Sherry Chandler

Here’s a distressing item from The Kentucky Literary Newsletter and Calendar:

Non-Christian Books Banned in Kentucky Schools – A 100-year-old law which has been ignored for years has been dusted off and implemented by schools across the state. “It’s still a law schools have to follow,” said Brad Hughes, a spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association. Lisa Deffendall, a spokeswoman for the Fayette County Public Schools, says Lexington included the infidel books ban when it updated its policies in 2003. Herald-Leader

Stunting Education — Former Reagan official and constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein says Kentucky statute “defeats learning and affronts free speech. It should be repealed.” BibleBeltBlogger

And here is Kentucky Revised Statute 158.190 — Sectarian, infidel, or immoral books prohibited. No book or other publication of a sectarian, infidel, or immoral character, or that reflects on any religious denomination, shall be used or distributed in any common school. No sectarian, infidel, or immoral doctrine shall be taught in any common school. (Repealed and reenacted 1990.) http://lrc.ky.gov/KRS/158-00/190.PDF

And on a related topic, take a look at KRS 158.170 — Bible to be read. The teacher in charge shall read or cause to be read a portion of the Bible daily in every classroom or session room of the common schools of the state in the presence of the pupils therein assembled, but no child shall be required to read the Bible against the wish of his parents or guardian. (Recodified 1942) — In 1963 the U.S. supreme Court declared Bible reading in public schools unconstitutional. Maybe some Kentucky laws need a little updating.

Man, I have got to read more local news! Here I’ve been feeling smug because the creationists on the Kansas State School Board had been dealt a strong push back by voters. Gloating at the beam in our neighbor’s eye, so to speak, when here’s this beam in our own.

Infidel is as dangerous and ridiculous a term in the current context as Freedom Fries, which recently got quietly turned back into French fries on the menu at the U.S. House of Representatives cafeteria. Sectarian? Well, one man’s sect is another man’s Southern Baptist Convention. The law is obviously unenforceable and so broad and nebulous as to ban most of western, let alone eastern, thought. To grab a quote from the Bible Belt Blogger (a thing I would never have thought I’d do):

…That censorship is both staggering and hostile to a classical education.

Shakespearean drama is laced with language or allusions that might be condemned as immoral. Ditto for Tom Jones, Madame Bovary, Elmer Gantry, and countless other pearls of literature. Under the statute, Peter Paul Reubens could not be taught in art history; Pilgrim’s Progress could not be taught in religious history; and, Darwin’s Origin of Species could not be taught in science. An exhaustive list of the literary, philosophic, and scientific masterpieces evicted from Kentucky’s public schools by the 1990 law must be foregone as a concession to the shortness of life.

Education should spark inquiry and eschew indoctrination. Ninety percent of belief consists in knowing why alternative claims to truth are unpersuasive. Thus, exposure to an uncensored marketplace of ideas is essential to the development of enlightened and firm convictions. The superiority of democratic government to anarchy or the rule of law to the rule of men will not be fully appreciated unless both alternatives are analyzed. Students sheltered from competing viewpoints will little understand what they believe and will be vulnerable to waywardness after emancipation.

Intellectual progress also rides on the back of freedom of inquiry. With censorship like the Kentucky statute, we would still believe in the geocentric theory of the universe, in witches, in the divine right of kings, in the subordination of women, and in the necessity or benevolence of slavery. Scientific and moral truths neither know nor need any statute of limitations.