By Electronic Mail

October 10, 2014

Superintendent Dawson Orr
Members of the Board of Trustees
Highland Park Independent School District
7015 Westchester Drive
Dallas, TX 75205-1061
Dear Superintendent Orr and Members of the Board of Trustees,
As organizations concerned with the freedom to read, the integrity of the public education system, and the
application of First Amendment law and principles in public institutions, we have been following the public
controversy over a number of books in use at Highland Park High School. We were particularly concerned
about the removal of two books over the summer and the temporary removal of seven additional titles several
weeks ago. We are also aware that a group of parents has requested removal of these and other books
containing disturbing, vulgar passages. The group has proposed, among other things, to require the school
to identify potentially objectionable content in literature and obtain parental consent for such material, and
to require the school to rate educational materials using the labeling system developed by private
entertainment companies for purposes of marketing movies and music to the general public.
While we do not question the good faith of parents who object to certain kinds of materials, or their right to
their beliefs, it is clear that their main objective is for the public school curriculum to reflect their personal,
moral and religious perspectives and preferences. However, what they urge the district to do is both
constitutionally impermissible and a prescription for educational chaos.
It is worth noting at the outset that it is impossible to accommodate every parental viewpoint in the
curriculum. Every community is home to a diversity of opinions on moral and religious questions. For every
parent who objects to an assigned book, there will be others who favor it. In practice, the attempt to alter
school curricula in response to individual objections means privileging the moral or religious beliefs of some
families over others. It is precisely this form of viewpoint discrimination by government officials that our
constitutional system is designed to prevent.

First Amendment Principles in the Public Schools

The First Amendment protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures Boards of
Education not excepted. West Virginia Board ofEducation v. Barnette (1943). As a result, school officials are
bound by a constitutional duty not to suppress unpopular, controversial, or even objectionable ideas. The
"bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment is that the government may not prohibit the
expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."Texas v.
Johnson (1989). See also Board ofEducation, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico (1982) (local
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school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in
those books ) Thus, decisions about instructional materials must be based on sound educational grounds.

Objections to the message, ideas, or content do not provide an adequate basis for the removal ofany book.

The present proposal misconstrues both the legal rights of parents and the duties of public school officials.
While parents do have a general right to guide their childrens upbringing and education, they have no right
to choose the curriculum. Parents who object to curricular materials are free to voice their opinions but have
no right to have them adopted by the school: while parents can choose between public and private schools,
they do not have a constitutional right to direct how a public school teaches their child. Parker v. Hurley (1st
Cir. 2008). Instead, consistent with Supreme Court case law cited above, the mandate of the public schools is
not to accommodate the personal views and preferences of segments of the school community, but to
administer school curricula responsive to the overall educational needs of the community and its children.
Leebaert v. Harrington (2d Cir. 2003). Otherwise, the schools would be forced to cater a curriculum for each
student whose parents had genuine moral disagreements with the school's choice of subject matter." Brown
v. Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions, Inc. (1st Cir. 1995), cert. denied (1996). See also Swanson v. Guthrie Indep.
School Dist. (10th Cir. 1998); Littlefield v. Forney Indep. School (5th Cir. 2001).
This rule is essential to public education. The attempt to eliminate everything that is objectionable will
leave public education in shreds. Nothing but educational confusion and a discrediting of the public school
system can result. McCollum v. Board ofEducation (1948) (Jackson, J., concurring.) Virtually nothing is
immune from objection, whether it involves religion, sex, violence, history, race, gender, science, politics, the
environment, or any other issue on which people disagree. There could be (and have been) objections to
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, because of its depiction of poverty; to historical materials that
include critical statements about US policies or actions; to books like Native Son by Richard Wright for their
depiction of ghetto life; to A Day No Pigs Will Die by Robert Newton Peck because of its descriptions of farm
life; to The Diary ofA Young Girl by Anne Frank because it is a real downer; to a Shel Silverstein poem in A
Light in the Attic because it encourages children to break dishes so they wont have to dry them.
According to press reports, the objection to The Working Poor by David K. Shipler is based on a passage
about a woman who was sexually abused as a child and later had an abortion.The book is a highly
acclaimed work by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, which Booklist describes as a compelling, insightful book
for those interested in issues of poverty and social justice," and former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron
Suskind called one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now."The objection to
a minor passage taken out of context ignores everything else in the book and thus completely fails to
comprehend the authors message, argument and conclusions. Whether the reader agrees or not is beside
the point: Education is about reading a work, comprehending the ideas, analyzing the facts and conclusions,
and thinking about its significance not focusing on a few isolated passages containing objectionable
content.
Removing such material in response to this kind of objection may well violate the First Amendment rights of
non-objecting students. As many courts recognize, removing educationally valuable material in response to
objections to the message, ideas or content is vulnerable to legal challenge. See Monteiro v. Tempe Union High
School District (9th Cir. 1998) (recognizing the First Amendment right of students to read books selected for
their legitimate educational value); See also Parker v. Hurley (1st Cir. 2008) (rejecting effort to remove books
that offend parents and students religious beliefs), Pratt v. Independent School Dist. No. 831 (8th Cir. 1982)
(First Amendment violated when films removed because of hostility to content and message), and Case v.
Unified School Dist. No. 233 (D. Kan. 1995) (First Amendment violated by removing a book from school library
based on hostility to its ideas).
There are predictable consequences for all students if schools attempt to accommodate multiple possibly
conflicting viewpoints by providing alternative assignments: due to the practical burdens, schools would
be unlikely to choose to teach alternate works separately to students objecting to a portion of the curriculum.
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Instead, they would probably simply remove books that they believed to be educationally valuable, but that
might be controversial, or offensive to some. Monteiro v. Tempe Union School District (9th Cir. 1998).
One of the basic goals of the public school education system is to endow students with the knowledge widely
shared by students across the country. Confronting controversial and complex themes in literature is part of
the educational mission of the schools. A school district puts its students at a distinct disadvantage if it fails
to introduce them to the range of ideas that they will encounter in college and in life. Excluding works out of
fear that they might be controversial would deny students exposure to a wide range of classic and
contemporary material that forms the basis for a high-quality education, including works by Shakespeare,
Hawthorne, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Angelou, and Toni Morrison, to name but a few.

Book Ratings
While the idea of rating books may have some superficial appeal, rating materials will stigmatize and deter
the teaching of valuable works of literature, invite ongoing controversy, and ultimately undermine the quality
of education students receive. Content warnings raise the same constitutional issues as removing books
because someone dislike[s] the ideas contained in those books. Rating books for objectionable content
influences how readers read and understand texts and will inevitably discourage the use of these books in the
classroom, depriving students of valuable educational experiences.
Instructional materials are selected for a number of reasons, including but not limited to their suitability to a
given course of study, their literary or educational merit, and their ability to connect instruction to human
experience in a broader sense. Warning labels reduce complex literature to a few elements taken out of
context. For example, would Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, a critically acclaimed book about slavery set
during the revolutionary period, be rated for violence or brutality? Would a book like Eleanor and Park by
Rainbow Rowell be rated for sex because of its realistic and touching depiction of teenage romance, including
scenes in which the main characters kiss?
Concerns of this sort have caused leading educational organizations to oppose the use of ratings and warning
labels for books. The National Council of Teachers of English in its Position Statement Regarding Rating or
Red-Flagging Books states:
Lists that segregate books into artificially-created categoriesgive a biased perspective, casting a
negative light on listed books regardless of their literary worth, stoking unnecessary alarm over
their content. Such categorization defers to a minority who object to a book often for random,
personal, or ideological reasons rather than the thousands who have read, taught, enjoyed, and
benefited from the book. More importantly, "red-flagging" privileges the concerns of would-be
censors over the professional judgment of teachers and librarians[narrowing] the curriculum to
only books that are deemed "safe".
.Letter ratings and "red-flagging" is a blatant form of censorship; the practice reduces complex
literary works to a few isolated elements those that some individuals may find objectionable
rather than viewing the work as a whole.
http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/rating-books. Instead of rating books, NCTE encourages schools
to explain how and why certain books are used as well as the pedagogical purposes these materials serve.
Similarly, the American Library Association rejects ratings and labels, calling them prejudicial [and]
designed to restrict access, based on a value judgment [about] the content, language, or themes. The
prejudicial label is used to warn, discourage, or prohibit users or certain groups of users from accessing the
resource. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/labelingrating. The ALA

further notes that The adoption, enforcement, or endorsement of any of these [private] rating systems by a
library violates the American Library Associations Library Bill ofRights and may be unconstitutional.
We have recently become aware that teachers must obtain parental permission for any book that has been on
the list of most challenged books compiled annually by the ALA any time during the past ten years. This is
akin to a rating of "O" for "objectionable" and an egregious affront to both literature and intellectual
freedom, giving a role in the educational process to the views of unidentified members of the general public.
Books may appear on the ALA lists because they are the subject of an organized campaign by a political or
religious group or figure; or because they are mentioned by a radio or television talk show host; or they may
be simply the personal views of a few unknown individuals. They may be based on objections to political
views (e.g., Nickel and Dimed), religious views (e.g., Brave New World), content or message (e.g., And Tango
Makes Three), and choice of language (e.g., To Kill a Mockingbird). In some cases, they reveal ignorance about
the work in question, or misunderstanding of it, but in every case they represent only the views of those who
object to a work, not the vastly greater number of readers who do not. Such objections rarely, if ever, consider
the literary or educational value of the work, which is the only legitimate concern of public school officials.
Some complaints, such as those based on political or religious views or content and message, are palpably
inadequate to justify removal, and schools would be vulnerable to legal challenge if they removed a book for
that reason. Perhaps most important is the fact that the most challenged book lists often include critically
acclaimed literature whose educational value is indisputable: e.g., Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Adventures
ofHuckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, to name but a few. Moreover, it is
unclear whether students in Advanced Placement courses would be entitled to Advanced Placement credit if
they fail to read any such books that are in the approved AP curriculum.

Summary and Conclusion

Those who object to certain kinds of books are entitled to their views, but they may not impose those views
on others, even to the extent of demanding that the school adopt warnings about content they find
objectionable. Students are entitled to an education that provides them with a solid foundation, as defined by
educators and experts in relevant fields and as taught to students nationwide. Failure to expose students to
the ideas and materials that are widely available to their peers around the country will unfairly disadvantage
them in college and in life. Students educational opportunities will be further threatened if courses do not
satisfy requirements and standards for Advanced Placement credit because essential content has been
excluded. It is the students including those whose parents supported the original curriculum who will
suffer the consequences.
1 through policies and procedures for
Parental concerns about curricular materials can be addressed
challenging instructional materials, which is the approach recommended by most educational organizations
and adopted by many if not most school districts nationwide. Such a process helps ensure that schools
remain on a solid legal footing, preserves the integrity of the education program, and enables school staff to
engage with parents in a manner that is thorough, objective, consistent, and fair. If schools provide
information to parents about materials that will be assigned, it is essential that such materials do not reflect
restrictive value judgments about sensitive content or pre-judge the material, but that they provide a
professional assessment of literary and educational value, such as that provided by the National Council of
1 Model procedures commonly provide an opportunity for informal resolution with the teacher or principal in the

first instance, at which point an alternative assignment may be offered, if appropriate. If this is unsuccessful, the
complainant normally is offered the option to file a written request for reconsideration on a standard form,
specifying the basis for the challenge and the requested remedy, among other things. A review committee of teachers
and administrators, the professionals most familiar with students educational needs and interests, then evaluates
the merits of the complaint and makes a recommendation to a designated school official, who issues a decision.
Often policies provide for a final appeal to the School Board. See also The First Amendment in Schools: A Resource
Guide, Roles and Responsibilities: B. Principles Governing Selection and Retention of Materials in Schools and C.
Complaint Procedures. http://ncac.org/resource/first-amendment-in-schools/#principles
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Teachers of English, Booklist, School Library Journal, VOYA, Kirkus Review and many other professional
educational resources.
We advise you to abide by the guiding principles you outline in your own EFA (LOCAL) Policies, which
guarantee that [a] parents ability to exercise control over reading, listening, or viewing matter extends only
to his or her own children, and that [t]he major criterion for the final decision on challenged materials is
the appropriateness of the material for its intended educational use. No challenged library material shall be
removed solely because of the ideas expressed therein.
We strongly urge you to reject any proposal to restrict the curriculum of students to accommodate the views,
values and preferences of some, and instead to rely on the professional judgment of educators, in your
district and around the country, in selecting curricular material that will best prepare your students to
continue their education if they choose, and to become informed, knowledgeable, thoughtful, and engaged
participants in their communities.
Sincerely,

Joan Bertin, Executive Director

National Coalition Against Censorship

Chris Finan, President

American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression

Judy Platt, Director

Free Expression Advocacy
Association of American Publishers

Charles Brownstein, Executive Director

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

Millie Davis, Senior Developer

Affiliate Groups and Public Outreach
National Council of Teachers of English

Susanna Reich, Chair

Children's and Young Adult Book Committee
PEN American Center

Lin Oliver, Executive Director

Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators

CC: Dr. Dawson Orr, orrd@hpisd.org

Walter Kelly, kellyw@hpisd.org
Anita Poteat, poteata@hpisd.org
Tim Turner, turnert@hpisd.org
Pat Gonzales, gonzalp@hpisd.org
Sherry Amyx, amyxs@hpisd.org
schoolboard@hpisd.org