Bowdlerizing alive and well and living in New Rochelle...

Bowdlerizing has a long, rich literary history. Named for a 16/17th century physician who published a heavily edited edition of  William Shakespeare "safe" for women and children, it is a practice that has had a small but passionate following ever since...generally within communities that wallow in moralizing, self-righteous indignation and a healthy sense of holier-than-thouness. Admittedly, I may be slightly biased, as I find gutting of literature to be on about the same plane as any other "abuse of innocents" activity...

The Talk of the Sound posted a cleverly titled entry yesterday: Now Playing in New Rochelle, "Book, Interrupted"! on the English Departments' decision to require students to return copies of the class book, "Girl, Interrupted" so that they could...literally...tear out pages 64 through 70 before returning them to the students continue their lernin'. 

Per English Dept. chairwoman Leslie Altschul, "The material was of a sexual nature that we deemed inappropriate for teachers to present to their students, since the book has other redeeming features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing." [emphasis mine]. Bowdlerizing is not a "liberty" to be taken..it is an offense to be inflicted (c.f. "I took the liberty of thwacking Ms. Altschul in the forehead with a copy of Girl, Interrupted."). The article notes that the District has a "book challenge process", but that the district failed to follow their own policies. 

The article also provides a succinct summary of why Bowdlerizing is such an ugly thing: "Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."

I'm tired of the lowest-common-denominator controlling the "public good". I'm tired of small-minded, pseudo-religious bigots setting the bar for what is and is not acceptable. Shouldn't school be where you are *challenged* in your conceptions and analysis...where you *learn* to think critically and cogently? Do we *really* want out classrooms defined by material that does not offend anyone, lest it be purged (or, you know, the offending pages be purged). 

 I suggest that one's willingness to rip pages out of a book should be inversely proportional to one's ability to hold the job of "English Department Chair"...in fact, I think I might go so far as to say that if one is happy to tear great chunks of text out of books before handing them to students, one should not be teaching at all. There are plenty of stalls that need mucking, fish that need gutting and/or graves that need digging...just about anything that keeps books from your hands. 

Thanks (so to speak) to Joyce and LB for the late night posts about the good times in New Rochelle...