unfolding under Hitler’s leadership in Europe, turning away from suffering and oppression out of fear or a misguided sense that those events were not their concern.”
Spiegelman weighed in Monday night in an online webinar saying he was apprehensive about children reading “Maus” until he met some of them who had read the book.
“I was interested to learn until last year, until very recently, McMinn County also thought this was possible on an eighth-grade reading level,” Spiegelman said Monday during the webinar. “I’m distressed to find that’s changed in the midst of strong political headwinds that are burning books, literally, in Nashville just a few days ago, that are trying to readjust our curricula to terrify librarians and book readers and teachers.”
The school board will meet Thursday at 5:30 p.m.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.