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Students Should Be Able to Read Book Unedited, Panel Says

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 May 2006, 12:02 CDT

By Zachary K. Johnson, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

May 17--MANTECA - East Union High School students should be allowed to read the original version of the controversial autobiography "Kaffir Boy" in a senior English class, a Manteca Unified School District instructional material review committee decided Tuesday.

The committee's recommendation will go before the school board next month, along with an admonishment that the board didn't follow the district's complaint policy when asking the committee to determine if the original edition of the book was appropriate for the English class. An alternative, the author-edited version of the book, contains two paragraphs intentionally altered to make a the original version's depiction of child prostitution less graphic.

School board members said they thought the book had been deemed inappropriate years before, and they fast-tracked the process to address an issue they thought already had been settled.

But Tuesday, the review panel of 13 district parents, administrators and teachers agreed "Kaffir Boy" is a relevant, authoritative book that promotes the educational goals of the school district.

The book, by Mark Mathabane, is an autobiographical coming-of-age tale set against a backdrop of crushing poverty in apartheid-era South Africa.

One committee member and East Union parent, Terri Campa, said she preferred offering the edited book. "In the revised edition, you get the same picture without the graphic description," she said. "Other parents might feel the same way." But after the vote, she said she supported the committee's recommendation.

The book's controversial passage uses the words "penis" and "anus" to describe a scene in which a group of young boys are about to prostitute themselves to a group of men for food. Mathabane does not take food or have sex with the men. He runs.

The book is read widely in schools, but the passage helped it reach No. 33 on the list of most-challenged books in the 1990s, according to the American Library Association. One of those challenges surfaced in 1997 in north Stockton's Lincoln Unified School District.

Heather Dragoo, the teacher of the East Union's multicultural English class, gives students ample chance to opt out of anything to which they or their parents might object, noted Kathy Griffin, committee member and librarian at August Knodt Elementary School.

Dragoo should not have to change her classroom policies, the committee decided.

The school board and district administration took steps to remove the book from Manteca Unified schools three years ago, said committee member Bob Lee, director of secondary education. But any decision made then is clouded in confusion because of ambiguous meeting minutes, and employee turnover and transfers, he said.

Trustee Nancy Teicheira put the book back on the board's agenda in April. She said she had heard from three parents who, like her, thought the book had been banned three years ago. The board directed staff to launch the review committee to look at the book.

District policy calls on administrators to try to reach an informal resolution before a complainant can file a formal objection, which creates a reconsideration committee to review the class material in question.

The committee accused the board Tuesday of sidestepping this part of the policy.

Board President Dale Fritchen said the board streamlined the process because it addressed a years-old, unanswered question.

The official objection form was filed by Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Jason Messer, not the parents who objected to the book.

It was wrong for the board to put Messer in this position, said Don Scholl, a committee member and East Union parent.

"Administrators were put in the role of advocates for the complainants," he said.

Contact reporter Zachary K. Johnson at (209) 833-1142 or zjohnson@recordnet.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

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Source: The Record

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