Page 30 - 2022_Magazine_89-2

Personal Reflection/Anecdote

Linda Mauser is a past worse daily through social media and movies; it’s real life; and so forth. A few of
president of Upsilon the papers opposed book banning but offered thoughtful considerations: parental
Chapter of Kentucky permission, alternative assignments, or age appropriateness, for example.
State Organization I was almost finished with my task. It was the very last paper in the stack,
and has served on the
state’s educational and it was different. It wasn’t that it advocated banning or restricting access to
excellence committee. controversial books. In fact, that was not the stance it took at all. The writer did not
Now retired, she was advocate eliminating titles. The writer did not advocate for either parental or local
a National Board school board input either. The writer advocated for a national committee to identify
Certified Teacher of offensive passages and reissue whitewashed (my term) editions of controversial
English. lbmauser@ titles. National. NATIONAL … so that there would be nationwide uniformity
gmail.com
without regard for parental preference, without regard for local community input,
without acknowledgement of the wide variance in cultural norms and values
present in a vast country. This young writer was all for keeping controversial titles
on shelves for their so-called “historical value” but edited to remove offensive
language or discriminatory passages. That, of course, begs the question of whether
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can be said to retain any historical value if the
offending societal values of its time are expunged.
High school students who choose to
enter essay contests have been taught
the strategies of effective expository and
argumentative writing. They know how
to construct inductive and deductive
arguments. They know about idea
development, about audience awareness,
transitions, voice, and tone. They have
been taught to acknowledge and then
dispatch opposing views. And they are,
relatively at least, skilled in mechanics
and conventions. This writer was no
exception, and the essay ticked almost
all the boxes on the rubric. I have noted
that we scorers are cautioned against
letting our personal biases creep into our scoring, and I think I scored the essay
fairly. But that does not mean I did not find it disturbing.
I have no way of knowing if the young writer’s position was truly held and,
if so, whether he or she had come to it on his or her own, whether it reflected a
mindset of parents or other authority figures, or even if it were perhaps a ploy—an
unpopular position deliberately taken to make the essay stand out from others.
I do think that it highlighted a challenge for teachers and students in a world
increasingly polarized through both social media and legitimate media: flawed
logic, troubling ideas, or oversimplification are more readily identified and
questioned when voiced either inarticulately or stridently. Concepts tend to be
far more acceptable when voiced with eloquence and style, cloaked in the facile
language of carefully crafted speech or writing. I also know that of all the years
I’ve been scoring for this contest, this is one of the few papers I will remember.
And ay, there’s the rub.

28 · Volume 89-2